Discussion about Future Crafting Updates

[Nonde]

1. I don't see need for guild for forester, prospector or scholar as the cost of guilding would likely exceed any benefit and to the degree it actually did it would mess with the economy. We already have improved high grade ingot, reinforced leather and boards recipes from reps for tiers 7-9 (adding these for lower tiers and rep zones would be nice) and we no longer need medium and high grade mats from t10 onward so it's hard to see what guild could offer other than more mats per process and given the time and mat cost of guilding it's likely faster to just collect more.

2. "The major quest lines and crafted gear should be used to get you prepared for the instances that come with the expansion." This is particularly welcome and returns us to the freedom to play alts and more easily construct teams we enjoyed before SSG took over - and is why players have been begging for crit purple gear ever since. Recipes should also be made comparable to the early years as well. 50 leathers or ingots and shards at all let alone 3-5 shards as well utterly defeats the purpose of this gear. What on earth were - if at all - those who designed 120 purple gear recipes thinking??? When current it cost 30,000 gold to make a set of purple jewels and armor for gear the raiders who got the raid only dropped artifcactS of the Vale didn't want and very few crafters could afford to buy.

Suggest you design how much time is realistic to create a set of entry gear then time trial your recipes to make sure they conform to your design - ie one of you go into the world and collect and process the mats required. This has been the Problem with (presumably) arbitrary recipes of 100 mats to process into 50 ingots/boards/leathers + 3 shards - per piece of purple entry gear.

3. "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. . . . will be scattered throughout the game . . ." Suspicious and not a fan given history of grossly disproportionate time v reward designs. Again, send a dev into the world to see how much time is involved in acquiring instance/scattered items and ask yourselves if supports or defeats the purpose of providing crit purple entry gear. All the evidence to date indicates it will defeat it. It could be appropriate to use these mats in teal recipes as we did at 50 with mob trophies, but not for rough and ready gearing for initial instances imo.

4. For Valar's sake start labeling items with different stats with different names - even if just superior in front or a colored boarder in the case of crits. Last I looked several years after mutiple feedbacks we still had doomfold gear with might and agility stats with same name, items with the same stats with different names, and crit and not crit items continue to share the same name. After I had posted that hunter tome was the sole item left that distinguished itself as a crit the label book was removed and all fails are now also called tomes >.<. Is no point selling items when this is the case as ppl price fails less - and 1 copper less in some cases - than crits as players - rightly - assume that items with the same name are the same and they end up paying crit prices for fails and crafters stop making crit gear to sell.

5. It is helpful imo to think of crafting as a entirely separate game style - which is supported by Bartle and others who have studied mmo player types. For some of us crafting IS the game and tangling it up with instances is not only not needed but anathema. As is forcing crafting on raiders, eg host of the west rep crafting, as many of them hate crafting as much as I hate repeating instances. It was wonderful when crafters were crafters and had a meaningful role and raiders were raiders. I will always remember us interacting in Thorin Hall when cap was 50. It was fun and collaborative back then and I never once encountered the raiders must be superior in every way epeening that exists now.

[Nonde]

At present, can you please add more essence recipes? Just when you think they can't make crafting any more useless . . . . We are in year 2 of Gundabad expansion with 1 essence recipes when we had 5 in Minas Ithil + a gold chest. The sole t14 guild recipe is for shards . . . . and less to use them in than has ever occured give the gear recipes are a major nerf in mastery compared with 130 gear and we have just 1 essence recipe.

[Kyetah]

... 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.

I like this idea, although I would pair Fishing with Cooking, as that seems like a more natural fit.

[Belnavar]

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

That's true for MM, but the sheer amount of shards we can get from the rare deed chests in Gundabad makes that an entirely different story -- except we have nothing to spend them on.

-Bel

[Tarbel]

In my opinion, removing vocations is a bad idea. The system encourages people to not only trade with others for resources they can't aquire, but explore professions that they might have otherwise ignored.

Keeping vocations and adding in a fourth, player-chosen profession to your vocation is the best compromise.

I'd just like to add, I really appreciate that this game is still getting this level of support 16 years later. Really shows how much of a labor of love this game is!

[Eirik_Ratcatcher]

I am most invested in Cooking, largely because it was not trivialized in the (now many years ago) crafting revolution. (For those who came in late: Early crafting (Tailoring, metalsmithing, perhaps jewelry as well) required bits and bobs made by the other professions. That was also in the bad old days where stacks were small, and "Processing" was not a thing.) My crafting is pretty much still at the Doomfold level, so my comments will reflect that.


1) Weaponsmithing: Legendary Items v1.0 ate weaponsmithing's lunch. There was still SOME traffic from making those same legendary items, but generally at 50+, you saw a weaponsmith once every 10 levels, and maybe got a new LI, maybe toughed it out for a while. Now? You might occasionally make an off-hand item. Metalsmiths at least have a few consumables they can make. Weaponsmithing needs some love, preferably remedial. Perhaps additional consumables for other skills? (And yeah, Scholars and Jewelers are kings of consumables already, so meh for them.)

2) Guild Tokens (repasts, et al): It would be nice if I could transfer my tokens to an alt for storage and crafting. I understand that it would be vastly unbalancing to make them "bind on account" because of reputation. But... could there be a fairly trivial skill that a) made the token Bind To Account (or even unbound, maybe?) but b) made the token no longer provide reputation? Alternately, could the token recipes be expanded to allow each type (binding/rep, less-binding/no-rep) varieties be made?

3) Cooking: While I saw, earlier in this thread, a complaint about recipes needing "ingredients from prior tiers". I don't see that as a problem. Indeed: I would like to see more recipes that use ingredients from prior tiers. There are a fair number of farmed items that have very very few recipes. This makes some farming tiers arduous ("oooh, might as well toss these, I'll never need 'em."). There are some Ingredient items that are only used in one or two recipes, sometimes only recipes available only through festivals. (blueberry filling, I'm looking at you!) I'd like to see more recipes for some of those ingredients. And... Ingredients should not be useful ONLY for Repasts/tokens. Not everybody guilds.

4) General: Raid tokens for crafting - Doomfold has two mechanics: tokens from raids for high level items, tokens behind time-rate limits for both. However, Mordor raids are mostly for deed completion or kinship entertainment purposes these days. The high level crafted tokens are as obsolete as the items are. Could we have "recipes to make raid tokens" (or some alternate mechanism) to avoid the raiding for obsolete crafted items?

4a) Exception to the above: if the item is an exceptional cosmetic item, leave the recipe hard-to-craft, to keep the rarity of the cosmetic. Thinking like the Draigoch cloak.

5) One-use-recipes: Specifically for cooking food, don't. (Example: Fangorn cooking recipes, Hobnanigans) For a permanent result, one-use recipes are fine if irritating. For consumables? Too expensive to be more than a trophy. Look into how many Hobnanigans raid food items have been made in the last year. Entirely too much time investment for the result, no matter how nifty. Maybe leave the raid-recipe items as one-use, but the "ingredient food" items used to make them are just too expensive.

6) General: between level 58 and 66, there's this gap that feels vast. Lothlorien cooking recipes help a little for that craft, but for everything else there's this big jump. Can anything be done about that gap?

7) Mining/Farming/Forestry guilds: having a bit of difficulty imagining what advantages these guilds would provide... maybe increased yield based on guild tokens? The trick would be making them so that they don't "become required" to make players happy.

8) An Anorien/Doomfold whine: admitting it up front: Between leveling up a farmer and gathering resource chests (Mordor), I've got so much excess "crops" of those tiers that I'm dumping them. Seems like a shame.

9) Crafting quests: The game economy can only use so many leather jerkins, bronze daggers, Superior Supreme Lutes. You've already got the processing mechanic. But it is boring. Perhaps you could create quests that provide roughly the same "materials in -> crafting skill out" but with at least a little story to it?

9a) There are a very few crafting recipes (Eglain, various reputations, entry level crafting in Bree, Michel Delving, Gundabad "get you through the top crafting tier" quests). I really loved those entry-level quests. Could we see more "crafting story quests"?

10) Cosmetic variants: I loved the cosmetic recipe variants of the Lossoth. Would you consider more of them?


Think I'll stop at that. I'm beginning to meander. (I know: "Beginning to?" ). Hope some of this is useful.

[Teliryth]

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.

[...]

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.

Sounds okay. Being able to choose different combinations sounds cool, and an extra one would be a bonus, wouldn't even bother me too much if it ended up being paid. What would this do to toolkits?

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.

So, for the record, I am not a fan of the forced rate of progression and moving carrot stuff we've been getting with LIs and gear item levels.
My interpretation of this is, you raise the item level on some stuff and we get some new recipes- to grind for. Very mixed feelings on that.
Positive because, perhaps crafting will not be rendered irrelevant at the first iL increase or raid release. Negative because 1-potenially (a lot)more grind, and 2- the unpleasant pressure of having to keep up to reach and keep that relevancy.

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 where you will be able to maintain your membership and access by continued activity or it will decay slowly over time.

Ok the decay thing troubles me. If I'm having a great time playing some other toon and don't "be active" on my crafting alt for a while... I may lose their guild standing??? and when I go to make something for a kinnie, now I can't, I have to spend a week or month pushing rep back up first??? Why punish me for having fun with some other part of the game, or for that matter, having a real life that may require my attention elsewhere?

But in terms of active engagement, making our crafts useful and desirable and sellable/tradeable will go a long way alone. Why bother to make something no one wants?

But while we're talking guilds...
How about how unrewarding/anti-climatic it is after you put in all that effort to max out the guild and find out how little you get for it?
The deficiency of unique crafts, the deficiency in some tiers of any crafts?
The loss of most remaining relevancy post crafted LIs?
The annoying pay barrier on guilds- that isn't announced until you hit it?
The obnoxious cooldowns that make it difficult to make a set for a kinnie before they outlevel the gear?
Traceries? The fact that, with the exception of the reward track ones, words of craft are still not craftable? and others could be too? (ok... that one's not guilds per se, but it could be)

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.

So. It has been my opinion for a while that crafters should be able to field, at a minimum, a FULL set of gear no one should be ashamed to begin raiding in. At every tier. And that a FULLY GUILDED crafter should be able to put out something you could hop into a t2 in, and perhaps 1 BIS with the appropriately annoying to get components (perhaps class items or pockets? those are handled very erratically through the tiers) If anything beyond that is earned by blood sweat and tears, fine.

Also how about the grind for components and recipes that are no longer cap? It simply takes too long to unlock many of them with how fast leveling xp goes, by the time you can get them, you're +20 levels! Useless. and then, it's a single use recipe, which if you ever use it, pray you remember where it came from! It irks me that default recipes mostly stopped being a thing and everything is locked behind rep grinds after 50. You end up going 40 levels in quest gear and have pieces 10-20 levels out of style because you can't figure out how to get recipes for anything. And it massively irks me when recipes are single use. Would 1000% prefer an equivalent grind rare component over a recipe that vanishes when i use it. I don't just make something and then promptly forget how I did it. Why should my toon? (I was pretty ticked when I saw those woc and heraldry recipies were single use AND limited time to get... only slightly mitigated by recurring reward tracks and delving barter added since)
Anyway, while I acknowledge everything is not going to be done in a day, please remember endgame is not the whole game, and as a crafter I enjoy not just making things for my toons but for others at all levels. Not all endgame busywork translates into a good leveling experience.

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'm pretty ambivalent about getting craft mats from housing npcs or items. I enjoy exploring and gathering. When I have time. I know other games have such things on a cooldown or whatever. Seems a bit trivial to me. But if you add it, fine, I guess. New craftable decos cool

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.

Intriguing teaser.

In Closing:

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

First, I love crafting in real life and I often enjoy it in games too. I had a goal at one point to be able to craft anything in the game... that has proven far more difficult and frustrating than I expected when I made it. I've have quite a few gripes with how crafting has been sidelined and frustrated in Lotro through the tiers. Meandered through some of those above. Probably forgot a few. Mostly hope for them to be on your radar as you go into reworking crafting. Cheers for giving us a chance to do the feedback thing and hope for more news and things shape up. Single use really can die in a bonfire though. My RK volunteers to light it. <.<

[faithfulgemi27]

I've been playing since 2010 and a majority of my alts are crafters for each guild in the game. If you do plan on revamping LOTRO Crafting, I feel there shouldn't be a guild for Forester, Prospector and Farmer-it's all ready included within the vocations of Woodworker, Tinker, Metalsmith, Weaponsmith, Yoeman, etc., so why overthink this? Keep it simple. The other thing I would like to address are the Legendary Weapons/Items recipes crafters had to purchased over the years-there should be some compensation. If you're able to develop a way which we can craft special traceries to insert in our current weapons and items without recipes from the Legendary Reward Track-make it Guild accessible. Make the crafting resources less grindy-when Gundabad was released each piece of crafted armor required 25-30 pieces of materials i.e., ingots, leathers, boards plus three Sunstone Shards only to make purple gear instead of teal. Considering how many updates we have since then, it's not worth the resources to craft gear, jewelry, off hand weapons or Minstrel Instruments at End Game. You guys are able to update the stats on Ember Gear Boxes, why not do the same for crafted gear? Finally, the Celebrimbor Symbols, Elder King Symbols, Legendary Fragments and Legendary Shards-we should be able to convert these into something useful. I have that stuff taking up vault space and I don't really want to vendor them away-it's like you worked to gather those items but in the end they became obsolete; has anyone considered this when the Legendary Weapons/Items were revamped?

I guess that's my two cents into this discussion.

[Neinda]

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.



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.

Please consider performance issues/lag before you set up server wide events that will be in one location. If the crafting events will be necessary to maintain crafting proficiency or obtain special items, I would be very disappointed if I lagged out and was unable to obtain whatever was needed to maintain the crafting profession at the appropriate level or obtain the appropriate materials.

[Fantomex]

Professions:

This is good but I would say counterintuitive to the stated goal of a social economy since it increases self-reliance. In which case you might want to consider other ways to incentivize cooperative crafting.


Crafting Guilds:

New guilds for Forester, Prospector, and Farmer sounds like a bad idea on its face. Lots of extra development time to what end? We already have many ways to increase yields in these gathering professions, and Prospector is really the only of the three that is a chore to level that can be more efficiently addressed with processing options for ore across lower tiers (1-9) that were only given to Weaponsmith/Metalsmith.


Crafting Relevance:

I don't like that this is the largest blurb and primarily oriented toward instances and raiding. Its relevance to group content will always be assured by various consumables, essences, and class items. Gundabad crafted gear already served the stated purpose of being better than most quest gear but was (a) too costly in resources for the gear it provided, and (b) quickly replaced by 3man/Adventurer's/Moors pieces. Add the Delving system to the mix for the next expansion and I struggle to see how it will be worth the effort for crafters to bother for anything but their own alts.

In my opinion you should look at this revamp as an opportunity to expand its presence in the game beyond instance assistance and add much needed layers to other types of gameplay, especially Legendary Items, Reputation, Cosmetics, and...


Crafting and Housing:

Music to my ears.

It would also be great if there were a way for the most diligent crafters to earn Housing Writs they can use to help purchase Premium housing. I own several and want more but can't bring myself to invest in another just to be the only person in the neighborhood.


Events:

Love this idea!

When deciding where to put these new events, please consider iconic areas of the game that would benefit from increased activity. The intro zones already get a population boost from new characters and festivals, while Rohan, Gondor, and the Dale-lands are all major locations that feel increasingly desolate as time goes on. Cyclical events with evergreen rewards would go a long way on that front and offer lower level folks a preview of later zones for better retention.

[Aeroniel]

My apologies if someone has already posted this idea (it's late and I just can't read through 4 pages of comments right now...)

To make crafting more socially interactive, give a way for crafters to fill specific orders from buyers. Right now, it's a crapshoot to make and post crafted gear on the AH - no way to know what people actually need or want. The chances of making something at the right level with the right stats for someone who may look in the AH during the 2 days you have the item posted - minuscule!

I know many folks have asked for something like this over the years, at least in world chat! I think the lack of this kind of functionality is one of the major impediments to making crafting a more useful and socially meaningful activity.

Thanks!

[Fantomex]

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

I don't hate the idea of guild decay myself since it seems realistic that your standing in a guild would diminish if you failed to pay your dues/did little to contribute to said guild. But I 100% agree with others that the loss of progress (particularly one that is gated by VIP status/store purchase) feels bad and is worsened by lack of rewards at max reputation.

There are definitely better ways to incentivize regular interaction with guilds than reputation upkeep. Daily assignments with weekly wrappers would be a good place to start.

[BRaymarK]

Idea: Guild mastery somehow translates to getting an ability or crafting an item that allows quick travel to a quality crafting area (w/ vendors, vault access, auction house).

[BRaymarK]

I don't hate the idea of guild decay myself since it seems realistic that your standing in a guild would diminish if you failed to pay your dues/did little to contribute to said guild.

Yeah, it seems that while paying a membership fee in currency might be tolerable, but paying in craft materials is intolerable.

[auximenes]

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.

If this was early in the game's life I'd be against it but at this stage I'm all-in. Being able to swap out individual professions is welcomed. I'm take it or leave it with having a 4th profession slot although certainly all but my main crafters would be taking all 4 gathering professions.

We want to establish crafted gear to be slightly ahead of quest gear. Further, we want to make new recipes that allow crafters to make objects for home and hearth. 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.

/signed

Details to be worked out, but there will be a way to ensure that the existing tools are still viable.

I suggest new tier-specific all-encompassing toolkits similar to the existing universal toolkits, BTC upon equip as usual, craftable with yellow or (crit) purple results. The kits would allow you to perform all necessary functions for the professions you have trained. Offer a barter of the old kits for the new ones.

ex:
Crafter's Apprentice Toolkit
Crafter's Journeyman Toolkit
...
Crafter's Minas Ithil Toolkit
Crafter's Gundabad Toolkit


A side-issue that I think needs some work are the user-unfriendly node tracking skills. Can we consolidate all trackings skills into one, so harvestable nodes for all of your professions would be shown on the radar at the same time? I do not enjoy having to toggle between them all the time when I'm playing a chracter who can gather more than one resource. With there only being one icon for all types of nodes that would be a little unwieldly as-is so new separate icons for each profession's nodes would alleviate that, like a 'book' for scholar, 'log' for forester, 'ore' for prospector, etc., or save some work and re-use the existing icons you have for the professions themselves (as seen at the current pick-your-vocation NPCs).

And how about a toggle for being able to select un-harvestable nodes, like the way Elves cannot even target harmless animals? I would absolutely love while I'm out gathering ore to not be able to even select a pile of branches that I can't harvest.

Decay of Crafting Guild reputation is a terrible idea

Absolutely. There should never be a loss of earned rep. Now, if there was some kind of temporary buff that could be triggered by staying active that dwindles over time if you stop being active (getting rusty), that would reward active players without taking progress away from inactive players.

[BRaymarK]

Also, regarding preposterous disproportionalities, what's up with an ingot of precious metal vs. a single gem. It is understandable that ingots are not sub-divided, but where's the sink for polished gems? Take jeweler guild symbols... two ingots to 1 gem... really? I feel certain it makes a lot more sense to up the gem count, if not changing the ingot count.

[.Onji.]

Just a few points I'm sure you are already aware of, but just want to put them there anywy

Make Anorien and higher tiers work the same way as the earlier ones, start with recipes for one set of gear. Have another set of recipes as drops (scrolls) and a third for one-shot recipes (drop/rep).
At least the two first sets should not require items that can only be gotten in instances. These should be good enough for solo-players
Reputation recipes should require rep to barter but not to learn, so you can send them to an alt or friend to craft it for you.

[oldbadgerbrock]

I very much enjoy crafting my own gear, and look forward to seeing this area of the game improved post level 90, especially in regards to new guild recipes.

[DoRonRon]

Can you untie Ironfold tear from a long forgotten raid's drop. And not just do the same again in the future with some thankless and limited out of raid option.

Plan of action now, before any release, is just another mule to store a load of Crafting Boxes (or guild rep picker boxes) from missions to have the necessary Forester, Prospecting and possibly a squeezed in Scholar node harvesting profession guild rep tokens? It being tied to Scholar now...

How about a roll back on the much diminished shard from node drop rates and an explanation of how we get to a situation where we can make the latest shard via a weekly recipe yet only the two previous ones are deemed worthy of ember crafting?

If was AC that taught me not to feed just one crafter for the sake of the guild because that guy got accused of being a gold farmer by Turbine, from all the gold he made dealing and he quit in disgust. No more free gear with the delivery of only mats for the guild's members...

[Estelher]

Could I make a plea to consider the implications for inventory space and utility at this point, which a few people have touched on. With another crafting tier coming and - hopefully - more in the future, pressure on inventory is becoming very considerable indeed. If this revamp goes the way of other games, with regard to instance etc. drops, then it wouldn't surprise me to see more crafting ingredient types adding to this problem.

Obviously crafting carry-alls are available, but this system is somewhat clunky. In an ideal world, I would like to see separate crafting resource storage (in a really ideal world a sort of passive one of the Guild Wars 2 type, but I realise that would probably be too complex a system to add to the game code at this point) in addition to current storage.

However, even without major change like that, two improvements to the present, clunky system would immediately and materially help:

First, and presumably simplest: allow us to rename carry-all bags

Second, and I guess more complex: allow us to craft directly from storage, including from carry-all bags in storage, in the same way as we can currently craft directly from carry-all bags held in inventory

[Arabani]

Most of the things look nice, except for the reputation decay system. No, just NO. As others have mentioned, I play games to relax, to enjoy the game, not to work here. If something is too grindy, too boring, too time connsuming, simply not for my taste-I just ignore it. Like I pretty much ignore missions, delvings, dailies, pvp.

The thing I would like to see is crafting quests. Good, relatively long storylines to unlock certain recipes and such.

[TobiasEstForte]

I'm also concerned by this, doesn't sound too alt friendly imo, and as pointed out above, would also affect people taking long breaks from the game.

Now that we are talking about crafting, any chance to upgrade the existing LI recipes so they don't require mats from the old system? Would be nice to finally have those cosmetics back

And put the recipes back to the vendors. We had the following contradictions:

Remove all LI recipes from vendors
But keep the recipes known for those who had them already.

Remove ancient script disenchant from symbols on the basis they should be used to make cosmetics
But remove all symbols from the reward table, remove legendary fragment acquisition so you can't make the cosmetics unless you hoarded the mats.

It's like two different developers came up with opposing solutions.

[Forgotten_Legend]

as for letting us have 4 crafting professions.... i really like the thought. i always wanted my main to be able to gather for both crafts (weaponsmith and woodworker) but the "old" system would only let her gather metal. it will be a great relief to be able to gather both metal and wood for weaponsmith and woodworker, both on the one character who crafts both.

[flamestrom]

Dear Orion, is it planned to open access to the Guild to all players, or will it still be available only to VIP-subscribers and Guild Access token buyers? Thanks.

[flamestrom]

Dear Orion, one more question, what will be the situation with special recipes for certain professions that require joining the corresponding Guild? Will we get access to them if we acquire the 4th profession? Thanks.