The Fall of Crafting

NobleNerd

In the beginning ZOS repeatedly stated how important crafting and crafted items (specifically armor and weapons) would be in the game. Now almost 2 years later and the game is going the way of most MMOs with more dropped sets being the desired item (especially with the massive material requirements for v16 gear). Thanks ZOS for proving even you could not resist the status quo of grinding for gear.

Spottswoode

I use crafted sets quite frequently. (Redistributor, Night's Silence, and Whitestrake, to name a few.) I do, however, have to grind for mats now.

Conquers

I didn't even realize IC had drop sets. But if you mean all the sets from TV vendor, it makes sense.
if you pvp, you should buy amazing gear for pvp, AND it would be hard to craft because players don't drop mats.

I plan on crafting, and they have amazing craft sets much better for pve than the pvp sets are.

If you try to argue that you'd rather go into a vet dungeon in shieldbreaker rather than Hundings Rage or twice-born star etc, please give this reasoning

GuyNamedSean

What I'd like to see and I think would help this is the ability to craft the older drop sets like Saviour's Hide and Knightmare. Those sets often cater to a more unique playstyle and beyond bringing crafting back up would encourage people to have more diverse set ups.

KcjAries78

I wear a lot of crafted sets too. Not everyone has been playing for two years and actually some of us have jobs ( maybe a life.. Not me) out side of this game. Crafted sets are still valid and some of them have been re-tweaked in the last update so don't count them out just yet. Of course drops are going to be desired, they are rare and they are a reward. I don't understand, I thought grinding for good gear was the point? You can sell it to make money or use it... What is the alternative?

daemonios

For magicka builds, and while we can't get a full set with good traits from the new dungeons, Kagrenac's seems to be an excellent option for PvE.

That said, I think the amount of materials required for VR16 is ridiculous, and I absolutely hate the grind/money grab that motifs have become. Oh well, at least they don't make us buy the trait stones and improvement mats in the crown store (yet).

Forestd16b14_ESO

#FixCrafting

NobleNerd

KcjAries78 wrote: »

I wear a lot of crafted sets too. Not everyone has been playing for two years and actually some of us have jobs ( maybe a life.. Not me) out side of this game. Crafted sets are still valid and some of them have been re-tweaked in the last update so don't count them out just yet. Of course drops are going to be desired, they are rare and they are a reward. I don't understand, I thought grinding for good gear was the point? You can sell it to make money or use it... What is the alternative?

Yes, early on in leveling crafted sets are one of the best options. My reference point is more from the "end game" content. Every time we have received a major update to the game with new dropped sets entering the game it becomes a little more clear where ZOS is heading. As it stands I believe there are more dropped sets (many with better set stats) than crafted in the game. Also when you go to make that v16 gear and realize you just went from needing 15 mats at v15 to 150 mats for v16 you pause for a moment, look at the benefit of the piece (which is nominal) and say "screw it" I'll just grind for my sets, because gathering that much material for such a nominal increase is not worth it.

redspecter23

Conquers wrote: »

I didn't even realize IC had drop sets. But if you mean all the sets from TV vendor, it makes sense.
if you pvp, you should buy amazing gear for pvp, AND it would be hard to craft because players don't drop mats.

The best place to get tel var stones is from IC mobs, the same mobs in IC are also the best source of items to decon for the new mats. Those that are farming for one are also earning the other collaterally. PvP'ers have the best means to acquire both pvp box sets and crafting mats. PvE'ers can do dungeons but the mats will drop at a lower rate and they have 0 chance at TV stones.

NobleNerd

redspecter23 wrote: »

Conquers wrote: »

I didn't even realize IC had drop sets. But if you mean all the sets from TV vendor, it makes sense.
if you pvp, you should buy amazing gear for pvp, AND it would be hard to craft because players don't drop mats.

The best place to get tel var stones is from IC mobs, the same mobs in IC are also the best source of items to decon for the new mats. Those that are farming for one are also earning the other collaterally. PvP'ers have the best means to acquire both pvp box sets and crafting mats. PvE'ers can do dungeons but the mats will drop at a lower rate and they have 0 chance at TV stones.

That is a whole other issue with how this content works. BUT that can be addressed in another thread.

FireCowCommando

daemonios wrote: »

For magicka builds, and while we can't get a full set with good traits from the new dungeons, Kagrenac's seems to be an excellent option for PvE.

That said, I think the amount of materials required for VR16 is ridiculous, and I absolutely hate the grind/money grab that motifs have become. Oh well, at least they don't make us buy the trait stones and improvement mats in the crown store (yet).

Yeah... I didn't get my hands on a motif for glass until after it poped up in the store. Was so disappointed i decided to sell it instead of learn it on my crafter. Didn't want anything to do with that tainted style.

If it wasn't green due to lore, i wouldn't be surprised if they would have colored it green for the sake of making you look like Scrooge Mc Duck.

code65536

Hm? My VR16 end-game gear is a mix of dropped and crafted.

My DPS/healer gear:

• Dropped: 3p Willpower jewelry
• Dropped: 1p Molag Kena
• Crafted: 5p Kagrenac's Hope
• Crafted: 2/3p Torug's Pact

My tank gear:

• Dropped: 3p Footman jewelry or 3p Willpower jewelry
• Dropped: 2p Engine Guardian
• Crafted: 5p Whitestrake
• Crafted: 2p Torug's Pact

Oh, and I'm using nirnhoned weapons. Can't do that with the dropped stuff.

If you don't count the jewelry, which were never craftable, the only dropped pieces that I'm using are the monster pieces. And this isn't some interim setup--this is what I plan to use until whenever VR16 is no longer the max level. I've golded all the pieces and plan to stick with them.

Compared to my end-game VR14 gear, I'm actually using more crafted pieces at VR16. With the extreme difficulty of finding dropped pieces of the right set, right trait, and mucking around with armor weights to get the Undaunted passive, and with there finally being a crafted magicka set that's as awesome as Hunding is to stamina, I'm seeing a lot of people ditching dropped gear for crafted gear at VR16.

As for the high mat costs, that wasn't an issue for me. It's pretty easy to gather enough mats to make VR15 gear, so what's what I did: purple VR15 to get me started, and over the weeks, through regular gameplay (daily pledges, running dungeons and sewers for fun, etc.) and through trading (e.g., trading my leathers for someone else's silks), I slowly accumulated enough mats to remake each piece of gear at VR16 gold one at a time. But there was no rush, no hurry, since the VR15 purple was almost just as good, and I just let the upgrades happen when they happened. Steady, predictable progression without the frustration of RNG. And there was that warm fuzzy feeling of accomplishment when I replaced each piece with VR16.

And I can't wait until I finally get 9 traits so that I could play around with Armor Master, since that looks like a pretty awesome tank set.

The fall of crafting? Bah, crafting's more relevant than it was prior to the update. ("But what about Overwhelming Surge or Spell Power Cure?" Well, if people want to bang their heads against the wall to scrape together sets with random traits, no control over style, and no control over weight, for dropped sets that're barely any better than the crafted sets, then let them. Most people I know aren't bothering.)

matcumb

KcjAries78 wrote: »

Not everyone has been playing for two years and actually some of us have jobs ( maybe a life.. Not me) out side of this game.

Best comment ever.

Mauz

code65536 wrote: »

The fall of crafting? Bah, crafting's more relevant than it was prior to the update.

If I wanted to craft a full blue equipment set to test a build before IC I needed mats for about 3-4k gold at any level.
If I want to craft a full blue equipment set to test a build for VR15 IC I need mats for 100k+ gold.
If I want to craft a full blue equipment set to test a build for VR16 I need mats for 1000k+ gold.

Well...great improvement. I'm really happy the stuff I craft became so relevant that I can't affort to craft it.

code65536

Mauz wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

The fall of crafting? Bah, crafting's more relevant than it was prior to the update.

If I wanted to craft a full blue equipment set to test a build before IC I needed mats for about 3-4k gold at any level.
If I want to craft a full blue equipment set to test a build for VR15 IC I need mats for 100k+ gold.
If I want to craft a full blue equipment set to test a build for VR16 I need mats for 1000k+ gold.

Well...great improvement. I'm really happy the stuff I craft became so relevant that I can't affort to craft it.

So test your build with VR14 gear. If you like how it turns out, then make it VR15 and, later, VR16. You wouldn't test a build or set combination at purple or gold quality, so why would you do a similar test at VR15/16? Think of VR15/16 as just another tier of quality, just as purple and gold are tiers of quality.

And I spent zero gold on my VR15/16 crafting mats because I wasn't in a hurry to get all geared up on day 1 (and my selling the mats that I did collect during the first week, to those who did want to rush to gear up on day 1, was extremely profitable for me). And after almost a month, I have geared up fully at VR16. Yes, it was a slow progression collecting the mats needed, and I spent much of that time with interim VR15 gear that cost 90% less to make, but I didn't need to spend any coin.

Tallowby

It is not the fall of crafting but all of the changes definitely do not make crafted gear more desirable....

Lets face it, crafting is a time sync and those that put the time in to level a craft want something out of that effort. It could be as simple as getting an achievement or more economic being able to merchandise off of learned skills.

The amount of materials needed to create end game gear is excessive. To make someone a full set of gear requires either 3 Trade window exchanges for the mats or 4 mailings (as long as the mail bug is not in effect).

Question: Where does all the missing mass go when creating one small dagger out of 100 Ingots?

Ignoring the above.... Look at the new motif's.

Challenging and time consuming to get but doable over a few months of effort. Perfect filler til Orcinium comes out right.... In comes the Crown store a little over a week from DLC release and offers the Glass Motif... The challenging one?

Why even put the effort in... just wait for the crown store offering. This is not good for crafting.

Crafting is and should be an optional profession that some that put in the effort gain the skills to feed the ingame economy for the better. Offering a quick win should never be an option on this. I am not saying that they should not be in the crown store, just that they should have been offered later ~ a few months down the road.

Long term these short term money grabs will kill the reason to keep playing. The term P2W comes to mind if this continues.

NobleNerd

Instead of increasing v16 gear to ungodly amounts of materials that doesn't even make sense.... why would I ever need 150 of any material to make one single piece of gear? Am I making it for a giant?... they could have offered the challenge of retrieving a special item to craft the new v16 gear. Something that required some luck or effort to get.

The Glass Motif being put into the Crown Store so quickly is another slap in the face to many crafters and just negates any effort put in to achieve it in game.

Creating so many dropped set pieces that in many cases have more desired bonuses than the crafted gear slowly makes crafters an after thought in the game.

So, as I see it, crafting is slowly making its fall and will continue if changes are not made to the system.

Dweebert

Having PVP shoved down my throat so I can get mats to craft my own gear is what I don't like. The Amount to make V16 gear is a bit over the top as well. As far as I know the jewelry sets in IC are the best available, another PVP in the face issue.. Mind you I do PVP a little and am not very good at it. Trying to farm mats and Stones to gear myself, all the time getting ganked, is not fun. I wear almost exclusively Crafted gear. My wife and I only play the two of us and never do Group dungeons.

BippNasty

I don't think it's any less worth it than it was before. Your going to want good armor when your fighting in the imperial city trying to get telvar stones or trying to complete dungeons for set gear. Crafting is how your gonna get that. There are 50 full levels plus 14 vet levels that are totally great reasons to use crafting. Especially considering the average gamer isn't even going to make it to max level for several months. So basically you have several months possibly even a year plus of game time where crafting is VERY helpfull! The usefulness of crafting isn't measured by the most powerful weapons in the game. If anything that's the least important part since you only need to make the most power stuff once. Leveling from 1 to v14 is where the crafting shines. Especially for when you start a new character and you already have a character with fully maxed crafting skills.

MisterBigglesworth

Crafters should also be able to change traits on dropped gear as well as upgrade crafted items to a higher Vet rank.

In both cases there should be daily/weekly cooldowns or significant time invested in research or material gathering so that the truely dedicated crafters will be able to do more trait switches and upgrade more gear pieces over time.

Tessie

Decreasing the effectiveness of your existing armor, while increasing the difficulty of PvE mobs, and then hiding the new gear and/or materials behind a PvP wall is what I have the most problem with.

Swindy

Tallowby wrote: »

It is not the fall of crafting but all of the changes definitely do not make crafted gear more desirable....

Lets face it, crafting is a time sync and those that put the time in to level a craft want something out of that effort. It could be as simple as getting an achievement or more economic being able to merchandise off of learned skills.

The amount of materials needed to create end game gear is excessive. To make someone a full set of gear requires either 3 Trade window exchanges for the mats or 4 mailings (as long as the mail bug is not in effect).

Question: Where does all the missing mass go when creating one small dagger out of 100 Ingots?

Ignoring the above.... Look at the new motif's.

Challenging and time consuming to get but doable over a few months of effort. Perfect filler til Orcinium comes out right.... In comes the Crown store a little over a week from DLC release and offers the Glass Motif... The challenging one?

Why even put the effort in... just wait for the crown store offering. This is not good for crafting.

Crafting is and should be an optional profession that some that put in the effort gain the skills to feed the ingame economy for the better. Offering a quick win should never be an option on this. I am not saying that they should not be in the crown store, just that they should have been offered later ~ a few months down the road.

Long term these short term money grabs will kill the reason to keep playing. The term P2W comes to mind if this continues.

What he said. ^^

I craft as I don't Pvp (unless provoked) and have no group/s. (Health issues see me regularly leaving the XBox expectantly, often to be exterminated but that's just how it is, so rather than screw people over, I refuse all invites, & hence don't have "friends" after some 1200 hours of XBox play.)
So crafting via farming is my only option for any gear, as I can't make the big cash via group drop gear or Pvp or AP gear (which they've now sadly killed) to buy dropped/AP/TV items of any worth.

I understand the grind, embrace it, but the Glass issue was an obvious ploy to hype the crown store release there-of...so I find the obvious cash grab by ZOS offensive.

ianshere82b14_ESO

BippNasty wrote: »

Especially for when you start a new character and you already have a character with fully maxed crafting skills.

I have that, and I do not bother to make my new alts any gear - you get sets very easily from running dungeons and out level the gear so fast it is not worth the effort of stealing, decon, mailing/banking mats, getting to set tables, crafting it all, and sending it back to the lowbie.

In my opinion it is not worth crafting any gear until you hit 45.

I think the thing most people are taking away from IC is that we have to be extremely flexible in what we think ESO is going to be. After all, ESO is dead - it is now ESO:TU. Anyone remember SWG and SWG:NGE? Seems similar.

Zavus

Most of the people I know are using at least 4-5 pieces of crafted..

wrathofrraath

This one is poor because he theory crafts too much

Mauz

code65536 wrote: »

So test your build with VR14 gear. If you like how it turns out, then make it VR15 and, later, VR16. You wouldn't test a build or set combination at purple or gold quality, so why would you do a similar test at VR15/16? Think of VR15/16 as just another tier of quality, just as purple and gold are tiers of quality.

Ok so it's an improvement that the effort to craft max level gear is 300x more than before. Got it. And it's better that the quality doesnt really matter. The thing is to craft it at all. Sounds resonable. And I'll not be able to collect enough mats to craft even the lowest qualty VR15 gear before I hit VR16. VR16 gear I'll NEVER EVER be able to craft because I have a live beside this game and I'll NEVER be able to get enough mats to craft even the lowest gear quality. Well fine, I got that too. Let's play pvp with VR14 gear then. Oh...that's not fun? Then quit the game, it's not for you! Got that too.

Oh boy some ppl just seem to have nothing to do in their lives beside sitting in front of a computer game. The longer I'm here the more I get the impression that this game has really not been made for me. I was a big fan of the elderscrolls series from the beginning and this really make me sad. It just becomes nothing more than an insane time sink in all aspects

code65536

Mauz wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

So test your build with VR14 gear. If you like how it turns out, then make it VR15 and, later, VR16. You wouldn't test a build or set combination at purple or gold quality, so why would you do a similar test at VR15/16? Think of VR15/16 as just another tier of quality, just as purple and gold are tiers of quality.

Ok so it's an improvement that the effort to craft max level gear is 300x more than before. Got it. And it's better that the quality doesnt really matter. The thing is to craft it at all. Sounds resonable. And I'll not be able to collect enough mats to craft even the lowest qualty VR15 gear before I hit VR16. VR16 gear I'll NEVER EVER be able to craft because I have a live beside this game and I'll NEVER be able to get enough mats to craft even the lowest gear quality. Well fine, I got that too. Let's play pvp with VR14 gear then. Oh...that's not fun? Then quit the game, it's not for you! Got that too.

Oh boy some ppl just seem to have nothing to do in their lives beside sitting in front of a computer game. The longer I'm here the more I get the impression that this game has really not been made for me. I was a big fan of the elderscrolls series from the beginning and this really make me sad. It just becomes nothing more than an insane time sink in all aspects

Um, this thread is about the "fall" of crafting.

Is crafting a grindfest in the update? Yes. Does anyone actually like that it's a grindfest? No. So what? Everything is a bloody grindfest in this update. In case you missed what I was trying to get at in my original post, getting the new dropped sets is even more of a mind-numbing grindfest. Most people I know who were salivating at the new dropped sets on the PTS have given up on them and are using crafted sets instead because in the time it'll take to assemble one of the new sets, you could've had enough mats to crafted multiple VR16 sets.

And getting purple and gold is just as much of a grindfest as VR15/16. I average somewhere between 1-2 gold improvement mats per stack of raw that I refine. 8 per piece of gear, around 10 pieces of gear per character, so I'm looking at over around 50 stacks of raws that I need to refine to gold gear for a character. That's just as bad of a grind as VR16. Only that it doesn't feel as bad because we have gold mats accumulated over all these months and because people have had so much time to farm them (gold farmers, in particular) that they're actually cheap on the market compared to the effort needed. Just think of VR16 as the new legendary--nobody is forcing you to get VR16 just as nobody is forcing you to get gold gear, and thinking "I need VR16 to compete" is really no different than "I need golden gear to compete". It's supposed to be a long-term aspirational goal, and if I think about it like that, the month that it took for me to finally get the mats doesn't seem that bad.

And in any case, it's still far less of a grind than trying to get five pieces of one of the new dropped sets from vWGT or vICP, and it's the reason why more people are using crafted gear post-update than they were pre-update.

These are two separate issues. Yes, the game is more of a grind than before. But that doesn't spell the "fall" of crafting because the alternative is even worse.

Mauz

code65536 wrote: »

These are two separate issues. Yes, the game is more of a grind than before. But that doesn't spell the "fall" of crafting because the alternative is even worse.

No no, I got you point. I've just the perspective of a casual gamer.

If I'm not able to craft my own max level gear of even the lowest quality because I'm not able to gather enough mats until the next update comes out than it's a coffin nail for me. Even for a single unenchanted non set white item I get 50 gold selling it to the npc vendor I need ages to get the mats for. Doesnt matter whether getting the VR16 dungeon sets is even worse, it's just useless if it is like this. That's far away for me anyway.

NobleNerd

Mauz wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

These are two separate issues. Yes, the game is more of a grind than before. But that doesn't spell the "fall" of crafting because the alternative is even worse.

No no, I got you point. I've just the perspective of a casual gamer.

If I'm not able to craft my own max level gear of even the lowest quality because I'm not able to gather enough mats until the next update comes out than it's a coffin nail for me. Even for a single unenchanted non set white item I get 50 gold selling it to the npc vendor I need ages to get the mats for. Doesnt matter whether getting the VR16 dungeon sets is even worse, it's just useless if it is like this. That's far away for me anyway.

I still use crafting for my lower level toons, but I will not even bother to gather that much material to make v16 items especially when you account for such a nominal increase in stats from the v16 gear that requires 300 times more effort to craft.

My point about crafting in the game and its fall is more to do with how the further we advance into the game the less crafting feels special and unique. It is more a time sink. There is very little that makes a crafter special or unique from other crafters. Motifs were about the only difference and those can just be bought from the Crown Store. There are no specialization paths a crafter can take to make his product different from a few others. There is nothing in depth about crafting that requires forethought and planning..... it is plain and simple.

MilwaukeeScott

NobleNerd wrote: »

There are no specialization paths a crafter can take to make his product different from a few others. There is nothing in depth about crafting that requires forethought and planning..... it is plain and simple.

+1

ianshere82b14_ESO

MilwaukeeScott wrote: »

NobleNerd wrote: »

There are no specialization paths a crafter can take to make his product different from a few others. There is nothing in depth about crafting that requires forethought and planning..... it is plain and simple.

+1

Agreed. Crafting does not feel special at all anymore. At first it was motif and researched traits, but now every 9 trait blacksmith is the same as every other 9 trait blacksmith. Waste of time, money, skill points, and effort to try and distinguish yourself in the ESO:TU community via crafting. The best you can hope for is to join a guild that needs crafting services and be used like a mule, sadly.