[SUGGESTION] Remove Time Sync In Watching Crafting Bars

Its never made any sense why crafting or refining takes so long. In short its a waste of gaming time to have to watch a bar move from one end of the screen to another. It doesn't add to the playing experience at all. Non-fun activities makes players question why am I spending time doing this which then leads to why am I playing this game, which as a company should never be a goal. At times this seems maybe to be a game engine issue with maybe transaction records and database updates, but that doesn't hold weight when you compare how long a lower level mat takes to refine compared to a higher level one which than negates that argument. In short an awesome QoL change would be to either remove the bar and change the crafting UI to be a "Are You Sure" window that then transmutes the material or make it so that all refined mats refine/craft at the speed of something like iron. I enjoy crafting but not having to spend valuable gaming time standing still while trying to find something else to do away from my computer or tabbed out as I wait for a bar to move back and fourth across a screen.

Thanks for your time.

This is something I’ve wanted as it took 4+ hours to do all of the refining per week when I used to do crafting but it’s not something that I think they’d change. It wouldn’t have much of an impact on the vast majority of players.

@"TheGrimm.5624" said:Its never made any sense why crafting or refining takes so long. In short its a waste of gaming time to have to watch a bar move from one end of the screen to another. It doesn't add to the playing experience at all. Non-fun activities makes players question why am I spending time doing this which then leads to why am I playing this game, which as a company should never be a goal. At times this seems maybe to be a game engine issue with maybe transaction records and database updates, but that doesn't hold weight when you compare how long a lower level mat takes to refine compared to a higher level one which than negates that argument. In short an awesome QoL change would be to either remove the bar and change the crafting UI to be a "Are You Sure" window that then transmutes the material or make it so that all refined mats refine/craft at the speed of something like iron. I enjoy crafting but not having to spend valuable gaming time standing still while trying to find something else to do away from my computer or tabbed out as I wait for a bar to move back and fourth across a screen.

Thanks for your time.

I've never played an MMO before where crafting was so fast and so streamlined. You can GM any skill in 1 hour, and knock out 500 items in ~1.5 minutes. This kind of "waiting" actually bothers you enough to complain about it on the board??

Ok lol

Yes, I am here posting now becuase I can't do anything else in game while I wait on refining.

And yes I have played MMOs that let you refine while you are WvW and in fights. This is a time waster, fun things like this shouldn't be in game.

Funny enough why does it impact you that players would prefer to spend their time more efficiently? Did you like it when people would take up spots in WvW while they had to wait to craft to make more food effects and utilities?

Timesink.There’s no way it's going to be removed.

Why? I don't mind some time sinks, but I am not inclined to spend money when I am left just to stand still in one place and NOT play. This doesn't make sense. And again, why defend a non-playing time sink? The policy is no unattended play. This is unattended play that you are forced into. Again what's a good reason here?

While I certainly understand the economy based reason for some of the daily crafting materials, time-sinks like this only make (financial) sense in a subscription based MMO... not sure what purpose it serves in GW2.

You're aware it gives the impression of actually going through the process of refining and crafting the material...at a very accelerated rate of course.

The title confused me because I didn't know what the bars might be sync'd with.

I don't mind the time it takes, though I also don't tend to routinely refine stacks and stacks of mats. I remember when the game was in beta, the crafting bar was one of the golly-gee-whiz-this-is-great things because it was so speedy, and it even accelerated as you went if you had a lot of the same thing to work on, le gasp! Other games took way longer to craft items, and included a chance you'd lose all your mats to a crafting failure, so this was pretty incredible and in line with the "we looked at all the unfun parts of other games and worked on ways to make them fun" philosophy of the original design.

@Zaklex.6308 said:You're aware it gives the impression of actually going through the process of refining and crafting the material...at a very accelerated rate of course.

Yes but it doesn't actually succeed in this so why? Its worse if you decide to make one of the new legendaries. Refining 26 thousand logs.....acquiring them already took a while, then waiting hours on end while they refined......

And agree with the above, this would be a technique if this was a monthly sub, so why make the players wait on a display bar? You would think it would also be less load on the servers. Instead of it updating two+ database records per bar crossing it would be a one time update of the change in material types.

There are two reasons why crafting isn't instantaneous:

• As others have said, it adds to the feel that you're actually taking the time to make something.
• More importantly, it artificially adds value to the process — people are willing to pay more for goods, including refined mats, because it requires effort. The impatient are willing to pay a premium to the patient just so they (the impatient) needn't bother themselves with the details.

Are the amounts of time reasonable for the goals? It's better in GW2 than many games, but that doesn't matter much to any of us when we're waiting in this game. It's very tedious to wait to refine fulgurite, but that's another thing that increases the value of Jeweled goods. What about Crystalline Ore, which has no economic role itself? I'd say that beats the process for creating clover: clover takes a similar amount of time and requires 5 double-clicks per attempt.

tl;dr there are good reasons that processing takes time, even if we don't much care for the wait or we don't agree with the specific amounts.

sheesh, complaining about the little time spent on refining... would have hated to see your reaction back in star wars galaxies... having to actually survey for resources, sample resources to see if it was good materials, drop harvesters, keep the harvesters powered, waiting to get decent amounts of resources....

@Fallesafe.5932 said:

@"TheGrimm.5624" said:Its never made any sense why crafting or refining takes so long. In short its a waste of gaming time to have to watch a bar move from one end of the screen to another. It doesn't add to the playing experience at all. Non-fun activities makes players question why am I spending time doing this which then leads to why am I playing this game, which as a company should never be a goal. At times this seems maybe to be a game engine issue with maybe transaction records and database updates, but that doesn't hold weight when you compare how long a lower level mat takes to refine compared to a higher level one which than negates that argument. In short an awesome QoL change would be to either remove the bar and change the crafting UI to be a "Are You Sure" window that then transmutes the material or make it so that all refined mats refine/craft at the speed of something like iron. I enjoy crafting but not having to spend valuable gaming time standing still while trying to find something else to do away from my computer or tabbed out as I wait for a bar to move back and fourth across a screen.

Thanks for your time.

I think it's a good suggestion. I see nothing to be gained by forcing players to watch a bar refill hundreds of times. Just let us set a number to craft, have a single confirm dialogue, and be done with it. Why do I always have to go surf the web while I wait for my materials to refine? Does it add something to your experience?

@preacher.9370 said:sheesh, complaining about the little time spent on refining... would have hated to see your reaction back in star wars galaxies... having to actually survey for resources, sample resources to see if it was good materials, drop harvesters, keep the harvesters powered, waiting to get decent amounts of resources....

Actually was heavy in crafting in Pirates of the Burning Sea and there you had to mine ore, refine into ingots make nails....all the way to full size ships. And you had only time gates as you waited for things to be done and refill, but you didn't have to stand still right there and wait for a bar. Again stop accepting a waste of time. If there were more demand for crafted materials or the systems complexity warranted it then maybe. But it doesn't, nor does the time that different mats take to refine.

The other option if we have to a gate a material to transform is create a crafting queue where we queue up the crafting that's going to done, kick it off and go back to gaming. There is already logic this in game with scribing and the guild halls. Adapt that system over to standard crafting. Again why create things in game where people are left with nothing but to tab out of it.

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:There are two reasons why crafting isn't instantaneous:

• As others have said, it adds to the feel that you're actually taking the time to make something.
• More importantly, it artificially adds value to the process — people are willing to pay more for goods, including refined mats, because it requires effort. The impatient are willing to pay a premium to the patient just so they (the impatient) needn't bother themselves with the details.

Have to disagree on both points. No one I know that crafts would think it makes you feel like it you are creating, it more ok I am AFK to go do something while this spins.As far as the people paying more, that's more peoples' impatient and tax on people unwilling to AFK thru the process or those with limited time that want to finish a goal. And anyone that is thinking about buying is going to place buy orders for well under the cost of the raw materials hoping someone with excess will go ahead and sell and lose money on the crafting, again a tax on the impatient versus a value add.

This might be moot for this game but if we don't talk about it then what happens in GW3. I see a lot of oh well, as a gamer you should be saying what adds value in your game experience, and I don't want to believe anyone of you thought, "Cool, its a bar crossing the screen and I can't do anything while that happens, hooray! "

@TheGrimm.5624 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:There are two reasons why crafting isn't instantaneous:

• As others have said, it adds to the feel that you're actually taking the time to make something.
• More importantly, it artificially adds value to the process — people are willing to pay more for goods, including refined mats, because it requires effort. The impatient are willing to pay a premium to the patient just so they (the impatient) needn't bother themselves with the details.

The OP wrote:

Its never made any sense why crafting or refining takes so long. In short its a waste of gaming time.

Those two reasons were posted to help the OP (and others) make sense of the reasons and why it isn't a waste of gaming time. As I wrote (but wasn't included in the quote):there are good reasons that processing takes time, even if we don't much care for the wait or we don't agree with the specific amounts.

@TheGrimm.5624 said:Its never made any sense why crafting or refining takes so long. In short its a waste of gaming time to have to watch a bar move from one end of the screen to another.

I agree. It's majorly annoying, especially since some (even basic!) materials take much longer than others to process (e.g., wood vs metals).