Crafting/Gear mats/ratios vs time vs AH prices

[Zilphia]

Crafting is a time sink, as is everything in the MMO. However these update suggestions are long over due and Im positive they're all randomly listed throughout the forum just not in one place.

1. provide an auto max upgrade button to frags just like you have on bulk materials instead of making us sit here and click a button 80 times. Give us the option to do both, level 1 click at a time or a one shot and make it cost whatever plat/planarite. You have the forumula, just make it simple

2. revisit the max upgrade armor items that require crafting mats [they are WAY over the cost of buying them in the AH or spending hours farming/crafting for. for example-the helm and the off hand last stage items in all classes require 8 prophetic weapon amenders [that's 16 tenebrean planar attuners which will cost us 160k planarite], 8 celestial matrixes which also require the same amount of planarite to make if a random matrix drops, and a 15k intel trigger. This is ridiculous, all to increase an item with a stat boost that is half as good as 1 rune on another item or less than half instead of updating 1 frag to 15. The mat calculation needs to be adjusted-seriously. People burn out on this kind of stuff. Long time players with one toon of each class have already done it the hard way-I'm just asking for some balance.

3. Remove the 24 hour cap on making amenders. You're bottlenecking the process to upgrade our own stuff with our own crafting. This would also drive down the AH pricing for the new people-because right now you're literally making it impossible for them to upgrade their own gear-they just don't have the plat. People will say make them do it the hard way-that is nonsense. They're learning at their own pace. At least give them a chance with gear they've already EARNED to get it upgraded.

4. I've noticed the engine drop has increased slightly. May I suggest substituting useless game currency instead? Void stones and celestial remnants get put in the currency tab to die, there is nothing in the game any more that uses them

5. Reduce the cost of stellar triggers-just like you reduced the cost of cosmic. The original price was outrageous. The new price of 15k [not new any more] is still VERY high. The drop rate on intel is crap. Have you leveled a toon yet with no boosts? OH.. and that's ANOTHER THING....

How dare you make us spend our own money to buy things in the store under "services" to remove runes from our gear. That's SUCH a con...it's terrible. Again-make us use our wasted game currency to do so, please stop making people waste money on things like essence removal tools. If you want the player base to stay-this is not coddling or accommodating them, it's giving them a better gaming experience within the parameters of what the currency/crafting systems are.

I think it's turned into a baby rant .. apologies. But all of the above is factual. Fix the bottlenecks please. These are easy fixes, substituting game currency in the store. Give the players something else to look forward to instead of just reskinning mounts and selling them in the rift store.

[Ambrodel]

Crafting is indeed a timesink, which is true in most games.

1. Too much RNG for that to be a good solution. You don't know the final stats. Do you really want to waste the materials and money upgrading something to max only to find out that you got 3 horrible stats after clicking that button? You could have stopped upgrading after the first bad stat appeared and saved yourself a lot of trouble. Besides, with current costs, not everyone can afford to mindlessly max out stuff.

2. Material costs were made with the intention that people would be playing for a long time and/or grinding out to get an advantage. I agree that they are ridiculous given the current state of the game, but there was a point to it in the first place. You are definitely not the first to suggest this, but nothing appears to be planned regarding this.

3. Cooldown on crafting is usually put on to ensure people do not crash the market and get upgrades faster than the devs intended. This is probably true for this game too.

4. Many things actually use both Void and Remnants. Just because you no longer have a use for them, doesn't mean they can be used for stuff.

5. Generally speaking, and this goes for the above points as well - the current state of the game is not what was planned for when the numbers were made. Yes, Gamigo should absolutely reduce prices and requirements for most of the things that we players are involved with at max level, because it just doesn't make sense to have such high numbers in the current state of the game. However, doing so would only be good for the players, not for the company. By dragging it out longer than they have to, there's a good chance people stay in the game and either grind it out (which increases the chance of them buying other stuff in the store, thus making Gamigo money from even non-Patrons) or simply outright buying the stuff from the store, which gives Gamigo money as well. In the current state of the game, we are more in Maintenance Mode than Game Mode. Gamigo needs to earn money and the best way to do it is by having all these sales and NOT catering to the player. I get that. I disagree with their (in)actions, but I understand the business perspective of it. In my book, however, they would earn a lot more money if they were actually as openminded and transparent about things as we were promised when they took over, but.... ah well. They don't want to live up to their own words, so we shouldn't expect anything to change.

[Zilphia]

I'm bumping this.

[Stevf48]

I am not as advanced as you appear to be. My highest crafters are ‘Savant’, but crafting seems to me to be a waste of time.
My Runcrafter reached level 146, it took 8 non-trivial items to move to level 147. I then spent a couple of hours running around gathering materials for crafting requests and non-trivial items (sorry I cannot be more specific, the colours don’t mean anything to me - or The developers IMHO).
When I came back and crafted 18 non-trivial items.(not all the same) my skill level didn’t increase. All of that effort and expense for no gain.
I give up, Runecrafting is the worst craft, but the others aren’t much better. They take a lot of time and effort if you combine collecting and manufacturing and the crafted goods seldom benefit the maker. They aren’t better stats than gathered equipment (e.g.my weaponsmith is level 61 warrior and I have worked and paid to train him to savant, but he can only make gear suitable for much lower levels and gets killed several times whilst gathering materials) and then the weapons sell for peanuts.(AH and vendors)

[Zornar]

Runecrafting is the worst craft, but the others aren’t much better. They take a lot of time and effort if you combine collecting and manufacturing and the crafted goods seldom benefit the maker. They aren’t better stats than gathered equipment (e.g.my weaponsmith is level 61 warrior and I have worked and paid to train him to savant, but he can only make gear suitable for much lower levels and gets killed several times whilst gathering materials) and then the weapons sell for peanuts.(AH and vendors)

I find crafting at 70 useful for making platinum via daily crafting quests. I get lots of free crafting mats via minion missions.

Crafting armor and weapons isn't necessary during leveling. It's fine to use quest reward gear. Up to level 45, I also buy blue or purple armor from the Adventure dealer. That gives a use for void stones.

At level 48, 58 and 65, I visit the new expansion zone to upgrade my armor and weapons via questing because the stats are so much higher in expansion gear.

Especially in the Plane of Water zones, you can kill rare elites that drop superior gear. It's virtually impossible to solo rare elites, at level, in Celestial Lands zones because the elites are all level 70 but drop lower level items. I never did understand why Scatherran Forest, a level 65 zone, has level 70 rare elites that drop level 65 gear.

At 65, I often do a lot of Celestial Adventures to get powerful level 65 armor and weapons from the reward chests.

My strategy is to wait until level 60 and then use the free crafting boost to raise a new crafting profession to level 375. Then I raise it the rest of the way with the daily crafting quests.

I have one character for each crafting profession. The gathering professions are all easy to level. Those I often max out before level 70 just by gathering while on Instant Adventures.