What is the use of crafting these days?

With the new "golden paths" being brought up online in the game, and URT/Hunters League style rewards sprinkled throughout, coupled with the super fast leveling, I have to ask what is now the use of the entire second sphere of Vangaurd: Crafting?
You cannot take something as fundemental as original leveling curve and itemization and then redically change it (make it super fast, and greatly increase quest rewards) without causeing a seismic shift throughout the game, damageing the other systems that were ONCE carefully balanced with each other.
What Im getting at is, along with the newbie racial starting areas, the lore, the localized music, and a ton of other things, this new great leap forward on the wow-ification path is now going to destroy a entire 1/3rd of the VG game: Crafting.
And thats not even getting into the recent give-aways where everyone gets a house and everyone gets a ship.
I just do not understand, why are they paving over this sandbox?
RIP Crafting and Diplomacy. Long live the golden path on rails, where you will be max level in no time (so long as you dont waste any time trying to craft useless items that NO ONE will want)

URT and HL are not new.
What does crafting offer? Custom gear, made to the exact stats and effects you want. Tailor made gear can really be awesome, so much so, all my chars now use crafted Gear exclusively.

Also if you do not want to have char 7 go thru the same path? Well then crafted gear means you still have awesoem gear and see new and exciting content.

I know they are not new, and they are also the reason I never thought twice about wasting my time making crafted gear for my characters in the teens and early 20s. Why bother? I can get URT/HLs gear which is better, and faster.

Thats my point. They are taking the URT/HL concept and bringing it to the entire game. That , together with super fast leveling = crafting is FAR less useful then it was at launch.
Ask any crafter who crafted the first year of the game, and craft now. Which era had more meaningful crafting?

crafters have always been the primary provider of expendables , like mithril health runes. I can see station cash items displacing that market. no clue what the impact will be on end game stuff like pota gear and epic shards

Good point, expendibles have ALWAYS been the bread and butter of any FTP cash shop system. Look to see crafting expendibles be eclipsed by the cash shop soon. Guess that will be the final nail in the years long assult on meaningful crafting in this game.

There are always going to be gaps in your armor set that can be filled with crafted items. My bard, for example, was level 30 before he looted his first helm. But of course the crafting system is no where near what it was at launch - common blue drops are a major reason for this along with the newer quests and superior gear they added along the way.
A free ship and free house will probably impact the market for those items for a while, although neither are top tier for those wanting the best. The thing that might hurt housing the most is F2P not being able to own a house, although this might change down the track (might also change so that they can purchase a hose from a cash shop too).
Other niche markets such as swamp gear and harvesting gear have taken a major hit from the low population. Some money is able to be made from things like spell components, bags, and consumables, but the competition is fierce, prices are low, and a dedicated crafter can't earn anywhere near what they used to earn, even 6 months ago.

Ah now there is stuff I never thought of, market viabiity. I craft for me, and me alone, or help friends/guildies. I never really consider or care about the abiity to market goods personally, how ever it is something the Devs need to be wary of ruining with the cash shop.

its sad really that the new plan whether it be cash shop, better gear drops, or free items like sloop, house, etc will all impact one of the best crafting experiences in any MMO. Perhaps some new, useful, things can be added to craft that will continue to give us a reason to grind out faction and levels. (the concept of people making gear for themselves via crafting is really only viable if their craft level is higher than their adv level, keep this in mind). But it would be nice to have even some items that crafters can make only for themselves or their account toons. just a thought

leavwiz wrote:

Well it has yet to be seen if it will really. End of day it is no more fair for the adventures to be forced to get gear from crafters any more then it is to completely destroy crafting.
It is a delicate balance, not one that is easily maintained. I have little issue with quested/named droped items being slightly more powerful, in lieu of crafted gears customization. I cannot over state the awesomeness of custom gear. Many have witnessed it in my play group.

I just came up with an idea when reading about your concerns about crafting becoming obsolete or more like a hobby.

First of all : Do not fear the FTP and the coming cash shop ...why ?
Because : SOE should/could link the whole production/demand cycle of the cash store with the crafters. What I mean is : everything u buy in the game (for cash) has to be produced by players (well ok the stock has to be filled by devs at start i guess). Basically you craft something like in the crafters quests, finishing it and handing it to some NPC amd whooosh it lands in the cash store... the crafting quests should be directly related to what is in demand.
Thats a basic idea but it could work if its a bit refined

I find it kinda funny that crafting was most important on the PvP servers:
Awareness gear comes to mind. Crafters were pretty busy making Awareness gear for people so they could
spot them rogues and rangers.
Actually it's not funny at all, it's pretty sad.

I have 6 lvl55 Crafter, 1 for every Specialization with some special Recipes. I love crafting. But I am very disappointed, that crafting is not useful after lvl50 (adventuring) - nobody needs it. Just a few little things, but nothing you can make Money with.
And you can reach the higher stuff only with an active 55 Adventurer. There are no hard crafting-Quests, where you can reach something, except PotA. But to enter, you need Adventuring again.

Traumweber wrote:

Agreed but the whole game past 50 is pitiful really, when compared to 1-50.

Its much easier to twink out characters with crafting, at least

Exmortis wrote:

This is part of the issue that will likely be solved. First, there needs to be more than just raids for the over 50 crowd. Raids are important, a good solid and dependable 5% of the pop of MMOs is dedicated to them.
There could be crafting raids with timers, high end crafting work that provides rare recipe rewards, and the like.
The easiest way to balance adventure / craft is to interlock content. Want to craft the armor of the worlds? Find someone that got a bar of mercugold from a high end dungeon, the only place where this exists. What the recipe for armor of the worlds? Diplo up the great beast Sargo after convincing his 400 evil henchmen to be nice to you.
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Crafting does need some attention in terms of how advancement happens and to add more quests.

back when we were testing POTA prior to its release both crafting and diplomacy were being tested by characters that were NOT 50 + adventurers. At the time we were told there would be alternative access for our craft focused toons. Upon release that revealed itself to be untrue. If Vanguard truly wants to represent itself as a multisphere game where even NON adventurers can play a role in the top end game, its time to do what the previous poster suggested, add quests and objectives that do not require end game raiders to complete. Some of us just like crafting and yes, diplo.
Also, it would be especially nice to have items and recipes that require some of the currently useless T6 rare/UR harvest items.

I would like to know if I can get an XP credit back for all the grinding I did as a ship builder? I would like to chose a new profession and apply that XP since it's now obsolete...

guess crafted stuff is not avail to the f2p's then ?

after looking at the sc market place and my mind keeps going down the path of what we really can do and what the impact is on the overall economy downstream. As an outfitter, my main staples were bags and talismans. both of these are now sc items and the ones i can make are not useable by f2p people without unlocking anyway. This impacts not only crafting but also harvesting. Both of these pursuits were income streams to help us eventually pay for our pota gear (the price hasnt gone down). Now it appears that we wont be effective in the market place if people have to pay in game money for the items we make and additional real money to use them. Perhaps someone from SoE could explain the future role of crafters in Vanguard, the best immersive crafting anywhere .

Ghostchild@Seradon wrote:

I can't speak for houses but referring to boats, anyone can buy a Sloop, Caravel or Galleon from the cash shop. This has essentially ruined Carpenters, leaving us with no boat market and at least one of our housing options gone.
It has not completely crippled us but it may as well have, we are now nothing compared to 2 months ago before all the handouts started, then the cash shop arriving.
This has effected crafting quite badly and I fear will only get worse as the add things to the cash shop.
I have 4 53+ craters of each type and I am now not going to bother raising the last 2 I just started (Weaponsmith and Tailor), there is no point anymore.