Guild Wars 2

AsteriskCGY.5931:

Man there’s a ton of bad ideas for the game here just to improve crafting.

Any type of “chance to crit” turns into “chance to fail” since you’re just going to want the better item and forgo the non critical one.

Forcing scarcity through randomness ruins the game.

It’s what makes KMMO crafting not fun.

Couldn’t agree more.

All you have to do is make the patterns more rare. Make players put some effort into learning how to work with claws/scales et at each level. Then people could get all the way to 400 and not know anything valuable except those who put in the effort.

Attach the xp to those mini quests rather than to grinding metal into bars and you’ll see more “pure” crafters and not crafters who want to buy 10 levels on thier alt for 2-3g.

A problem is that even if you do that, it won’t stay profitable because all you need is 5-10 crafters competing with each other until everyone’s willing to undercut each other to break-even. Players pay for “time”. If it only takes a crafter 15 seconds to craft an item (even if it took them an hour to get the recipe beforehand), then eventually there will be enough players with that recipe that they’ll be competing with each other for sales.

It happens in market stuff too — people compete for the same market, and the profit gets eaten up in the competition. That’s why everyone’s so reluctant to tell people what items they’re flipping for profit: because once they do, everyone will do it and the margins will be closed.

So crafting would have to take actual time to be worthwhile – a crafted recipe that only has 5 uses but takes 2 hours to farm and that is account-bound so you can’t sell the recipe, or a crafted recipe that uses skill points. Those would be (and in the latter case, currently are) profitable.

EDIT: An actual challenging minigame with a chance of a “critical” success would be pretty cool, if it was challenging enough that it would take time and wouldn’t be just “spend 15 minutes learning how to get a Perfect every time”.

hluill.2790:

I’ve played a few MMOs and I’ve never seen crafting generate reliable profit.

Eve Online. Star Wars Galaxies (original recipe). These are two examples where crafting was/is absolutely profitable. Vastly profitable.

They are also examples of games where crafting is integral and far more complex than the kind of “crafting lite” we have here and in most games. I don’t believe Crafting Lite™ can truly be made into a profitable enterprise. At best you can monitor the dynamic situation and seize the odd opportunity when it comes along. I did manage to make some gold by selling weapons, when I carefully chose which weapons to sell and when to sell them. But I made a lot more money by just selling the materials.

Really, the only reason I have to craft is salvaging the items hoping for ectoplasm, or to throw them into the bottomless pit of chance and sell the exotics. Is that really what they had in mind? The only point of crafting is to supply mystic forge gambling?

In any case, I stand by my statement: if you assemble an item and sell it for less than the value of the materials you assembled it from, you’re doing it wrong. If the item has so little value then you should not have crafted it in the first place. Try to remember that we’re not talking about selling drops here. Don’t bother crafting something that’s worthless. Craft something else, or just sell the materials.

1. Mutually exclusive high level recipes – You can choose to craft this amazing item OR that one but you cant get both. Cuts down the overabundance of supply a little by individualizing every crafter. No two lvl 400 crafters should be the same.
2. More consumables for every class esp high level ones that you cant get anywhere else – Increases the amount of items for which there will be long term demand.
3. Legendary Armour – So we can throw armor pieces into that bottomless pit too.
4. Rare materials as well as exotics dropping in dungeons. Give people more reason to do them and drops the price of raw materials a bit.
5. Crafting being about xp up to lvl 80/400 is good but its not much use after that. It has to be either gold or the ability to make something nobody else/few people can. See point 1.

“…If this environment doesn’t suit you, then you shouldn’t expect to craft for money.”
This is exactly what I was thinking of when I said “it cannot [be profitable].” My hyperbole really meant that it cannot be profitable in and of itself: you have to play markets that have very narrow windows, exactly like Daulnay said. In fact, his post is by far the best response to the generic and often-asked “how do you make money on crafting?” I’ve seen.

I like Webba’s suggestions above, especially 1-3. Mutually-exclusive high-level recipes are how WoW makes crafting more profitable (or at least more guild-friendly). And I also wish crafting still gave XP gains after 400: although this might drive demand for T6 items even higher.

Agree with Daulnay 100%. Crafting in GW2 is a skill based game, because buying and selling raw materials and finished products in a highly competitive, highly efficient, highly transparent market is HARD! The fact that so many players have just accepted that crafting is a gold sink by design is evidence of how hard it is. Crafting is not a gold sink. Crafting is, for most, a gold transfer. Players happily transfer their money to other people in exchange for the joy and xp of crafting an item that, in most cases, they didn’t really need to begin with.

And, if I’m being honest, I’m one of them. I’ve happily paid some stranger to farm crafting mats for me via the TP just to turn those mats into an item that I then vendored at a loss. I did that because at that moment XP had more value to me than silver.

One other thing about profitable crafting. It takes time. Lots of time! Holy cow it takes so much time! First I have to look at the buy/sell spread for each crafting mat. Then I have to look at the buy/sell spread for the finished product. Usually it a loser. Then I have to look at the buy/sell spread for every intermediate product to see if there’s an opportunity for savings there. Then I have to reanalyze the buy/sell spread of the finished product to estimate how long it’ll take to sell and decide if I’m better off putting my cash elsewhere. Over and over again. And I haven’t even gotten to all the various karma or skillpoint to gold conversions that have to be done for some recipes!

And don’t get me started on gold to dollar conversion, and weighing if I’d be better off just saving the time it takes to get all this gold and spending real dollars on it.

TL → DR version: Crafting is profitable. Crafting is skill based. It’s just really hard.

Colbear.6425:

A problem is that even if you do that, it won’t stay profitable because all you need is 5-10 crafters competing with each other until everyone’s willing to undercut each other to break-even. Players pay for “time”. If it only takes a crafter 15 seconds to craft an item (even if it took them an hour to get the recipe beforehand), then eventually there will be enough players with that recipe that they’ll be competing with each other for sales.

Compete for sales? yes, but the demand for some items is high enough that there would be plenty to go around.

I craft stuff for a profit right now. If people are paying 7-8 silver above the cost of an ecto they aren’t buying it to rip it. Now maybe it goes into the bottomless forge, but that’s not my problem. If I can maintain my margins on these few items (30-40 i’ve found depending on the day) then surely if there were 1/4 the number of people able to craft it we wouldn’t have a hard time then either.

The skill in crafting comes from adding value. Time is a value, but so is effort in mastering your craft.

phys.7689:

Someone who truely is an expert at say making clothes, makes money because they are good at making clothes, the make cooler looking, higher quality clothes (in theory) How well they can be marketed is a different issue.

No, it isn’t. A master tailor makes money because they are good at making the clothes people want to buy. If what they make can’t be marketed, the person can’t make money.

Adding a quality rating to items might help in the middle levels, but would it have much effect on stuff created by 400-level crafters?

PinCushion.7390:

One other thing about profitable crafting. It takes time. Lots of time! Holy cow it takes so much time! First I have to look at the buy/sell spread for each crafting mat. Then I have to look at the buy/sell spread for the finished product. Usually it a loser. Then I have to look at the buy/sell spread for every intermediate product to see if there’s an opportunity for savings there. Then I have to reanalyze the buy/sell spread of the finished product to estimate how long it’ll take to sell and decide if I’m better off putting my cash elsewhere. Over and over again. And I haven’t even gotten to all the various karma or skillpoint to gold conversions that have to be done for some recipes!

It’s not quite that bad! Mostly, you need the ability to calculate 15% in your head, at least for the intermediate products. Lots of the parts use identical combinations of materials, so those calculations aren’t even so bad. Also too, use a spreadsheet, and just plug in your estimate of the raw materials prices. Then you only have to compare market prices to what you spreadsheet says they should cost based on raw materials.

Hippocampus.8470:

snip

Adding a quality rating to items might help in the middle levels, but would it have much effect on stuff created by 400-level crafters?

DAOC had critical successes and quality ratings. Based on that, I’d say it doesn’t help much of anywhere. The only stuff people wanted to buy was the perfect stuff, even at mid levels.

It would help to be able to dye armor before you sell it. Then you could make a profit off your ability to make nice color combinations and your good personal dye selection.

OT:

for the joy and xp of crafting an item that, in most cases, they didn’t really need to begin with.

And, if I’m being honest, I’m one of them. I’ve happily paid some stranger to farm crafting mats for me via the TP just to turn those mats into an item that I then vendored at a loss.

If you really find joy from just crafting, you might want to check out the MMO game Istaria. It has one of the best crafting systems I’ve seen so far (and no, you can’t make money crafting there, not really.)(and forgive the graphics, it’s an old game.)
Here are a few highlights from their crafting system:
— In addition to the usual stuff like weapons, armor, potions, and the like, you can craft buildings, ornamental plants, bridges, spells, dragon lairs, storage, and best of all, crafting machinery (for your own plot of land).
— Spells have to be learned from a player-crafted item, which can be customized by the crafter. You have to learn a possible customization before you can craft it, and each customization takes a particular drop or two. For example, if you have a basic flame bolt spell formula, you can customize it to add range, damage, crit damage, accuracy, or a couple other things (but not all at the same time).
— Gathering and Crafting require tools, which can be customized to help you gather or craft.
— Increasing skill increases the efficiency of your crafting and gathering. You gather more, or use less materials as you craft. It caps out at a certain point (although not at the very top, only for each item or tier). Your skill level can be boosted by customized tools, armor, potions (for gathering) and player-made crafting stations (for crafting).
— Weapons and armor can also be customized as you craft them. However, it’s more like a system that allows multiple runes/sigils that are locked in at craft time.

I’d say let crafters craft unique skins. Or specialize in a certain style. If stats are static, next would be appearance.

Course, depending on how well worked all of the styles are, there’d still end up being that one set that everyone likes and then everyone will go for, and in the end we’ll be back where we started.

Rare randomly created recipes would be something one player has that another doesn’t, and as long as the mats cost no different from others of the same tier a demand for that appearance would outweigh the supply. Having to gamble for it only once is more palpable than having to do it each time when crafting.

Daulnay.4971:

Hippocampus.8470:

snip

Adding a quality rating to items might help in the middle levels, but would it have much effect on stuff created by 400-level crafters?

DAOC had critical successes and quality ratings. Based on that, I’d say it doesn’t help much of anywhere. The only stuff people wanted to buy was the perfect stuff, even at mid levels.

It’s not that it’s a bad idea. It’s just that a quality rating is only meaningful as part of a fundamentally more complex approach to itemization and crafting. Otherwise, by itself it’s only relevant when the game is new and everyone’s broke, or when you’re new to the game and you’re broke. In a game like this, quality level is handled by rarity level. There are no exceptional level 50 blue swords.

I dearly love games where player crafting is just as vital to the game as adventuring, because players are the major source of the gear people use. Say what you will about all the technical and balance problems that plagued Galaxies 1.0, but that game’s approach to crafting, itemization, and general player interdependence was liquid awesome dipped in chocolate.

In this kind of game crafting is purely a secondary pursuit. You can make some money with it if you try but it’s not absolutely vital to the game.

Really only two things need to be addressed to make all crafting profitable. Supply and demand and community standards. I’ll elaborate at bit on those.

Anything that is constantly over supplied vs the demand will always not be profitable. So the only way to make an item like that profitable is to reduce the supply. With crafting the only way to do that is to limit the number of suppliers or amount each supplier can make over a certain amount of time. Both not really good solutions as they would get grief from significant amount of players that those changes would be seen as negative. Perceived value helps determine demand. So if an items perceived value can be improved then the demand will go up. Making adjusting supply less of or of no need at all since if an item is made more desirable then their willingness to spend more on it goes up.

What I mean by community standards is this: the community has to agree that items would have a minimum value at which they are to be sold so that a profit can be made. In the case of crafted items that minimum value would be above the cost of the materials to make the item. Right now that is a problem since based of the data from gw2spidey (at time of posting this) less than 30% of all crafted items (including components) can be sold for a profit above the cost of the materials to make. So we have to ask the question: How do we get the community to set standards and stick to them? Because even if you adjust supply and demand there still has to be standards otherwise some form of enforcement would be needed to maintain a profit margin. Because without the standards there still could be a lot of people doing what is being done now with listing stuff for too little.

Some may say well then that is what the items are worth. I would have to disagree with that since based on the average person’s rate of earning gold and vender purchased alternatives contribute to the establishment of prices. If a common (white text) weapon, level 10 for example, sells at vender for 64 or 96 copper then it stands to reason loot drops or crafted items of that same level should sell for at least that. Obviously blue or higher quality should definitely be worth more than that. Especially crafted items. If you look at the cost to make the level 10 crafted items and compare those to the price of common vender sold items. Selling the level 10 item with a 30% markup over cost to make would be a reasonable price about 1s 50c to 2s, Instead they are sold at a loss compared to cost to make because of one or both of the issues I mentioned.

TravisTrout.6803:

Daulnay.4971:

Hippocampus.8470:

snip

Adding a quality rating to items might help in the middle levels, but would it have much effect on stuff created by 400-level crafters?

DAOC had critical successes and quality ratings. Based on that, I’d say it doesn’t help much of anywhere. The only stuff people wanted to buy was the perfect stuff, even at mid levels.

It’s not that it’s a bad idea. It’s just that a quality rating is only meaningful as part of a fundamentally more complex approach to itemization and crafting. Otherwise, by itself it’s only relevant when the game is new and everyone’s broke, or when you’re new to the game and you’re broke. In a game like this, quality level is handled by rarity level. There are no exceptional level 50 blue swords.

I dearly love games where player crafting is just as vital to the game as adventuring, because players are the major source of the gear people use. Say what you will about all the technical and balance problems that plagued Galaxies 1.0, but that game’s approach to crafting, itemization, and general player interdependence was liquid awesome dipped in chocolate.

In this kind of game crafting is purely a secondary pursuit. You can make some money with it if you try but it’s not absolutely vital to the game.

This opinion is more sensible to this kind of game than what Daulnay is espousing. In this kind of game crafting is just one of the icing on the cake and not a vital component.

The only way to raise the value of crafting is to make crafting products a greater factor in “winning the game.”

Let us say in holding certain territories you need crafting skill in order to build and maintain siege weapons for offense and defense. But no, that is not the case, as all you need to do is to get the supply through “brute force” and in WvW it is simple as “zerging”.

Jia Shen is correct in pointing out the simplest way to do it is to make materials rare – with simple demand and supply in mind. Trying to really have it like the real world is a bit of overkill because that is not going to happen in “this kind of game” at the moment.

IMO They should take example for crafting from other games. Like lotro.

Crafting is almost not profitable because it is easy to master and most of the recipes are easy to get. Items are bound, is partly a reason for low prices as well. You can’t re-sell an item after using it. Leveling is too fast (In my opinion of course) even if crafting an item had any profit, you will level fast and so not use armor/weapons long enough – waste of resources.
Only cosmetic aspect can be profitable, and any other thing that is hard to get or supplied not by the masses.

P.S. The thing that crafting is easy and you basically can craft anything on your own also lowers prices.

It’s impossible to make Crafting profitable because it’s so easy to craft that any Arbitrage cannot exist. Therefore the only equilibrium possible is avhieved when PriceOfCraft = PriceNeededForMaterials ie no profit

You know, crafting can be a pretty big world in Guild Wars 2. I recently found out, for instance, that there are items that can be crafted that a lot of people aren’t even aware exist.

I feel like a bit of an idiot for revealing one of my big income secrets here, but how many people reading this thread have even heard of Beaded weapons? These are weapons that can be crafted by a sufficiently skilled craftsman which not only turn a big profit due to such low, low supply, but also almost directly allow you to convert karma into gold. The fact that the main expense involved in crafting Beaded weapons is one that you can’t actually use to make a tangible profit with any other way — karma — makes them hugely profitable. The actual gold costs are just a few silver and the items consistently sell for between 10 and 20 silver.

I won’t give any more details on how these are crafted, readers can research that for themselves. But my point is that, aside from being an insightful trader, you can also be a smart crafter. There are plenty of things you can do with crafting that are actually relatively secret. You don’t even have to be excellent at playing the economy (I’m not) to know that rarely-seen weapons have a higher innate value.

Elricht, But why you have to tell… I must admit I craft them too.

Crafting is already profitable, but you have to put effort in it.
You just have to watch the market, see which crafted items have more demands and sells well, then gather or wait to buy materials when they are at low price, craft, profit.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Beaded_weapons

Not exactly a deep, dark secret.

Also, thanks to everyone who responds to the title and not the discussion.

Well i just hit 400 leatherworker and i have to say i am making some money off from rare materials mixed with easy insignias.Everything sells for about 20s and i have a profit of about 10 from the crafting materials.These are rly easy recipes and if u mix an Insignia it goes up by a bit.Massively producing them i can make up to 5 g a day just from crafting.U ppl should look more into Rare Items that are easy to make then going for High LvL armors and weapons.Keep it simple