I Love Crafting but I'm the Only One

Community General Discussion
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This is horrid because I don’t want to ruin the game for others, and I recognise that by making the crafting system intricate, they have hurt the enjoyment of everyone who wanted it plain.

Now it bears mention that every other player does want to gatekeep, and they rub their hands in glee when a system has lots of unnecessary hurdles and complexity to keep others out of it. Why do I like the complexity? Well to me, the profession points are a form of progression. I like having my character get better at something, and thanks to Blizz listening to people who call for the game to be made harder and harder, I don’t get that with gear. I can do delves up to 9 but I’ll be stuck at 616.

Now, crafting does not and cannot make my character stronger. I actually appreciate the way they did sparks and crests because this does not gate me out of making the item because I cannot complete the content. But it still lets the item be relevant for the person who did do the difficult content to earn the crests.

And crafting is a gold sink, not a gold source. One crafting order to get +1 profession point can be like 10k. (Blacksmithing is actually particularly bad about this with the sanctified alloys, worse than the other professions I think.) So it’s not like because I invest in crafting, I’m getting richer than you. In fact it’s the opposite.

I’m tempted to say just leave me this one.

But believe it or not I see it as wrong. The game should not be designed for a tiny percent of people. It’s wrong to put so much effort into content that only a small amount of players will enjoy, and it’s particularly wrong in a subscription-based game because the rest of the people paid for it.

So what’s the solution? To make crafting like it was? I’m going to say yes.

Because I am not special and the game shouldn’t cater to me. It’s unethical to take your money and use it to make content I enjoy and you do not.

Maybe there’s an alternative that makes everybody happy, like a simplified profession track for people who do mythic content. But if there isn’t some such solution, well, content should be designed to make more people happy, not fewer.

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I agree but it’s like Pandora’s box, can’t go back I believe. Also yes I know there’s no way I read all of it, I’m still reading it

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They can next expac, and they can do it consequence-free.

And if they wanted to they could just return professions to the simple track this expac and delete everyone’s knowledge points. Only a few people would be upset and it’d be for the best.

I wouldn’t be upset if they learned a lesson and didn’t do this again.

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You lost me.

Or you could spend the excess mats you collect and do the crafting orders for zero gold.

What? People were begging for more content outside of instances and this is somehow ‘designed for % of players’?

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The majority of people don’t enjoy it. It’s that simple.

I love it but I’m in the minority.

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And most people didn’t enjoy the old profession system either. Point?

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That particularly in a subscription-based game, they shouldn’t take your money and use it to make content you do not enjoy.

I love that you’re trying to naysay this because you’re afraid it makes a point about other content, when you haven’t done crafting, or you’d realise that if the mats I gathered would sell for 10k, it’s still a 10k investment, nevermind the vials of kaheti oils, gloomfathom hides, and other such materials that the NPCs don’t include which can’t be gathered by the profession.

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I think this is largely correct but I think a ‘middle ground’ is to have professions level the ‘old fashioned’ way for pre-mythic content but once you get to that level introduce more complexity for the level of crafted items needed for those mythic raids/level 10+ dungeons (or something like that). This will allow casual players to participate in their love of crafting while introducing complexity when the more hard-core gamers reach the level of play the the casuals likely will not.

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That’s a really silly argument. I don’t like PvP, but I’m not going to demand they stop making content for PvP.

That’s not… that’s not how money works. You only get 10K (theoretically) from selling the mats. The mats themselves are not worth 10K by simply collecting them from the open world.

You use the free mats you get for the crafting orders for zero gold spent.

I don’t know how that’s a struggle for you.

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Personally, I think a good middle ground would be having all of the currently gated patterns be available at skill levels rather than knowledge points. That way the people who truly engage with crafting and invest time into it can get the reward of much more efficient crafting (fewer mats, higher quality, etc ), but it allows those who only want to simply level it up and make items for themselves and friends to engage with it at the floor level.

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It’s not a silly argument and that’s why, by saying it is, you’ve put yourself in a position of having to defend a crafting system you don’t like and won’t use, that is an objective waste of your money.

Crafting is a gold sink. Not only because selling the mats will make me 10k, but because even if we don’t accept that gold works as a currency (which it does), the crafting orders will require mats that the gathering profession cannot gather, such as vials of kaheti oils and gloomfathom hides, and you would have known that if you’d engaged with the crafting system at all.

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I don’t think it’s all that silly because comparing professions to PvP is apples and oranges. Crafted gear/items can be applied/used universally in the game no matter if you PvP or not. But you don’t have to PvP to level your character or take part in combat.

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But I like the crafting system?

If you’re lazy.

It’s the same principle. Why am I spending money on a subscription-based game for an aspect of said game that I don’t like?

It’s regressive thinking.

And you don’t need professions for any of the end game content.

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I love the current profession system, but also recognize it is needlessly obtuse. You pretty much need something like CraftSim in order to use it properly.

Do i need rank 2 or 3 mats to craft this item at the highest level? Idk. Can i get away with 50/50? Idk. And if not, how much more skill do i need to get to the highest rank? Idk. Can i then sell this for a profit? Idk.

I don’t know. That sums up the current professions. Addons solves all the problems of course, but they shouldn’t be needed to get it to work. And yes i realize they are technically not needed. I could just sit down with a pen, some paper, and a calculator and figure it out the old school way. But let’s be honest here, that is not a good use of my or your time.

I wouldn’t call it a gold sink. Not a traditional one anyway. It’s more of an investment. You can make a ton of money of pretty much every profession right now, with the right set up.

Except for maybe Leatherworking. I don’t know why, but everything there sells for a loss. Even stuff that requires concentration.

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No, even if you’ve gathered all the mats and you were somehow in Runewowscape on ironman and couldn’t sell them. Because of the valuable reagents required that the gathering profession cannot gather.

But it really is basic economics that if I can go to the auction house and sell the mats I just gathered for 10k instead of making the crafting order, the investment is still 10k.

Then why didn’t you know about the valuable materials required for crafting orders that can’t be gathered by the associated gathering profession? If I click on you is it gonna show you haven’t done professions?

Now you can say oh I’m an alt, but if you had done professions, you would not be wasting that 80 alt, because your main would need profession tools only a blacksmith can make.

At least you show you’ve engaged with the system enough to know this. +1.

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The problem in this instance is that the idea of a more intricate crafting system CAN work, but the current execution is hot garbage. Patron orders for example should NOT be demanding 5k+ worth of mats be given away for free for all of 1 knowledge point, which has happened a few times on my blacksmith. Now if this was 5k worth of mats for 5 points each time, alright that I’ll consider. However if they’re going to demand 5k+ of mats for knowledge points, I better be getting at least 5 or more knowledge points from that. They also shouldn’t be locking missives behind having knowledge points either. That’s just moronic. If they want to lock the silver and gold variants from being used outside of crafting orders, okay maybe it could be justified to a degree, but the actual slot itself should not be locked at all.

Then there’s the whole thing of them only letting you get half of the actual skill points (slight variances between professions) and wanting to make you craft your way through the rest of them using recipes you can only get through knowledge points. Which in turn makes it far far more of a grind than it needs to be. I get that they don’t just want people done with everything in a day, but simultaneously if I want to level my profession to max in a day I should be allowed to do it. It was that way for well over 15 years with no issues. Then if they wanted to introduce the knowledge system, they could’ve made it way more intuitive than it is now and shouldn’t take weeks or months potentially to max out as it can for some professions without a ton of gold bankrolling it. Time spent =/= automatically better and I reject that notion fully.

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Not really. PvP is just a subset of ‘combat’ of which there are a variety of play methods while crafting is not a subset of anything but its own, singular method; if you want to craft you have the one design of doing so and none other. There’s a reason Blizzard has crafting which is to expand player experience. But imagine Warcraft without combat!

As for end of game content I’m pretty sure that all mid-to-high end raid groups strongly use or even require the use of crafted items in the game for buffs.

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You’re shifting goalposts.

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Because I have engaged with the system, the general rule is that if you are making another mat and not an item, you will need all gold mats to go gold, plus 100 skill, plus ALL of the relevant skill points, plus 1/3 - 2/3 of your top-tier profession tools (the ones that cost acuity) at the highest quality.

My engineer started being able to turn gold quality bismuth into gold quality bolts without concentration, only with 2/3 of the tools and all parts knowledge to max.

When you’re making the item you can scoot a little and add in silver stuff as long as you’ve invested heavily in points. But the weighting is weird. It seems to follow how many of something is used in a recipe. If you need 1 crystalfused hide but 150 leather, you can’t always just scoot on the hide and assume it’s only worth 1 piece of leather.

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I guess i have an unpopular opinion on this one.

I like the complexity of it. In the beginning, i couldn’t stand it. Once i wrapped my head around it. I started liking it. The gating is gating, i never like too much of that, but overall i think its well constructed.

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