Should you avoid crafting in GW2?

[pandalishus]

Interesting little blog post

www.mmomeltingpot.com/2012/09/should-you-avoid-crafting-in-guild-wars-2/

[Vejuz]

Crafting definitely isn't worth it from a financial perspective. It has an investment cost and basically no payoff, as goods often LOSE value the moment you craft them. (Which begs the question of why people are making them...) In the current economy, it's unlikely you'll ever recoup your level up costs by selling things on the TP.

However, crafting does have value, in:

1. Convenience. You can always make what you need.

2. Savings and flexibility. You're not at the mercy of market forces, and it gives you the option of choosing between the TP price, and the raw material cost, whichever is lower. It also allows you use gathered resources to subsidize the cost of items directly, without losing 15% of value in TP costs. (This 15% may actually be the main source of gold savings that may pay for crafting level ups over time.)

3. Time. You don't need to wait for goods to sell to raise money for bought items nor wait for buy orders to be filled.

That said....I'm leveling up all my crafting professions across my alts, because I just enjoy crafting, and because these marginal advantages will add up over the long haul. Also, I'm holding out hope that they will fix crafting to allow it to be profitable.

[Rer]

It's a sellers market right now. In 4 months when a new wave of players join the economy will shift. Happens in most MMOs.

[pandalishus]

I'm not sure Rer. There are two important points in GW2 that differ from other MMOs: The TP is not server-bound and crafting = LOTS of XP. The XP means everyone with a brain will craft to get the XP boost, and the game-wide economy means sellers will be competing with *everyone.*

Personally, I think the only real reason from crafting (so far) is to get the free XP. Beyond that, I can't see much reason to. The time I spend crafting my own stuff to save a few copper so far hasn't been worth it. As margin become super-thin, I think it's going to be easier to just sell mats on the TP and buy whatever item you want, even if you could craft it yourself.


Vej, I'm willing to bet that...
(1) will be obsolete in a few more months (anything you need will be on TP)
(2) market forces will bring margins down to a point that you'll actually lose money if you consider the time you could be out gathering mats rather than trying to craft and so on (not to mention buying bank slots to store the stuff that not a basic component)
(3) will be like (1). Just about anything I list on TP right now sells instantly. When the wants and desires of millions of users finally come online, I'm willing to bet that we'll see absolutely no benefit to crafting an item ourselves, unless it's extremely rare (say components for legendaries).

Something tells me ANet has killed the "auction house" mentality, but that it just might be a good thing (I much prefer the idea of gathering mats than just "trading" for what I need so I can get back to killing stuff).

[Vejuz]

If you sell mats on the TP you lose 15% of its value in TP taxes. By gathering and crafting, you save 15% of the value of the mats. This will always be true, unless they change the TP taxes.

[Winin]

I looked at the crafting system and saw an alternate xp path: harvesting/crafting time > xp. Not much different than hunting/questing time > xp. And in both paths, you get gear, some things you need, some you don't. An interesting take on the "leveling for those who don't want to kill" idea, but it doesn't address the corollary that goes with that: "they don't want to kill, but they do want to be a shopkeeper".

[pandalishus]

Good point on 15% Vej, though it depends somewhat on what "stage" the materials are in. I've noticed that items that are along the second or third stage of crafting sometimes cost less than the raw mats (not surprising, of course). On more than a few occasions, i've sold the raw mats and then bought whatever "next step" item item I needed at much less than the 15% TP cut. (Actually, this has become my standard strategy in crafting now)

That's an interesting perspective Winin. It's definitely the shopkeeper that appears to have been sacrificed here.

[Winin]

The way I really see it is: Fighting yields XP and crap gear/drops, add in $$ and time to yield more XP. But you could just do harvest + time > XP

[pandalishus]

Well, what I'm enjoying most about crafting is how intricate/simple it is. Once you get the basic idea of discovery down, you can have all sorts of fun. In the end, I really feel like I'm doing crafting because i enjoy it, rather than it's a must (though the XP makes it a "must")