Guild Wars 2

(FYI My original title for this thread was, Suggestion: Please Remove Leather from Low Level Crafting Recipes, but it was rejected for being “too long”. So, I had to shorten it to the impolite one you see…)

OK, so I leveled Armorsmith to 400 something eons ago, because I figured it would be handy to be able to craft armor for my alts as they leveled. Well, the unfortunate reality of the situation is that there’s absolutely no point in doing so, because leather is so rare, expensive, and too many recipes require it (in plate armor no less…).

For instance, I could go buy a whole set of blue level 55 gear from the TP for 5 Silver a piece, but to make the same set myself would cost at least 1 Gold per piece, because for some reason a Linen Patch requires 10 Cured Rugged Leather Squares??? Yup, for reals…

Come… on… It’s mid level, junk gear here people!

Sure, by all means if you want to use mid and low tier materials for uber super duper high level stuff in massive grind quantities, because you think that is all fun and junk, well that’s fine. But, when it comes to using the materials to actually craft the gear at the material’s appropriate level, the very least you could do is not bung up the whole system by requiring large amounts of the most expensive materials.

Really, 1 or 2 of each thing is more than enough in recipes between level 1 and level 350ish, because… it’s just leveling gear anyway, ya know what I’m saying!

It should not be removed simply because you feel that it is too high. For those that can equip the gear (e.g. A level 45 player crafting level 45 armor), they’d be earning those components as they play.

Besides, they’re adding a level farm tomorrow. Whether that includes all leather tiers or just T6 remains to be determined unless I missed that clarification. Outside of that, there are plenty of ways to earn leather as you level. Probably one of the reasons so many players miss this is because they use XP scrolls and tomes.

It’s also impractical to level a craft as you level your character as you will level that character at a much quicker rate. This leaves the equipment quickly becoming obsolete and the amount of mats needed to level to the next crafting tier doesn’t help the situation either.

Ayrilana.1396:

It should not be removed simply because you feel that it is too high….

No, they should remove it, because they broke their crafting system when they added all the high level recipes that use 250 of this, and 250 of that.

Bottom line is really thus:

Why even have hundreds of crafting recipes between level 1 and 450 if none of them make sense to craft, because it’s an order of magnitude cheaper to just buy the gear instead? To simply “give people something to do when leveling craft”? Yeah, that’s terrible game design and no fun at all.

Tatwi.3562:

Ayrilana.1396:

It should not be removed simply because you feel that it is too high….

No, they should remove it, because they broke their crafting system when they added all the high level recipes that use 250 of this, and 250 of that.

Bottom line is really thus:

Why even have hundreds of crafting recipes between level 1 and 450 if none of them make sense to craft, because it’s an order of magnitude cheaper to just buy the gear instead? To simply “give people something to do when leveling craft”? Yeah, that’s terrible game design and no fun at all.

The system isn’t broken. None of those recipes made sense before ascended crafting. It was always cheaper to buy the equipment off the TP.

Oh. And let’s not exaggerate the numbers. For leather, the T7 recipes which provide the largest demand for them, only require at most 40. It’s nowhere near the 250 that you claim.

The cost of crafting armour and equipment is prohibitively high and not just because of the cost of the insignias. Even before they made those changes there was little point in crafting equipment for alts because as you point out its a lot cheaper to buy equipment from the TP or from Karma merchants, you don’t tend to get enough mats to craft as you level and the leather you do get is far better put towards ascended equipment, IMO.

Levelling is so fast that personally I’d just get stuff from the karma merchants, I wouldn’t bother buying or crafting equipment at all until you reach level 80.

I think a solution to the OP’s problem would be if ANet would either:

• Provide more sources of leather by increasing the drop-rate of hides, belts, and other salvageable items as per the old GW1 days, when we could salvage piles of enemy “armor” into materials. Good times.
• Further increase the salvage rate of lower-tier leathers, which I swear I get almost nothing of — and yet I’m selling off thick leather like it’s going out of style.

Either one would provide greater quantities of a rather limited resource without substantially altering the existing methods of acquisition by simply making them more reliable.

Or better yet:

Stabilize the kittened economy by implementing material vendors using a similar quote-based system to what was used in GW1, thus ensuring an even platform and exchange. Yes, I’m aware this would undercut the trading post severely, but at this point, I’ve seen players overcharge for items that can be purchased from common vendors.

Let it be used to buy and sell equipment and consumables and similar items. Materials are too volatile right now to trust to the whims of the markets.

Ayrilana.1396:

Tatwi.3562:

Ayrilana.1396:

It should not be removed simply because you feel that it is too high….

No, they should remove it, because they broke their crafting system when they added all the high level recipes that use 250 of this, and 250 of that.

Bottom line is really thus:

Why even have hundreds of crafting recipes between level 1 and 450 if none of them make sense to craft, because it’s an order of magnitude cheaper to just buy the gear instead? To simply “give people something to do when leveling craft”? Yeah, that’s terrible game design and no fun at all.

The system isn’t broken. None of those recipes made sense before ascended crafting. It was always cheaper to buy the equipment off the TP.

Oh. And let’s not exaggerate the numbers. For leather, the T7 recipes which provide the largest demand for them, only require at most 40. It’s nowhere near the 250 that you claim.

This is in part because certain things (blank patches, maybe?) give 5x the output, which is incredibly easy to miss if you aren’t reading the recipes closely. I thought the Marauder set I wanted to make would need some 400+ bits of leather or whatever until I noticed that.

Still don’t have the resources to make it, though. Oh well.

In most games, the sole point of crafting is to, as the OP wishes, make stuff for alts as they level. This is so because — in general — low to mid tier mats are cheap, and drops of gear are rare enough that it’s more economical to make gear rather than buy it. In GW2, however, the sole point of crafting is to be able to make max tier gear and for crafting mats to drive the GW2 economy. Add that focus to the multitude of blue and green drops the game throws at players, and the crafting v. buying thing is reversed.

The discrepancy between GW2 crafting and crafting in a more traditional MMO is due to the fact that in those other games, max tier gear cannot be made by crafting. In GW2, not only can it, but for many players it is the best method to get that gear.

While I understand the OP’s complaint, I also understand what the crafting system in GW2 is designed to do. Since there is a viable alternative to gearing alts, I am OK with the system as is. I’d rather that the mats I gather be worth something, and in those other MMO’s, that is often not the case. So, no, the GW2 crafting system is not broken, it’s just that the OP is expecting crafting to work the way it does in some other games.

As to why have recipes for sub-max crafting tiers? They exist primarily so that players can advance their crafting to the level where it’s useful.

All that said, would it be so bad to do as the OP asks and drop leather from mid-tier recipes? On the face of it, maybe not. However, every change ANet makes to the game generates complaints. Most people seem content to gear alts via the TP. Some people who take crafting seriously could be upset that recipes are not consistent across tiers. Not requiring leather at all is different than requiring less. Finally, you know that people who want their Ascended gear as cheap as possible would point at the mid-tier recipes and demand that ANet drop leather from max tier recipes also.

They’re introducing a leather farming opportunity in tomorrow’s release – as a result leather prices crashed already and will continue to go down. So I think your issue has been addressed.

I don’t mind that the leather component is there. The big problem has always been no consistent means of getting that material. Cloth only comes from light armor. Leather from medium armor.

Now that all armor requires it for the insignia and/or inner padding, it ought to be so that salvaging an armor can drop any of the components that goes into making it.

No doubt the current value of leather is a lot higher than ‘acceptable’ for a lot of people. All the same, it wasn’t that long ago that the value was a low lower than ‘acceptable’ for seemingly more people. There’s no magical amount of sinks and faucets that creates a magical balance of supply+demand that pleases everyone or even more than a simple majority.

• ANet created patches to suck up T5 and T6 leather sections that had a glut on the TP.
• Every patch requires 4 bolts and 10 squares of the same tier as the patch.

Thing is it’s always been cheaper to buy gear from TP than craft it. Crafting in GW2 has rarely been about saving money or crafting for profit. It’s merely a stepping stone to max level crafting.

Tatwi.3562:

Bottom line is really thus:

Why even have hundreds of crafting recipes between level 1 and 450 if none of them make sense to craft, because it’s an order of magnitude cheaper to just buy the gear instead? To simply “give people something to do when leveling craft”? Yeah, that’s terrible game design and no fun at all.

Its there for variety and choice, and because you get to pick the stat attributes that gear has when you craft it, but if you depend on drops its RNG and you aren’t very likely to get teh stat attributes you want, and not all stat attributes are available from vendors at all levels.

We are getting a leather farm tomorrow, so the price should continue to drop on making these pieces. On top of that, you can easily farm the mats yourself in a few minutes and make it for almost nothing if you wanted to.

I also agree with @Raueri, now that leather is needed to craft all armor weights, it should drop from all armor weights when salvaging. It just makes sense.

The problem with having leather drop from all armor weights is that it would crash the prices by the sheer number of salvageable drops that we get in the game. Unlike ore/wood, they don’t have that many sinks. Silk and thick leather would hit vendor prices by people doing any of the HoT metas. Technically, silk is already almost there.

Ayrilana.1396:

The problem with having leather drop from all armor weights is that it would crash the prices by the sheer number of salvageable drops that we get in the game. Unlike ore/wood, they don’t have that many sinks. Silk and thick leather would hit vendor prices by people doing any of the HoT metas. Technically, silk is already almost there.

How does leather have fewer sinks than ore and wood?

IndigoSundown.5419:

As to why have recipes for sub-max crafting tiers? They exist primarily so that players can advance their crafting to the level where it’s useful.

If that were truly the case, it would be a gross affront to people’s time, developers and players alike. The leveling gear is supposed to be useful, it just isn’t useful in practice, due to…

1. Obtaining level appropriate materials, specifically leather, through normal play is limited to the point where you may need to buy a few materials from other players.

2. The materials you’d need to buy cost more than just buying the completed item.

A simple solution would be to make the basic leveling gear (blue quality) really easy to make. That way people will be more likely to be able to craft it using materials they’ve gathered in normal (non-farming) game play, yet it wouldn’t change any other the dynamics of the game.

It’s safe to say that ArenaNet spent money creating this stuff with the intention of it being useful. Unfortunately, it’s not. But, it could be!

To everyone going on how it’s “cheaper to buy from the TP,” don’t forget that to craft max-level or even ascended gear, you have to grind up to the rank necessary to do so, which requires many low-level components.

Crafting isn’t necessary for most gameplay, but for anyone interested in legendaries or ascended equipment, it’s an absolute must. And with most drops being scaled to your general level, it actually becomes harder and harder to maintain a flow of resources from armor (cloth and leather) which eventually become difficult to acquire at lower levels.

The “unstable” items may have helped that in the most tangential of senses, but they’ve become even worse of a coin and time sink than the stuff you’re trying to get from them.

OriOri.8724:

Ayrilana.1396:

The problem with having leather drop from all armor weights is that it would crash the prices by the sheer number of salvageable drops that we get in the game. Unlike ore/wood, they don’t have that many sinks. Silk and thick leather would hit vendor prices by people doing any of the HoT metas. Technically, silk is already almost there.

How does leather have fewer sinks than ore and wood?

• Well for one, legendary weapon gifts don’t use any leather other than T6.
• Gift of Metal/Wood use multiple tiers.
• Unlike armor skins, there are many craftable weapon skins that are very popular which of course use wood and ore.
• Precursor crafting also uses ore and wood in very large quantities.
• Precursor forging uses a lot of T5 wood and ore

This list isn’t everything.

fluffdragon.1523:

To everyone going on how it’s “cheaper to buy from the TP,” don’t forget that to craft max-level or even ascended gear, you have to grind up to the rank necessary to do so, which requires many low-level components.

Crafting isn’t necessary for most gameplay, but for anyone interested in legendaries or ascended equipment, it’s an absolute must. And with most drops being scaled to your general level, it actually becomes harder and harder to maintain a flow of resources from armor (cloth and leather) which eventually become difficult to acquire at lower levels.

The “unstable” items may have helped that in the most tangential of senses, but they’ve become even worse of a coin and time sink than the stuff you’re trying to get from them.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say “absolute must” as that implies no other alternatives. All ascended equipment can be obtained without crafting so obviously it’s not an absolute must. For legendary weapons, the core legendary weapons can still be obtained off the TP.

You can obtain lower tiered crafting material from salvageable scraps and loot bags. This is one of the reasons why the AFK farming necro bots were popular.

Crafting from 0-400 should just be streamlined. If you try to craft as you lvl up you will out level your crafting skill unless you already have a bank full of mats.

Can someone please post a link that talks about this “level farm”? I’m perpetually out of the loop. Thanks.

Maggotpez.7598:

Can someone please post a link that talks about this “level farm”? I’m perpetually out of the loop. Thanks.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Quick-note-on-Ep4-bundled-updates
First post: “This release will also include a new, challenging group-farming spot for leather.”

No other information about where exactly or what.

Regardless of whether its broken, or not, You used to be able to fairly nicely level up your crafting profession alongside leveling your character. I have no idea how much the (not so) new recipes impacted that, but if it’s still possible within a fairly comfortable margin then there’s no real problem (subjectively).

Then again natural progression went out the window ages ago, and since all my characters are lvl 80, you get bombarded with lvl up scrolls to 20 30 40 if not loads of tomes to simply skip that now awful beginning of the game, so I guess it doesn’t matter that much.

Anyway, it’s seems to me that Arenanet is balancing in circles (or maybe a spiral) here, first leather is more required due to patches being a thing, then they add sporadic leather farming items, and then they announce a leather farming spot.

Personally, they really shouldn’t have touched it in the first place, the market would balance itself out as more goals requiring leather appear over the coarse of the game. Which did right at the same moment when they decided to nuke leather sinks. (Why wait for metrics)

Of course, since everything gets more expensive or less selfsufficient to get people need gold every day to buy from the TP, thus dailies now give 2 gold so that the average joe can actually progress somewhat as well.

I’m left to wonder whether this actually makes the game more fun for me, or it’s just so there’s arbitrary worth to certain materials which equals fun to (other) people.

TL;DR: The times where leather was abundant feel nostalgic to me, while in the current game I don’t feel like farming it up just to get some stuff.

You never could fairly nicely level up a crafting profession as you leveled up your character. XP comes so easily and quickly in this game that you quickly outpace the rate that you get the materials as drops.

A glance at GW2crafts showed that they’re all in the 20’s as far as gold needed if you were to buy everything to get to 400. A couple were around 32G.

Natural progression is a player choice. Players can choose to you boosters and consumables or they cannot. I personally don’t see the introduction of those items as an issue for that reason. This feels pretty reasonable to me.

Ayrilana.1396:

OriOri.8724:

Ayrilana.1396:

The problem with having leather drop from all armor weights is that it would crash the prices by the sheer number of salvageable drops that we get in the game. Unlike ore/wood, they don’t have that many sinks. Silk and thick leather would hit vendor prices by people doing any of the HoT metas. Technically, silk is already almost there.

How does leather have fewer sinks than ore and wood?

• Well for one, legendary weapon gifts don’t use any leather other than T6.
• Gift of Metal/Wood use multiple tiers.
• Unlike armor skins, there are many craftable weapon skins that are very popular which of course use wood and ore.
• Precursor crafting also uses ore and wood in very large quantities.
• Precursor forging uses a lot of T5 wood and ore

This list isn’t everything.

You’re right, I did forget about precursor crafting.

So … you want Anet to change leather in crafting on the EVE of the release of their new leather farming zone.

Yeah, probably no.

fluffdragon.1523:

To everyone going on how it’s “cheaper to buy from the TP,” don’t forget that to craft max-level or even ascended gear, you have to grind up to the rank necessary to do so, which requires many low-level components.

Didn’t forget but it’s craft over territory. You don’t linger there. You do what’s minimal to get by those levels to get to 400 and then to 500.

On the other hand I farmed and sold 3000 rugged leather over the course last week. This new leather farm is going to hurt what has been a primary source of income for me over the last year.