Guild Wars 2

Something that has always irked me with just about every MMORPG I’ve ever played, is that the ingredients to make an item are expensive, while the end result is borderline worthless.

For example, way back in the day, playing runescape, I finally got to the level to make adamantium armor… and find out that players often give those out FOR FREE?!

Now I understand why, because crafting TAKES NO TIME OR SKILL.
It simply converts useful items that are time consuming and difficult to acquire into exp and a less useful item that took little time or effort to turn it into that.
Most of these MMOs have ZERO depth to crafting, its just… select items, press craft, boom you’re done.

Why does it have to be this way? How do you make it so crafting something is better than just mining and selling materials? It has always been a money sink, and for what purpose? It’s better to just mine some materials, sell them, and buy what you need.

from my MMO experience, crafting only make the end item increases in value if the recipe is rare and “one-time use” ….

If you look at some of the time gate materials you’ll find some will have a higher sell value over the base materials.

I remember a game where you had to go through all sorts of minigames to craft stuff, it was really a time consuming process, it could take hours to produce a decent item, and only a few players were good enough at it, most couldn’t figure it out.

It was possible to mess up if you did it wrong, requiring even more work to fix the problem, and there was a system where items would occasionally need maintenance, repair, or further refinements.

Sadly it was some sub-only game and the graphics and everything else really sucked.

I haven’t played many MMO’s or games with an “economy” but I wonder what would happen if you actually had items that deteriated with use. Maybe if you had to fix things with mats like fix heavy armor with metal. I wonder if the market would be stronger for crafted items.

Weylin.6478:

rage

That’s not really true – you can craft a lot of stuff and make a profit, you just have to figure out what the people need, that’s always the case if you want to make money.

Players set the prices for items.

The reason why the end results are usually cheaper than thematerials is because
1) Some players need to buy the mats for crafting themselves. They gain crafting XP from converting ore into ingots, and ingots into axe blades, and axe blades into axes.
You can’t get any xp from an axe that has already been crafted.
2)Just because it costs a certain price to make an item doesn’t mean the item should cost that price. If it is cheaper to craft a lvl 70 rare than it is to craft a lvl 50 green item, guess what? Your green item is still garbage.

i make most of my money from crafting stuff . ..

The primary value in crafting these days is being able to craft top tier weapons and armor. Those cannot be sold. The T7 mats can be sold, and are about the only thing that can sell for more than it costs to make. As for everything else being less valuable than the mats, consider these two facts:

1. Many mats are used for more than one thing. The most expensive are all used in making either Ascended or MF Exotics. Thus, many mats are valuable.
2. Every account is capable of maxing every crafting profession. In fact, as far as Artificer, Weaponsmith, Huntsman, Leatherworker, Tailor and Armorer go, that’s the only way to reliably get Asc. armor/weapons. Thus, the only way to sell most of the output from those crafts is to sell the convenience of a ready-made item at less than the mat cost. This allows those who made the items to defray part of their cost.

First of all, if you think crafting takes no time you have no idea at all. Especially with GW2s tedious crafting setup, you can easily spend hours at the crafting station/forge.

You can make a profit in almost every MMORPG I ever played by crafting – you have to apply your mind to it and and the market of cause.

GW2 crafting as a money maker is in an especially bad place. For whatever reason (talking pre-Ascended here), Anet decided crafting XP going into general character progression – so everyone levels crafting to advance some levels, which results in well geared charaters flooding the market with crafted goods noone needs. Of cause selling materials makes a better profit in such a scenario.

I currently count over 100 items you can make for a 1g+ profit on the TP. Some up to a 10g profit.

I have no idea what OP means. In gw2 crafting is the second best and easiest way to increase value and make alot of money. Only better way is tp trading.

People that think that they can’t earn much gold through crafting should really play more gw2 and learn about the crafting system. And it takes alot of time! On some days I have to spend more then 6h straight just to craft some hundret Items (of course with xxx gold earning ).

Everquest 2 had amazing crafting, it was a whole mini game you had to play. You could get critical successes and critical failures, so cool. One of the few things I miss from that game.

Relair.1843:

Everquest 2 had amazing crafting, it was a whole mini game you had to play. You could get critical successes and critical failures, so cool. One of the few things I miss from that game.

On the other hand .. most people today would also call it a grind i think.
Crafting a profession to max with all the harvesting and so took nearly as
long as leveling the adventure class to max ^^

Was however funny in the beginning when people could actually die at the
forge if they don’t get the counters right

I also blame EQ2 for beeing such a big fan of harvesting

It depends what you are crafting. I find consumables (food, oils, stones) to be more profitable than gear. Also, just upgrading raw mats into bolts and ingots will generate a profit.

Crafting items becomes less profitable the less generally useful the item crafted is.

Food? Expensive.

Dyes? Lol.

Ingots/Quality of life refinements that save people from doing an extra click? hooboy.

Boxes? Not really.

Armor? Less so.

Specific runes and etc? Rofl dont bother unless its for you.

Economics 101

You can make money by crafting every day. What’s different in GW2 is there are very few items that allow you to make a consistent profit every day and every single one of those items is gated in some fashion.

Making money from crafting is like making money in any other economic venture in any game:

• Crafted item needs to be in sufficient demand that people are willing to pay a premium.
• The supply needs to be sufficiently limited that such demand cannot be filled quickly.

Since the GW2’s TP covers all players across all worlds (NA & EU), it’s extremely responsive to changes (much to the surprise of most of those who have attempted to manipulate it). In other MMOs, crafting has “guaranteed” niches, in part because each “server” economy is separate and in part because crafting itself is somewhat gated, whereas in GW2, anyone can easily teach their characters to craft anything.

Despite the dynamics, there are certain things that are always money makers:

• Any time-gated recipe for popular item, including damask or heat lamps (for Mawdrey)
• Similarly, recipes for popular items requiring a time-gated item, e.g. ascended inscriptions/insignia.
• Things that require lots of steps, such as various mystic forge recipes (some wouldn’t call it “crafting”, but the mechanics are very similar). MF promotions are also often valuable.
• Things with horribly-expensive components, such as chef-recipes for dyes, certain foods, special weapon skins, …

Given the dynamic GW2 economy, specific items on the list rarely stay the same for long, sometimes only for hours.

tl;dr like making money anywhere outside of a few games, you have to do your market research. Many people make money every day from crafting; you just have to pick & choose carefully.

All the time.

I’ve made 2.5k gold over the last couple months by only buying (logs|ore|scraps), refining, and selling (planks|ingots|bolts).

It just takes a lot of research to figure out what is profitable now (it changes rapidly). Other than that, it’s an easy way to make gold.

Weylin.6478:

Something that has always irked me with just about every MMORPG I’ve ever played, is that the ingredients to make an item are expensive, while the end result is borderline worthless.

For example, way back in the day, playing runescape, I finally got to the level to make adamantium armor… and find out that players often give those out FOR FREE?!

Now I understand why, because crafting TAKES NO TIME OR SKILL.
It simply converts useful items that are time consuming and difficult to acquire into exp and a less useful item that took little time or effort to turn it into that.
Most of these MMOs have ZERO depth to crafting, its just… select items, press craft, boom you’re done.

Why does it have to be this way? How do you make it so crafting something is better than just mining and selling materials? It has always been a money sink, and for what purpose? It’s better to just mine some materials, sell them, and buy what you need.

You’re right, it’s a shame that crafting is what it is in most MMORPG’s. Some game’s don’t do this though, such EQ2, you had to pay attention while crafting or your end result would be terrible. I think GW2 could use a crafting overhaul to be honest, there’s no real reason to do it outside of a legendary and ascended weapons (maybe armor). And to get those you have to max something. Sadly it’s not about the journey in that system, it is in fact about the destination. I never cared about what i could make between 1-499, just cared about what i could make at 500, an ascended greatsword.

A OK.8276:

I haven’t played many MMO’s or games with an “economy” but I wonder what would happen if you actually had items that deteriated with use. Maybe if you had to fix things with mats like fix heavy armor with metal. I wonder if the market would be stronger for crafted items.

I have played games with this in it …. not even worth worrying about. Since every time you stop at a town or city you just automatically go to the forge to fix. Not much of a time or gold sink.