What is the use of crafting these days?

Kilsin@Telon wrote:

well Vanguard just became a two sphere game.
Anymore and I will just get banned again.

I agree the boats/ships and mounts are a little too much.
There should be level restrictions on those items - level 30 for the sloop, level 40 for the caravel, 50 for the galleon. At least at those levels, not everyone will be severely lacking the funds to buy them. I didnt get a sloop until 45, and even then, the 50 gold was about 1/2 of what I owned. I didnt get a caravel until 50, and then I bought a cheaper Qalian one for 1 plat because 1.5 plat was all I had.
At level 1, there is not going to be ANY f2p player with enough money to afford any of those ships, and 5 plat is going to seem like a million dollars at the rate players make money (let alone the fact they can only carry 2 plat) - so its basically a no brainer to anyone wanting a galleon - the $ one is much cheaper in terms of time investment, especially if you think how long I would have to work in real life to buy a galleon (less than an hour) or how long it would take to grind 5 plat - (20-30 hours??)

Thanks guys for posting this thread. I was considering a return to VG, was here in beta & at launch, but left a few months after the first server merge. I really loved the crafting & although my highest adventurer was just a 48 Ranger, I'd capped his outfitting and diplo, and also had toons with all other crafting areas capped, or nearly so before I left. I had built my own Guildhouse and had a couple of extra houses where I'd stocked up on Galleon parts in preparation for their launch. Then I just got tired of dealing with SOEs unresponsiveness & failures to support this lovely game, their cuts to development so that the same old bugs just kept hanging around, et al.
I was actually glad to see it still around, and decided to drop in & look around again; last article I read says it is finally looking great. So here I am, all my lovely stuff is gone (changed claim system to get rid of stuff they can sell on the market) - no biggy, I can make more. All my mules purged (got rid of any extra non-$$ goods that may be floating around), no biggy, smart marketing move I guess, in time I can rebuild. But now I see that all my time and effort invested in these characters, learning to craft, is voided - erp. No thanks, that was the best part of the game. Don't think I want to get back in bed with SOE.
I do hope things improve for you guys, such a shame to see loyal customers dragged along this way. Maybe one day they'll figure out that a few bucks cut from the quality of the game experience never makes them money in the end.

Crafting has been crueled by the freebie fest and the new marketplace. I agree with the bulk of what is said above. With the loss of one of the main (authentic) revenue raising methods for players, things like paying 10p for the priviledge of starting to grind your epics probably need to be reviewed. As a quick fix to keep crafting alive, I suggest considering things like the following:
- make crafted boats superior in that they are faster and can load a sea chest or something for storage.
- make crafted bags beneficial by adding a slot or the ability to imbue (excuse the pun on the aug that still isn't live) it with a stat of some sort like +20 str or a small amount of damage rating etc. This doesn't seem like it would be too hard to code as bags with extra junk on them have arrived just fine in the station market. It would be nice if the bags from crafters weren't half the size of the ones on the marketplace also.
- make more powders so people can compete with the kind of stuff you now have as blue drops, with strikethrough chance, extra damage, etc etc etc - and give crafters the option to put a few powders on - seriously, jewelry was about the last decent craft option out there and now it is pretty much useless too.
As a long term fix, I would like to add that a truly "epic" character would have mastered all spheres and, in order to add some incentive to do so (read as money for subs etc to incentivise SOE to code it), you could add a special masterwork line (maybe called your masterpiece or something), where someone with max adventuring could quest for some ingredients (could be high end raid but I suggest not due to low pop and some people are not enabled for this), diplo for some recipes and other components and craft your own custom made soulbound unique item that is far superior to anything in game if you get it right. Possibly a weapon but maybe choice in this too, and let it be tailorable in most ways - you get ingredients or upgrade options from diplo to make slots like etherence, infuse, rune and soul, you get special ingredients for stats etc poss not unlike the Virak Cave stuff, but you can't do any of it unless you are highest end in a sphere and can never complete your real masterwork until max in all spheres. Quested would be better than random drop for this stuff as people would need to feel its achievable and that would mean my legendary bad luck couldn't come into play! Maybe you could add a specific soulbond harvest material to the mix. There is no reason why somene who has committed massive amounts of time to all areas of the game should not be rewarded for that over someone who can make a specific raid time with the right people - a large amount of the community is unable to do that.
I guess those are just some "food for thought" options. I implore you, please do something to give crafting a fighting chance as it is one of the main things that made this game different and better than others.

It's kinda funny. I've been making bank selling blue and yellow Tier 2 through 4 crafted gear for the last few weeks, on my tailor, mineralogist, and armorsmith all three. I don't feel particularly gimped, useless, or otherwise. The blue stuff is a vast upgrade over most other F2P gear options - even yellow is significantly better than most of the quested gear. Orange, in the rare cases I actually make it, is better in pretty much every case.
People also snap up bags pretty quickly - not everyone wants to spend min $4.50 just to get a big bag that's empty a lot of the time, and I know someone was dumping Pristine Vielthread bags on the Exchange the other day for 1g a pop and having them sell almost instantly.
What's curious is how I don't see much in the way of crafted gear on the Exchange for more than a couple of people except at the very high end of crafting. It kinda makes me wonder how people on the forums are so absolutely sure that crafting has been destroyed/gimped/crueled (whatever that is)/etc. by the new changes, given that you don't actually appear to be trying to, you know, sell anything.
That being said, I'd love to see some of the enhancements that have been asked for in this thread - not because I feel they're necessary to revitalize crafting, or make it useful again, but simply because they'd be nice additions. A broader spread of resonance and attuning catalysts in particular would be welcome - there's quite a few out there right now, but the limitations on what recipes each can be used with kinda dampens the actual variety down a lot.

I have found many opportunities to craft items for new players lately. they are excited about the stats and usefulness. However, this is more of a labor of love than an income stream. Since the value of crafting ultimately boils down to time rather than the value of the end item being made, many of us are crafting just to help people out. The 1g they can offer to pay for a new weapon or piece of armor barely covers costs to rift somewhere and make it for them. Still , we do it because we love the game, helping others, and crafting itself.
Expendables, remarkably, are still selling in spite of station cash items. These, however, are the mithril runes and such used by higher level players (usually subbed accounts) that have more in game cash to work with.
I have suggested that one of the player panels at SoE Live be about the role of crafting in a F2p model across all SoE games. I havent heard back yet, but would love to hear how crafting is doing in the other games.

Flarestar wrote:

We used to make good coin crafting Sloops, Caravel's, Galleons but these days they can be bought in the cash shop, my Carpenter can't make bags, or armour or anything really decent to make the kind of money I used to, so he is gimped.
I have tried to sell Masterwork items on the exchange for a very cheap price too and they take much longer too sell these days, if they sell at all.
All the big sell items players used to compete in price wars over like, housing, boats and so on is pretty much dead or the prices have dropped to far to waste your time making anything.
I have noticed a considerable drop in sales and the type of items on sale since F2P and the big hand outs + cash shop.
My Carpenter is basically benched now and only makes some 51+ spells for guildies or my alts when needed.
My Armoursmith just makes Damage/HP runes for my other characters + guildies and T2/3 PotA armour now.
Crafting was already struggling but unless something is done to revive this sphere, it will continue to just adapt and become more boring and lifeless than it has already become.

Kilsin@Telon wrote:

Are you sure its not because every end game player who wants them now has them, at the same time that more people levelled crafters as something to do during a lack of new progression content ?

Kilsin@Telon wrote:

I have a guildmate that's currently bringing in constant cash by making lower tier bows.
The problem most of the established crafters seem to be having is twofold.
First, there isn't much of a market amongst existing higher level players because they already have the items.
Second, the vast majority of the player crafted items, whether armor, weapons, housing components, etc., that I see on the exchange are listed at prices that are utterly absurd compared to the amount of money newer players will have. In a lot of cases I've seen them listed at prices F2P players can't actually even have.
Basically, crafters in this game have had a stagnant economy so long that they've forgotten how normal game economies work. Your stuff isn't worth what you think it's worth - it's worth what other people are willing to pay. Between myself and my harvesting partner we have everything but a leatherworker at at least tier 3 - we've had zero issue making money selling things, including bags. We haven't started building ships yet, but we've got four people right now that are waiting on my partner to complete the quests so we can because, as quite a few of us predicted, a lot of people don't want to drop real life cash on something that is almost purely a vanity item.
I'll absolutely agree with you that crafting needs some love. So does diplo, for that matter. But I do have to say that the impact of the cash shop on the marketplace is being exaggerated pretty badly.

Most of the crafters that are describing these issues have the benefit of massive amounts of experience crafting, many as you can see with multiple 50+ crafters. Its reasonably safe to assume they probably know what they are talking about. Here is a simple equation for you - go to the broker and source the mats you need to craft an item, then compare those costs to what you are receiving for the item. In the bulk of cases the crafted item is worth far less than the sum of its parts. If you think that through, the process of crafting devalues materials = dead as a doornail.
I am glad you are enjoying crafting some low level stuff and think its great you are doing it, but here is the same point again - crafting is a sphere that has lost a significant amount of its value due to recent changes. I expect thats what has been said in every post above by people who have a fair idea. When you compare your profits for some of the few items still worth trading (lets say mithril runes, at an average of 3-7g profit for a stack of 10, which takes 3 crafting steps to make) to the basic cost to do POTA as an example, you will find you will only need to make about 1000 items and sell them. My paladin needed 33.5plat just for sealers and the start of the epic grind, not counting harvested mats. All of the revenue generated by my 6 crafters has only just kept me afloat for 1 toon over a number of years and the bulk of my crafters are 50+, and that includes revenue raised through adv grinding which to be frank is higher for the most part.
The gist of the message is this: your concept of "bank" is probably massively dislocated from the real costs of the game. My request remains the same: review the costs of things like 10p to start grinding out more crap if you are going to cut off peoples methods of making money. Its pretty simple.

Crafting is needed as a necessity for quest completion, but hardly something you do for profit on the high end/critical to economy.

Adventuring trumps all.

Tely wrote:

So I did what you suggested - went and sourced materials strictly through the exchange. In every case except the ultrarare materials, if I purchased the resources strictly from the exchange I'd still be making a substantial profit even with what I charge right now. I could probably bump my prices up a bit beyond that and still be making decent profit from it.
Like I said, I really believe most of the problem is that the economy has been stagnant for years. You have six crafters, and have barely kept one character afloat - this is largely because there hasn't been an economy worth anything to sell your stuff in. I remember trying to sell things about a year ago - was near impossible except for consumables. That's not the case now.
So the gist of MY message is this: adapt. The economy's actually moving again - not as much as I'd like, but it's an improvement. Crafting needs love, but it's far from worthless, and I genuinely believe that most of the complaints about how the store have damaged crafting are pretty badly overstated. You just can't get away with charging more money than a character will see from 1-40 for a single bag anymore.
And for what it's worth, I agree with your request. The means of making money in this game do not keep pace with the costs of advancement in the adventuring sphere. And they shouldn't, really, or you basically remove the point of putting in a cost to begin with, but the disparity shouldn't be as large as it is.

Flarestar wrote:

Making money is easy, making GOOD money like we used to is impossible. Crafting is dying and needs some Dev love.
I can make low tier bows too but they don't make anywhere near the amount of money I used to make selling houses and boats on my Carpenter.
I am well aware of the market and how to play it but without a decent assortment of crafting options behind me, there isn't a worth while market to sell too, if you think selling cheap bows is worth while then that's fine for you but compared to what Crafting used to be before the hand out and cash shop, it's a shadow of it's former self and needs attention.

Flarestar wrote:

I am not sure how many crafters you have Flare but not all crafters are equal. What you may be able to source and sell for a profit is not the case for the other crafters.
I have 4 myself, 2 x 55 (Carpenter & Armoursmith) and 2 x 53 (Leatherworker & Mineralogist) and they are definitely not equal and able to make the same amount of money each.
Crafting needs Dev attention and it would be nice if the cash shop didn't sell some of our main big income items.
I make most of my money these days by Adventuring, selling cords, Aug's and other things will net a lot more profit than anything you can craft, which is silly, crafting needs to be given meaning again.

It held true for my armorsmith, mineralogist and tailor, for what that's worth. Weaponsmith and carpenter have substantially less money-making capability, excluding boats, simply because it's less slots that need to be filled by what they make. And boats are a vanity item. *shrug* I expect you'll still see a decent trade in them. A lot of your are overestimating the willingness of people to pay real money for a vanity item. As far as the gear sold in the cash shops, I'm decidedly unimpressed by the vast majority of the items in the armor packs. And appearance gear is basically what you get laughed at for spending money on by everyone else, which is why you don't see a ton of people wandering around at 20 looking like they just stepped out of a raid.
Bags I'll grant you were a low blow... but not as much of one as people think. I have yet to see reasonably priced bags sit on the exchange for more than a brief period, except for the glut of cotton tier bags that everyone who can craft immediately makes and tries to sell. That indicates that while quite a few station cash bags are being purchased, there's still plenty out there that aren't willing to drop $20+ per character to fully kit themselves out.
I really do have to question how much of the lack of ability to make profit that you're seeing is simply due to market saturation. That's really the point I'm raising here. The crafting market was incredibly stagnant even before the market went in - largely because of no particular influx of new players needing to buy things. When you have a stagnant population, eventually you have a stagnant market, with the exception of consumable items.
I'd venture a guess, just based on average population counts over the last few weeks, that the majority of the new players haven't even broken 40 yet, much less gotten to levels where they can effectively farm cash. i.e., the market demand hasn't penetrated into what higher level crafting can offer. Nothing SOE does, short of substantially increasing cash drops, quest reward coin, and trash loot prices, is going to suddenly make crafting a huge source of income, because the income isn't there to be spent amongst the people who comprise the current buyer's market.
The biggest changes crafting needs, to me at least, are these.

• An alternative route to work orders needs to be implemented for leveling. Grinding work orders to level crafting is, bluntly, horribly boring. The speed of leveling isn't my complaint, even without exp pots you can level pretty decently, it's just that it's literally the most tedious thing in the game.
• An alternative route to obtaining masterwork sigils, or at least a more consistent way of gaining them, needs to be put in. I got all of my tier 3 recipes on my mineralogist in two evenings' work of grinding WOs, then spent over a week and a half of my evenings grinding WOs on my tailor and ended up with only enough sigils to get two. Same outpost, same level (to start), 100% on almost all items on all Batch WOs. You'll get them all eventually with the current need to grind WOs to level anyway, but it's incredibly disheartening to people who are relatively new to crafting.
• Additional attuning catalysts should be added to cover all stat spreads, and which resource types they can work on should be revisited or completely opened up.
• Additional resonance/focusing catalysts should be added to cover the newer additions to item attributes, and again, which recipe types they can work on need to be opened up.
• Ultrarares need to be more common - this is necessary to keep up with the increased quality of a lot of the new itemization. The orange crafted gear is in most cases superior or equivalent, but it falls on the equivalent side more than the superior side.
• Add high level artificer recipes to make crafting stations for use in housing.
• Add high level outfitter recipes to more stat/bonus bags.
• Something for blacksmiths, I dunno. They seem to do just fine due to runes already, honestly, but eh.

I do sort of agree about ships though - more specifically, I think that galleons should be removed from the marketplace, and content added that requires a galleon to reach. I know that breaks the model of "free players can go everywhere", but boats are cool and are completely useless for anything other than grinding along coastlines in a hilarious fashion at the moment.

Kilsin@Telon wrote:

What you're describing is technically known as "not enough new customers".

Boats and houses are ultra-durable goods - customers dont tend to be repeat purchasers ... so you need a bunch more new high level customers.

Would someone be willing to compile a list of the crafting classes that can still make a decent amount of money in the market?
I've just returned to the game and, while I can adventure a handful of hours per week, will probably spend a good amount of time crafting (I'm not too fond of Diplomacy, aside from the amazing loot available). It would be nice to be able to convert that time spent into cash earned for gearing up my characters.
I have an Outfitter that is about to turn Leatherworker as well as a Artificer who is about to go Carpenter. I am also considering to roll a Minerologist. Which I play is going to depend on the money involved as I have no preference of which items I make (as the process of making them is all relatively the same).
I've finally decided on my main adventuring class, so my main crafting class is the next step!

A player panel has been added to SOE live (formerly called fan faire) about the role of crafting in SOE games today, I will be using comments from this thread and anything new I see posted to represent us on that panel. feel free to post here or PM me.
regards,
leavwiz

the ability to create "Packs" would be nice too. ex. sell a pack of housing bricks on the market as one item, or suit of harvesting gear, maybe a 10 pack of stacks of runes etc.
mouse over tool tip could show contents and they behave like the normal reward packs.

Cynosure wrote:

Mineralogist, armorsmith, tailor, leatherworker. Jewelry and armor, basically - you can craft better than quest offerings for both F2P and non-F2P. Jewelry in particular you can do quite well with due to quest/drop jewelry being meh and not having a lot of high quality stuff. Houses are still in pretty high demand also - there's a decent amount of T3 housing components on the market, but not much in the way of T4, and T5 components are still being priced far above what non-veterans will be able to afford for some reason, despite granite being easily farmable.
None of the weapon recipes will turn a very good profit - the blue weapons you can make are on par at best with blue quest weapon rewards, so the F2P market won't be as big as with armor and jewelry. Likewise with the yellow and orange weapons for non-F2P - the quested weapons available to virtually every class are equivalent or superior for the most part although a few specific weapons will sell well at certain levels due to gaps in quest weapon availability.
Carpenter theoretically can - the market for bows isn't that huge due to only one slot, but there's still wooden focii for healers that sell nicely, and potentially boats, although the market for those has probably been impacted by the cash shop.
Two weeks ago I'd have said bags are a good income source - now not so much due to a couple of high level crafters flooding the exchange with cheap 32 slot bags. That market will dry up very soon if it hasn't already.