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Crafting is broken and pointless
tyrzn
Member Posts: 23 Arc User
First off NW is a great game overall. I enjoy it a great deal. The flow is good, the combat is good, and the quests are usually fun.
The crafting system is utterly broken.
What should someone expect from a crafting system?
#1 That you can make items that are useful to YOUR character. Typically you don't want to be stuck with random drops that might help you. So, you spend extra time making sure you have nearly the best gear for your level instead of running the risk of a dry spell over many levels that makes the game harder.
What is required to make crafting work for this purpose?
Crafting experience should rise at exactly or slightly ahead of the players "combat" level. If you can make stuff you can't use yet, you will wait for it. So, it's far better to have a characters crafting level a little too fast than too slow. Too slow means your gear isn't keeping up with your level.
In NW this is not the case. If you are an average player you will gain multiple levels in lets say 6 hours. So, lets say you send out your craftsman to gather whatever and it takes 6 hours. In that 6 hours they typically gain maybe 15% of a new level in crafting. Meanwhile your character gained 2+ real levels and found lots of gear. Most of it higher level than the player. Say, you send your craftsman out on an 18 hour mission, which you must do 3 times to have the 4 mercenaries to make a guard. 56 hours of real time. If a person played modestly of 3 hours a day over that time. 6 hours pass. If they play heavy as much as 12 game time hours go by gaining how many levels? 2-5+ Now you're sending that crafts person out to gather ore, then make plates, then make the item, then make the +1 item... how many more hours passed? How many more levels did your character gain?
The more you play the worse the gap gets and the further crafting falls behind.
As it stands now there is ZERO reason to do anything other than Leadership. So, why implement a crafting system that doesn't work? It just alienates and angers people that spend a lot of time an effort in it. It very well may make decent END game gear, but that is no excuse to make it useless for the rest of that game.
Crafting levels need to go up a lot faster to be viable.
#2 The ingredients need to cost less than the end product sells for to make a profit. That is NOT the case. Not even close. You should always be able to make a profit even selling to vendors, although a small one. So, even if you didn't get the pacing right on crafting level you should be able to turn a profit. No way. Not with the price of the ingredients you have to buy. Vs what people can buy that is BETTER on the AH. There is zero demand for inferior items.
This is a simple fix. Ramp up the crafting experience gains a great deal. Leadership is different, but the other 4 are useless as they stand. After spending many hours raising the 4 of them up and when you realize it doesn't get better... it only gets worse and it is like a slap in the face when it sinks in on how much time you have wasted. The end game may be different, I haven't maxed craft and I certainly will not be at this point. IF it is good at the end fine, but the journey there is totally messed up and there isn't one single good reason for it to be that way. SLOW down the gains near the end if the stuff at the end is good, not make all the other earlier levels useless...
I even stopped playing my characters to see how long it would take for them to make gear for their current levels and that was back in the 20s... after 6 days of only crafting... and still not catching up in gear and my toons still gaining levels just from praying and the real exp from the quests... it was the last straw. I'd have been in the 40s and by the time I could make level 20 gear...
Devs make a new character. See how totally messed up the level gains are vs the crafting gains. You'll see. You've got a great thing going, but this is unacceptable as it is. Remove it to avoid the betrayed feeling or make it usable.
The crafting system is utterly broken.
What should someone expect from a crafting system?
#1 That you can make items that are useful to YOUR character. Typically you don't want to be stuck with random drops that might help you. So, you spend extra time making sure you have nearly the best gear for your level instead of running the risk of a dry spell over many levels that makes the game harder.
What is required to make crafting work for this purpose?
Crafting experience should rise at exactly or slightly ahead of the players "combat" level. If you can make stuff you can't use yet, you will wait for it. So, it's far better to have a characters crafting level a little too fast than too slow. Too slow means your gear isn't keeping up with your level.
In NW this is not the case. If you are an average player you will gain multiple levels in lets say 6 hours. So, lets say you send out your craftsman to gather whatever and it takes 6 hours. In that 6 hours they typically gain maybe 15% of a new level in crafting. Meanwhile your character gained 2+ real levels and found lots of gear. Most of it higher level than the player. Say, you send your craftsman out on an 18 hour mission, which you must do 3 times to have the 4 mercenaries to make a guard. 56 hours of real time. If a person played modestly of 3 hours a day over that time. 6 hours pass. If they play heavy as much as 12 game time hours go by gaining how many levels? 2-5+ Now you're sending that crafts person out to gather ore, then make plates, then make the item, then make the +1 item... how many more hours passed? How many more levels did your character gain?
The more you play the worse the gap gets and the further crafting falls behind.
As it stands now there is ZERO reason to do anything other than Leadership. So, why implement a crafting system that doesn't work? It just alienates and angers people that spend a lot of time an effort in it. It very well may make decent END game gear, but that is no excuse to make it useless for the rest of that game.
Crafting levels need to go up a lot faster to be viable.
#2 The ingredients need to cost less than the end product sells for to make a profit. That is NOT the case. Not even close. You should always be able to make a profit even selling to vendors, although a small one. So, even if you didn't get the pacing right on crafting level you should be able to turn a profit. No way. Not with the price of the ingredients you have to buy. Vs what people can buy that is BETTER on the AH. There is zero demand for inferior items.
This is a simple fix. Ramp up the crafting experience gains a great deal. Leadership is different, but the other 4 are useless as they stand. After spending many hours raising the 4 of them up and when you realize it doesn't get better... it only gets worse and it is like a slap in the face when it sinks in on how much time you have wasted. The end game may be different, I haven't maxed craft and I certainly will not be at this point. IF it is good at the end fine, but the journey there is totally messed up and there isn't one single good reason for it to be that way. SLOW down the gains near the end if the stuff at the end is good, not make all the other earlier levels useless...
I even stopped playing my characters to see how long it would take for them to make gear for their current levels and that was back in the 20s... after 6 days of only crafting... and still not catching up in gear and my toons still gaining levels just from praying and the real exp from the quests... it was the last straw. I'd have been in the 40s and by the time I could make level 20 gear...
Devs make a new character. See how totally messed up the level gains are vs the crafting gains. You'll see. You've got a great thing going, but this is unacceptable as it is. Remove it to avoid the betrayed feeling or make it usable.
Post edited by tyrzn on
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Comments
I picked up 50 dollars worth of zen in profession assets and booster packs, and still cant craft anything useful.
Seems like all Perfect world is intrested in is robbing people of real money at every turn.
Cant even use the auction house without jems? WTF is that?
Couple that with an entire community that believes that the games PVP is the worst out there and well... I'd almost rather play Dragon's Prophet in its unfinished state of translation.
Becoming more and more appearent every week. But hey, atleast they keep adding new Zen companions!!!
/signed
Not as long players display your attitude towards it.
my lvl 30 char cant even make things for my newly made character
other than the first tier equip. and that was almost not worth it.. but I used it nontheless
but it's something to do for those who'r manic enaugh.
what puzzles me is that when getting higer lvl you seem to get equal or even lower rewards than on a lower lvl too frequently.
I've noticed that I'm far more often selecting a lower lvl craft than a higer lvl, because it's more rewarding compared to time and effort.
This puzzles me beyond reasoning.
But I guess this just says more about the developer than anything else.
But the crafting isn't the reason im playing the game. and I would Never... ever... even consider spending money on anything related to crafting as it is, for the above mentioned reason, and why someone would do so puzzles me even more than the imbalance of the crafting. (but elexin2 did make me laugh)
The reason players outrun their crafting level is because the experience gained from crafting items doesn't scale up. I'm level 6 in leatherworking, and the best way to level up the skill is to keep crafting level 2 shirts. They give the same exp, but require a lot less materials. It seems like common sense that higher level, harder to make items would give better experience. Unfortunately common sense doesn't seem to be so common with these developers.
well, in that regard crafting is the least of the problems.
otoh cryptic revamped whole systems in the past (crafting alone was at least revamped once in CO, iirc twice in STO), so hopefully we see some improvements across the board soon.
compared with STO's doff system NW's crafting is like lego duplo anyway...
The crafting in Neverwinter is actually good.
Getting to lvl10-11 every proffesion is easy and fast, but only got leadership to lvl20.(got tired so now i using it leadership to make AD)