Feedback: Crafting leveling speed + secondary/primary item costs (bug?)

[Archived Post]

I've now maxed out my crafting at 400 on my (then) level 34 character and I have some feedback to share on the speed of leveling. Specifically that it feels too fast. It seems I always maxed out my crafting skill 2-3 levels before I could increase it (or in my current case, 6 levels before hitting 40). This is without going out of my way to get there. Essentially I just followed this pattern:

1) Collect every crafting resource items I noticed on my map, but don't go looking for them. I.e if I fly around and see a ! on the map, I go pick it up.
2) Craft items, find ones that are suitable and research until I can do it no longer (essentially use all resources to make items and then break them down until I run out).
3) Play the game, collecting more item and resources to repeat 2.

So I think the primary cause for this skillup is gathering. I got too many points from just picking stuff off the streets and wilderness. When I was around 270 SP I started putting all my science items in the bank. This was at level 28 I think. At level 29.5 or so, I was maxed out from having gathered mats during normal play.

Don't get me wrong, I like quick crafting, but it seems a bit too fast / easy if I can max it out this fast without even trying specifically to do it. Hate to call nerf but greatly reducing skill gains from gathering seems to make sense.

Also as a sidenote, is it intended that SECONDARY items are much cheaper to make but are worth more "research points"? I believe the "research point value" is directly related to the item cost and secondary items are worth a lot more resources than primary items, despite the cost of making a primary item being A LOT higher. This might be a simple switch that's wrong similar to how the secondary UNITY items cost more than the primary UNITY items in beta. It's possible this is an issue with non-crafted items too but I can't check right now.

[Archived Post]

thanks for the feedback. Yes, Tier 3 and 4 should be more work to finish off than Tiers 1 and 2, I've been holding off on some adjustments till some interrelated non-crafting issues got resolved but I'll be addressing that relatively soon now. :)

Yeah, the secondariesbeing overvalued are a bug that I'm going to fix, that will be part of the process of getting Tiers 3 and 4 to be more challenging to complete.

[Archived Post]

thanks for the feedback. Yes, Tier 3 and 4 should be more work to finish off than Tiers 1 and 2, I've been holding off on some adjustments till some interrelated non-crafting issues got resolved but I'll be addressing that relatively soon now. :)

Yeah, the secondariesbeing overvalued are a bug that I'm going to fix, that will be part of the process of getting Tiers 3 and 4 to be more challenging to complete.

Speaking of t3 and t4, a lot of the higher level non-stat enhancements currently do nothing, in fact pretty much all of them do nothing.

[Archived Post]

Speaking of t3 and t4, a lot of the higher level non-stat enhancements currently do nothing, in fact pretty much all of them do nothing.

On top of that, the tooltips for virtually all of them are wrong or misleading, and there are several duplicates in each list, some of which add the same effect, some that do not.

~I

[Archived Post]

And please give us more information about blueprints that we can buy before we buy them.

[Archived Post]

To offer a differing viewpoint:


I'm not having any issues leveling crafting, but I am finding that I'm not able to really craft useful items for my current level. I will be spending some time this weekend (when I can be online again) trying to level up crafting to max out what's allowed (currently level 17) specifically to see if it's just me.

I guess my specific question is: Are other folks who are NOT capped out on their levelling skill finding that the blueprints they can develop are not worth replacing equiv-level drops at their current level, or am I just behind the curve. I'd give my specific skill level, but I'm not at home right now. :) I guess another way to ask my question would be: When I am level 19 and have level 200 crafting, will I be able to craft level 19 blueprints?

[Archived Post]

To offer a differing viewpoint:


I'm not having any issues leveling crafting, but I am finding that I'm not able to really craft useful items for my current level. I will be spending some time this weekend (when I can be online again) trying to level up crafting to max out what's allowed (currently level 17) specifically to see if it's just me.

I guess my specific question is: Are other folks who are NOT capped out on their levelling skill finding that the blueprints they can develop are not worth replacing equiv-level drops at their current level, or am I just behind the curve. I'd give my specific skill level, but I'm not at home right now. :) I guess another way to ask my question would be: When I am level 19 and have level 200 crafting, will I be able to craft level 19 blueprints?

Tbh, I've (almost) never looked at a game hoping that I would be able to get current level useful equipment via my own crafting unless I spent farming a lot of mats. And farming a lot of mats involves killing a gazillion mobs to get items dropped.

If you do that, I can assure you'll level up on par with your "fighting" level and surpass it if you want. It takes time... and I don't see the point considering the quest rewards are good enough.

The good part starts at skill level 200+ though, with customs :)

[Archived Post]

Glad to hear these issues are being addressed. As for daywalker's comment, I do indeed feel like the amount of valuable crafted items is rather small, especially when leveling. I think I only made like 2 or 3 items that I used for a bit when leveling. Now at max level I made a few customized items that I basically fully statted to benefit my superstats. I have yet to buy the epic ones since I have no idea what I'm paying for (some stats are listed now but they appear very wrong in many/most cases).

[Archived Post]

It's a fine balance to achieve though. I too found the 200's to be a bit easy to climb through, I've been sitting on items since about 28 (but it's mostly because those levels take sooooooo much longer to complete than they used to, meaning you get many more items along the way), but the 100s were very hard toget through, since even the cheapest 101+ items would take like 16 Aethers which rapidly ate through my supply of them. There's something off about the "common" ingredient balance, as there seem to be two common ingredients in each tier, and yet most recipes ask for many more of one of them than they do the other, and they don't always drop at a 50/50 rate anyways, which often means that as I outlevel one tier, I'll be completely out of one common ingredient and yet stuffed to the gills with the other, a full stack or more. My new level 11 character, for example, hit 101 skill sitting on about 20-30 Argent Arms, but completely out of Machine Parts, because he was finding more of the former, but recipes were asking for four times as many of the latter.

[Archived Post]

As much as I might wish to do otherwise, I agreed with NeoTron's original post about this. Crafting goes fairly fast as it is and I cap out way before I hit the next 'required level' for the new tier, in some cases halfway through. (300 at level 25-26).

I also agree with Ohoni, the 'common' components seem to be the things that I am most commonly devoid of in the process of making things. However I wonder if that might not be a bit of a different issue all together...

Considering that some zones (Canada, Desert) are used by multiple tiers, in some cases I think up to 3 nodes seem to be fairly scarce and rather lacking in 'output' when one does find them. However this may also be due to fact that I have tunneling as a travel power on all my crafting characters and there is currently an issue causing us to never see node icons on the map anywhere unless we 'surface'' near it. So with regard to the quantity of nodes, YMMV. Though I'd still think the nodes are a bit stingy either way.

In all honesty though, as a personal opinion only; I'd trade a slower crafting process/less likely increases if it meant that I could get a decent bump in supplies to make things. *shrug*