Guild Wars 2

I am also disappointed in this announcement. I have been playing Guild Wars 2 for about 3 months now. I love the PVP and the combat mechanics. The weakest part of the experience for me has been the crafting. I found it to be hard to understand at first. There’s a lot of bloat and tons of refining materials that barely get used. You have to refine materials, in order to refine them again, in order to craft intermediary components, before making an item. It’s very boring and tedious. The Discovery tab may be easy to use once you figure it out, but I read a guide on it and still couldn’t get it until I played with it for a few hours, I just don’t find it intuitive at all. Not to mention that it penalizes players for having and using crafting recipes. My first impression was, “This is not for me!”

I have since revisited it and managed to bear through the monotony to Weaponsmithing 500. I found it to be such a chore that I do not want to repeat again any time soon. Hearing that crafting will be made much more necessary if you want to even experience the raid content is disheartening.

The other major weak spot in my interest in Guild Wars 2 is the economy. Crafting is a big part of that because in most MMOs, crafting is a way to secure more monetary income, rather than an expensive barrier to getting into advanced content. I do not think it is currently possible to make money in Guild Wars 2 using crafting. Even worse, crafting materials are the number 1 faucet in the game, meaning that you must not only pay for crafting materials you don’t have, but also lose your income in the process.

Please make and keep crafting entirely 100% optional for progression. Anything else will drive away customers.