I've really enjoyed crafting in GW2, but I actually have one major issue with it that I wanted to bring up:

It's so beneficial and accesible that everyone does it.

Now you probably read that and though fanboi blah blah blah...but not so!  Let me elaborate...

My problem with crafting is that there are SO many reasons why everyone wants to max out a crafting skill, some of those reasons being:

1.  Both crafting and gathering give you A LOT of exp, so people not even interested in crafting just do it for the exp.

2.  Crafting drops are fairly common and the trading post makes it very easy to get the ingredients you need, making crafting pretty easy to level.

3.  You can swap crafting skills without loosing progress on one character, so many folks will probably use to easier crafting skills just to level on when they have spare ingredients.

All of these reasons add up to mean that 400 level crafters are EXTREMELY common in this game.  This may not sound bad, but it means that the actual value that a max level crafter contributes to the economy is very low.  In fact, buying the ingredients of an item on the TP almost always costs either more or the same as the end product that a crafter can make...which essentially means that the crafter's value to the economy is worthless because it is so common.

And when you think about it, this is almost by necessity because of how the TP works.  If the ingredients of an item were posted for significantly less than the final item costs, then a crafter could just buy them all up, instantly craft the final product, and sell them back for a profit...this is essentially arbitrage and the market would quickly correct itself by making this impossible.

What are your thoughts on this?

As for me, in the future, maybe with an expansion, I hope that they make maxing out crafting a little more difficult and less accessible.  That should give max crafters some actual value in the economy.

Good points Creslin,

Another thing that is impacting the low value of crafted items is the generous quantity of world item drops and/or karma reward items.

I originally started crafting weapons and armor on my guardian primarily to supply myself with equipment but I quickly realized that the plentiful drops and cheap TP prices made that unnecessary except for the odd item here and there.

Raw materials are maintaining their value because we have a use for them in skilling-up our crafting. Finished products otoh, don't have an equivalent economic niche because there are plenty other ways of getting the same thing.

This is no suprise to me.. It's a themepark... bats drop HA... economies for crafters are always screwy in themeparks, especially when you incentivize gathering & crafting with xp. When there is a never-ending supply of goods (from mobs and crafters), with none being removed from the market (except consumables like food), the only possible outcome is a deflated market.

Originally posted by Grigor_Bron
I honestly don't know of a game where raw materials don't cost more in the marketplace than crafted products. It's the nature of the beast. Hard core crafters like to hover between the crafting stations and the trading post, never venturing into the world to get materials for themselves. This drives the price of materials up, but keeps crafted items fairly low.

Eve. But yea, not in a themepark.

Well, either 10% of the uber-crafters / market managers / traders have all the fun and make all the money and 90% of the playerbase has useless, inaccessible crafting that requires an excessive amount of grinding and STILL isn't as viable as drops...

Or 90% gets useful, easy, somewhat fun crafting and the 10% don't get to play wall street and feel all special inside for being "the best" etc.

I mean, no offense meant to you Creslin - but I'm with the majority especially because I've never been a big fan of crafting in MMOs and I know all too well how damaging it is to the game when it's the former not the latter.

Originally posted by BadSpock

Well, either 10% of the uber-crafters / market managers / traders have all the fun and make all the money and 90% of the playerbase has useless, inaccessible crafting that requires an excessive amount of grinding and STILL isn't as viable as drops...

Or 90% gets useful, easy, somewhat fun crafting and the 10% don't get to play wall street and feel all special inside for being "the best" etc.

I mean, no offense meant to you Creslin - but I'm with the majority especially because I've never been a big fan of crafting in MMOs and I know all too well how damaging it is to the game when it's the former not the latter.

Well what you're saying is that either crafting has 0 value and everyone can do it, or crafting has some value, but only some can do it.

I guess this decision comes down to whether you value the economy/virtual-world aspect of the game more, or whether you value being able to experience leveling up crafting more.

Personally...I side with the economy/virtual-world here.  Leveling up crafting is fun, but it does not have much longevity.  You max out your crafting, you're done, it ceases to provide you any benefit.  If crafting was useful to the economy however, you could continue doing it and making a profit even after it's maxed out.  Personally, I think that is better for a long-term game like an MMORPG.

Also...GW2 is still very good for "wall street" players, just not on the crafting aspect.  The trading post and currency exchange make it fairly easy for players that like to play the market and short sell stuff.

In the end though, I don't think this has to be either or.  For example, something as simple as making certain high level ingredients account-bound would immediately give crafting value because ONLY crafters would be able to use those ingredients and then sell the results.

Originally posted by ShakyMo
At least the crafted stuff is useful at endgame with gw2

Fully agree and it is great to see. After grinding crafting in many games, finally maxing it out, then realizing you can't make anything remotely close to the stuff you already have equipt is rediculously frustrating.

I understand fully and I was being very black and white, which we all know cannot be logically done - my apologies.

As I understand it, there are indeed account bound items only crafters can make - and then you combine them with dropped/farmed ingrediants to make something needed to craft legendary weapons in the mystic forge.

So the crafter can craft the object, as the mats are account bound, but the product is not so you can craft and then sell it.

However as I understand it there are not very many legendaries and I doubt too many people are at that point yet anyway so it's kind of a moot point.

I do agree there needs to be more items like this for crafters, however it goes against the idea of being able to play "your way" and having a very, very soft equipment (stat) cap at end-game.

I think they also do this kind of thing with crafted only armor sets, unique in look yet matching in stats to the farmed/dropped equivs.

But the demand for such a set is subjective as taste in the style is subjective.

However crafting an Exotic set is (supposedly) the quote "easiest" way to max your stats, than the grind is simply for cosmetic looks for the dropped/farmed pieces.

I was contemplating this exact topic yesterday and almost started a thread that would have mirrored yours.  I agree with pretty much everything you said, but I will add the following bullet list of quick points. 

Things I love about crafting in GW2: 

• The natural flow of it while leveling your character
• You can continuously craft yourself full upgraded sets of gear
• Stat customization in conjunction with bountiful transmutation stones from map completion
• Character EXP from crafting!
• You can generally level any craft without losing money
• For any level, including max level, you can craft yourself gear of the same power for about the same amount of effort/gold as it would take to acquire gear through other means

• Doesn't feel like a special accomplishment
• Your unique profession is not uniquely profitable--market is flooded with crafted items because everyone does it at all levels
• Your skills as a crafter are not in high demand
• 15% TP tax hurts crafting profitability, but is a necessary deterent for exorbitant, easy item flipping.  I wouldn't mind a few of the following features to be implimented to help out crafters specifically:
  • Reduced TP tax for crafted items
  • Trade channel.  Trading manually is a good way to mitigate the hefty TP tax and make a larger profit.  When it comes to exotics that sell for several gold, you can actually offer them up for many silver below the TP price, giving buyers a good deal, and still come out with a larger profit than if you posted it on the TP.  But unfortunately, right now everyone can only communicate through map chat, and people actually get angry when people "spam" chat with items they're trying to sell.
  • An alternative bazaar system similar to FFXI, perhaps for crafted items only, perhaps not.  Perhaps the ability to open a bazaar is only unlockable by players once they reach 400 in a craft.  This would allow crafters to list their finished products in their own personal market, tax free and browseable by anyone nearby.  This was always a good way to initiate bartering, something many crafters--the ones in question here, who want to use their craft to earn some money--actually enjoy.  

I think it'd be cool if max level crafters could discover rare sets with a unique skin - but that kind of thing just doesn't really work these days cause it'll be all over the net in a few hours/days...

Unless you randomized the list of materials on a per server basis or something to make it actual discovery per crafter but there are always patterns and only X number of possible high levels mats you could use...

How do you win?

Originally posted by BadSpock

I think it'd be cool if max level crafters could discover rare sets with a unique skin - but that kind of thing just doesn't really work these days cause it'll be all over the net in a few hours/days...

Unless you randomized the list of materials on a per server basis or something to make it actual discovery per crafter but there are always patterns and only X number of possible high levels mats you could use...

How do you win?

It's a difficult question because you have to make leveling crafting desireable enough so that it's not a total grind and makes for a fun gameplay experience, but undesireable enough so that not everyone does it.  

Catch-22.

Originally posted by ShakyMo
At least the crafted stuff is useful at endgame with gw2

Unless prices have changed. I haven't played the game in three weeks. It's much easier just to buy a full set of gear at 80.

Personally I hate crafting in video games. To make my legendary I had to have 400 Armorsmith and 400 Weoponsmith.

I looked up a guide and went from 1-400 in about 3 hours and 10 gold for each for a total of 6 hours and about 20 gold.

I feel like I overspent, but I didn't give a bakers bluff... I just wanted to get them both over with.

"crafting. proper crafting. So i can draw a design and give it to the crafter (another human player) and he/she be able to build exactly what i want. they need to be able to put there own signature on the armour/weopen as well so that the crafter gets reconition for his/her work. this sorts everyone, crafters get to make unique designs (not the same old piece) and get reckonised for their skill. Everyone else gets to wear armour they like..."

ties in with subject....

i would think this would be possible some how with gw2s trasmution stones system (i don't code or make mmos for a living though.

Originally posted by Creslin321

I've really enjoyed crafting in GW2, but I actually have one major issue with it that I wanted to bring up:

It's so beneficial and accesible that everyone does it.

Now you probably read that and though fanboi blah blah blah...but not so!  Let me elaborate...

My problem with crafting is that there are SO many reasons why everyone wants to max out a crafting skill, some of those reasons being:

1.  Both crafting and gathering give you A LOT of exp, so people not even interested in crafting just do it for the exp.

2.  Crafting drops are fairly common and the trading post makes it very easy to get the ingredients you need, making crafting pretty easy to level.

3.  You can swap crafting skills without loosing progress on one character, so many folks will probably use to easier crafting skills just to level on when they have spare ingredients.

All of these reasons add up to mean that 400 level crafters are EXTREMELY common in this game.  This may not sound bad, but it means that the actual value that a max level crafter contributes to the economy is very low.  In fact, buying the ingredients of an item on the TP almost always costs either more or the same as the end product that a crafter can make...which essentially means that the crafter's value to the economy is worthless because it is so common.

And when you think about it, this is almost by necessity because of how the TP works.  If the ingredients of an item were posted for significantly less than the final item costs, then a crafter could just buy them all up, instantly craft the final product, and sell them back for a profit...this is essentially arbitrage and the market would quickly correct itself by making this impossible.

What are your thoughts on this?

As for me, in the future, maybe with an expansion, I hope that they make maxing out crafting a little more difficult and less accessible.  That should give max crafters some actual value in the economy.

You missed the part where they made GW2 shiny happy everyone wins ?  there is supposed to be no market for anything, no way to controll or massively  affect the market, everyones even  game. Ill stop there cause i cbf dealing with more fanboys lol