Noob ? what is crafting good for?

[DrakeWurrum]

Oh, oh! And dyes - chefs can make dyes - which is very important if you're as vain as me

Best thing about crafting, to be sure. Ironically, I still have yet to actually work on cooking on any of my characters - it just takes so much WORK. At least I have a good supply of cooking mats for when I get around to it.

[Granyala]

But skill points are also useful, which can easily be inferred as being my point.

Haven't really found any use for them yet except mystic forge crap. You get more than enough to learn all your skills through map completions.

[rhandric]

Haven't really found any use for them yet except mystic forge crap. You get more than enough to learn all your skills through map completions.

Right. But by calling it "mystic forge crap" I see your bias and why you think gold is more important than anything else.

[Granyala]

Right. But by calling it "mystic forge crap" I see your bias and why you think gold is more important than anything else.

So what if I don't like the concept of the mystic forge? Has nothing to do with the topic at hand.

If you gain levels through crafting you get a skill point. If you level through other means of XP-gain you receive that same skill point.
I stand by my point that crafting as it is now is fairly useless, since you can buy everything it provides off the trading post and save a ton of gold in the process.

Crafting would be great if it weren't for the morons out there that sell stuff too cheap because they assign a near 0 value to materials they have gathered. That same problem is found in any MMO economy that I've seen, but in most others you actually need the craft if you want the items because they are soulbound or as in WoW the craft grants other bonuses.

If there's something really good that I overlooked, please feel free to point it out to me, but currently I can't recommend a new player to skill up crafting and keep a straight face.

[Rukh]

No, that's one area that was done fairly boneheaded. People are obviously going to spam up crafting. You get gear and xp. Knowing that, you should NOT make the main craft recipes also be the ones people spam up. Dumb dumb dumb.

[DrakeWurrum]

I stand by my point that crafting as it is now is fairly useless, since you can buy everything it provides off the trading post and save a ton of gold in the process.

Actually, you can save more gold by gathering and crafting all the crap on your own.

But, seriously, just because you don't put value on the Mystic Forge, does not mean that skill points have no use. They just have no use for you. Which, imo, isn't that big of a deal.

---------- Post added 2012-09-27 at 06:34 PM ----------

If there's something really good that I overlooked, please feel free to point it out to me, but currently I can't recommend a new player to skill up crafting and keep a straight face.

Leveling up faster than you would without it. Keeping yourself stocked with gear for your level, as you level, more easily than you would without it. Supplying your own food buffs, and crafting your own dyes, without having to buy them.

[Granyala]

Actually, you can save more gold by gathering and crafting all the crap on your own.

No you don't.. that was my entire point. Whether you gathered a resource or bought it off the TP It has the same goddamn value! It's just an illusion that you need less gold because the effective sum you're actually spending as gold gets reduced. But just because you mined the Orichalcum ore yourself doesn't diminish it's value. It's still worth 3 silver per ore. Your mindset is the entire problem behind every MMO-economy.

But, seriously, just because you don't put value on the Mystic Forge, does not mean that skill points have no use. They just have no use for you. Which, imo, isn't that big of a deal.

Did you even READ my post? I guess not, so I quote it for you. Remember: we're talking about a new character that wants to craft while leveling, NOT a bored 80 that doesn't know where to put his gold. (For the latter you'd be kind of right, but an 80 also gets xp from events and co thus gaining skillpoints, so crafting doesn't provide anything unique)

If you gain levels through crafting you get a skill point. If you level through other means of XP-gain you receive that same skill point.

Leveling up faster than you would without it. Keeping yourself stocked with gear for your level, as you level, more easily than you would without it.

Haha you're kidding right? All the time you (and others) are speaking about "It's not about leveling fast it's about the journey!" and now this?

On a more serious note: If you gather the materials and sell them, you can probably buy the gear everyone spams to level his craft AND make a profit.
EG: One jute scrap currently sells for a whopping 25 copper on my server. One friggin SCRAP. Not a bolt.

Supplying your own food buffs, and crafting your own dyes, without having to buy them.

If cooking can reliably produce chosen colors it might be an exception. Or not I'd have to study the material requirements and calculate their value to make judgment. Too lazy to do that now though. :P

[DrakeWurrum]

No you don't.. that was my entire point. Whether you gathered a resource or bought it off the TP It has the same goddamn value!

You're saying the TP offers them for free?

You don't spend money on the materials you gather, you realize. It doesn't matter if TP matches vendor price when the vendor price isn't a price you're paying.

---------- Post added 2012-09-28 at 11:43 AM ----------

Haha you're kidding right? All the time you (and others) are speaking about "It's not about leveling fast it's about the journey!" and now this?

It's not about the leveling. That doesn't mean that crafting doesn't benefit your leveling speed.

---------- Post added 2012-09-28 at 11:43 AM ----------

On a more serious note: If you gather the materials and sell them, you can probably buy the gear everyone spams to level his craft AND make a profit.
EG: One jute scrap currently sells for a whopping 25 copper on my server. One friggin SCRAP. Not a bolt.

I'd rather gather the materials myself, then spend tiny amounts of copper to craft a fuckton of stuff, and then vendor the stuff.

[Granyala]

You're saying the TP offers them for free?

You don't spend money on the materials you gather, you realize. It doesn't matter if TP matches vendor price when the vendor price isn't a price you're paying.

Is it really this hard to grasp?

You gather Orichalcum. 2 options:
-Craft
-Sell it on the TP.

IF you craft you must assign the same monetary value to your Orichalcum as if you bought it off the TP. If you don't do that you 1) waste your profit 2) ruin the economy for everyone else.

So saying "Item X gets cheaper when I gather the mats" is WRONG. You're paying exactly the same as whether you pay it with 100% gold or with 50% gold and 50% materials. The item-creation does NOT get cheaper.

This is why I say "crafting is useless". You pay the same as if you'd buy it off the TP AND on top of that you pay for your skill ups to even be able to make the desired stuff.

Simple example:

I craft an Item.
I need 1 gold for 5 ectos.
I need other mats which combined cost me 1 gold in the TP.
I craft the item.
I sell it at 2Gold (creation cost) + 20s (Auction fee) + 30s (My profit margin) = 2.5 gold.

You craft an Item.
You need 1 gold for 5 ectos.
You gather the rest of the mats yourself.
You craft the item.
You sell the Item at 1 Gold (creation cost) + 10s (auction fee) + 40s (Your profit margin) = 1.5 gold.

YOU think you made a profit. And your gold counter says so too. But you actually WASTED 60s worth of materials due to a simple mathematical error.

If you keep selling that low your customers will buy your stuff and all the other crafters lose money because the CAN't sell that low, they would lose money. As you actually lost money but you didn't realize it, because you lost potential money, not actual money. Basically what you did is forcefully bring the prices of the gathered materials down from 1 gold to 40 silvers. Thus reducing profit margins, not only for other crafters, but also for the guys who gather-> sell stuff.

Why? Because the customer always want's stuff as cheap as possible. He doesn#t care that crafters need to make a living, he's just glad he saved some bucks.

[rhandric]

-snip

If you take into account TP listing fees and market values, selling mats and then buying completed items requires a rather close eye to accurately determine which is more effective. Plus, if Item X is up on the TP for K cost, why would I sell it at K-m for such a large value of m (in your example, K=2.5, d=1)? It'd be in my best interest to sell at or as close to the CMV to maximize my profits. And if I'm already getting those mats through normal gameplay, and taking into account listing fees, I'm ahead: assuming buying 1g worth of mats, it'd be ~85s worth profit selling (approximate due to rounding, since unless you're working with multiples of 10c/5c there'll be rounding), while you spent 1g.

[kiLzeD]

A lot of people use it for leveling I found that cooking was the easiest and fastest

[DrakeWurrum]

YOU think you made a profit.

I don't really care about maxing out my profit as much as possible with the materials I gather. O_o

I gathered a bunch of stuff, got exp for it, then turned it into crafted shit, got exp for it, wore it for several levels, and when I didn't need it anymore, I salvaged it all over again.

Either way I gain money, don't really need to maximize it. Difference is, I got some use out of my items first.

And it doesn't change the fact that it's cheaper to do all that, than to buy it right off the TP. You can't look at profits not earned as money you lost, when you didn't have it to begin with.

[Rukh]

If you take into account TP listing fees and market values, selling mats and then buying completed items requires a rather close eye to accurately determine which is more effective. Plus, if Item X is up on the TP for K cost, why would I sell it at K-m for such a large value of m (in your example, K=2.5, d=1)? It'd be in my best interest to sell at or as close to the CMV to maximize my profits. And if I'm already getting those mats through normal gameplay, and taking into account listing fees, I'm ahead: assuming buying 1g worth of mats, it'd be ~85s worth profit selling (approximate due to rounding, since unless you're working with multiples of 10c/5c there'll be rounding), while you spent 1g.

The difference is you can target farming expensive mats, not the mats needed to construct the thing.

[Granyala]

If you take into account TP listing fees and market values, selling mats and then buying completed items requires a rather close eye to accurately determine which is more effective. Plus, if Item X is up on the TP for K cost, why would I sell it at K-m for such a large value of m (in your example, K=2.5, d=1)? It'd be in my best interest to sell at or as close to the CMV to maximize my profits.

Numbers were arbitrarily chosen to make a point ofc you wouldn't undercut by that much, but imagine 10 guys undercutting a little (everyone wants to sell faster than the other guy) and you basically have the same effect.

But you're right. I calculated the values for every item at the time I was going to craft it.

And if I'm already getting those mats through normal gameplay, and taking into account listing fees, I'm ahead: assuming buying 1g worth of mats, it'd be ~85s worth profit selling (approximate due to rounding, since unless you're working with multiples of 10c/5c there'll be rounding), while you spent 1g.

Correct, but only if you assign the monetary value of 0 to your playtime.

By the time you farmed your mats for 1 Item, I could easily create 10 or more, thus eliminating your gain of 15s, relative to time, in a heartbeat. (Of course that only works IF there is sufficient demand to support mass selling)

Note: I compare crafting-selling via gathering and craft-selling via TP now. The line gets blurry when you only want to craft once for yourself and never again.

But again: We're talking as if it was a bored 80 char that's in question. To level a craft you have to create way more stuff than you actually need and most of it doesn't sell for squat in the TP. That's the actual waste of money I was referring to in the first place. But that comes down to whether the XP-gain is worth the wasted gold to the leveling character.

And it doesn't change the fact that it's cheaper to do all that, than to buy it right off the TP. You can't look at profits not earned as money you lost, when you didn't have it to begin with.

Erm... of course you can. You MUST do that in order to calculate the actual market value of you merchandise. oO

This is the point you just don't seem to be able to understand: You HAVE the materials. Thus you HAVE their gold's worth as well since you could sell them any time you wanted to as there is huge demand for crafting material. If that demand wasn't present, then you'd be right, but it is.

Example: I sold every Orichalcum ore by the time I managed to click "sell -> ok -> fetch". The demand for that stuff is THAT high.

It's like having a gold bar lying on your desk and assigning the monetary value of 0 to it. Sure it's not money now, but you can sell it at any point in time for the CMV of gold.