Discussion about Future Crafting Updates

[Levanthalas]

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.

Seconded. This would be especially burdensome for anyone that plays multiple characters. It's one thing to have grinds that people can get done faster than you because they prioritize them, or have less IRL time restrictions etc; it's another thing entirely to say "not only can you not reach as high a tier as quickly, you can't keep it once you have it.

Losing progress feels horrible. Imagine if enhancement runes decayed over time, or even if you weren't using that LI (say my DPS set for my LM). Or if you had to "re-earn" virtues, or faction reputation. I can't imagine that ever getting proposed or accepted, and I don't see the difference between those and guilds. Don't take things away from people unless they choose to lose it. (e.g Ale Association and Inn League. That's perfect because it's a choice).

Choices are fun, progressing your journey is fun, even if you have to do it an inch at a time when you finally have a free hour to log in. Treading water is not.


"We know that the length of time needed in order to increase standing with guilds is prohibitive." Adding a grind to stay at full standing undermines any feeling of victory you would get for finishing the grind, even if it is shorter.
And if reducing grind time is the goal, I don't see how adding a grind where none exists would do that.

If you want people to actively engage in crafting, rather than just making it a one-time thing, some of the other ideas are better. Participating in limited-time crafting events or cranking out some quests to get the best stuff, that's good. It's the same for people running Thrang to get the best pocket items. Need mithril for the best jewelry? Join the Moria expedition as they uncover a new vein, that will only last so long.

On the whole, I like a lot of the points, just want to shoot down what seems like at minimum a frustrating change for no benefit.



Custom profession combos? Great! Never got much use farming or weaponsmithing on my historian, but maybe now he'll cook some bread and write a book by the fire.
Additional slot? Amazing. My armorer will love being able to tan hides on his own.
Useful crafting gear beyond just "done with quests, haven't done instances yet?" Awesome. What I want from it. To not *just* be a stepping stone I use for a couple weeks.
Decorations / housing utility? Wonderful. I have a friend who decorates every house he buys (6+?) in exquisite detail, and always wants more options. I'd love to provide them.
Crafting Events? Perfect. As I noted above, I think they are a much better solution to "repeated engagement" with a crafting profession than a forced continuous grind. Working for something shiny is good gameplay. Working to survive is well, real life.

Thanks for opening this up to discussion. I've always love LotRO's crafting, and I'm excited to see it get some new life and attention.

[Elmagor]

What is VIP.....

...what is durability maintenance....

I swear, some of you have no grasps on reality.

No grasps on reality - consider what every player in Lotro must have VIP. What if they don't want to have VIP? What if they can't have VIP?

[Joefender2001]

Hi! Thanks for the discussion.
What I am NOT seeing (ok I may have missed it), is the Cut-throat node farming that has been a problem since day 1.
Hate to mention other games but node farming is actually something GW2 does right.
No competitive node farming. Everybody can go out into the world and farm nodes.
Nothing worse than spending the time (even MORE time at level) traveling with absolutely no results simply because your timing was 1 minute slower than another person or persons farming nodes.
Or a higher level stealing your node while you're fighting a mob in the way.
There's plenty of places for competition. Acquiring crafting materials shouldn't be one of them.
Thanks again!
GL!
Sutrebor (& too many alts)

[chrisdav10]

Hi! Thanks for the discussion.
What I am NOT seeing (ok I may have missed it), is the Cut-throat node farming that has been a problem since day 1.
Hate to mention other games but node farming is actually something GW2 does right.
No competitive node farming. Everybody can go out into the world and farm nodes.
Nothing worse than spending the time (even MORE time at level) traveling with absolutely no results simply because your timing was 1 minute slower than another person or persons farming nodes.
Or a higher level stealing your node while you're fighting a mob in the way.
There's plenty of places for competition. Acquiring crafting materials shouldn't be one of them.
Thanks again!
GL!
Sutrebor (& too many alts)

FFXIV does this really well too.

[Belechael]

The only thing that is interesting for old players is the ability to pick and chose the professions we want for our old characters. If that is not an option then I really don't care about any other aspect of the crafting update, as I already have multiples of every profession and guild in multiple accounts.

I am curious about the social part of crafting that you mentioned. What are you going to do? Put crafted items from one profession in the craft chain of another, like what was going on in the very early stages of the game? Or are you just implying that a someone with just one character has to socialize with other players in order to get crafted items from them? Because, if it is the latter, then that only happens during the first character any new player creates. From the second one and up the need to socialize evaporates, as the first character, preferably an explorer in order to gather all the mats in the game, can support the newly created ones with everything they need to craft items at the right level intervals, making any need for socializing irrelevant.

If you claim, and I agree with that, that you feel the crafting system is well, then just introduce minor changes and do not advertise the whole endeavour that much, because people will get the wrong impressions.

[padawanbeck]

Professions:

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.

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

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.

In Closing:

I like the idea of being able to pick up an extra profession - it would help with the difficulty (for example) Historians have with Weaponsmithing. My Elf is doing great at Scholar and Farming, but lagging behind as a Weaponsmith because she cannot gather the ore/ingots to make the weapons, and has to rely on my alts, who are much lower level and can't yet go to the areas that have the resources my Elf needs.

Regarding Guilds, I honestly don't mind the amount of time it takes to level up Guild Reputation - it adds to the feel of characters studying/working hard at their chosen professions. In real life, learning and honing your craft is not a quick process, and the fact it takes time, dedication and practice in the game feels authentic to me. Having said that, it would be unfair on players who take a break to have Guild rep reduce if you're not active. People do take breaks, and they should keep the rep that they've worked hard to build up.

I also support the idea of Guilds for the gathering professions (Farmer, Prospector, Forester), it feels a bit like they've been left out so far. Perhaps in place of recipes, they could earn new tools/techniques as they progress their Guild rep?

Also, I like the idea of events linked to professions - it links in with what happens at some Festivals e.g. the Farmer's quest at the Summer and Fall Festivals, so would essentially be an expansion of that idea. There are already recipes available from many festivals for certain professions (e.g. flower decoration recipes for Farmers at the current Spring Festival), so events would tie into that, and provide opportunities for characters to socialise with others of their profession, which would be good for RPers.

Crafting is something I really enjoy in this game - it's very relaxing and exploring the different profession combinations with my characters is interesting. I don't mind recipes being gated behind reputation - I like building rep with the various factions, and it makes sense that if you get to know people, they are more likely to trade valuable things and trade crafting secrets with you. I appreciate not everyone has the time to do that, but personally, I'm fine with that aspect as it is. I recently reached Friend status with Theodred's Riders and was able to get the Wild Pipeweed Field recipe, among other things. I'd been looking forward to achieving that and was really happy to earn it. There should be that sense of achievement.

[WeirdJedi]

I like the flexibility of recipes being offered through landscape quests. I don't mind if you reward a specific recipe from a quest instead of using regional tokens to barter for them. Obtaining recipes like in the bounty system for Barrow-downs or in Harloeg is fine. Gathering items in Ered Mithrin resource instances and completing weekly quests that can be done inside solo instances in the case of Minas Morgul are fine too. The last thing I want to see happen is for items to drop exclusively from non-solo instances or raids. I don't like seeing a higher chance of something dropping or more currency being offered if you run them at higher tiers. If they are meant to be an auxiliary approach before starting the instances, then they should be offered in such a way you can get it by yourself.

[Theozor]

I've often thought that the only time LOTRO got crafting right was in the two Rohan tiers. In both tiers, we can craft decent gear at the 5 level mark of whatever level range a tier covers, then the gear at the 10 level mark/top of the range is what requires the special ingredient (shards, etc.). The earlier tiers had too many odd/unnecessary gear levels (tier 6 was the worst, with 51/54/56/58/65), while too many of the subsequent tiers are "cap only" crafting.

Please eliminate the rep requirements for crafted gear at certain tiers. They're the reason I never craft lvl 65 or lvl 120 gear, for example.

I'm all for the "pick 3 professions" concept. The cynic in me expects the 4th profession will be store-obtained, of course, but it's not like I absolutely need a 4th.

[Forgotten_Legend]

i will second the notion of "fear" of the "need to be actively craft or your guild membership will decay" nonsense. i don't play every week anymore, it's really more a few hours every few months, but the thought of losing progress just because i don't log in for awhile whistles steam out of my ears. it's bad enough that y'all removed most of the Hunter melee skills because too many people thought that a "ranger" meant "ranged combat" and ignored that a "range" is a type of topography. it's bad enough that i am now required to replace traceries, etc on my LIs every so many levels (after spending many hundreds of thousands of store points LIs. it's bad enough that i need to grind out essences for armour because the armour is not complete and is missing stats because of empty essence slots. it's bad enough that levelling up ONE level means lower damage from physical / tactical mastery percentages because of the equations (while levelling up doesn't reward high enough mastery to make an equal percentage) But LOSING (through decay) progress just because i don't log-in is not only a slap in the face to this Lifetime Founder (who spent much more $$ in the store than a monthly subscription), but it feels like you don't even want me in this community any more.

[Laurelinarien]

We want to take a very “do no harm” style of approach to this update.

I just wanted to highlight that for all of our sakes. Hope we can agree on what that means.

Professions:
The first step is to separate vocations into individual professions.
(...)
We are also likely to allow players to expand their crafting vocations by one more slot.

Personally, not a fan.. especially when I think of our tortured inventories & storages. But not a harmful change, per se.

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.

Vague, hard to picture without seeing a concrete example. But if this tiering system will rely on recipes locked being instances' loot and RNG... Since Anvil one of the main crafters complains has been items locked behind group content. I don't see that changing with you guys.

Crafting Guilds:
decay slowly over time.

Probably the definition of harm, right here.

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.

Alright, this is more of a wait & see to me.

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 want to feel optimistic about this. I really want to.

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.

This sounds good.

[2ElfCrew]

Definite yes on crafting housing decor (even though it will inevitably give Yao more work on D&Co, lol). A lot of the classic furniture, like the Elven red chair/table/bed set, just looks dated. (Oddly, the chest has aged the best out of all of the bits meant for Falathlorn housing.)

Definite yes to splitting up the professions and having the same character be able to be e.g. armsman, metalsmith, prospector and some other thing.

Possible yes to crafting events. However, you want this to not conflict with your goal of avoiding fighting over nodes. This could be tricky, given how competitive people already get over nodes in the Treasure Hunt. It also sounds like there would need to be some sort of scaling to avoid 140s (or 150s come fall) crushing nooblets.

SWEET ERU, NO: The guild reputation decay thing. I have three kinmates suffering from long COVID to greater or lesser extents. This suggestion seems bizarrely punitive even to people who merely need to touch grass every now and again, but especially in a pandemic world, "bizarrely punitive" quickly slides down a greased slope into "actually ableist."

[SSG_Orion]

Will we be able to keep 2 of the existing professions we have already levelled up and replace the third one with a different profession?

Keep three, potentially get a fourth.

[BlackThanatos]

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.



From my point of view this is a very bad idea. I mean I was glad when i hit the max guild reputation with all my characters. Being forced to redo certain dailys - or whatever the consept would be - to keep up the reputation just consumes TOO much time, which I would not be in the mood for.
On the other hand the guild receipts should be worth it to keep up the guild reputation.

[SSG_Orion]

The crafted gear shouldn't be crafted with expensive, rare ingredients either. It doesn't have to be trivial to gather, but respect peoples' time and allow them to gear up one character in a short amount of time while focusing on gathering nodes.

We will need to strike the correct balance here.

This is an interesting change. How will it work for old tools that are catered specifically to their associated vocations ("Tools of the Yeoman", etc)? Will they be updated to include every profession like Universal Toolkits, or will it just be shrugged off and left to the player to figure out how they want to get around it?

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

I do worry that increasing this to 4 professions will lead to people just using 3 characters for crafting:
1 Main with 2 Gathering Professions, Scholar (which has unique gathering nodes that require you to be a scholar to access) and 1 other Crafting Profession
2 Alt with the 4 other Crafting Professions
3 Alt with Farming and Cook

This is entirely possible. I will say this though, this is already possible with alts and players who choose this option would likely already be doing something like this.

One way to increase players desire to craft is to give more interesting cosmetics to the crafting system (with rare resources). Allow players to craft gear that has unique or rare cosmetic appearances. Give scholars the ability to research some basic weapon auras.

One thing I've always asked for is that new tiers of recipes MUST include new versions of *ALL* relevant consumables. Every time a new tier comes out most classes get updates of their old class consumables, but sometimes a class or two gets left behind and must grind resources in old content killing grey mobs or praying for scholar nodes to spawn faster. A good example would be Beorning Wrath potions, which only existed in the level 100 recipe tier.

Giving players the ability to trade-down their highest tier resources for lower tier resources would also be a good idea. After spending months in the endgame instances getting hide/skarn/scholar drops from mobs, we tend to build a stockpile of the highest tier resources that we have no real reasonable way to get rid of other than selling. If we had the ability to craft older recipes with this latest gear (or trade it in for older, lower-tier crafting ingredients), we would be able to level new vocations without grinding grey mobs/gathering nodes in zones surrounded by grey mobs.

Good ideass.

My suggestio

n for the "catch-up" is to remove the time-gate on old reputation tiers; but change them so they can only apply reputation for their specific tier. This would serve two purposes:
1- players would be able to "catch-up" in a one-time grind without constantly waiting for timegated recipes to come off cooldown (or being forced to use MC to reset the timer or feeling obligated to use reputation accelerators).
2- players would NOT be able to stockpile old reputation items in order to instantly max out the new guild tier at the time it is released, as they would have to wait out the time-gate on the max tier reputation consumable, which would be released at the same time as new crafting/guild reputation tiers.

Theres no reason to make reputation decay. I'd prefer you respect players' time and keep it as a one time grind but add a catchup method. Adding decay would be the opposite of respecting players' time, and instead force meaningless upkeep.

This could be where this ends up.

[SSG_Orion]

The feedback I feel strongest about relates to the point above about capping a player to 4 professions. I don't think this is a good idea. I would really like to see one character being able to get all professions, even if they are locked behind mithril coins. I get the argument of maintaining the social aspects and game economy as relevant mechanics, but I would say the following:

1) There really is no social element to crafting with the system today. Players won't pick 4 professions and rely on friends and strangers for the rest, they will make crafting alts and have to deal with farming, managing inventory, and gaining rep on multiple characters they may not even enjoy playing. It's much more streamlined and a huge QoL boost to let players pay for the option to learn more professions.

Those who would choose to do this, likely already do, as I said in another post. In a couple of the kinships to which i belong, there is a very strong social element where the crafters are constantly trading back and forth with one another. On some servers this behavior is more pronounced, on others, less so.

2) As far as the game economy goes, this too is basically non-existent due to the amount of gold inflation that has happened over the years. The reality is the crafting marketplace is not accessible by the vast majority of players and is not worth accessing for those who have the gold for it given how hyper-inflated prices are.

Maybe for some, but there are still a number of players who cannot afford the inflated prices on the auction house who will benefit. Everyone has a different experience.

[SSG_Orion]

Are recipes (or other crafting components) going to be bound to account or character? Nothing is going to be more frustrating than getting a really good crafting drop on my main, an explorer, if it’s only going to be useful for a jeweler. Or having to rep barter for recipes or crafting components at level 150 when my jeweler is only a level 75, for example.

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

[Ketriana]

... LOSING (through decay) progress just because i don't log-in is not only a slap in the face to this Lifetime Founder (who spent much more $$ in the store than a monthly subscription), but it feels like you don't even want me in this community any more.

This is exactly what I was warning about. It's a really bad idea to take away progress from players who are putting RL first, regardless of whether their breaks from the game last weeks, months, or years. Crafting attracts a lot of casual players who don't play every day because it can be a really relaxing and undemanding way to spend your time in Middle-earth. Turning it into a grind where you are pressured to play every day/week or you risk losing progress will not sit well with most players who are passionate about crafting.

There are a LOT of players that return to LOTRO after many years away. I try to be as welcoming as possible and answer their questions when I see them in world chat. I have personally seen several returning players consider quitting again when they find out they are missing anniversary frames/gifts because they did not log in each year during their break (for example, their account is 12 years old but they only have gifts up to year 7). I explain that things changed and I was also affected by this change but people get really upset about it. Players HATE feeling like something they earned has been taken away from them, and that feeling is enough to drive people away from the game.

I have zero doubts that some returning players will quit again if they return and find their crafting guild rep has been reset. If they will quit again over anniversary frames that they never had (but feel like they should), they will most definitely quit because you have taken away their progress and punished them for being busy irl. It's a really bad idea that is more likely to drive people away from crafting (and quite possibly from the game as a whole) rather than encourage active participation. Please reconsider.

[Skohgar]

Some random crafting ideas

Don't know how other people feel about this but it would be nice to have more themed crating items around expansions like how tailor and jeweller could create the cloak and clasp during the Rise of Isengard expansion.
These would be on off items for each tier and require gathering materials from around the game to create e.g. from raids like the above.

The NPC farming mechanic reminds me of work orders in WOW garrisons which I wasn't really a fan of personally as they felt like a chore to check every day and devalued actually going around to gather the mats but maybe other people liked them idk.
Also I feel that housing should be an optional fun thing rather than a plot of land which you stick a bunch of NPCs to farm stuff for you.

For farming it would be nice if you added some rare seeds that had to be found in the wild like they used to be which would yield a different type of plant that could be used in better cooking recipes or in other crafting like buffing pipe weed or incense.
Also could the names of the stuff you farm be made more interesting as they used to have unique names like golden shire potato or represent real foods like onions and berries but now most of them are just expansion-herbs expansion-spice etc which doesn't affect gameplay but feels less interesting. Gem berries are an example.

If you were to go into the housing to crafting link idea it makes the most sense for farming where you could set up your house with animals like cows and bees and return to look after them and harvest them but this would require the removal of the vendor bought versions of honey and milk etc. This could be a separate housing location as not all neighbourhoods fit this aesthetic unless places like Erebor can only grow mushrooms.
Farming could also require you to water and wait for the plants to grow over a period of a day instead of them instantly growing but this doesn't add to crating and makes it more annoying but more realistic.
Meat could also drop off animals instead of being vendor bought as well.
This is a more out there idea that would probably not be that well received but definitely interesting, maybe more fit for a hobby than a crafting vocation.

You could move campfires to forester and make the most recent campfire you set be an optional landscape respawn point that lasts longer with tier and maybe work to certain levels per tier.
Restrictions are placed on flat ground beneath the player and not usable in combat, instances and moors and maybe brake after a certain number of uses.

For prospectors maybe some kind of torches that produce light and buff or have some larger ore deposits with special ore like Ancient nickel that require multiple uses of you pick and attract mobs to attack you for every use.

Should weaponsmith and woodworker have a greater number of tracery making skills since they are linked to the weapons that they go on and the same for essences with tailor metalsmith and jeweller but maybe that would make them imbalanced more then they already are.

[Curuer_Bauglir]

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

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.

[Kyetah]

My concerns about the crafting system are:

Crafting guilds take a long time to level up and once they're at max level, there's no real reason to continue working on guild rep. The old legendaries were a good reason to work on guild rep, but some of the mats needed for the guild recipes were inside raids and unavailable for solo players if they didn't want to pay auction house prices to get them, or have difficulties with getting pug groups.

Usefulness/relevance is limited. The only profession I regularly use is scholar (mainly hunter oils and bow chants) Cooking can be useful, but can also be a pain to produce. The rest of the professions really only get used if I'm levelling an alt, and crafted weapons lose almost all relevance once the alt receives their legendary weapon.

Recipes: Once a profession gets past Eorlingas level crafting, it becomes more difficult to get recipes as they become accessible from reputation vendors, with some recipes being bind on acquire meaning a character can't buy them and pass them on to an alt.

Mats: This is a minor annoyance, but still a pain. As a solo player, it can be difficult to get the mats for recipes if they only drop from mobs/bosses in a dungeon/raid. Those recipes are usually for higher level gear that isn't always needed to do landscape, but it does limit gearing options for landscape players if they can't get all the mats to make a piece of gear that would be an upgrade for them.

[Meneliel]

Please, please, please, for the love of Eru, do NOT make crafting guild rep decay over time. If I know that the grind I've already done will slowly become undone, I will never bother with crafting guilds again, and may just give up on crafting entirely. Nope, never, no way.

Please do consider adding a set of basic gear to all crafting levels--ones that do not require special "instance drop" recipes/crafting items. My crafters should be able to gear up all my characters well enough to get started on new landscape stuff, at least. It's so dang frustrating now, as a crafter who does not do instances or raids, to open up a higher level crafting tier and have little or nothing to make. Back in the earlier levels, I at least knew I could keep my characters in basic gear, and it was a good motivation to keep my crafters maxed out. Now, what's the point of bothering with it?

Thanks for at least trying to come up with some ideas. I do look forward to new housing item recipes and other housing-related stuff. As a housing enthusiast, this is something I've been hoping for. The craft-centered events sound interesting. The ability to add a profession will be nice, it's good to have the option. But the guild decay thing...ugh. Maybe there are some better ways to keep guilds interactive? Tie them into the crafting events? Have special guild-only activities available?

[Oddessia]

Understandable and something that we will need to be cautious about implementing and integrating.

Ooorrrrr, can we just NOT do this at all? Seriously, to put it blunty I find this is a terrible idea. Many of us have countless alts across many servers and doing this immediately turns this game into a "job." I dont come here to work. Stressing about all the hard work I've put in being eroded away in any form is a complete turn off. It actually makes me want to not engage with Guild crafting whatsoever. I actually cannot keep up with that many alts across servers if this is implemented. Even if I wanted to, its just too much.

If Im working out of town for a number of weeks and dont have game access, I get actively punished. For having a real life...thanks? And to think....I subscribe to this XD. Im not a masochist, I wont pay to be actively punished for having an existence outside this game. My hubby is deployed with the military for 6 months overseas, you're telling me with these changes he's going to just lose his guild progress.

The mind truly boggles.

Please dont. Just dont.

-Ods

P.S. I dont care how slow the degradation of guild rep is, I consider it a bad idea. Please don't pressure me with *must do* things in this game....I come here to RELAX.

[Justavet]

Always wondered why you didn't offer additional crafting other than the three. Always thought that was a missed opportunity and would be a good store moneymaker.

[drongo]

I'm really not a fan of this.

I have an Armourer that doesn't need Tailoring.
I have an Armsman that doesn't need Woodworker.
I have an Explorer that doesn't need to be a Tailor
I have a Historian that doesn't need to be either a Farmer or a Weaponsmith
I have a Yeoman that doesn't need to be a Tailor.
I have a Woodsman that doesn't need to be a Farmer.

I would rather have 3 crafts on each toon that make sense to me than 4 with one that just sits there with 0 development.

I have already planned the changes based on my most active characters and how I would like to have the crafts set up on each.
The extra redundancy in professions is just more data bloat, please keep to 3 but allow for the full replacement of any of the 3.

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Not a fan of the decrementing of skills either, don't make me grind the same thing on the same toon more than once, I simply won't do it.

I do however like the crafting fair ideas.

In addition, I'm a big fan of discoveries being earned by deconstructing loot found elsewhere, you could do amazing things in this space.

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Crafting is currently a chore for me, I play to do 6 and 12 man raids with old friends, I don't want to spend inordinate amounts of time in a new Skinner box.

I hope you wanted honesty.

[Neinda]

Please don't make crafting another daily chore like most things new in game these days. Crafting for many of us is something you do to help others, relax or just take a break from the daily grind of dailies, missions, delvings, whatever it is that you have us do in order to be able to play the game. If I spend the time to level my crafting and level my guild reputation I really don't want to have to start over because I skipped doing anything crafting related for a week or two and I lost status of some sort with the guild. There are too many dailies in game now and developing a system where we have to log in and do our daily crafting would probably kill the idea of crafting for many people. Crafting is one of the few things left in game that does not require someone to complete repetitive dailies. Please consider that something fun needs to be in game for the player base. Another item on the to do list when logging in makes all of this more like a job than a game. If you decide to force us to engage in crafting by making basic weapon or gear parts needed to participate in content a mandatory part of the system, people will stop engaging in the game.

I would also request that you allow us to use the crafting ingredient packs from our crates at the higher tiers. There is nothing wrong with allowing people to use the ingredient packs as a substitute for the basic ingredients and you can still require the special shards and other items with them. There is very little difference in using a stack of ore/hides vs substituting a stack of ingredient packs. Account bound items and just you being flexible enough to allow us choices.

Please make special ingredients and materials available to the general population. The special materials required at level 115 and 120 that only dropped in higher level raids made crafting irrelevant during those times unless you happened to be lucky and get the special drop.

Please don't make us start over and require people to relevel crafting and guild reputation. Please consider allowing everyone to purchase additional crafting lines and if we want "one crafter to rule them all" it is a win for everyone.

Whatever you implement, and I honestly suspect you already have a plan in place, please reconsider your ideas and remember that this is a game. Most of us play the game for fun and relaxation. Daily chores are not fun for everyone. There will be a point where daily chores overload most of the player base.

And......please implement a complete system rather than part of a system that will be fixed someday at a date to be determined.