On other forums they are talking about a huge nerf to crafting.The implications are that crafting because of major nerfs to TRAITS...... cannot come close to even matching a dropped item...let alone be bettter than......

I am NOT talking about the level of items.I am talking about crafters ability to apply TRAITS.TRAITS that have been nerfed from previous much higher levels resulting in an overall item that cannot even match looted drops. YES...your stats may match....but the weakness of crafters ability to apply powerful traits make the item less desiable than drops.

I have no idea if all of this is mis-information or true ? As a person who is highly interested in crafting I am very concerned.

Would someone in the know please educate me and others who may have this concern.

Thanks.

There was a forum post yesterday that linked one of the devs saying that the highest level items (not sure if this encompasses rings, necklace, armor, weapons, etc.) will be dropped not crafted.

Drops will likely have better traits than natural crafting can apply, but Lengendary items never drop, so the crafter can gain these drops with great traits & improve them to legendary, which will increase the items stats & also its trait stat.

At the same time however, natural crafting will have better item stats than dropped items (not including traits).

There hasn't been any nerf. It just means there is meaningful gameplay for everyone.

The more you put into it, the more you will get out.

Some people are concerned because, as stated above, the end-game drops apparently have better enchants/traits than crafted gear. I don't doubt this, because if crafted gear was hands-down better than anything dropped, what incentive would people have to raid aside from storyline? Along the same lines, this philosophy is true for most games, so it shouldn't come as a surprise, either.

The developers did say that anything can be upgraded to Legendary status, and that upgrade can only be done through the crafting system. While it's true anyone can do the boost, a non-crafter will need 20 boosters per item to make a legendary, whereas a level 30+ crafter will only need 8. So crafters will either make a fortune selling the booster items needed to create legendaries (they also said the boosters do not drop from chests, loot, barrels, etc; they only come from crafter-related abilities), or charge non-crafters a tremendous fortune to click the upgrade button on any BoE item. Sure, you might not be able to create the ultimate helmet in the game, but you can likely charge 10,000g (random guess based on server economy, but given gold income rates at 50+, not a horrible estimate) per Legendary booster easy at the start of the game. Multiply that by 20 for the non-crafters, and you're looking at obtaining a small fleet of horses just from selling boosters. I would bet that someone looking to upgrade a BIS and who doesn't want to buy 20 boosters would love for you to click that upgrade button for a mere 50,000g if they provide just the 8 boosters (would save them 70,000g if you did). And of course, factor in bad luck for slots during the gear-up process (maybe that end-game raider just had horrible luck with leggings, and needs a strong pair to farm Adventure Zones), and I think there will still be a small market for finished non-Legendary goods.

My take on it: crafters will still have a market at endgame. Selling Legendary boosters, selling Legendary upgrades to BOEs for those who provide boosters, selling occasional epic V10 level gear to unlucky raiders, and selling level 50 items for Extraction (powerlevelling items) will all be moneymakers. In addition, not everyone raids...there will still be a portion of the playerbase whose best-in-slot items will likely be crafted gear. Plus, there's probably going to be new set bonuses and new traits in the future (in an expansion, if not in a patch) so there's really no telling if set bonuses will remain worthless in the future. I really, honestly, don't believe crafting is "broken" at all. In fact, Provisioning, Enchanting, and Alchemy all stand to be huge moneymakers at all points in the game.

If you like crafting, do it. It's really fun in this game. If it ends up profitable, awesome. If not, hey, at least you had fun doing it (and likely you made yourself some neat gear along the way)!

--Myrron

I posted about this a little earlier today but i fell off the front page fairly quickly:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1493768-the-best-gear-in-the-game-will-be-loot-dropped-not-crafted/

Not true at all, currently in the beta many PTS testers are saying that the end game you will be using dropped gear, not crafted gear, as the dropped stuff has far far better benefits then anything a crafter can craft minus literally a couple.

Also the problem is that upgrading dropped items to legendary doesn't require you to master crafting, so people that invest all their time and skill points into crafting are getting ran over because dropped items are simply better for hte most part vs anything that you can craft so they become useless aside from "upgrading" (which you can do without mastering crafting, it just requires more tempers).

from what i gethered reading the article, The drop loots has better set item stats, everything else would be better crafted. I possibly read what i wanted to read but only way to know for sure is wait 2-3 months and find out.

Sigh.Thanks.You told me what I didn't want to hear. I appreciate your clarity.

I'm on the PTS server and have gone over the forums the past couple of days since this entire crafting is useless mess started. After reading what all the crafters have said on the PTS forums they seem to be split in their opinions. There are a few people yelling crafting is useless but there are just as many yelling how crafting gear is just as good as dropped loot.

So opinions vary at the moment...don't take what anyone is saying here as the absolute truth and just wait a few more weeks and make your own judgement because whatever the state of crafting happens to be right now...it was different a month ago...was different a week ago...and could be different again in April.

I think that regular loot should remain equal with crafted gear. Whether you loot your gear (which is random, and may be any style or type), or craft your gear (to your specifications on style and trait and type), the end result should be the same.

I personally want to see each and every item craftable. Namely for design, but also for continuity. But this doesn't mean that that any crafter should be able to make the same traits and stats as that armor you loot while raiding, without the crafter every stepping foot there. Raids, and PvP content, can easily be expanded to include crafters. Not just for upgrading, but for learning new traits and using in-zone crafting stations for unique set bonuses. We may not want to actually wear the content, but we can break it down and make other (possibly limited-run) gear that is equal to that loot, if not the same style.

The act of rewarding raiding with better-than-crafted gear is a poor design loop that will end up sinking this game. The reason I argue this is actually simple: because if looted gear is the only significant reason to do the content, then when new content is introduced, it will be necessary to add better gear in order to convince players to try the new content. This is a circular method of game development called 'power creep', whereas two years down the road gear released at launch is an insignificant and useless paperweight next to gear released with the latest expansion.

Raiding might be better suited if the rewards were more 'outside the box' of modern MMO thinking. Vanity pets, titles, unique emotes, special abilities, crafting recipe's, unique vanity gear (like cloaks and banners), etc.

Finally, the nail in the coffin to ANY gear-driven games:

Using the Random Number Generator in order to trick players to constantly repeat your content over and over in the hope that they don't get bored? And then essentially force them to either buy the gear (through real money transactions or by spending their gametime attempting to grind gold in-game) or repeatedly run the content whether they enjoy it or not, else they are under-geared and no longer acceptable in future raids or dungeons? Much less incapable of keeping up in PvP?

At what point did somebody who wasn't trying to churn customers through fluff content think this was a good idea?

You'd think developers would have learned by now. A simple work around for this would be to have the legendary crafting materials drop only in high level raiding and/or end-game content; at a very low drop rate. This would appease the non crafter and crafter alike. The raider would run a dungeon, find a rare material, give it to someone who knew what to do with it, who would turn it into a weapon for them.

I think what can be crafted should ALWAYS be as good as dropped, aside from a few truly spectacular items... reason is, if an item drops, it had to have been crafted by SOMEONE in the past. So, if you want to say that to learn some sort of 'mythical recipe' you need to be of X level and find the lost tome of Master Crafter NPC-Guy, cool, I'm all for crafters needing to find green, blue, purple, yellow recipes... we already have special crafting places in the world that do 'special' things yes?

So, You go and find a briastplate that is amazing, top end gear... but I can also make that same BP, because I found the yellow recipe for it, know the right traits, have worked on my enchanting skill, found the yellow recipe for that enchantment, farmed the right mat's, and went to the correct 'shrine/altar/forge/etc' to make the item. Yes, my way is a bit more complicated, but could potentially be done without having to arrange a raid, fight my way to X boss guy, and then only get ONE bp... if I have the mat's, I can make multiple bp's...

So, yeah, you spent 2 hours and got it, but 11 or more others didn't, and the next time it doesn't drop, or the next time... I spent a week or two, and my guild now has 6 of them, and all I need is an hour of gathering and can make another one... Different methods, pretty balanced imo. Dropped items should ALWAYS be able to be crafted, just decide HOW and what is required!

It really looks like crafting will be useful for getting gear to level up in, but the only use it will have in end game is improvements, which don't require any or much skill in crafting. You'll need some skill to save on tempers, tannins and resins, but I'm pretty sure you don't even have to be all that high level to get to the highest rank in Temper/Resin/Tannin Expertise.

Yes, but that someone might have been an Aedra or Daedric Prince, whome we could never hope to match.

In this mindset, I think the best argument against 'artifacts' is continuity. How many players can possibly run around with that unique daedric artifact?

So what is so wrong with leaving the all-powerful artifacts for the single-player games, and make the items we use in this game something that could have more than one copy in this world and simply hasn't lasted the centuries?

Which is why I said with the exception of a couple items... I understand if they want to throw in a couple items that are specifically Daedra/Aedra (not sure, personally, if they are really all so different myself) made... But, 99.999% of all items, should be able to be crafted. And honestly, if they had Daedra/Aedra items, I would like repeatable quests where I can do 'favors' for them in order to win their blessings/enchantment on an item I made (thus making even THOSE craftable)

This is assuming they were meant to be unique in the first place. I know from the beta that Volendrung is attainable in ESO by many players. Guess it isn't something that bothers me; it isn't beyond comprehension that in a world of magic, vampires and talking lizards.. there could be two weapons the same.

Or, potentially can only be one at a time... maybe you can lose it somehow as well? But to me, if they are going to make them capable of being found by more than one person, then those items go in my "I should be able to craft this somehow" list... even if it requires me doing questionable acts for a Daedric Prince.

Exactly. I'm not on the PTS but have been following this on Reddit, and have seen PTS players who have debunked this. Yet another manufactured emergency, is my conclusion. People like to get their panties in a twist because it makes them feel important

Don't believe what some one alarmist says unless you are in a position to get the whole picture. The vast majority of people on the internet think the vast majority of people on the Internet agree with them

Current state of crafting in a nutshell:

-Dropped items can have unique enchants.

-Dropped items can have slightly better/unique traits.

-Crafted items have higher base stats than dropped items assuming same level. (A crafted axe, as an example, will do more damage than a dropped one of the same quality/level)

-Crafting is the only way to get legendaries

-You dont need max crafting to make an item legendary, but you need far more tempers, which dont come cheap/easy

So in the end, both will have significant roles in the endgame which is a GREAT system. Almost every MMO makes crafting *almost* entirely irrelevant at level cap after the initial wave of players get there. Crafting gear will be better in some ways and dropped gear will be better in some ways. It's a really good system. If the crafted gear is better period, it leaves no incentive to do AZ's or endgame PvE.