Why is Crafting still in the game?

[Athol]

I don't get all the qq about crafting in this game. It's the best crafting in any mmo I've played. I craft because it's like a mini game to me and it's fun to collect and make hq mats and then make hq items to sell or use. There are plenty of things in this game to qq about but crafting isn't one of them in my opinion.

[Felis]

I don't get all the qq about crafting in this game. It's the best crafting in any mmo I've played. I craft because it's like a mini game to me and it's fun to collect and make hq mats and then make hq items to sell or use. There are plenty of things in this game to qq about but crafting isn't one of them in my opinion.

We don't complain about the crafting system.
We complain about the best ilv gear we can craft versus the best ilevel gear we can find in a dungeon.

[Nekodar]

We don't complain about the crafting system.
We complain about the best ilv gear we can craft versus the best ilevel gear we can find in a dungeon.

Compare aquisition time for dungeon gear vs crafted gear in current version (pre-2.2).
i70 crafted HQ with optimal meld vs i90 Allagan or Myth...
If you can afford the i70 crafted, you'll have enough to take on pretty much everything, if you have the skills. With "only" darklight, you'll have a much harder time... But the point here is that you don't have to be lucky with RNG for Allagan, and don't need to farm ad nauseum for myth...
Sure, Allagan and Myth are both in general better than the i70 crafted, but the i70 crafted lets you take on stuff faster than if you have to wait for drops/myth...

Next up we'll have i90 (likely) crafted, HQ with melds that's going to spank the myth/allagan i90, making it easier to take on the new stuff while you gear up to the next top tier...

[Zplinter]

I don't get all the qq about crafting in this game. It's the best crafting in any mmo I've played. I craft because it's like a mini game to me and it's fun to collect and make hq mats and then make hq items to sell or use. There are plenty of things in this game to qq about but crafting isn't one of them in my opinion.

Disagree, crafting here is no where close to what SWG had (prior to those 3 letters). Mind you it is better then 90% of the crafting systems I have encountered in my mmo years.

In regards to someone a few pages back asserting the having gear player made on par to drops would lead to more RMT transaction for the "win." That frankly is already happening, it is called buying your primal, coil carry. I could be as lazy as a (insert something lazy here), buy RMT then buy all my primal carries (I see the advertised in Mor Dhona all the time and you get the drops), the same with coil. So lets not blame the boogie man, a.k.a. RMT.
While I can understand some bigotry about crafted gear versus "earned" gear, I think get that twisted over pixels is a bit silly.

Some things that could help creating a bottleneck so we are not any more over ran by crafted gear versus "earned" gear:
a. Someone described specialization: make is so that no matter how many 50 DoH you have accomplied you can only specialize in one, then make is so that one specialization would have one or two items that you could make and only self wear that were comparable to bis.
b. Bind mnaterials: Make it so that the top end items require an item that drops in a top end 4 man run, but the item that drops bind to the toon that picks it up. This would frankly suck for the OP that wishes to avoid dungeons, but it would lock out speed rund for items that you in turn sell on the MB, and the price wars that in turn would make your "good" gear cost trivial.
c. While it would cause 90% of the player base a heart attack (in some cases in the real world), have item decay, by this I mean you items take damage, you repair them and they take less damage, in other words repairs of an item give you diminishing returns until said item eventually turns to dust and you need to get a new item. (least viable option in this game granted).

I really was a fan of the SWG system. this one is not bad, but it is not and will not be a player based economy.