Make crafting accessible.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Quote: "...it never introduces you to crafting and it doesn’t make an attempt to even guide you through it."

As for the game not introducing players to Crafting, or incentivizing them, there is the information on the Level-up Rewards window, as well as rewards and achievements in the Tutorial (Achievement).

[sorudo.9054]

two things they should do for crafting is:

1. make characters actually do something, one of the most immersive breaking part of this game is that ppl are just standing there doing absolutely nothing.
2. make crafting after 400 more interesting, i quit crafting because now i am stuck with overly expensive inscriptions that apparently has a tier system because i now have to make 20 of the same gear for different levels.

[Tommo Chocolate.5870]

I partially agree with the OP. I don't think crafting requires a guide (by which I really mean I personally figured out how to craft weapons and armour without a guide), but I do think it's utterly tedious and unfun. Before the game was released, Mike O'Brien condemned other MMOs because they "feel like you're playing a spreadsheet", and yet crafting in GW2 is about as close as you can get to a playable spreadsheet.

Not only is it dull, but you have to get through way too much of it before it also becomes useful. Unless you want any of the crafting-exclusive skins, there's no reason to craft anything until you're level 80. Once you are level 80, if you want to craft a full set of exotic gear, you have to grind through 400 crafting levels in at least three different crafting disciplines in order to do it.

As for interaction with drops, yes, technically, the drops you get give you a lot of materials used for crafting level-appropriate items - but there's no reason to actually craft those items because you can (and will) obtain equally good items through other much easier means anyway.

Personally I much prefer the GW1 crafting system, where you only have to craft things you actually want, the materials used actually bear some relation to the item, and you never have to craft any intermediate items that can themselves only be used for crafting.

@Dante.1508 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Dante.1508 said:If you just stick to exotics you can ignore crafting completely.. You aren't very good but you can ignore that grind.What do you mean "you aren't very good"?

Ascended are far better than exotics, i know people suggest otherwise but Ascended blow exotics out of the water in stats.. and no its not 5% you add weapons and armor up and Ascended are like 30% or something better..

I assume that most of the people who claim ascended gear is 5% better than exotic are just parroting something they read online and haven't actually bothered to check. From the item stats, I can't figure out why anyone would make that claim in the first place, but it's complicated even further by the fact that the question "how much better is ascended gear than exotic gear?" doesn't really make sense on its own. How much better at what? For the question to make sense you'd have to pick a particular attribute combination and a particular thing that you care about comparing. Since most people seem to use berserker gear, to me the most pertinent question seems to be: how much more (direct) damage do I deal in ascended berserker gear than in exotic berserker gear? As far as I can tell, the answer is just over 13% more - so much more than the 5% that most people claim, but nowhere near 30%. (Working in spoiler below.)

! Expected (direct) damage is proportional to [weapon strength]×[power]×(1 + [crit chance]×[crit bonus])!! A character in Ascended berserker gear and a greatsword has 1100 average weapon strength, 2381 power, about 0.5076 crit chance, and crit bonus of 1.1407. Hence the expected damage is proportional to about 4135622.!! A character in Ascended berserker gear and a greatsword has 1047 average weapon strength, 2289 power, about 0.4781 crit chance, and crit bonus of 1.0993. Hence the expected damage is proportional to about 3657939.!! 4135622/3657939 = 1.13 (2 d.p.)!! (The choice of greatsword was totally arbitrary. Weapon strengths vary between different weapons, but I tried some of the others and still got just over 13%.)

[Khisanth.2948]

@Astyrah.4015 said:

@"kharmin.7683" said:Ascended is not mandatory either. Perhaps it is preferred for specific types of content, but it isn't mandatory.

ascended is only required for fractals (above tier 1) where agony resistance and infusions come into play

Even in fractals you don't need ascended weapons and armor immediately.

You can have 9 agony infusion slots from the trinkets and back item. 10 if you infuse the back item but anyone complaining about cost has no business wasting gold on that unless they are using Mawdrey(which requires LS2 so it has that as a cost if not already owned) or Tempered Spinal Blade(which has a hefty material cost compared to the other sources of ascended back items). When filled with +9s that is 81 AR and with anther 10 from Anguished Tear of Alba that brings the total to 91 which is enough to get 2/3rd of the way through t3.

[Gibson.4036]

I think the problem with the crafting system is the same problem with the leveling system. Level 1-79 is pretty meaningless, then suddenly the game hits. Just like you end up easily overleveled and not really learning how to play your character until you hit 80 and things get challenging, you have to craft all of this useless stuff to get to making exotics and ascended items at end game.

[ASP.8093]

Worth noting that originally crafting was a handy way to level your characters. It was expensive enough that you wouldn't do it on your first toon, but if you've already got some cash and mats and boosters stockpiled, getting your alt up to 400 in two crafting disciplines you hadn't unlocked would also get them like 70% of the way to level 80.

The availability of level-up scrolls and Tomes has kinda changed the math on that. (I would not want Tomes removed, for the record. I think they're a very nice "filler" reward for WvW/PvP stuff.)

[Firebeard.1746]

@Tazer.2157 said:The crafting system in this game is one of the most tedious, unfun experiences in this game and it needs attention if the game wants to bring in and hold on to new players.

Why the current system is bad

1. Zero interaction with drops: kill a mob, get crafting items to then directly deposit in storage or sell on TP. How is this okay? I get the world and the quests are fun enough to keep people engaged, but encourage us to find use for these drops.
2. A painful way to level up crafting: any player who wants to level up crafting needs at least two screens! One where they need to log into gw2, copy a bunch of text to paste in another website, then go through a list of things they need to buy On the TP and tick them off. This is unfun, tedious, and quite frankly elitist where the crafting system is min-maxed. I leveled up a weaponsmith and an armorsmith to 500 and I spent more time looking at the tiny screen on my phone to make sure I was buying the right amount of items from the TP than actually enjoying the experience.

Fixes: some sort of daily system where you craft items that levels you up. This is all that is needed. Getting to 500 need not be done in an hour. There are multiple crafting professions in the game, and it’s a shame and a loss if it’s not accessible to most players.

1 -> The only issue I would say here is the cardinality of items. There's nothing wrong with depositing items to use later. The use is crafting. All of them are used somewhere. If you think they're useless, you just haven't learned the use for it yet.2 -> This is purely by choice. You can learn the hard way. It is the most efficient way, but that's always the case for any game where there's a guide. I'm not sure where you're pulling elitist from. Like yeah, it's expensive, but a noob can just cash out their mystic coins for money for the mats if they don't feel like farming the cash. Also you can use materials from festivals to earn cash. That's actually how I subsidized my crafting. I think the hardest thing is that most of this is non-obvious, not that it's not accessible.

Crafting professions have become very binary (where they're not useful until 400-500) because the process of leveling a character has been massively sped up due to the plethora of tomes of knowledge along with boosts. Most people are playing at max level very quickly now. The levels below 400 are intended to gear leveling characters. That phase of the game is by and large over. I have no problems with this either as so much happens at end game now.

I think the biggest weakness of the crafting system is the non-obviousness of everything. There's tons of loot and it's not easy to know what everything is used for. On the flip side, this creates markets for crafters who are paying attention. It also created one of the most robust economies I've ever experienced in any MMO. In almost every other MMO I've played, I've felt like the AH just wasn't worth the effort or took forever to learn. So many things having value with so many different conversions allows you to make money very quickly as a new player if you're willing to sell. Sure you might be losing some cash because you don't understand how to use it, but you can make money REAL fast in the game using the deposit all function on the inventory widget and selling everything every now and then.

I actually really like the economy and crafting system, I just wish it was simplified because like I stated early, the amount of materials can feel very intimidating.