Crafting is Handy but needs Some Love

Hluill · April 2016

First off, let me confess that I miss Vanguard's crafting game, and that I actually enjoy EQ2's crafting game as well. While both of those have their issues: grinding, grinding and more grinding, they are stand-alone, log-on-and-play activities. I've even spent hours in gathering groups.

ESO, like most current MMOs, has just tacked on a crafting system to make decent gear. It is completely dependent on combat advancement. Skill points are only earned through exploration, questing and killing. The Crafting System requires a lot of Skill Points. There is no way to level-up as a crafter without earning these skill points. Spending Skill Points in Crafting actually makes advancing as a crafter even harder: rarer materials, tougher zones.

Crafting as one levels seems to be an easy suggestion, but feels rather limiting. Trying to balance killing skills with crafting skills to be effective in both areas is a frustrating challenge. Waiting to craft until after developing effective killing skills seems even more limited, and is useless to the individual character. And the resource-gold-gear system is severely handicapped by the fractured guild-markets.

Seperating the skill-point system for crafting from skill points earned from killing would be the most common-sense suggestion. Of course it would require quite a bit of time and energy from the developers. But would create an appealing activity for many players. MMOs shouldn't have to focus solely on killing and questing.

Another suggestion is to rework the Crafting Writs. The tier-based turn-in locations make them delivery quests: if the writ is done in Stros M'Kai it should be turned in there not on the other side of the continent. Location-based writs would be more accessable than tier-based ones. The writs themselves could also be less specific:ten shields or ten health runes. Rewards could be based on the quality of the product. This would require some of that rare developer-time as well.

ESO is a great game, but I find its crafting system to be needlessly frustrating and unenjoyable.

AugustoCP · April 2016

Just wait until you reach level 50 something, you'll be literally swimming in skill points. It's not like this game makes you struggle for them, you get lots of skill points. What I recommend is, do every single quest in each area, get the Skyshards add on and grab every single one of them.
( http://http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info128-SkyShards.html] )

You'll find that most of the time you'll have unallocated skill points because you just don't have anywhere to put them.

NBrookus · April 2016

I agree there should be some way to just have a crafter only toon. I'm not sure how to accomplish this.

As for swimming in skillpoints... it depends. My tank has every skillpoint in the game except about 40 of the pvp rank skillpoints and a few Cyrodiil skyshards. There are not enough to be max level in all crafts, plus tank skills and tank weapons plus DPS/Solo skills and DPS/Solo weapons. So another toon does my alchemy, which is not a big deal. (My other characters ARE swimming in skillpoints.)

As they add more zones with a few skillpoints each, though, this will correct itself.

AugustoCP · April 2016

Uh... when I said swimming in skill points, I had in mind a character that aimed to max out 2 crafting skills, namely, clothing and woodworking for me. Of course you can't max out ALL crafting skills in one character, that would make no sense. You have to specialize in something.

Hluill · May 2016

The challenge for me is to keep my characters close enough to support each other.

It seems my clothier-blacksmith will never have enough skill points to keep my higher-levelled character outfitted. Every level, every three skyshards, creates a painful descision between combat effectiveness and crafting ability.

Of course, now that I have learned how to pay to have skill points reassigned, things are more expensive. How many skills I have bought only to realize how utterly useless they were, or at least not worth the skill point. I find that many of the skills can wait until I am "swimming" in skill points.

Having to wait to be an effective crafter until after the character is a level-fifty killer reduces the effectiveness of crafted items for that character to nil.

So, I return to my original issue of crafting just being a "tacked on" sytem, not an enjoyable pursuit.

Danksta · May 2016

AugustoCP wrote: »

Uh... when I said swimming in skill points, I had in mind a character that aimed to max out 2 crafting skills, namely, clothing and woodworking for me. Of course you can't max out ALL crafting skills in one character, that would make no sense. You have to specialize in something.

I have all 6 crafts maxed out on 1 character.

AugustoCP · May 2016

I meant, in a combat efficient character.

nudel · May 2016

Hluill wrote: »

ESO, like most current MMOs, has just tacked on a crafting system to make decent gear.

I don't think I could disagree with this statement more if I tried. ESO's crafting system has always been one of my favorite aspects of the game. It's much more enjoyable than most of the crafting systems I've tried and I honestly hope the next TES game borrows some of its features.

Hluill · May 2016

nudel wrote: »

Hluill wrote: »

ESO, like most current MMOs, has just tacked on a crafting system to make decent gear.

I don't think I could disagree with this statement more if I tried. ESO's crafting system has always been one of my favorite aspects of the game. It's much more enjoyable than most of the crafting systems I've tried and I honestly hope the next TES game borrows some of its features.

Sure, compared to Blade and Soul or Guild Wars 2 and the like, ESO is a great crafting hack. Compared to games like EQ2 and Vanguard, where the crafting is as involved as the combat, where a crafter levels as a crafter, where there are crafting quests etc... well, ESO's crafting system sucks.

Granted, combat in EQ2 is an easy street, so the crafting isn't that challenging either. But, you can have a character that is at max-level solely as a carpenter. I think that is boring, but I like have characters that can help outfit each other as they level.

The other point I would make to your disagreement: Crafting may be your favorite aspect, but it cannot be your only aspect. It is completely depedant on killing and questing. It's something you enjoy before and after the main aspect of the game: killing and questing.

nudel · May 2016

Hluill wrote: »

nudel wrote: »

Hluill wrote: »

ESO, like most current MMOs, has just tacked on a crafting system to make decent gear.

I don't think I could disagree with this statement more if I tried. ESO's crafting system has always been one of my favorite aspects of the game. It's much more enjoyable than most of the crafting systems I've tried and I honestly hope the next TES game borrows some of its features.

Sure, compared to Blade and Soul or Guild Wars 2 and the like, ESO is a great crafting hack. Compared to games like EQ2 and Vanguard, where the crafting is as involved as the combat, where a crafter levels as a crafter, where there are crafting quests etc... well, ESO's crafting system sucks.

Granted, combat in EQ2 is an easy street, so the crafting isn't that challenging either. But, you can have a character that is at max-level solely as a carpenter. I think that is boring, but I like have characters that can help outfit each other as they level.

The other point I would make to your disagreement: Crafting may be your favorite aspect, but it cannot be your only aspect. It is completely depedant on killing and questing. It's something you enjoy before and after the main aspect of the game: killing and questing.

I hate the very idea of leveling my character via crafting. I played another MMO with this system and I gained so many character levels via a single extended crafting session that I was completely lost when I attempted on-level combat afterwards. Without the experience of getting my new skills one by one and using them, I had no sense of how they actually played. Additionally, the overall difficulty ramped up considerably from my pre-crafting level to my post-crafting level and I had no gradual adjustment period as I'd earned all those inbetween levels crafting.

bloodenragedb14_ESO · May 2016

well, you dont technically need to combat

you can go out and find skyshards

but yeah, even then you may need to 'hire' a protector

Hluill · May 2016

nudel wrote: »

Hluill wrote: »

nudel wrote: »

Hluill wrote: »

ESO, like most current MMOs, has just tacked on a crafting system to make decent gear.

I don't think I could disagree with this statement more if I tried. ESO's crafting system has always been one of my favorite aspects of the game. It's much more enjoyable than most of the crafting systems I've tried and I honestly hope the next TES game borrows some of its features.

Sure, compared to Blade and Soul or Guild Wars 2 and the like, ESO is a great crafting hack. Compared to games like EQ2 and Vanguard, where the crafting is as involved as the combat, where a crafter levels as a crafter, where there are crafting quests etc... well, ESO's crafting system sucks.

Granted, combat in EQ2 is an easy street, so the crafting isn't that challenging either. But, you can have a character that is at max-level solely as a carpenter. I think that is boring, but I like have characters that can help outfit each other as they level.

The other point I would make to your disagreement: Crafting may be your favorite aspect, but it cannot be your only aspect. It is completely depedant on killing and questing. It's something you enjoy before and after the main aspect of the game: killing and questing.

I hate the very idea of leveling my character via crafting. I played another MMO with this system and I gained so many character levels via a single extended crafting session that I was completely lost when I attempted on-level combat afterwards. Without the experience of getting my new skills one by one and using them, I had no sense of how they actually played. Additionally, the overall difficulty ramped up considerably from my pre-crafting level to my post-crafting level and I had no gradual adjustment period as I'd earned all those inbetween levels crafting.

That same thing happened to me in GW2. It was easier to level at the crafting station than in combat. But the levels were adjusted to the zones there so it wasn't that big of a deal.

In EQ2 and Vanguard, crafting has its own classes. So your character levels as a carpenter, or weaponsmith, or jeweler, seperately from how they level as a Shadowknight or Templar (profession names may vary). Crafting is a seperate game from combat. A max level Necromancer might only be a fifth-level artisan.

I am not necessarily a big fan of the crafting game. It's more of an an interesting observation that newer MMOs don't seem to cater to the crafting games at all. These MMOs have independant and complex combat AND crafting mechanics. Newer MMOs ignore the healthy crafting populations that these games had, and that's a shame. Thee are people that would subscribe to ESO just to spend ALL their time at the forge, making ingots and weapons. My wife for one, when she plays, spends most of her time gathering, crafting and decorating her characters' houses. She pays her twelve dollars a month to do that.

llSRRll · May 2016

AugustoCP wrote: »

Uh... when I said swimming in skill points, I had in mind a character that aimed to max out 2 crafting skills, namely, clothing and woodworking for me. Of course you can't max out ALL crafting skills in one character, that would make no sense. You have to specialize in something.

I actually do have a character that is a VR1 and he has all the needed skills in all of the crafting trees and still had left over skills to make him capable to handle himself around wrothgar to get the surveys. Dont get me wrong I'm not going to do a dungeon or pvp with his but he can kill just about all VR16 cpu's as long as they dont gang up on me.