Not for me. Given the insane amount of time I'll be spending on mastering my crafting skills, I want my mastery of those skills to mean something. Players SHOULD be able to make the best gear, otherwise crafting has no real meaning or longevity. Grinding end game bosses should never replace that. Ever.

To buy the gear from a crafter you will need gold.

To get gold you will need to play the game.

How many MMO's have you played where you spent a huge chunk of your time to learn & max a crafting profession, only to find that it was basically worthless? If you were lucky, you had one or 2 useable items by the end.

Eso makes that time investment worth while again & without it, its a waste of time even having crafting in the game.

Hell, in most MMO's people who had the gear did nothing but grind in Dungeons for more gear to sell to those without gear, while at the same time, alienating those that needed to do dungeons to gain gear because they were not "geared".

Eso does away with that elitist pish.

Its not all about crafting. You can still get some great drops from dungeons, but crafting will help improve them a little.

And crafting alone will not equal those drops as there are some traits that can only be found on dungeon drops.

This is the most fair & worth while system if you ask me.

I think WoW did the ideal thing with the crafting professions. Every crafting profession is useful in WoW because it gives good benefits to the crafters (different ways to increase the stats on their gear) and crafters can also make items that are useful and can be sold to other players (for example Tailors, Blacksmiths, Leatherworkers etc can make items to enhance existing gear). I think that system is the most idea.

I disagree with the notion that you need to play the game to get gold. You can just play the Auction House to make money, or even better just buy gold with cash (No MMO to date has been able to prevent that).

Basically with the current system, you can buy the best gear in the game from the Auction House (including Legendries, which CANNOT drop but must be crafted). Its the Diablo III problem all over again. I don't see how its any different.

there is no global AH

you still have to play the game to be able to use the gear. and in WoW they only added benefits to crafting because the things you can make are only beneficial until the next patch comes out. "legendary" items will also probably be super expensive to buy from other players. also, how does someone buying a weapon or armor for gold affect you?

Really? After TBC craftimg was useless for armor/weapons.

Engineering only provided one or 2 useful items such as ammo and Jeeves/mailbox, which you needed mining (not to mention other elements) to use.

In fact, you had basically one profession & the other was designed to aid that.....mining & weapons/armor, skinning & LW, mining & Jewelcrafting, Gathering & Alchemy........and for the most part, the only valuable ones in the end were alchemy & Jewelcrafting to make money. The rest was determined by PVE drops or PVP gear. Oh..and the enchancements were not great.

It really wasn't a good system & not worth while unless you had a tonne of alts which they made you pay for.

As for playing the AH...my friend did that a lot & made a fortune, but he still had to play the game.

I don't see a problem with Crafted gear being on par with dropped gear, in fact it is a plus because it creates more personal appeal in the game for certain players.

If I read correctly there is no global AH, rather it is Guild based: guildmates have access to a guild-wide, player run 'store' that they can sell their wares on, and only when that guild controls a Keep can non-guild members access this 'store'.

I can already see specialized Crafter guilds that allow people to join simply to peruse their wares, and I see nothing wrong with that.

Anything that builds player involvement will benefit player interest and community.

***** Sentimentality below this point

And frankly, I never cared for the AH system because its impersonal.

My first MMO was Asheron's Call and for the years that I played that game I never maxed out my level. It was grindy: killing Lugians/Golems/Virindi/Shadows/Drudges/Tums for hours on end in the mountains around For Teth; there was no quest/reward system.

When I first started playing I was playing on my brothers acct while I waited for my copy to come in snail mail. I had a character called Bob the Camel in a Sho town on the beach.. Hebian-to. Hebian-to the next town down the road from a starting town, and along the beach was a fort crawling with Mosswarts.

Since there was no point in leveling on my brother's account I would run Bob out to the that fort and pick up the sacks of loot that players would leave behind, once I was weighed down (AC had a weight system) I headed back to town to sell the loot to the vendors. As I did this I would see what items that other players had sold the vendor (in AC the items that a player sold to a vendor were available for purchase to any other player until server reset) and buy cool stuff to later resell directly to players.

My biggest score was a pair of Koujia (sp) sleeves that were bright green, I paid about 1.2kpy. I traded that for a Sho Master Healing robe which was worth about 10kpy, which I in turn sold for 5 motes, which were worth about 5-10k each.

The only crafting in that game was alchemy if I recall right. You could make fire/frost/acid/lightning/fire oils and put them on your arrows to make cool. Oh, and Fletching.

I was a pro trader, I even had customers inscribe torches with testimonials. There was no trading system, you simply dragged and dropped items to trade.

My fondest memories of that game were dodging Portal Storms in Arwick while spamming my wares, like the rest of the players in this player-designated trading town were doing.

*sigh* Those were the days...

110% Yumi -- 2 scints /tell Bob the Camel

Ok, let's stop right there. I appreciate where you're going with this, your post was thoughtful and sincere, but this isn't any other game; certainly not anything Blizzard related.

I think a lot of handwringing is coming from people who are trying to mold this game to fit their previous gaming experiences.

Much of ESOs crafting and trading systems feel like old school MMOs used to, before they were ruined by auction houses and end game raiding. ESO is shaping up to be more than just about a miserable grinding rush to level 50 so you can start playing the 'actual' game.

This is how I have understood how it works. To craft the best gear you need to get dropped gear first to research it. Then you need even more dropped gear to disassemble for materials that you need to temper armor or sharpen weapons with. So dropped weapons and armor will still be very important to get just not technically best in slot.

Do not compare ESO with D3. Compare it with SWG instead. That game was based on crafted gear even more, and everything worked fine.

SWG has to be the wet dream of a MMORPG crafter. But there was allot of complaining in SWG from the adventure type of players that crafter had to mush power in the game though. Because if you where not friendly with the best crafter on the server you where black listed in the crafting community and ruined as a PvPer for ever. That pissed off some people. Personally I think it was one of the best things with that game.

erm, you read too much from it.

There will be set item that is only craftable from a crafter.

There will be unique set item from drops.

Legendary will not be drops.

Drops can be improve by anyone (no restriction seen in improving items using temper)

So, the craftable gear will be better than drop because you need to upgrade the drop to legendary.

Mostly they are the same except for the set bonus which may or may not be better for people. Drop also contain unique set and unswappable enchantment which may or may not be better.

Mastering crafting skills doesn't require much time. What crafter wanna-bes do need are materials.

Large guilds will win at crafting because guild members will be 'encouraged' to 'donate' all their materials to the chosen guild crafters.

Also, some materials will only be available to large guilds because access to certain materials will be in locations that only large groups will be able to access.

Another thing to consider is that It's doubtful that all recipe drops including those for the best legendaries will be world drops. Those recipes will be tucked away in instances where most players won't even have the chance to get them. In other words, most players won't even get to roll the dice.

Finally, no idea how the op connects crafting in Diablo III with crafting in ESO. In D3, individual players can craft almost anything and rng plays a major role. In ESO, certain portions of the crafting game will be limited to large guilds.

I think you played another game because that is not how ESO crafting works.

1st. The only profession require recipe is provisioning

2nd. Mastering a crafting profession takes time. You can craft set item without certain number of traits learn. To learn trait, you will need to research it from items which takes time.

The real money ah was what killed diablo 3, yes there will likely be 3rd party gold or crafted item sellers but that's not something that can be fixed in any mmo.

If you have a solution I would like to hear it.

This!

Well the solution of course would be for crafters to be UNABLE to make and sell the best gear in the game. That players that wanted the best gear in the game would have to play the game, kill monsters and bosses and get it. Crafters should be able to make valuable additions to gear so that they are always in high demand (the same way it is done in WoW, and it works just fine).

I think Crafting as the best source of gear trivializes Endgame PvE content, which is the bread and butter of Themepark MMOs.

-I strongly oppose the idea that someone will be able to pay cash, buy gold and then get the best gear in the game.

-Or even just play the Auction House game and make gold to get the best gear (which is what D3 was all about).

-Finally, i can see A TON of people getting Bot programs to collect mats, then sell them at the Auction House and get gold to buy the best gear. Its easy to find and use Botting programs and if you ever playing an MMO before you would always see tons of people use them.

Finally, i understand and agree that Gold Farming is not something that can be fixed in any MMO BUT THATS WHY MMOs NEED TO HAVE SYSTEMS THAT ARE NOT OPEN TO GOLD FARMING ABUSE (i.e. being able to use gold to get the best gear like you can do in ESO).

This isn't wow. Epic raids for super rare shoulder pads of pwn aren't really a part of this world. Looting rare items isn't really the the primary objective in PvE.

Trading destroyed Diablop III because that game is almost entirely focused on gear. Getting better gear is the crack that made Diablo II a success, and losing that with the auction house crippled the game.

If your main online experience comes from games like Diablo and WoW, which use gear as loot drops one of their major hooks, I can understand why it seems shocking for you to see a crafting based system. Lots of other games have been very successful with much less emphasis on loot. Part of the problem you're having is that you only consider going out and killing bosses to be "playing the game" and that's an absurdly limited point of view. Personally I have no desire to play a game where I'm required to spend hours in some dungeon for a chance to get some super boots so that I can be competitive in PvP, and then do it again (and again) because the boots didn't drop or I didn't win the roll. I'd rather spend that time PvPing. Crafter based games have the best and most active economies (EVE online has the most advanced and well done economy of any MMO ever, and is entirely player crafted) and allow a lot more time for players to do what they actually enjoy doing. Like dungeons? Go do dungeons. Like crafting? Sit around and craft. Like PvP? Go do it. You're not forced to repeat the same absurdly long dungeon over and over and over and over.

According to some PTS testers, as seen in this thread:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1493470-the-best-gear-in-the-game-will-be-loot-dropped-not-crafted/

Crafted loot is not in fact the best. The confusion is in the statement that weapon damage and armor value can be higher with crafted items. However, the best (according to the PTS testers) set bonuses are only found on dropped gear. I.e., the set bonuses crafters have to work so hard to be able to make aren't really worth the time and effort, since they are not as good as set bonuses on some dropped gear.

Seriously? Seriously? How many chests did you loot?

The value of an acquired item should match the effort needed to obtain that item. Hence, their is absolutely no logic in making loot drops better then crafted. If a person spends 100 hours mastering a craft, they should be able to craft an item that is better then what you got after a 20 minute boss fight.

agreed crafting is really hard in this game anyway. So I dont really see the problem.

a lot of misinformation here.

1 - I dont think its weird, I think that is a great system to those who are hardcoe crafter like myself.

2 - Define "playing the game". Because you know, you are playing the game even if you just login and stays at the taverna rping. "playing the game" isnt restricted to pveing and pvping.

3 - No AH on ESO my friend.

4 - No cash transition in ESO. If you earn the gold you can spend it with whateva you want, not matter if you never went to a quest and made huge bucks just crafting.

5 - See 2.

well- you can't just buy the best gear without playing the game, since the gear is leveled- right?

you have to be a certain level to use certain gear,

thus you must play the game to be able to use the best gear,

sure- you might be able to buy it whenever you want, but you still can't use it until your character has reached a certain level

-right?