Crafting is dead

[Buckles]

-Snip-

I sure do remember those days, where the thousands of people on the server could buy the materials with tomes and put them on the MB creating a vast economy for the various goods. Not the current state of a handful of bored gatherers who aren't getting gear via scrips putting 3 red ooids on the market for 500k each or the roundstones up for over a mil.

Then add to this that ANYONE with the gathering / perception could gather these nodes - then those goods become more and more available. They aren't gated behind a weekly capped currency. Those nodes spawned every day at X time, and the trickle effect only increased the supply as more and more people reached that point. Now gatherers are gated behind a weekly currency cap that they then have to decide how to spend between upgrading their own gear (which most are) or running around for an hour and fifteen minutes per stack of favors grinding ABSOLUTE GARBAGE with a small chance to gather something that we crafters need a shockingly large number of to be able to make A SINGLE item.

Thanks for reminding me of 2.0 good old days and that things weren't always so bad!

[scarebearz]

I sure do remember those days, where the thousands of people on the server could buy the materials with tomes and put them on the MB creating a vast economy for the various goods. Not the current state of a handful of bored gatherers who aren't getting gear via scrips putting 3 red ooids on the market for 500k each or the roundstones up for over a mil.

Then add to this that ANYONE with the gathering / perception could gather these nodes - then those goods become more and more available. They aren't gated behind a weekly capped currency. Those nodes spawned every day at X time, and the trickle effect only increased the supply as more and more people reached that point. Now gatherers are gated behind a weekly currency cap that they then have to decide how to spend between upgrading their own gear (which most are) or running around for an hour and fifteen minutes per stack of favors grinding ABSOLUTE GARBAGE with a small chance to gather something that we crafters need a shockingly large number of to be able to make A SINGLE item.

Thanks for reminding me of 2.0 good old days and that things weren't always so bad!

This is exactly right, the current system is worlds apart from the 2/3/4 star 2.x days, there is no comparison.

The people arguing against this were saying things like "you can't expect to full gear up on day 1" etc etc, a week and a half later...

How many 2* items can you see on your Market Board from the 100's of lvl 60 crafters on your servers?

On my server there are 4 HQ items and 2 NQ items for sale, in total. None of these are battle i180 items, they are all items that use less mats than the battle gear. (e.g. 2 of the HQ items are crafting rings, they use a sixth of the scrips mats a caster robe would need).

Also there are hardly any ooids etc for sale, as people don't consider them worth their time to collect...

[Sibyll]

Also there are hardly any ooids etc for sale, as people don't consider them worth their time to collect...

Eh, if people did the math it's cheaper scrip wise to mine the mats up and craft the items. I think what needs to be done is have the roundstones provide enhanced quantity of mats rather than quality, then people would be excited to see these pop up.

Think the system SE had in envisioned was people farm up mats for making a single crafted piece, save the rest of their RGS for gear pieces for their gatherer, and sell any remaining ooids etc. on the marketboard for cash.

Thing is unless you are buying HQ mats you likely won't come close to using all your crafting scrips unless you buy ooids of the board.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

Eh, if people did the math it's cheaper scrip wise to mine the mats up and craft the items. I think what needs to be done is have the roundstones provide enhanced quantity of mats rather than quality, then people would be excited to see these pop up.

If every Gathering Gear piece sold had a corresponding crafted piece, then I'd be looking at using the RGS for Favors to craft stuff. As it is, I find that the better use of my time is getting the Gathering tools first, and that leaves me with excess RCS tokens. I really don't see anything to do with them but to buy a couple of MH crafting tools. I'm leaning towards the Leatherworker, and either Blacksmith or Carpenter tools.

Unfortunately, that means I'm more than a month away from being able to even try crafting anything, and that's only if I get lucky with the Favors.

[Sibyll]

If every Gathering Gear piece sold had a corresponding crafted piece, then I'd be looking at using the RGS for Favors to craft stuff. As it is, I find that the better use of my time is getting the Gathering tools first, and that leaves me with excess RCS tokens.

Couldn't you spend 200-250 RGS on Favors and save the rest for gear? The gatherer off hand is far from as large of an upgrade as the main hands, but you can get that in a week easily while still getting a piece of turn in gear the following week. That's my plan at least simply because 11 hours of favor farming is excessive but I'd still like to be able to work on the 2* stuff a bit.

But yea, I can understand that gatherers are kind of left screwed with now crafted alternative. What I'm interested in is when we can expect a new tier of gear. As of now all the stats prerequisites are met without the need for the new gear.

[Roth_Trailfinder]

Couldn't you spend 200-250 RGS on Favors and save the rest for gear? The gatherer off hand is far from as large of an upgrade as the main hands, but you can get that in a week easily while still getting a piece of turn in gear the following week. That's my plan at least simply because 11 hours of favor farming is excessive but I'd still like to be able to work on the 2* stuff a bit.

But yea, I can understand that gatherers are kind of left screwed with now crafted alternative. What I'm interested in is when we can expect a new tier of gear. As of now all the stats prerequisites are met without the need for the new gear.

I could .. but ... we don't know exactly when the next major patch is coming.

Everyone knew that 3.05 was going to include new recipes (the rest of the 1 star, at a bare minimum). Everyone expected that there would be 2 star stuff, as well. Very very few expected the 2 star crafting requirements to basically be "max meld everything 3.0 BiS". Scoff if you like, but 718 Craft/695 Control is darn near "max meld everything".

At 9 tokens per week, if you ignore the Fishing gear, you are looking at 18 weeks (with a whopping TWO RGT left over) :
MH : 26
Hat : 12
Body : 18
Hands : 10
Legs : 7
Feet : 7
subtotal : 80
Total for both Mining and Botany : 160

I don't know what patch 3.06 is going to do. It may reduce the number of RGT required to obtain this otherwise-unattainable gear. It may increase the cap from 450 to 900 (effectively halving the time).

But does anyone realistically expect that 3.1, when it comes, won't have recipes requiring materials from nodes requiring this gear's stats? For all we know, and I half expect this, 3.1 is going to have the crafted i170 equivalent that gathering gear is currently missing.

My gathering gear is not melded in the best fashion. As it is right now, though, I am unable to obtain the Folklore RGS collectables with enough of a Collectability rating to be worth the RGS. That suggests to me that a gear improvement is certainly in order, and the MH tools are one heck of a place to start. I don't know that I'm going to get all of the i180 Mining/Botany gear. At this point I'm only planning out to six of those 18 weeks.

But I do know that either they are going to drop the Scrip system entirely, OR they are going to add new kinds of scrips. Green, Yellow, Pink, Purple, all rotating in and out as the Philosophy, Mythology, Soldiery, Poetics, Law, and Esoterics have done. *IF* they follow the same sort of pattern with Scrips as they do with the Tomestones, we are looking at what .. 3.15? 3.2? Before another Scrip is added.

At 3 months between each major patch, we're 11 weeks away from 3.10 ... and 23 weeks away from 3.15. That's only a difference of five weeks in which to gather Favors and still gear up with the bought Gathering gear.

Hopefully by then more people will be gathering and selling Favor node gathers on the MB at lower prices. I tend to doubt it though, unless 3.1 adds recipes that replace the current ones.

[Sibyll]

Scoff if you like, but 718 Craft/695 Control is darn near "max meld everything"..

I didn't mean to come off that way. I had nothing melded when the patch dropped and I thought it was a bit stupid how much melding these required. The meld requirements wouldn't be such an issue if it weren't for Clam Chowder requiring fish, which tend to cost of fortune due to fishing. The Control melds are the real killers here. Clam Chowder combined with budget craftsmanship melds is very easy to hit those requirements.

As for the rest of your post, if they don't release crafted versions of the gathering gear and drop a patch that raises stat caps then it's going to really throttle the supply of materials for crafters, as you alluded to. As of right now the only major piece that you can make is the off hand and maybe the belt.