Guild Wars 2 Has The Best Crafting in an MMO Yet, and Here's Why

[Lord_PorkSword]

The GW2 Beta was damn good fun!

I enjoyed spending a few hours playing with cooking recipies. Plus the sheer amount of them will keep me going for quite a while(there will be no DB peeking on my end) as I like to discover these things myself rather than using info from some twat who couldn't help but go perving inside the dat file....
I look forward to slowly progressing my way through all the crafting professions...

Itching to play the next beta when it comes out later this month!(hopefully)

[CJGordon]

The crafting system sought of reminds me of SWTOR crafting system, you learn recipes, craft them, learn better variations etc. Except in SWTOR to learn more improved versions you have to reverse engineer the items you create only difference I see is in SWTOR you just send your companions off to gather the materials and craft things while you continue questing.

[Bronze_D]

The difference iirc is that in SWTOR you are not really trying to find an ingredient formula in SWTOR, you just repeat the base item production (using identical mats) until it crits and give you the one step improvement recipe...

in another word, it's more or less chance based and you have practically zero control on what kind of recipe is going to come out of it except for the fact that it's going to be an improvement of the base item, and then you pray that it gave the one with the prefix or suffix you wanted.

then repeat the process again with the new recipe you got for the improved version to make the next stage version (till the maxed out purple) and pray again that it crits and gave you the correct prefix/suffix.

[Marius]

Yeah there's no chance based crafting in GW2. If you know the recipe, it's really easy to craft good stuff. There are some uncommon/rare components, but all those are found by going out in the world or using the tradepost, so is a lot more interactive and economy-based than SWTOR.

Like most everything else, crafting in SWTOR was a solo affair. In GW2 you practically depend on other people due to the hard-to-get nature of some drops. Even if you never meet them or group with them, you're still going to be trading with them.

[masternick13]

]Nope. Star Wars Galaxies' crafting still thrashes anything in any other MMO, including GW2's system.

+1 crafting in SWG was epic

[Krogan]

Well I spent the 36h pretty much only crafting in the beta weekend and it was probably the most fun I have had with crafting, Horizons might still compete with it but it's better in many ways.

So what Mythos is saying is mind boggling to me, holy **** the crafting system in SWTOR was SOO BAD, and to get anything fun made it cost you a **** ton of money. I also grew tired of the companion style crafting really really fast as it really just felt like there was no crafting system at all.

I guess if your only criteria for a good crafting system is how little work it takes then I understand why you'd like the incredibly shallow crafting system of Swtor but otherwise its just really bad. I also really hated how slow the crafting system was in Swtor as you always had to wait for your slow **** companions to finish crafting items....11 bloody min for a useless blue item....for those of us that actually enjoy crafting love to gather tons of resources and then stand around crafting for an hour straight just doing that, in swtor that was never possible as sitting around waiting 30min for your pets to finish crafting was so incredibly dull.

I also really love gathering system of GW2, it is just really smart to not have skill levels for gathering, holy **** is it about time. I have always hated the feeling when you walk up to an iron node and it says "you need 125skill for that" it is such a massive immersion breaker for me. In GW2 it just feels so much more natural that maybe you can't use your copper pickaxe to mine iron ore or you could argue that the wood you want in higher levels are so hard that you need a steel axe to cut it down. I am not saying its 100% logical but at least you could give it the benefit of a doubt that it could work this way.

As for crafting databases I really don't care, I know I won't look at it much. People need to be in charge of their own game experience.

[CJGordon]

So what Mythos is saying is mind boggling to me, holy **** the crafting system in SWTOR was SOO BAD, and to get anything fun made it cost you a **** ton of money. I also grew tired of the companion style crafting really really fast as it really just felt like there was no crafting system at all.

Umm, Mythor was talking about Star Wars: Galaxies, not TOR. SWG crafting was great because it was NEEDED to get anything in game, every item in game was craft able (with few exceptions) the entire economy in SWG was run by crafter's and such.

[Mythor]

Yep, I didn't bring SWTOR up at all, that was other people.
SWTOR's crafting is fun for what it is, I enjoy the different spin of having the companions do a lot of the work for you and I like the reverse engineering instead of just vendoring a bunch of trash you've used to grind skill points.
It's fun, but it's certainly not in the ballpark of the best system ever.

[flabcab]

So what Mythos is saying is mind boggling to me, holy **** the crafting system in SWTOR was SOO BAD, and to get anything fun made it cost you a **** ton of money. I also grew tired of the companion style crafting really really fast as it really just felt like there was no crafting system at all.

Umm, Mythor was talking about Star Wars: Galaxies, not TOR. SWG crafting was great because it was NEEDED to get anything in game, every item in game was craft able (with few exceptions) the entire economy in SWG was run by crafter's and such.

Armor was definitely all bought from crafters but most weapons were looted so you could get the ones with dots, I played pre CURB though so it might have changed.

Regardles SWG crafting was epic although it did have the downfall of the fact that if you missed out on a particularly good resource spawn you were behind unless you had lots of capital to buy it at auction.

[DjVu]

Unfortunately I only got 2 hours to play the beta on the weekend, so didn't spend any time crafting. As I'm not an MMO player, crafting is always a little scary to me, but I will definitely be trying it out next open weekend if I have the time.

I'd at least like to try it out before the actual game comes out so I know what I'm doing!

[bink]

Is there a designated AUS server for us to use, like Blackrock was for WoW?

I understand it's a US server, but I want max population of Aussies.

[Kinky Kel]

Sorry but this article title is wrong. If current crafting trends continue (i.e the wow style of crafting) continue.. then no MMO will beat Star Wars Galaxies for crafting. It had the most in-depth, interactive and fulfilling crafting mechanics invented to date. It was even better when there was item degradation as there was a realistic supply and demand system.

This crafting system, while adding elements to the already over-used fomula, is still bland and dull.

[Kinky Kel]

Well I spent the 36h pretty much only crafting in the beta weekend and it was probably the most fun I have had with crafting, Horizons might still compete with it but it's better in many ways.

So what Mythos is saying is mind boggling to me, holy **** the crafting system in SWTOR was SOO BAD, and to get anything fun made it cost you a **** ton of money. I also grew tired of the companion style crafting really really fast as it really just felt like there was no crafting system at all.

I guess if your only criteria for a good crafting system is how little work it takes then I understand why you'd like the incredibly shallow crafting system of Swtor but otherwise its just really bad. I also really hated how slow the crafting system was in Swtor as you always had to wait for your slow **** companions to finish crafting items....11 bloody min for a useless blue item....for those of us that actually enjoy crafting love to gather tons of resources and then stand around crafting for an hour straight just doing that, in swtor that was never possible as sitting around waiting 30min for your pets to finish crafting was so incredibly dull.

I also really love gathering system of GW2, it is just really smart to not have skill levels for gathering, holy **** is it about time. I have always hated the feeling when you walk up to an iron node and it says "you need 125skill for that" it is such a massive immersion breaker for me. In GW2 it just feels so much more natural that maybe you can't use your copper pickaxe to mine iron ore or you could argue that the wood you want in higher levels are so hard that you need a steel axe to cut it down. I am not saying its 100% logical but at least you could give it the benefit of a doubt that it could work this way.

As for crafting databases I really don't care, I know I won't look at it much. People need to be in charge of their own game experience.

Mythor said Star Wars Galaxies, NOT Star Wars The Old Republic. When will people learn to read?

[Sphinx2000]

The component crafting model in GW2 is almost the same as LOTRO - mixed with a bit of minecraft-esq for discovery

But I agree it's a great setup, and the experience bar design based on completion, instead of heavily used random roll based on level of difficulty is a breath of fresh air.

The auto speed-up of repetative tasks is also welcome, as well as the ability to collect crafting items to your bank instead of taking up slots in your bags, it's all good.

[Marius]

I'm not convinced that the SWG craft system was the be-all-end-all.

A major problem with such in-depth craft systems is that they split characters up between crafters and non-crafters.

I like to play a character who crafts her own gear, and then uses said gear to explore the world. It actually gives me a lot of satisfaction to use gear in the world that I've made myself. And not just to go out to collect materials, but to actually do dungeons and PvP as well.

This is why I've never really got into crafting in games that have had split crafters and non-crafters, because I find the concept of making a crafter who can't fight to be incredibly boring. Posting crafted items on a trading post for complete strangers to buy is not a very interesting sub-game.

Likewise, farming or even (*cough*) buying gold just to buy a crafter's wares is about the most boring way to acquire gear you'll ever find in an MMO.

That's also why we'll never see SWG-style crafting return, because developers want to include systems that are easily accessible, rather than expend heaps of resources making something for a small subset of the population. I do think some games (like SWTOR) take this entirely too far, and make it simplistic, but GW2 strikes the right balance between complexity to keep it interesting, without being too complex that adventuring characters don't get into it.

And for this reason I agree with the article title, that GW2 does indeed have the best crafting in an MMO ever.