Post your ideas for crafting changes

These are features I am looking for:

1. Add more fish to our diet. Food recipes could use more seafood ingredients.
2. Please introduce critical successes and failures based on crafting level, hidden variables, and RNG. Hidden variables may be things like time of day, location in Tyria, character species or profession, etc. The more variables, the better.
3. Undefined recipes; that is, combining ingredients and/or items can result in a new AI-generated item taking whatever skin or icon but having better, different, or worse stat's.
4. Material slots for crafting are currently limited to 4. Please increase the number of slots available as characters max out their crafting level so that more complicated recipes are possible.
5. Add more variability to gathering results based on crafting or gathering expertise, not just current tool and other bonuses; things like high quality mithril, red meat, blue berries, and hard wood that increase the odds of a critical success or provide some other benefit.
6. Add more regional material varieties. I always thought the dill and chili pepper limits to Ascelon were a great idea and think that regional specialty concept should extend to more than just plants. Meats, metals, wood, gems, cloth, and leather should have unique varieties for each region. Even if regions have the same basic harvesting nodes, they can always give customized critical harvest results like more rubies here and more sapphires there.
7. Let the gods help in crafting. Each species should be able to buy, or otherwise claim, a bonus specific to their species and personal story to improve some results and handicap others. A Charr should be great with meat and metal where a Sylvari should be great with herbs and wood. The character and personal story should enable bonuses to crafting results based on player choices, if the player can obtain approval from the authorities the character's government or gods.
8. Forget about adding skins for all crafting options and open up the range of stat's before getting back to fashion wars. Sell skins separately but let players have more input to the attributes of equipment and consumables. This may mean loosening the hard recipes to allow hybridization based on quantities of various materials consumed. Three black diamonds and two charged quartz crystals should make something, not nothing.
9. Add other types of materials. Wood, cloth, leather, metal, gems, food... Add superior runes, sigils, and anything else clogging up the trading post. There is an amazing amount of unsellable junk that needs a way to consume. Let minor runes be food additives, for example. Add rock nodes and rock-based recipes. Designate runes and sigils as an ingredient type.
10. Open up recipes and uses for ascended materials. For example, adding blood stone dust to a potion increases its duration 20% or adding a crystalline ingot to a bowl of muscle soup adds 10 vitality and subtracts 5% more condition duratio.
11. Add increased resolution for stat sorting to the BLTP so players looking for specific stat's can find everything from a boon duration L80 staff to an expertise-giving potion.
12. For crafted items, including a signature of the crafter would be great.
13. Implment portable crafting stations.

Allow us to craft Glyphs for gathering tools - with each trade able to have the chance of snagging something unique. Leather for leatherworking; cloth for tailor; metal for armorsmith; ingredients for cook, cetera cetera

Gw2 crafting suffers from the same problem as crafting WoW, endless crafting levels of useless recipes you have to slug through before you can reach the proper endgame recipes.

Nearly all lower level crafting recipes are completely irrelevant in the game. You level up so fast that its absurdly pointless to try to level crafting with your leveling.At least wow builds on its crafting tiers with each new higher level expack. Though I hear come their next expack they are splitting crafting into expansion tiers so you can choose the tiers you want to focus on, and skipping all the unneeded junk.

Crafting needs to be fundamentally redesigned since only endgame crafting is relevant, doubly so since lvl 80 is max level.I ask, why is there so many junk recipes when you never will realistically get to use it?

And Jewelcrafting has become an obsolete proffession. Ascended trinkets relegated to achievements or grinding ls3/4.The cooking 'tree' of layered recipes needs to be dramatically trimmed down.

Completely scrap it and start over.

Especially with gear bound to "inscriptions" or "insignia".Honestly, to take a cue from WildStar, each item should be crafted at its base values with stat-boosting additions made in a separate panel. Maybe not with so much of WildStar's RNG on the result, but the idea is in the general ballpark of what I would want.With that, then we only need recipes equal to the number of stats. We won't have to scrape to get 1000 flax for arbitrary oiling or wait for a Living World map release in the vague hope we might get a stat combo we want.

We also need more relevant sinks for stuff we have, preferably an in-game way to trade materials on the market floor into useful things without funneling it through the trading post. Especially those mid-tier materials for cooking, etc.

For all the things GW2 tried to innovate with gameplay, crafting and its "discovery" system were by far the most disappointing, but it's too entrenched in everything to remove, because it will affect best-in-slot, the trading post, and item development. There's no way to even catch it all, so we'll never see an improvement.

Yes, ascended and legendary crafting are massive and irritating material sinks. I do not mind that they are there for that reason but I do mind that there is virtually no other reason to do anything else beside consumables. All recipes are fixed, many are gated, results are all identical, prices are mature on the BLTP, very few items under level 80, and many that are 80, have much use outside of forging and salvaging.

I'd like to see crafting knowledge be shared across characters and not require "crafting licenses". For example if I work my way up to grandmaster weaponsmith on one character, then any character I step up to the weaponsmith crafting station should be able to craft at that level. I think the focus needs to be more on what we've achieved on the account and less about what we've achieved on a specific character.

I would like them to add a discovery system that has random results, but with the (low) chance of creating weapon / armor skins. Unless you intend on crafting Ascended / Legendary gear, you end up full with mats that serve no purpose other than to post on the TP - which isn't a bad thing, mind you, but it would be nice to have something to actually craft at max level besides Ascended / Legendary stuff.

And for heaven's sake, give us a new gathering tool: skinning knife, which when used on the corpses of the bajillions of neutral beasts that cover the Tyrian landscape, produces leather / scraps of leather. We need a more reliable method of farming leather than what we have currently.

@"Anchoku.8142" said:

2. Please introduce critical successes and failures based on crafting level, hidden variables, and RNG. Hidden variables may be things like time of day, location in Tyria, character species or profession, etc. The more variables, the better.

These already exist, without the additional complexity. What does more RNG add?

3. Material slots for crafting are currently limited to 4. Please increase the number of slots available as characters max out their crafting level so that more complicated recipes are possible.

There are currently 172 ingredients in the game. With 4 slots, and no duplicates, that permits 172171170*169, or 845,006,760 distinct recipes. I'm not sure that more complexity by way of more slots really brings much to the table...

4. Add more variability to gathering results based on crafting or gathering expertise, not just current tool and other bonuses; things like high quality mithril, red meat, blue berries, and hard wood that increase the odds of a critical success or provide some other benefit.

Why is this a good addition to the game and/or how does this improve the fun of cooking?

6. Let the gods help in crafting. Each species should be able to buy, or otherwise claim, a bonus specific to their species and personal story to improve some results and handicap others. A Charr should be great with meat and metal where a Sylvari should be great with herbs and wood. The character and personal story should enable bonuses to crafting results based on player choices, if the player can obtain approval from the authorities the character's government or gods.

Too late, the up and sodded off into the mists already.

11. For crafted items, including a signature of the crafter would be great.

Why? WoW has this, and the approximate number of people who ever even remotely cared was zero. Obviously you see some value here, so what is it?

@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:

@"Anchoku.8142" said:

2. Please introduce critical successes and failures based on crafting level, hidden variables, and RNG. Hidden variables may be things like time of day, location in Tyria, character species or profession, etc. The more variables, the better.

3. Material slots for crafting are currently limited to 4. Please increase the number of slots available as characters max out their crafting level so that more complicated recipes are possible.

4. Add more variability to gathering results based on crafting or gathering expertise, not just current tool and other bonuses; things like high quality mithril, red meat, blue berries, and hard wood that increase the odds of a critical success or provide some other benefit.

6. Let the gods help in crafting. Each species should be able to buy, or otherwise claim, a bonus specific to their species and personal story to improve some results and handicap others. A Charr should be great with meat and metal where a Sylvari should be great with herbs and wood. The character and personal story should enable bonuses to crafting results based on player choices, if the player can obtain approval from the authorities the character's government or gods.

11. For crafted items, including a signature of the crafter would be great.

Thank you for not criticizing the 7 other suggestions but I was hoping you may have a few to make crafting more interesting and personally rewarding.

Consider that it might be fun to figure out that truffle steak gives 20% more power and precision if made near lava, another 10% if made within 5 minutes of praying to Balthazar at his temple, 5% if made within an hour of noon, Tyria time, and 2% if made by a Charr, the meat master species. On the other hand, salad recipes may fail or produce below standard quality in the same circumstances.

@Anchoku.8142 said:

@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:

@Anchoku.8142 said:

2. Please introduce critical successes and failures based on crafting level, hidden variables, and RNG. Hidden variables may be things like time of day, location in Tyria, character species or profession, etc. The more variables, the better.

3. Material slots for crafting are currently limited to 4. Please increase the number of slots available as characters max out their crafting level so that more complicated recipes are possible.

4. Add more variability to gathering results based on crafting or gathering expertise, not just current tool and other bonuses; things like high quality mithril, red meat, blue berries, and hard wood that increase the odds of a critical success or provide some other benefit.

6. Let the gods help in crafting. Each species should be able to buy, or otherwise claim, a bonus specific to their species and personal story to improve some results and handicap others. A Charr should be great with meat and metal where a Sylvari should be great with herbs and wood. The character and personal story should enable bonuses to crafting results based on player choices, if the player can obtain approval from the authorities the character's government or gods.

11. For crafted items, including a signature of the crafter would be great.

I wouldn't consider any of that fun. What's wrong with putting ingredients in and getting the desired result?

@Anchoku.8142 said:

@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:

@Anchoku.8142 said:

2. Please introduce critical successes and failures based on crafting level, hidden variables, and RNG. Hidden variables may be things like time of day, location in Tyria, character species or profession, etc. The more variables, the better.

3. Material slots for crafting are currently limited to 4. Please increase the number of slots available as characters max out their crafting level so that more complicated recipes are possible.

4. Add more variability to gathering results based on crafting or gathering expertise, not just current tool and other bonuses; things like high quality mithril, red meat, blue berries, and hard wood that increase the odds of a critical success or provide some other benefit.

6. Let the gods help in crafting. Each species should be able to buy, or otherwise claim, a bonus specific to their species and personal story to improve some results and handicap others. A Charr should be great with meat and metal where a Sylvari should be great with herbs and wood. The character and personal story should enable bonuses to crafting results based on player choices, if the player can obtain approval from the authorities the character's government or gods.

11. For crafted items, including a signature of the crafter would be great.

I've tried to, as much as I could, keep my comments on your suggestions ... well, I guess "in a place to open a dialog" is the way to put it? Like, even if I can't see why some of them add value, you obviously can, so if you explain I can learn something. I may not agree, but at least I'll know what I'm disagreeing with, y'know?

Honestly, I think the best thing would be to strip 95 percent of it out, since it is basically noise, and stick with the top five percent most produced recipes. In part, because I don't think there is all that much meaningful depth available. Not least because ...

Consider that it might be fun to figure out that truffle steak gives 20% more power and precision if made near lava, another 10% if made within 5 minutes of praying to Balthazar at his temple, 5% if made within an hour of noon, Tyria time, and 2% if made by a Charr, the meat master species. On the other hand, salad recipes may fail or produce below standard quality in the same circumstances.

... you would shortly have "metacooking.com", which would document the best way to produce the specific food which was most desirable for the meta builds, and people would do that and only that. All those other options would be wasted, because players are not interested in intricate systems, they are interested in optimizing for maximum return on effort.

@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:

@Anchoku.8142 said:

@SlippyCheeze.5483 said:

@Anchoku.8142 said:

2. Please introduce critical successes and failures based on crafting level, hidden variables, and RNG. Hidden variables may be things like time of day, location in Tyria, character species or profession, etc. The more variables, the better.

3. Material slots for crafting are currently limited to 4. Please increase the number of slots available as characters max out their crafting level so that more complicated recipes are possible.

4. Add more variability to gathering results based on crafting or gathering expertise, not just current tool and other bonuses; things like high quality mithril, red meat, blue berries, and hard wood that increase the odds of a critical success or provide some other benefit.

6. Let the gods help in crafting. Each species should be able to buy, or otherwise claim, a bonus specific to their species and personal story to improve some results and handicap others. A Charr should be great with meat and metal where a Sylvari should be great with herbs and wood. The character and personal story should enable bonuses to crafting results based on player choices, if the player can obtain approval from the authorities the character's government or gods.

11. For crafted items, including a signature of the crafter would be great.

Consider that it might be fun to figure out that truffle steak gives 20% more power and precision if made near lava, another 10% if made within 5 minutes of praying to Balthazar at his temple, 5% if made within an hour of noon, Tyria time, and 2% if made by a Charr, the meat master species. On the other hand, salad recipes may fail or produce below standard quality in the same circumstances.

Oh, I agree, crafting would be like an Easter egg hunt while players experiment trying to figure out the variables and the most optimal conditions for each recipe and either keep secret or post online their discoveries. Material consumption and prices would increase drastically as crafters consume to learn while crafted goods of higher quality are priced accordingly. At the end, though, the material quantities required may be less significant than the time required to make a high quality item so a higher list price would be fair value.

The problem with critical crafting results, or situational factors making the result better, is that everything else becomes a failure.I used to play LotRO, and liked crafting in it, but the fact that you have base and crit crafting results just mean you craft whatever you want until you crit and vendor the rest (as no one is buying the non-crit result).

Easter egg crafting would quickly be codified and spread on the net, and people following the best results and the rest would be ignored.

@Tanner Blackfeather.6509 said:The problem with critical crafting results, or situational factors making the result better, is that everything else becomes a failure.I used to play LotRO, and liked crafting in it, but the fact that you have base and crit crafting results just mean you craft whatever you want until you crit and vendor the rest (as no one is buying the non-crit result).

That can happen, easily, if material supply is too high. If material supply is more limited then many players will opt' to pay less for lower quality items. GW2 already has an equilibrium on the BLTP because low ranking items can be salvaged for materials and luck.

I think it can be done right but you are correct to be concerned. There are many items in GW2 that do not have an economic balance; e.g., minor and superior runes. Salvaging and forging are keys already in place.

@Anchoku.8142 said:

@"Tanner Blackfeather.6509" said:The problem with critical crafting results, or situational factors making the result better, is that

everything else becomes a failure

.I used to play LotRO, and liked crafting in it, but the fact that you have base and crit crafting results just mean you craft whatever you want until you crit and vendor the rest (as no one is buying the non-crit result).

So basically what you're saying is only the rich could afford to sink the cost necessary to get the improved results, and can then benefit from that indefinitely, while the rest of us struggle with not being able to afford it?

The goal shouldn't be to create another Have vs Have-Nots, but to clean up the entire system so reoccurring investment (and the anti-inflation measures built almost entirely on item trade and consumption) can actually function correctly and uniformly across the entire game. Ascended gear crafting went through its demand cycle twice, and its only now reaching saturation with the most active players have enough excess gear sets, or legendary armor. Considering both were added specifically to be material sinks for the market, thats a pretty mind boggling amount of player wealth tied up in these things. Crafting in this game exists to leech gold out of the player's banks, so it doesn't inflate the economy..... but because the biggest demand is in Gear sets, the gear sets themselves being capped, and our ability to recycle gear asc gear sets for very little cost...... what are we actually spend all our money on? Look at the price history of materials, and what things were added to the game at the time, and you can see a long list of pure material sinks in ever growing amounts, later juxtaposed by a massive material dump to counter act excessive demand. They almost never go with sustainable solutions; IE- Ongoing costs with targetable supply generation. Instead they favor huge demand spikes to drain surplus, and then generating surplus when demand doesn't fall off.

The mistake they keep making is seeing an excess in the market, and making a huge 1-time sink to drum up demand that will inevitably taper off, and the excess returns once enough people have it, or stop caring about it. Gear tends to have a longer interest curve due to how integral it is to how this game functions, and the perceived long term benefits of the "power latch" you can't fall below once obtained. But what we really need is more balanced approach to how we use consumables, and enough alternate channels to get whats desired verses whats available. Right now the Utility consumables have a very narrow material spread, much of which is competing with Legendary crafting on one or more areas. Food has more sources, but much narrower demand due to a "best in slot" for the already narrow meta game.

My modest suggestions:1) Ascended jewelry. Realize it would remove need for a lot of the LS currency, but as of now, jeweling is pretty pointless - in the end, you are just going to go for ascended in most cases.2) Remove time gating and account bound of some recipes. At this point, I'm not sure why things like mithrilium is limited to 1/day, when the final result (deldrimor steel ingot) can be bought on the TP. If one is in a rush, one could but the deldrimor steel from the TP, and then craft and sell ones own steel ingots in the days/weeks that follow.3) Speed of crafting - some recipes still craft very slowly when doing a lot. However, others are quite quick, so this is not a technical limitation - it just results in me watching the screen longer while I don't do anything.

While crafting is really just a goal to get the end game items, that is not a crafting issue - that is a game item design issue. Common/uncommon are basically trash items, whether found in the world or made in crafting. This is probably worse with the number of level boosts and the like out there, such that one can get to level 80 in zero time.

@Solvar.7953 said:2) Remove time gating and account bound of some recipes. At this point, I'm not sure why things like mithrilium is limited to 1/day, when the final result (deldrimor steel ingot) can be bought on the TP. If one is in a rush, one could but the deldrimor steel from the TP, and then craft and sell ones own steel ingots in the days/weeks that follow.That is almost the entire point of the timegate - it maintains a demand for the resulting material, so that there is always a profit (even if small) to be had by crafting them.

Crafting in its original form and purpose is dead. Anet killed it with Tomes of Knowledge and the super easy availability of ascended trinkets.I always wanted for Cook and foods to be more useful. Guild Hall Tavern upgrades (sadly, the guild hall idea is dead too) would be a great sink for food items to unlock the ability too take more guild buffs at a time.

@ the OPI don't see the need for more RNG in the process (that already is one of the most complicated in game) and I don't want to see anything on foods that increases the power creep. I appreciate the effort in trying to find something nice for crafting though.

Craft is an oft-overlooked skill set in any RPG, but there are ways to make it more interesting without resorting to Skinner Box gambling mechanics.

1. Make gear upgradeable. If I can make an armor piece, why not make a better/different version of that armor set out of it? Use the gear piece as a material itself, along with additional mats, to raise or change its level/rarity/stats. Or, in some cases, unlock new "fixed" or "renewed" versions of gear that has a tattered or makeshift look to them (similar to the Reclaimed/Plated/Machined weapon sets). The benefit for this is twofold: first, it gives players an option for equipment other than salvaging it for scraps, and second, it adds value to common and uncommon drops as crafting materials.

2. Make crafting quicker. While the fractal reduction on crafting bulk mats is nice, the cap feels a little low; I assume this is for technical reasons. There are ways around this for crafting in bulk, such as: up the recipe-per-tick once the cap is reached; set a maximum timer that, when reached, instantly completes the entire order; set up vendors/artisans who will trade raw mats for refined ones and money (but not give any XP)... something like that.

3. Make crafting social. As it is, there's very little reason not to do everything yourself. You could have your friend make a lining while you make an armor plate, but why would you? it takes longer for them to give it to you than it would to make it yourself, and they get nothing out of it once you have your item. If crafters could work together on a project via shared UI, it would both reduce crafting times and invite players to socialize. They could also receive a greater, mutual benefit. This could be as simple as a Karma/XP rewards (especially if your partner have higher Craft skill than you), duplicate items, or unlocking "inspired" recipes/skins for "fancier" versions of craftables.

4. Give crafted items additional purpose. There's always a little "feel bad" to early- and mid-tier crafting. It takes a lot to gather the materials, you're going to outgrow these items almost instantly, and because anyone can make them, there's no point in Trading or selling them. You might not even want to craft anymore after that, and crafting becomes a grind. Perhaps there should be a way to trade or sell crafted items to certain NPCs for a profit, or set them up on display, or improve them as per #1... anything other than salvaging them for a huge loss and feeling like time and resources were wasted on it. For example, I know a few Priory members would love the idea of Potions of Dredgeslaying at any strength, and there are tons of remote Skritt who might want super-shiny metal pieces in trade for non-shiny wood or herbs... make it a secondary game, and have fun with it!

5. Make crafted items special/distinct. This one is trickier, because they can't have unique stats or powers, but crafted-only skins aren't enough of a draw, apparently. However, we've seen things done with effects and auras (such as the Rime-rimmed Rebreather), why not let us create them for gear? or craft Tonics/Food that generate them? This adds value and distinctiveness to the crafted item, but doesn't unlock as a skin, so not everyone might have them. ("It's not just any Winged Helmet, it's MY Winged Helmet!", or "its a [designer] Winged Helmet!"). As an example, perhaps there could be a special "Designer" skin that can only be crafted, with certain, invisible "nodes" on it that can only be crafted on to it, like a glowing aura or ribbon, etc.. Such a skin would technically be the same for everyone, but still distinct.

Beyond adding the ability to craft certain items (like .. increase Jeweler to 500 and let us craft Glyphs or something), Crafting as a whole in this game is a total and complete loss. It is not worth even overhauling because of it's base mechanics that limit it to four recipe items, etc. It also doesn't need to be any more complex because of how it is required in order to make Ascended gear and so many other items.
The idea of being at a high crafting level being of value in the game is a myth, and the only reason it isn't used for XP and then ditched is because Ascended gear is account bound. Sure, you can make a little bit of money with it, but it's not like other games where people with specializations in certain crafts are a valuable member of their guild because of that skill. The closest we get to that is Scribe, and it's use is limited.

Crafting in this game has become an utter loss of the effort put in by the players. Arenanet can either say, "Oh, well, look forward to the next game," or deeply rework both crafting and how the BLTP handles item variety.

Like dungeons, crafting was abandoned by the development team after launch.

There are some good ideas in this thread. Keep them coming.

Speed it up. I'll buy a device that halves crafting time, for instance.

I dont want more rng in crafting, any kind of rng is bad, even i want to make mystic clovers everytime i put the ingredients in the forge.

What i want is to have account bund crafting professions, rather than change into diferent characters to acces them.

In the previous game I played, you leveled up not only from refining, but also from salvaging and gathering nodes specific to your craft.

Its obvious the crafting in this game is designed to be a money sink, but that only hurts the newer players who get day one poor just to pass that hurtle. Not to mention the way the crafting list is organized is annoying.