Crafting and the mystic forge need changes

[Tazer.2157]

So with the release of the legendary armory, the new legendary weapon sets and the fancy weapon skins released in the ICB it is clear that crafting legendaries/weapon skins are endgame goals. If this is the direction the game is taking, then why on earth is the crafting system untouched? I would have thought that the game would incentivize crafting. But no. There are no daily crafting goals, there is nothing that introduces a new player to crafting and the system itself is confusing  when it comes to sigils and runes. Getting to lvl 500 is just boring and a chore.  

 

The mystic forge is another neglected part of the game. Again like crafting it is barely introduced to a new player. It is severely lacking in many features, recipes aren't even saved which means we need to refer to the wiki or our memory to use the forge. This game relies far too much on the wiki and as a result many players miss out on many features of the game. 

 

I would hope the game improves these fundamental systems. Encouraging more players to craft and reach level 500 gives us more reason to be excited for new legendaries and the armory. Even if new features like player housing is introduced, it would greatly benefit from an improved crafting system.

 

One idea is to have us choose a crafting profession as soon as we join one of the factions. From there we are introduced to a smith that gives us recipes that help us get to lvl 500 and equipping us in faction armor and weapons along the way. This way new players might be encouraged to farm mats on various maps and the game can ensure most people have at least exotics equipped. 

 

But maybe I am wrong, and I am just too lazy and uninterested to craft. What do you think about the system? Are you happy with it? Do you want to see any changes made to it?

[Ayrilana.1396]

51 minutes ago, Tazer.2157 said:

So with the release of the legendary armory, the new legendary weapon sets and the fancy weapon skins released in the ICB it is clear that crafting legendaries/weapon skins are endgame goals.

It’s been that way since 2012.

[keenedge.9675]

They started giving away so much gear that there is no longer much demand to craft anything but Ascended food and Account Bound Ascended gear.

 

We used to be forced to craft Exotic to get the stat seals that were locked behind HoT and PoF expansions.  Now the restrictions have been reduced and since everyone beyond the core-only game has access to HoT and PoF seals via stat selectable gear, there is little reason to visit those maps and craft the coveted items.

Edited May 8, 2021 by keenedge.9675

[Tazer.2157]

On 5/9/2021 at 4:13 AM, keenedge.9675 said:

They started giving away so much gear that there is no longer much demand to craft anything but Ascended food and Account Bound Ascended gear.

 

We used to be forced to craft Exotic to get the stat seals that were locked behind HoT and PoF expansions.  Now the restrictions have been reduced and since everyone beyond the core-only game has access to HoT and PoF seals via stat selectable gear, there is little reason to visit those maps and craft the coveted items.

 

It is not just about the gear. It is about getting people to 500 so the end game rewards make sense. If most people aren't level 500 then what is the point of having weapon skins or legendary weapons as end game rewards? Besides this, fractals also need ascended gear and infusions which can be obtained by crafting.

[Sobx.1758]

On 5/7/2021 at 9:02 PM, Tazer.2157 said:

If this is the direction the game is taking, then why on earth is the crafting system untouched? I would have thought that the game would incentivize crafting. But no.

You just said that there are rewards related to crafting, but somehow that's still not "incentivizing crafting"?

 

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There are no daily crafting goals,

You can make some profit with daily crafting, sooo... there kind of are? 

 

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there is nothing that introduces a new player to crafting

You're getting introduced to crafting around lvl 12 I think?

 

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and the system itself is confusing  when it comes to sigils and runes.

How?

 

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Getting to lvl 500 is just boring and a chore.  

So don't do it.

...but you want the rewards right? So do it.

But it's boring and a chore! Ok, so don't do it.

...but the rewards and some crafting profit tho? Well, do whatever you want I guess.

 

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The mystic forge is another neglected part of the game. Again like crafting it is barely introduced to a new player.

Level 69: https://images.alt-gr.org/gw2/levels/69c.jpg

 

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It is severely lacking in many features, recipes aren't even saved which means we need to refer to the wiki or our memory to use the forge.

I get how this can be annoying to some, but this is how I see it: do I want to go through the game blindly and get to everything by myself? Great, I can do exactly that.

Do I want to take the shortcut? (yes, I do) Wiki it is.

Personally I don't see the problem, but w/e.

 

 

 

Edited May 10, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[Joote.4081]

I have been stuck at something like level 475 in Armor smith for months.

I can farm all week and I'm lucky if I can craft one thing that ups my level and that hardly touches my progress bar.  The craft system in GW2 is disheartening at best and does not reward you for hard work.

It took me ages and a lot of gold to get cooking to 500 and I only got that due to me finding out about the gormy chef achievement.

Recently I have been considering completely giving upon crafting.  It was great fun but becomes somewhat ridiculous, expensive, and disheartening at later levels.  Every time I think I have made a breakthrough I come up against a brick wall.  I look at what I need to progress and think 'maybe next month if I'm lucky' 

 

One thing I hate is how they make one item important and then make it near impossible to obtain.  This is NOT what a game is all about.  They should always make it possible to keep moving forward and NOT, frustrate the hell out of the player.

I guess it use to be a lot easier years back but for new players crafting has become your ultimate nightmare.

 

I have to ask.  Why the kitten are snowflakes still in crafting recopies when they no longer exists.

Edited May 10, 2021 by Joote.4081

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Pretty sure Snowflakes exist.  You can even purchase them on the Trading Post (hundreds of thousands available), if you don't want to collect them during Wintersday. 

Edited May 10, 2021 by Inculpatus cedo.9234

[Veprovina.4876]

2 hours ago, Joote.4081 said:

I have been stuck at something like level 475 in Armor smith for months.

I can farm all week and I'm lucky if I can craft one thing that ups my level and that hardly touches my progress bar. 

You're doing it wrong. You need to discover new recipes, those are worth like a full level of XP.

 

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The craft system in GW2 is disheartening at best and does not reward you for hard work.

Yes it does, you get rewards by being able to craft expensive stuff to sell on TP. Or for yourself.

 

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It took me ages and a lot of gold to get cooking to 500 and I only got that due to me finding out about the gormy chef achievement.

Chef's a bit different because it's tied to achievements, not a good reference for other crafting disciplines.

Besides, you only need it for ascended food so meh...

 

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Recently I have been considering completely giving upon crafting.  It was great fun but becomes somewhat ridiculous, expensive, and disheartening at later levels.  Every time I think I have made a breakthrough I come up against a brick wall.  I look at what I need to progress and think 'maybe next month if I'm lucky' 

Again, you're doing it wrong.

It costs about 25 gold to fast level Armorsmithing to 400 (https://gw2crafts.net/armorcraft_fast.html) and about 12 gold to level from 400 - 500 (https://gw2crafts.net/armorcraft_400.html). I'd hardly call that expensive. Especially since you only need to level it once.

If you look at the guides, you'll see that most of the leveling is done by discovering recipes. Not crafting X thing 100 times. That way you don't need a lot of materials because you get the same experience for one discovery craft as you'd get by crafting 100 items otherwise, meaning less materials, meaning cheaper.

Also, there's indication on every item on how much XP you'll get if you craft it. Don't remember the colors exactly, but the "weaker" the color (gray being no XP), the less XP you get. So the system is literally telling you in no uncertain terms that it's useless to craft "known" items and it's always nudging you in the direction of discovery.

 

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One thing I hate is how they make one item important and then make it near impossible to obtain. 

Which ones? I've never come across an item i needed for crafting that's "impossible" to obtain. If i was too lazy to farm something, i always found it on the TP so idk what you're talking about, crafting materials are abundant.

 

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This is NOT what a game is all about. They should always make it possible to keep moving forward and NOT, frustrate the hell out of the player.

Craft discovery - you'll always move forwards. Just because you didn't understand the crafting process doesn't mean it's not making it possible for players to level fast and easy.

 

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I guess it use to be a lot easier years back but for new players crafting has become your ultimate nightmare.

If you're spending all your materials on crafting low XP stuff then yeah, i can see how it would be frustrating, but that's not the game's fault.

 

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I have to ask.  Why the kitten are snowflakes still in crafting recopies when they no longer exists.

There's tons of snowflakes on TP, and you can get them from your daily christmas tree in your home instance, plus, they're used in tons of recipes like Giver's for example so of course they're in crafting recipes.

Edited May 10, 2021 by Veprovina.4876

[T G.7496]

@Veprovina.4876
is correct in everything they say.

 

But it is also true that probably 95% or more of all the crafting recipes are completely and utterly useless.

[Joote.4081]

1 hour ago, TwoGhosts.6790 said:

@Veprovina.4876
is correct in everything they say.

 

But it is also true that probably 95% or more of all the crafting recipes are completely and utterly useless.

Reminds me of levelling in cooking.  I had all bags and bank full of stuff that I crafted which said in the description 'Crafting material'  but I never used again.  I have since bin or sold it.  I now only craft 5 out of all the other 1,300.467 junk food items.

 

@Veprovina.4876

I  think I have discovered everything there is to discover.  When did you level up in AS, 2011?

Edited May 10, 2021 by Joote.4081

[T G.7496]

Just now, Joote.4081 said:

Reminds me of levelling in cooking.  I had all bags and bank full of stuff that I crafted which said in the description 'Crafting material'  but I never used again.  I have since bin or sold it.  I now only craft 5 out of all the other 1,300.467 junk food items.

Yeah, levelling your cooking (which is actually well worth it if you want to craft a bunch of other 'end-game' bits and bobs) is one of the most frustrating endeavours, simply because of all the crap that fills your bags (literally fills them) along the way. And it's kind of a shame because, of all of the crafting disciplines, it's the one that I can see most appealing to those who prefer to 'discover' their recipes; to experiment and try things out. But, sadly, because the frustrations about bag space, its actually probably THE discipline to just follow an efficient guide to.

[Rasimir.6239]

On 5/7/2021 at 9:02 PM, Tazer.2157 said:

Encouraging more players to craft and reach level 500

There is a very fine line between "encouraging" and "forcing". Many of this game's systems exist in a way that makes you free to choose to play them or get what you're after in a different way, and crafting is a prime example.

 

You'd be surprised how many people despise crafting, not just in this game but in all similar games. They already find way too many rewards in this game tied to crafting (starting with ascended equipment, which early on was very hard to get outside of crafting it yourself). That's why the game has different avenues to the same results, and that's why crafting is where it is, offering nice perks if you choose to craft, but giving you different ways to get most of what's available if you don't want to bother with crafting.

  

31 minutes ago, Joote.4081 said:

@Veprovina.4876

I  think I have discovered everything there is to discover.  When did you level up in AS, 2011?

According to the wiki there are 43 different types of exotic lvl 80 insignia (if I have counted them correctly), times 6 different armor pieces. A few of them might actually need a recipe sheet to learn, but the majority is available to discover, as long as you have the insignia and the matching armor components at hand. You only need a fraction of the possible discoveries to reach armorsmithing lvl 500.

[Nazarick.9653]

5 hours ago, Joote.4081 said:

I have been stuck at something like level 475 in Armor smith for months.

I can farm all week and I'm lucky if I can craft one thing that ups my level and that hardly touches my progress bar.  The craft system in GW2 is disheartening at best and does not reward you for hard work.

It took me ages and a lot of gold to get cooking to 500 and I only got that due to me finding out about the gormy chef achievement.

Recently I have been considering completely giving upon crafting.  It was great fun but becomes somewhat ridiculous, expensive, and disheartening at later levels.  Every time I think I have made a breakthrough I come up against a brick wall.  I look at what I need to progress and think 'maybe next month if I'm lucky' 

 

One thing I hate is how they make one item important and then make it near impossible to obtain.  This is NOT what a game is all about.  They should always make it possible to keep moving forward and NOT, frustrate the hell out of the player.

I guess it use to be a lot easier years back but for new players crafting has become your ultimate nightmare.

 

I have to ask.  Why the kitten are snowflakes still in crafting recopies when they no longer exists.

 

There are plenty of crafting guides that take you to 500 with minimal effort.  Requires gold ofc, but much easier to farm that and buy the mats to follow a guide. (I did that with all of them, didn't take long at all except for the gourmet chef which took a little longer)

[Veprovina.4876]

5 hours ago, TwoGhosts.6790 said:

@Veprovina.4876
is correct in everything they say.

 

But it is also true that probably 95% or more of all the crafting recipes are completely and utterly useless.

That's true but just because most of them are stepping stones to get to the higher ones. And since early game is so easy and fast, you never need to craft yourself some lvl 40 armor or whatever lol, especially because there's tons of it on TP for peanuts.

 

3 hours ago, Joote.4081 said:

Reminds me of levelling in cooking.  I had all bags and bank full of stuff that I crafted which said in the description 'Crafting material'  but I never used again.  I have since bin or sold it.  I now only craft 5 out of all the other 1,300.467 junk food items.

 

@Veprovina.4876

I  think I have discovered everything there is to discover.  When did you level up in AS, 2011?

Yeah, Cooking is "special" lol.

 

And are you certain you discovered everything?

I leveled up AS this year, it would have been harder at the beginning lol.

I used the guide, but if you don't want to spoil your experience or whatever, i'll just write a few things here to give you an idea what to craft. You can be done in like, an hour including shopping if you want to level it to 500.

 

You said you are lvl 475 Armorsmith.

 

That means it's time for you to craft exotic stuff.

 

You do that by crafting stat insignias + whatever piece of armor you happen to need or didn't discover yet. Some require recipes, but most are discoverable.

Here's a list of all the insignias and the general recipe for them:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Master_insignia

 

That means, you can discover most of them first (for those that are discoverable).

For the undiscoverable ones, you can buy a recipe, those are most of the time HoT and PoF stat ones.

Base game stats are all discoverable.

 

Then, you can discover each piece of armor with X1 insignia.

After you're done, you discover each piece of armor with X2 insignia.

 

There's 34-ish core stat combinations in the game.

There's 6 pieces of armor.

 

That's 204 discovery recipes right there!

It takes around 30 discoveries to level from 400-500.

 

The recipe for each one of those is:

2 armor components + insignia (like orichalcum helm lining + orichalcum helm casing + insignia).

 

You can make just 34 helmets with different stats. But you won't need to because you're just 25 levels shy of max crafting level.

 

Discover insignias, then discover exotic armor with that insignia stats. Move on to the next stat combo or armor piece when done. You can do this in an hour. If you don't want to buy insignias on TP, just make them yourself.

 

Bonus - you can get most of your gold back by selling the finished pieces on the TP!

Edited May 10, 2021 by Veprovina.4876

[Linken.6345]

9 hours ago, Joote.4081 said:

I have been stuck at something like level 475 in Armor smith for months.

I can farm all week and I'm lucky if I can craft one thing that ups my level and that hardly touches my progress bar.  The craft system in GW2 is disheartening at best and does not reward you for hard work.

It took me ages and a lot of gold to get cooking to 500 and I only got that due to me finding out about the gormy chef achievement.

Recently I have been considering completely giving upon crafting.  It was great fun but becomes somewhat ridiculous, expensive, and disheartening at later levels.  Every time I think I have made a breakthrough I come up against a brick wall.  I look at what I need to progress and think 'maybe next month if I'm lucky' 

 

One thing I hate is how they make one item important and then make it near impossible to obtain.  This is NOT what a game is all about.  They should always make it possible to keep moving forward and NOT, frustrate the hell out of the player.

I guess it use to be a lot easier years back but for new players crafting has become your ultimate nightmare.

 

I have to ask.  Why the kitten are snowflakes still in crafting recopies when they no longer exists.

 

Well sounds to me your doing the wrong thing, crafting the same items you already know gives abysmal exp.

 

Go into the discovery channel and discover some 400 recipies you dont have yet.

[Cuks.8241]

Two tips of my own. I never used guides so there are most likely better methods.

 

If you are aiming for certain skins, most can be crafted before 500. So you might as well just craft them during lvling.

 

While you can sell exotic weapons and armor and return some cost, there are items that will actually give you profit for crafting. Mystic curio for example. You can craft it at lvl 450 and gives exp until 500. I found it out by mistake. I was crafting The Shining Blade and decided to craft Curios on my artificer which was the last profession that wasn't 500 yet. It gives a KITTEN TON of exp, you can sell it for profit or use it later if you plan to go for legendary. It uses materials that you probably already have in bank (t5 mats). So going from 450 to 500 should net you profit in the end.

There could be some prerequisites for the recipe though that I missed (like core Tyria masteries). It's still useful for secondary crafting professions later on.

Edited May 10, 2021 by Cuks.8241