Discussion about Future Crafting Updates

[SkyWarpPro]

Guild reputation decay gets a negative vote from me.

I feel like we need to separate gathering from creating in crafting.

Instead of just going to 4 lines of ability as opposed to 3, lets open it up to where everyone starts with two (or three if we change Fishing to this instead of a hobby) gathering abilities but allow them to get ALL of the gathering abilities via various methods (I am fine with this being store based as it is something we don't have now)
Farming (Food and Dyes)
Prospecting (Metal and Jewels)
Forestry (Wood and Hides)
Chest opening (Scholarly texts and anything else that one wants to put into them)
Fisher (Fish)

And then we all get two actual crafting Professions with the ability to add one more with store purchase or something. I am fine with starting with one crafting profession per character, but some already have two in the way they are set up now, so that won't work to take away from people.
Cook
Tailor
Jeweller
MetalSmith
WeaponSmith
Woodworker
Scholar

I hate ingredients that are blocked behind Raids or other large group content. All ingredients should be available to all types of players. However, I am fine with certain ingredients being harder to get for certain types of players. Just not impossible such as putting things in Raids only. Maybe a Raid gives MORE of an ingredient instead of being the only way to get that ingredient.

[Tralfazz]

I like decisions with consequences, some of which are empowering and some of which are limiting. Choosing a Vocation is such a decision. I’m sure that Larelinarian and I are going to be part of a tiny minority opinion here, but I would prefer that this not be changed to a universal mix-and-match system. There are more issues involved here than just how to make existing crafted toolkits work with a non-Vocation system.

Three Professions is plenty. I understand the point that individual players can have access to all Professions already by using alts. Adding a fourth Profession for a character isn’t going to change that, the number of needed alts simply drops to a smaller number. Again, decisions should have consequences and the more Professions learnable by a single character – especially in a non-Vocation system – the fewer consequences applied by that decision.

Decay of Crafting Guild reputation is a terrible idea, already covered well and in detail by others. On the contrary, there needs to be something added to Valar packages to allow Valared characters to catch up with both crafting proficiency and Craft Guild reputation in the same manner Valared characters receive substantial Virtue Experience and don’t have to spend weeks to months grinding deeds to get their Virtues to something level-appropriate. There should also be a way for characters that reached a high level but who neglected their crafting some other way to catch up, perhaps by adding a level-based multiplier to the store-bought Crafting Guild Token of Esteem and adding a similar item for crafting expertise experience.

When each new expansion with a higher level cap is released, the following things should happen:
1- All recipes gated behind raid and instance drops from the previous level cap drop on landscape as well; and become bind-to-account if they were bind-to-character.
2- All recipes gated behind rep and/or tokens from factions of the previous level cap become available at one rep level lower and at half the tokens previously required; and become bind-to-account if they were bind-to-character.
3- All recipes from the previous level cap which could not be crafted with Universal Ingredient Packs become craftable with Universal Ingredient Packs.
4- All Forestry and Prospecting patterns from the previous level cap become craftable with Universal Ingredient Packs.
…And of course all of this is applied immediately to all existing lower crafting tiers.

I enjoy crafting a lot but it becomes something between a terrible chore and something I ignore once past Eastemnet or thereabouts due to the small number of auto-bestowed recipes, landscape drop recipes, inability to use Universal Ingredient Packs, and later the gap in Guild recipes from Tier 10 through Tier 12. I’m happy to know that crafting is going to get attention over the next 12 months or so and I hope crafting is made more fun and less of a grind without removing the importance of and consequences associated with player decisions.

[Neinda]

In an ideal world, you would only get recipe drops that are bound to a character if that recipe were relevant to that character.

Umm, anyone that has spent even a few minutes at end game has enough BPE traceries to last several lifetimes. Please don't do the same thing with crafting recipes. Please give us a way to get actual recipes that are useful. Way back in the day, we got most basic recipes and could buy others from the vendors. No reputation, no grinding, nothing special required. It worked well. Please don't force us to play multiple characters on a daily basis and get them all to cap just to be able to craft anything. This game really needs to look at making more things account vs character bound.

[SSG_Orion]

Removed the mention of guilds decaying. Simply causing too much initial consternation and is going to derail good conversation.

[SSG_Orion]

Hmmm, that ideal world qualifier leads me to believe that drops will be bound to character, but you can’t guarantee that we won’t get worthless drops that our character can’t use. Is “ideal world” the goal for the new crafting system or is it something you’d like to do, but won’t be able to? I imagine it’s probably not easy for the loot system to recognize what professions our character uses.

No reason to read into this negatively. It is a statement that really needs no qualifier. In an ideal situation, we would rather give you items that are worthwhile to you. Not much is set with these potential changes. We're looking for responses, feedback, interest, so on and so forth.

[Panaeon]

I'm rather concerned about this. I'm constantly seeing players returning to the game after long absences, and I've taken a lengthy absence from the game in the past myself. Does this mean that all our hard work to raise our guild standing would have decayed during our break from the game? I came back after 7 years myself and I would have been extremely disappointed if I had to start over to raise my guild standing. Something like that is very likely to frustrate and anger returning players, possibly to the point it would discourage them from returning. We really don't need endless grinds or punishment for putting RL first when it comes to something like crafting.

I really dislike this idea unless it is something very simple like, "go talk to this npc and do one quest to have your standing restored to where it was prior to your break." In that case though it seems like it would be a pointless change and would only serve to confuse and annoy people.

Thanks for posting this - I've had the exact same thoughts - that would be really awful since it would be a huge disadvantage for players who cannot (accidents, illnesses etc.) continue playing constantly and then are "punished" for it by such a toxic system, that needs regular activity. I understand where this "idea" might be coming from, but it's toxic nevertheless for a Game, that is supposed to be an "Escape from Reality" and not a mere reconstruction of - especially the distressing! parts of - it!

So, for relaxation's sake, that has been the very reason for me to return to this Game over and over again, I really hope, that such "gaslighting" Game Mechanics, that require players to be active or otherwise be "punished" for inactivity, should not be implemented into a Game, that is and has been a source of enjoyment and escape from an already very "gaslighting" reality in many areas of the World!

Do not to this, Standing-Stone-Devs, I implore you!

[Neinda]

Removed the mention of guilds decaying. Simply causing too much initial consternation and is going to derail good conversation.

Is it removed as an idea or just removed from the discussion but will come back to haunt us at a later date? Removing this from the discussion but planning to surprise us with it in the future will not win over the player base and will probably annoy many people.

[Beki_0000]

Professions: Having a fourth profession (depending on what one currently has as a crafting profession) would be nice. My question is having for professions is that per toon, or what you can have on one server? Having the flexibility is nice. However, many of us solo for various reasons. I currently have 4 toons that do all of my crafting per server that I play on. I would prefer to be able to craft as I need to as I rarely have the opportunity to group, much less have the availability to get gear good enough for raiding.

Buying at the auction house is often way crazy expensive. Buying a stack of X thing or Y piece of gear can cost more gold than a person has in their wallet (sometimes over 1000 gold). I know there are those who brag that they have to convert their gold to something they can put in their vaults because they are at the cap of 9999 gold, but the fact of the matter is, most of us have nowhere near that kind of gold. So please do take that into consideration. I suspect many would like to have all crafting open to one toon. I'm not sure how that would work from a game standpoint as I am sure it would cause some database concerns. I do see a call to maybe have extra professions buyable with LP. I would be fine with that.

Resource tiers: New recipes are nice. Typically when we get a new level/tier we have new recipes. Are you saying that there will be new recipes for say, apprentice or journeymen level? If so, what would that look like? Many people might like to craft housing furniture and pets/mounts if they are available at any tier. I wouldn't mind using lower level tier things to make higher tier things. Cooking recipes are like that now. We often have to get spring barley for herbed dough for example.

Guild crafting: I do not like the idea of decaying guild rep. I have earned my crafting/guild levels and taking that away is a huge NO for me. I have only so much time in a day to play, and having to grind for crafting rep is going to make me disinclined to craft at all, if all I do is spend time crafting to keep up. I have a hard enough time trying to get into PUGs to try to get decent gear to get into raids/instances with now. I don't need it to be harder to get the things I need to play the content I would like to play if I have to constantly craft too.

Crafting relevance: Relevance for guild crafting went away when crafting for LI's went away. Many see no reason to level in their guild(s) since other than a few bulk recipes, there is little reason to build guilded reputation for them at this time. I am told that many stop building guild rep at the supreme level. I think that having guild rep recipes that will allow us to housing items or to craft gear that will get us into instances/raids or for us to be able to send X thing to Y crafter to make Z thing as a better use of crafting guilds.

Personally, I would like to see crafting for decent gear, weaponry, and housing items. Having some of those things be gated behind guild reputation is fine, but not basic crafting being behind faction reputation. I gather many folk keep alts specifically for crafting as they are unable to have others do crafting for them for whatever reason. Those toons are usually low level, so the player is hosed if they can't take their alts into a high level area because they are too low level and would get eaten by a squirrel. Not everyone is in a large kin or are available to be online when many others are.

Crafting events sound intriguing. Perhaps tie them in with festivals as we have recipes tied to festivals in the past. Many of us have limited time to play, so having an event once or more a month would be a bit too much for the casual "average" player to grind through.

[EU_Macfeast]

Keep three, potentially get a fourth.

But will we be able to replace existing professions at all? If the intent is for professions to be freely selectable going forward, then I can't help but find it a little unfair if existing characters are locked out of this choice; it would feel like a punishment for being early. I really don't want to end up feeling like my character's crafting ability is "ruined" (= having professions taking up space that I would rather spend on other professions) because of a choice I made years ago, that I have to reroll to get the exact professions that I want.

[Belnavar]

Professions:

The first step is to separate vocations into individual professions. Our intent is allowing characters with a vocation to keep the three associated professions at the level that they have currently achieved. Players who are just enrolling in the crafting system can choose any three professions that they want.

We are also likely to allow players to expand their crafting vocations by one more slot. The details on how this is acquired is not yet solidified, but we are not expecting to allow players to have more than four professions trained at any time.The reason for this is simple, we still want to keep the social and game economy moving through the crafting system. While also offering you more flexibility.

This is a good change, but I still think a better system would be the one Severlin originally suggested a year or two ago: allow three "free" professions, where crafting xp is gained at normal levels. Then the next one requires an extra 50% or 100% crafting xp, and the next one an extra 100% to 200% crafting xp, etc. You can even have a hefty gold cost or other unlock mechanism for these additional professions. It means someone with a single character can eventually (at a price) get all crafts, but the later ones would be harder to maintain, so there is still an incentive to use alts or engage with others. I think the reality for many nowadays is that asking others to craft stuff for you is a thing of the past. I remember it well, but it's been years since I have done that or many I know have done that, so restricting just to four professions on the basis of that social aspect is, perhaps, a mistake. Encourage social crafting through events instead of restricting players.

Going back to your proposal, it's very unclear if someone with an existing vocation is locked into the three professions they currently have (plus the new one), or if they can change one or more of those original professions. I think many, many players would like to change one of their professions, as they got stuck with a "dud" profession as part of their vocation. For example, as Tinker I've maxed out Jeweller and Prospector, but Cook has been completely ignored, as I need Farmer with that (and so made a Yeoman to be my cook on an alt character). I'd rather swap that Cook profession for Forestry and then take Scholar as my fourth profession so I can have all three gathering professions (and thus make more use of the resource instances) and one crafting profession. We really need to be able to change our existing professions or it somewhat feels like longterm players are being punished for adopting the old vocations.

Crafting Resource Tiers:

With Update 35: Return to Carn Dûm, we are introducing minor updates to the crafting system with new recipes and added items needed to craft those new recipes. This is the start of changes that will re-align crafting tiers. While we are not going to refine all the earlier tiers, we will continue to increase resource tiers for future level updates. We will continue creating more recipes for crafting vocations over time, rather than only at level increases.

More crafting over time throughout a level cap is a good and welcome thing.

Crafting Guilds:

There are three omissions for crafting professions and associated guilds: Forester, Prospector, and Farmer. We want to address this. We know that the length of time
needed in order to increase standing with guilds is prohibitive. We want to address that by making enrollment in the guild a more activeexperience where you will be able to maintain your membership and access by continued activity or it will decay slowly over time.

I welcome guilds for the gatherer professions, though we'll need ways to more easily catch up on these.

I strongly dislike the idea of your guild membership decaying over time. This will not achieve engagement. It will turn players off from engaging in the first place. Imagine if something similar applied to your character level, and after a month or two break at level 140 you came back to find you were 132. Or, worse, after a few years break, you came back to find yourself at level 1 again. That is effectively what you're proposing with another system of advancement. We don't spend hours and hours of our lives here grinding something to have it be gradually taken away from us. It's one thing adding a new tier, etc., that invalidates the old ones, but quite another to take away the progress we worked so hard to earn. This is doubly or triply so for players who've invested in many alts to cover all crafts and may simply not be able to grind on them all to "maintain" their membership (a maintainence that never existed before).

I implore you not to move ahead with this idea, and I predict the player revolt to such if it were to be implemented would be huge.

I get the idea of wanting to encourage more engagement with guilds (as currently we largely forget about them), but I think other approaches can be made. We ignore them at the moment mostly because there are no real desirable recipes or reasons to engage with them.

Crafting Relevance:

Our goal is to work toward making the relevance of crafted gear more important in the next level band, then over time integrate that back through the lower-level bands of the crafting system. The process to work backward through the tiers will take longer than this year.

The effort to make crafting more useful is integrated with the release of the expansion later this year. We want to establish crafted gear to be slightly ahead of quest gear. This will lead to two behaviors. One, providing optional rewards through the quests specific to crafters. And two, making crafting a unique stepping stone to assist in instances. The major quest lines and crafted gear should be used to get you prepared for the instances that come with the expansion.

Further, new gear and armor in instances will have some measure of crafting included to ensure that there is always something for crafters to look forward to. These items will assist in the stepping stones needed to move into raids, and so on.

The widgets or extra items that are needed to craft these latest items will be scattered throughout the game, not only in instance or raid spaces, so crafters should not feel forced to engage with the systems that they might feel less inclined to play. They will, however, be able to directly assist their fellow players and kinmates by making items that could help them in those endeavors.

I support this, though this has kind of been the case with new expansions already. The problem is that the crafted gear is often invalidated so quickly it's sometimes not even worth making. Being able to decon them into something useful might take away some of the sting of this.

Having constant crafting drops throughout content is a good move. I always felt like the geode system (an "almost" profession) was wasted, as we grinded our geode pocket, and then the instances dropped immediately better ones. What should have happened, in my view, is that the instances should have dropped a rare geode item, which we could have combined with our grinded pocket item through our existing crafting professions to make a better one. Upgraded gear always feels much better than new replacement gear, as it feels like we got more value from our earlier grind. It also means other systems (like the geode gathering) and content last longer.

The Minas Morgul instances kept their relevance through the rare crafting ingredients that dropped in them, which were always desirable for rolls and scrolls later. This is something that should be a default approach to content, especially as you add new instances and content that make older ones less appealing. Crafting can be the mechanism to ensuring all content in a level bracket stays relevant.

Crafting and Housing:

We are looking at options to enhance how crafting influences and is influenced by the housing system. Details on this are still in the formative state but we have some ideas such as new hooked items or NPCs that function as gatherers for materials that you would need to visit and obtain the items that they are collecting for you. We expect that this will need a hefty side of control to ensure that it does not become abused.

Further, we want to make new recipes that allow crafters to make objects for home and hearth.

I very much welcome crafting integration with housing. NPCs that harvest for me sound amazing.

I'd like to see a new system where you obtain/craft a display cabinet, then obtain a raid armour set (from current and old content) and craft that into a display piece of that armour set. This could give Armourers extra viability long-term. The same could be done for Weaponsmiths with various weapons throughout the game.

I'd also like to see ways to craft combined items that take up a single slot. For example, you obtain an Elvish table and two Elvish chairs, and you combine them into a single housing item of an Elvish table with two chairs. This could be done with all manner of things, like groves of trees, bookcases, etc.

Events:

One idea that we have around enhancing the crafting system is the establishment of events that rotate and move from place to place in support of the different professions. An example might be a logging contest at different lumber camps, cooking competitions in the Shire or Bree, scholarly activities, metal working, and so on. Something available to engage in regularly that rewards unique recipes, items, titles, and most importantly crafting advancement for engaging with the events.

I love the idea of crafting events, especially if they have unique rewards. I would engage with all of these (assuming the grind isn't too prohibitive).

Perhaps to encourage more of that social aspect you mentioned, there could be combined crafting events too, where you need a few items from a few different crafts (which you can either use alts for or work with other players).

In Closing:

This is the first time we have spoken about crafting in a while. Now, we want to hear from you!

Some other ideas for crafting:

Archeology as a profession (where you dig up various sites throughout the world, finding old pottery and relics of the past -- which you can then send to your other professions to craft into display pieces for your home). I'm sure Saruman would've hired many would-be archeologists to go digging for rings

Toymaker as a profession. I'd really love to craft lots of different toys for my house, and perhaps even new variations of the hobby-horse.

Crafted warsteed cosmetics.

Crafted birdhouses, birdbaths, etc., where we combine a cosmetic pet (bird) and other object (cage, pond, etc.).

Another Hytbold-like experience, but perhaps level-agnostic (so it can be relevant throughout the game), where you engage with your crafting professions to repair/build/enhance a town (or your own housing plot). You could add new aspects and upgrades over time that players can work towards. This could be done as part of a returning event too, with new rewards.

-Bel

[Belnavar]

A further idea regarding the guild decay:

Instead of removing our hard-earned progression, just give us more progress to earn throughout an expansion cycle. So, instead of us grinding all the guild stuff on day 1, you could unlock it gradually every month, with new rewards and bonuses for every "pip" along the track you reach. For example, some of them could award an extra 1% crafting crit chance for the current tier of crafting. We'd have to earn this bonus again for the next tier, but it's a new unlock then as opposed to having our previous progress wiped (i.e. we'd still maintain the bonus on any tiers we unlocked it on).

Players want to engage if you give us something to engage with. Removing our progress isn't the least bit engaging. It's frustrating.

-Bel

[Elmagor]

Some other ideas for crafting:

Instance with different bosses killed via crafting. Like craft food and give it to orc, or craft catapult and kill other orc

Emotes created by crafting. Like banners, food eating, book using. Simular to crafted cosmetic pets from Elderslade

Upgrade crafting tools with new functions related to your professions and them to different tiers up to level cap

Add new titles or new features to crafted gear related to where you craft them. Like you have different sets of swords, and you can craft "sword of elves" only in elf related location or elf related homesteads, or "sword of hobbits" only crafted in The Shire or around it.

[Ketriana]

Removed the mention of guilds decaying. Simply causing too much initial consternation and is going to derail good conversation.

I'd argue that there was also some good conversation about that topic as well, but I understand if you don't want it to overshadow everything else up for discussion. I do hope removing the reference to guild rep decaying means that you have understood our concerns and have reconsidered that change.

One idea that we have around enhancing the crafting system is the establishment of events that rotate and move from place to place in support of the different professions. An example might be a logging contest at different lumber camps, cooking competitions in the Shire or Bree, scholarly activities, metal working, and so on. Something available to engage in regularly that rewards unique recipes, items, titles, and most importantly crafting advancement for engaging with the events.

I love festivals in LOTRO and I really like the idea of crafting events. I've also enjoyed server events in other games where players have to work to gather/donate materials to unlock a small story update. Just an example off the top of my head, a crafting event in LOTRO could be something like crafters across each server helping a refugee encampment by cooking them food, sewing blankets for them, repairing buildings, or donating raw materials (for gathering professions to participate) to gain their trust so that they will tell us their story about how they were driven from their homeland. We already have quests that are somewhat similar to this (such as in Dale) but it would be nice if crafting could be used in that way as well. I like when crafting feels relevant to the story part of the game in some way. For example, a small story update could be unlocked after a set period of time (so that it was balanced between high/low population servers), and people could earn rewards based off of how much they contributed (maybe earning tokens to barter like in festivals, or just earning titles etc through deeds).

Another idea would be using crafting to help a town (Winterhome?) prepare for a big event/party by cooking food, sewing costumes, building theatre sets/making props in preparation for a play, etc. Then after a period of time we unlock an instance to watch the play/attend the party (this should be viewable by everyone so that non-crafters aren't punished). There would probably need to be a resource instance that could be used for gathering so that people didn't get too competitive with nodes. Anyways, just an idea. Not sure how feasible it would be, but something like that could encourage participation in crafting and make it feel relevant to the story/lore of the game. I'm sure something could be designed as a repeating/seasonal event rather than a one time thing as well.

Keep three, potentially get a fourth.

Just to clarify, does this mean that players who already have 3 professions are stuck with those but will have the option to add a 4th profession, while players with no crafting professions can choose any 3 they want? I have some characters that have not levelled their 3rd profession at all and I was hoping I could drop that one and pick up another instead.

Crafting and Housing:

We are looking at options to enhance how crafting influences and is influenced by the housing system. Details on this are still in the formative state but we have some ideas such as new hooked items or NPCs that function as gatherers for materials that you would need to visit and obtain the items that they are collecting for you. We expect that this will need a hefty side of control to ensure that it does not become abused.

Further, we want to make new recipes that allow crafters to make objects for home and hearth.

I really like the idea of crafting being more relevant for the housing system. I'll be interested in hearing more about this.

[Belnavar]

On the contrary, there needs to be something added to Valar packages to allow Valared characters to catch up with both crafting proficiency and Craft Guild reputation in the same manner Valared characters receive substantial Virtue Experience and don’t have to spend weeks to months grinding deeds to get their Virtues to something level-appropriate. There should also be a way for characters that reached a high level but who neglected their crafting some other way to catch up, perhaps by adding a level-based multiplier to the store-bought Crafting Guild Token of Esteem and adding a similar item for crafting expertise experience.

+1 for a catch-up mechanic for guilds, through Valars and/or other means.

-Bel

[Belnavar]

One other thing:

Give us something to actually use our Sunstone Shards! In Minas Morgul cycle, we had huge incentives to use our Ithilharn Shards, from essences to consumables to armour to pets. Roll forward to Gundabad and you gave us tonnes of Sunstone Shards from rare chests and almost nothing to actually make with them. Any time I get a rare shard box, I don't even open it, as I've no reason to add to a growing pile of useless rare crafting ingredients. This is such a wasted opportunity. Copy the Minas Morgul approach, as that was the right way to do things there (though keep the shards in rare chests from Gundabad, as that felt very rewarding and gave me greater incentive to do deeds).

-Bel

[Xaviere]

The thread's moving so fast (in itself encouraging!) that I'm not sure who to reply to. But I see a lot of great ideas akin to crafting "seasons" within each tier, that keep us engaged without eroding our past progress. I'm not sure about a crit chance buff (honest question, do people not have enough of the 100% crit chance items from tasks and festivals?), but if you were to offer special Consumables and/or Cosmetic options as a reward, I'd find that exciting. Special dyes, unique appearances and maybe even weapon auras. Or *gasp* craftable Defence Tomes

Several threads also poke the sleeping "hobby" bear--will we ever get another? any changes in store for fishing? Maybe our lone hobby, and ideas for others (there have been several, I'm firmly on Team Gardening), could breathe new life into our crafting system as well. More professions certainly aren't needed, maybe Fishing grouped under the Forester heading? Gardening under Farming? Archaeology under Scholar, etc. Like each Profession has a hobby-esque just-for-fun-but-also-some-useful-crafting-outputs facet to it.

[Belnavar]

In an ideal world, you would only get recipe drops that are bound to a character if that recipe were relevant to that character.

It's better to just make recipes unbound. With U35 we have new food recipes, but if I didn't run my Cook through, I'd never get them then (according to that ideal world scenario -- I'm aware this isn't actually the case for U35). Instead, I should be able to earn them on alts and ship them over to the relevant crafter, or have someone else send them to me, or be able to buy them on the AH. Let it be a free market for them, like real-world "crafting". I get that it can a problem sometimes getting loot you can't use, but given how many people have alt crafters, binding recipes to character really isn't the way forward here. Picker boxes with multiple recipe choices is also a way forward, allowing you to potentially find the recipe most suited to your class.

-Bel

[Malachi108]

1. As mentioned several times above, basic Recipes need to be de-coupled from Reputation across all existing (and future) Tiers. As it stands, not only do you need to finish the whole Region on each crafting alt, but frequently need to grind dailies for more tokens just to start crafting items which are below the gear you just got from that Region's quests. This also doesn't mesh at all with the new "{Coins} for Motes/Embers" weekly quests which make you feel punished for spending those coins on pointless recipes. It's totally okay to keep High End Single-Use (Purple/Teal) Recipes as is, but not the Common ones (Green/Purple) and especially not the Cosumables. Either make those recipes auto-bestowed or give them to "Expert {Profession}" vendors which didn't have anything new in ages.

2. On the recipe front, having both end of a tier range being covered would be very nice. For instance, for the upcoming expansion that would raise level cap to 150 (I presume), we need to be able to craft some level 141 gear right away. It can be worse than quest gear and should be worse than instance/raid gear from Gundabad/BtS era. The real purpose of that is that in the future characters would hit 141 while still deep in Gundabad, so having crafting options for upgrades would come in very handy when none of Gundabad/BtS instances are run anymore. Having that extend backwards across current tiers would be welcome too - when I craft gear for my alts, options quickly start to drop around Lothlorien/Mirkwood at level 60 (where Reputation is needed not just to craft, but to wear items) and further on, where the only Recipes of old level caps are Rep-gated Single Use.

3. If the top-tier (or near) crafted items require a random drop from a raid or a Tier 3 instance, then those items might as well drop there directly. To keep Endgame/Guild crafting relevant, there needs to be a way to craft Teal quality gear that is at most a couple item levels below what the "Adventurer Quartermaster" lockboxes offer. Have those require Shards, Single-Use barter recipes and Crafting Guild patters as you like, but there have to exist way to outfit a character for Tier 2 raids purely through crafing, even if that takes months and heaps of materials. These Recipes also need to be available at Crafting Guilds, bypassing any Reputation or Single-Use restriction.

4. No gear below Teal should require Shards either - it's what made the last few tiers especially pointless. In my opinion, an ideal crafting tier should look like this:

• First new level post-cap raise: Full set of green quaility equipment (including off-hands, cloaks, Minstrel Instuments, Pocket items etc.) can be crafted right away, with no recipes gated in any way and no special ingredients required. Same goes for all crafting consumanbles (curiosities such as Dyes aside). Ingredient Packs can be used.
• Middle of the new level range (basically, any level ending with 0 or 5 that wasn't a level cap): Same as above for equipment, but double the ingredients required. Ingredient Packs can be used.
• New level cap: Same as above, but double ingredients required again. Green items will be slightly below 3-man instance drops on Tier 1, Critical result will produce purple-quality items equivalent to 3-man T1 drops but below 6-man or raid T1 drops. Ingredient Packs can still be used.
• Endgame: Recipes available from Reputation OR Instance Barter as Single-Use for Purple gear equivalent to T1 6-man, with critical option as Teal equivalent of T2 instance or T1 raid. Crafting Guild offers the same auto-crit recipe with 1 week cooldown. Additional requirements are Shards and Guild Patterns. As in good old Dunland/Rohan days: one week with maxed Crafting Guild = one guaranteed piece of Teal equipment that's not totally worthless.
• Special Extra: Tailor/Metalsmith/Jeweler/Woodworker/Weaponsmith have one recipe each for Teal/Gold armor, jewelry piece or off-hand/shield that requries either tons of Shards (Minas Morgul did it well) or one item that is found as rare drop in Tier 2+ raids. The resulting item is comparable to T3 instance or T2 raid drop, but each character can have three at max.

5. With the LI revamp we lost not just crafted LIs, but the Crafted Relics also. How about you let us craft Green/Purple Traceries, either directly or through Essence-like boxes? Current single-use Recipes from Reward Track are a nice thing to have, but especially on leveling alts it would be nice to outfit LIs without relying on random drops or spending Ancient Script that my main needs in Endgame. You can of course make Crafted Traceries NOT disenchantable to prevent abuse/loops/farming and also spread non-Class Traceries across different crafts as with the current Reward Track recipes. It is okay if they require special ingridients too - we end up with stacks of old shards each time a tier stops being endgame-relevant.

6. Cosmetics are a big thing! Many regions have unique amor/weapon appearances that only show up as one-time quest rewards and aren't on any barter vendors (Dunland, East Rohan, West Gondor come to mind). If you sold that - you're out of luck. Having existing appearances repurposed for either green crafted gear or outright cosmetics would be a good way to keep them relevant and obtainable on-demand.

7. Cook is consistently the worst to level because each new tier still requires ingredients from previous ones. I understand that names of the food lean towards that, but having just farmed ~2000 "Gundabad Crops" to level up Farmer, it makes zero sense to then go back and farm some Tier 2 or 6 crops just so my Cook can make some basic consumables. You can do a pass where you swap some food names around so that most basic foods only require same-tier farming produce. For example, one Tier is "Onion" tier so that all Trail/Cooked foods are "Beef with Onions", "Soup with Onions", "Omelet with Onions", while others Tiers are "Mushroom", "Carrot", "Cabbage", "Potato" (boil them! mash them!) and so on. So the Farmer can just make stacks of ingredient from one Tier, knowing that's all the Cook of that tier needs.

8. Back in the days you've added new Class Comsumables (Minstrel Sheet Music, Champions Portion of Fervor etc.) to different professions to balance the reliance on Scholar/Cook/Jeweler. However, most of those consumables turned out to be pretty useless in raids and landscape alike. I understand that buffing them too much would offset balance elsewhere, but to make different crafting professions revelant you can either lower their effects but have them last 10+ minutes or increase their effects significantly (to the level of "Oh ***p!) skill while also likewise extending their cooldowns to 30 minutes or so.

9. Finally, to reflect the coming of a new level cap, the cost of single-use recipes from the previous tier should be lowered and Ingredient Packs allowed to take places of shards (but not the special raid items). Previous Tier Essences should be craftable with Ingredient Packs instead of Solvents as well: even if they're Tier 4 or raid equivalent, that's only relevant for those who stick at old level caps on purpose.

[SSG_Orion]

But will we be able to replace existing professions at all? If the intent is for professions to be freely selectable going forward, then I can't help but find it a little unfair if existing characters are locked out of this choice; it would feel like a punishment for being early. I really don't want to end up feeling like my character's crafting ability is "ruined" (= having professions taking up space that I would rather spend on other professions) because of a choice I made years ago, that I have to reroll to get the exact professions that I want.

You would keep what you have levelled up, already. You could remove a profession, and train a new one - there would likely not be a direct transfer of your previously leveled profession to the newly trained profession.

[Marchewka]

First of all, I want to say thank you for looking at crafting. Crafting is what originally pulled me into the game. I loved the capacity I had to feed quality gear to all of my army of alts for leveling and at end game. I have always had work schedules that are HIGHLY unsuitable to regular raiding/static progression groups to getting instance gear drops so it has been a highlight of my time with the game since closed beta for Shadows of Angmar to craft things that have MY name on them. I've taken 2 lengthier breaks from game in 16 years and it has been the constant tether to bringing me back and keeping my alts relevant once I was no longer able to maintain 5+ characters at level cap.

There are a couple things that I have had concerns with over time and more recently, though:

1. I do agree that there should be some rewards for characters reaching level cap and reputation thresholds with particular factions. Though, I find that by the time I grind out enough faction currency (even for my main) to barter for recipes (not to mention to feed to alts), that the results of the recipes (even critical success items, which, let's face it, if it's not a crit, it's a fail/vendor trash) are already out-classed by even 3-man instance gear rewards. You've addressed this being rebalanced, so I'm looking forward to this, but I would like to see something like using the Flame of Ancalamir to disenchant them once they are replaced with instance rewards to perhaps refund the rare ingredient for reuse and not just the regular materials, or maybe making the crafted durable items (as opposed to consumables) being Bind on Account instead of Equip, so I could feed them to alts I might level in the future.

2. I also like the integration of cookable fish from Fishing into Cooking recipes. It feels like a good reward for having invested the time into that Hobby (still the only one after 15 years? really?), but currently it is required?! to fish in order to Cook Meals for level cap (or buy them off other people who do the work for you; shoutout to Wato's Fish Emporium of Gladden, and his standing order to buy cookable fish CoD :-| ). It seemed like a great opportunity to marry the feature of critical success food from say the Anorien tier (as opposed to just granting greater quantities of the same results at higher tiers) such as using the fish as the Optional Ingredient, particularly fish that could only be obtained by fishing in the newest regions, while still allowing Meals to be crafted from pure Farming resources converted into Cooking ingredients. Even dramatically more powerful versions for utilizing the fish, but still providing basic functionality without them (I try to have all my consumables running when joining group instances: Hope Tokens, Battle Scrolls, Meals, Trail Food, Snacks, with class-specific consumables on Quickslots), and I feel like I'm not being the best group-mate without them, while feeling like I'm "cheating" on myself by purchasing consumables from the Auction House instead of making my own goods.

3. In light of your indication that 4th Professions may be added, this might end up being superfluous, as I could conceivably have all Gathering possible from a single character, but as I do enjoy creating and playing characters of all race, class, and sex combinations and that crafting is so important to my play experience, I find that crafting experience leveling is highly mismatched in relation to character leveling speed. Even without my endless supply of Enhanced XP blue bar, and Destiny Point perks and Tomes of Extraordinary Experience, I will ALWAYS out-level a crafting tier's potential crafted items prior to reaching mastery within that tier unless I go farming for the resources before I even start questing in a region, or feed them to that character from an over-leveled alt. The Crafting Experience recipes available and their required ingredient that I can barter for from the Skirmish Camp's Crafting NPC with Marks is a great idea in principle, but the Cooldown on the recipe's completion is just far too long. I think that spending Mithril to reset the timer is too steep a price, but could be an option, though I think the better balance would be to be able to spend Medallions or Gold/Silver/Copper coins to buy a reset on them. In particular I have a couple characters that I have used Valar upgrades on to level them and the idea that they have to go back to a series of low-level areas for weeks either farming nodes (alienating/stealing from new players) or waiting for cooldowns so that maybe in a couple years I might get up to Anorien(?) tier and then still have to go back and level the crafting from there (since the experience doesn't go through cap crafting tier)....it's not the integrated play experience I think everyone is looking for. But hey, who knows, maybe I'll get to practice the rez deed on my minstrel in the newbie areas a bit more than inside the current level cap hub while I'm there tagging their nodes they were fighting on-level mobs to get to in the first place. :wink:

[Ketriana]

I just had another thought about crafting events. Perhaps some daily crafting quests could be added to existing festivals as an additional way to earn tokens? Create bundles of firewood for winterhome, or sew blankets for the homeless each day to earn some Yule tokens, sew costumes and bake goodies for Harvestmath, etc. There is crafting involvement at Midsummer so there is some precedent for adding it to other festivals as well, which might help make crafting more attractive to people who don't like the quests at a particular festival but still want to gather some tokens for rewards.

[Astralman]

We have some plans for LOTRO's crafting system, and we want to update you on where we are headed, so that you can share in our thought process and direction.

You've worked so hard over the past years to make crafting irrelevant, and turn this into a raid/dungeon fest with "the uber gear" in a roll after the last DDO/WOW boss in the "raid". The only way to make crafting relevant again is to allow the crafting of comparable gear. That, of course, would negate all the "design" effort someone has been ... deluding themselves over. SO...hey, good luck with your crafting facelift. I hope the new eyecandy fools everyone.

Since I can rely on you to not do a thing that's significant with crafting, could you at least do something about the functionality of the rather idiotic crafting panel?

Thanks ever so much.

Oh, and, there's a rumor that crafting points will decay over time.
Whomever thought of anything like this (if true) demonstrates
what you do when you've run out of ideas.

[wispsong]

One other thing:

Give us something to actually use our Sunstone Shards! In Minas Morgul cycle, we had huge incentives to use our Ithilharn Shards, from essences to consumables to armour to pets. Roll forward to Gundabad and you gave us tonnes of Sunstone Shards from rare chests and almost nothing to actually make with them. Any time I get a rare shard box, I don't even open it, as I've no reason to add to a growing pile of useless rare crafting ingredients. This is such a wasted opportunity. Copy the Minas Morgul approach, as that was the right way to do things there (though keep the shards in rare chests from Gundabad, as that felt very rewarding and gave me greater incentive to do deeds).

-Bel

I hate the MM approach of needing shards for pets because there are just not enough drops.

[Vorgse]

]Crafting Resource Tiers:
With Update 35: Return to Carn Dûm, we are introducing minor updates to the crafting system with new recipes and added items needed to craft those new recipes. This is the start of changes that will re-align crafting tiers. While we are not going to refine all the earlier tiers, we will continue to increase resource tiers for future level updates. We will continue creating more recipes for crafting vocations over time, rather than only at level increases.

1. Some of the higher existing crafting tiers need to have their crafting experience requirements changed. For Southern Gondor and above, it takes a lot of material grinding just to complete. I assume this is because they were set with the expectation that players would be at the cap in that tier for a while.

2. Some of the lower "collection vocation" tiers need to be aligned with the "skarn" tiers. For example, combine Barrow Iron and Silver should be replaced with "Barrow Skarn" (or something), Rich Iron and Gold should be replaced with "Rich Skarn" (or something) etc.

[BRaymarK]

Crafting Guilds:

There are three omissions for crafting professions and associated guilds: Forester, Prospector, and Farmer. We want to address this. We know that the length of time
needed in order to increase standing with guilds is prohibitive. We want to address that by making enrollment in the guild a more active experience. (Already enough consternation about what was deleted from here that we will not discuss it further.)

What is the point to guild for the resource collection vocations? Already, there seems really no point to get Gold level mastery for forester and prospector. At present, it only seems valuable to fulfill Copper mastery to advance availability to the next tier. What am I missing here? Basically, getting Gold level mastery just consumes large amounts of resources one might use to level up other Forester/Prospector alts.

Also, the disparity between Forester and Prospector feels ... annoying or a symptom of not having thought out the system ahead of time. Advancing Forester is "trivial" compared to advancing "Prospector". Since Forester can advance via hides dropped from hunting landscape creatures, it is much easier to get resources to advance with. It seems that this likely drives up the price for ores and ingots because it takes a LOT more work to collect raw material.

What makes this even more unbalanced is that forester supplies two professions with two sources, but prospector feeds three professions with one source. I don't see this bizarre imbalance addressed in the introduction.

Edit: Historian was left out above, but it also seems to exhibit some imbalance in the sense that basically profession can collect scholar raw material through mob kills.

Further, we want to make new recipes that allow crafters to make objects for home and hearth.

All well and good, except that the number of hooks already means it is highly impractical to use many items one might like to have on display. The hooks and storage to available items ratio already seems to discourage decorating to some extent.

Edit: Oh, and as to the social interaction bit, would people craft more and put up for auction more if longer auction times were possible. This player probably would. It is understandable that very long "auction" sales probably are self-defeating in that people don't want to wait an eon to see if they win an auction, so perhaps longer listing times could gate on having a buy-it-now price set.