147402-broken-tradeskills-broken-subs

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Greetings,
 
Given how much of the Signature Service revolves around tradeskills, I find it hard for anyone to justify spending the $15/mo. for it, given their current state.  Let's examine this in detail:
 
1:  AH:  30 active buy/sell bids is only going to be useful for speculators.  Gear is stupidly easy to come by, to the point where anything under iLevel 70 isn't worth posting.  There is no point to crafting (and selling) anything other than leveling tradeskills to unlock endgame schematics.
 
2:   Circles:  The most common circles were plot farming circles, but the effectiveness of addons like Neighbor Notes and WYBMN Redux as well as the drop in demand and vendor price for mats has pretty much made it a pointless feature.
 
3:  Circuit Board Crafting:  See #1.
 
4:  CX:  See #1.  Given that Commodities can be sold in stacks, this perk is even less useful than that for the AH.
 
5:  Gathering:  See #1.  Nothing quite like seeing stacks of rare mats being sent back to me because no one buys them on the CX.
 
6:  Warparties:  This feature is dead, and with it an entire tier of Architect crafting.  So, no.
 
Also worth mentioning that Voucher rewards from Work Orders are not affected by Signature's Rep or Currency bonus.
 
I is disappoint, but more importantly, this impacts Carbine/NCSoft's bottom line.  Is the only useful option to buy NCoins instead?  I'm sure Carbine has the data, so i'd like them to refute my points.	
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A few things on this that I see.
 
Before F2P we all had 25 listings on the AH/CX to put up. However, many did run into that, so in reality we're only getting 5 more things to list up and if you do list a lot of things it can go quickly (decor, gear, mounts, discoveries, etc).
 
As for the issues with mats on the CX? Unless it's the FotM for what's needed or high level, it is rather pointless. Then again, WS focus is literally "50 or bust" with so much of the game (always has been), it's not surprising the lower end mats and things aren't profitable. This also ties into the vendor prices for them too. They were lowered (horribly so) because no one was listing them above vendor prices anyway...yes, vending was a good way to make gold off your farming runs before but maybe they felt there'd be more on the CX if it was more profitable...not shocking it didn't work as intended since lower level crafting was never addressed at all.
 
Warplots have always been a bit of a joke...the sheer numbers needed for them pretty much ensure they never get done or rarely. That whole area needs looked at.	
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I agree that the subscription seems to focus on benefits for crafters, which lets be honest, would be a minuscule part of the population.
 
I do see a benefit in that you get extra xp and money from the sub also but I could honestly probably easily go without those. The sub needs something else to make it more appealing to all and that's to give a flat amount of bonus Omnitbits.
 
I have the sub running (yep, mainly for the crafting benefits) and I do seem to be getting a 25% boost to crafting vouchers.	
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			Crafters are only a small portion of the population because crafting itself is pretty useless in WS outside of a few things here and there. It flat out needs redone right now, it used to be pretty fun, but it's been downhill for a long while there so no one really bothers with it outside of Raid groups and a few niche markets like boosts and decor.	
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I agree that the subscription seems to focus on benefits for crafters, which lets be honest, would be a minuscule part of the population.
 
I do see a benefit in that you get extra xp and money from the sub also but I could honestly probably easily go without those. The sub needs something else to make it more appealing to all and that's to give a flat amount of bonus Omnitbits.
 
I have the sub running (yep, mainly for the crafting benefits) and I do seem to be getting a 25% boost to crafting vouchers.
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At this point it almost seems like a total overhaul is needed because it's just not worth it. That would take some considerable time, but this is probably one of the least rewarding crafting systems out there unless you're doing Architect. There's zero benefit to anyone to level things all the way through as you'll just get better gear 10minutes later while leveling, and then from drops/vendors in Dungeons and the like. Technologist have boosts and power cores, but the latter isn't much to go by outside of helping one or two people here and there as they're needed.
 
Make this worthwhile, make the things crafters can make unique and unobtainable elsewhere, and you'll have something. Cause right now? People aren't bothering to due the bugs, high investment/weak return, and lack of usefulness have killed this area of the game.	
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On a related note, I plan on buying Service Tokens with NCoin, since there's no ingame way of attaining them, compared to Omnibits.  This is because I don't want to be at the mercy of RNGesus when rerolling rune slots.  Rerolling slots has already cost me so much plat that it's not funny.
 
Expanding the Talents that control rune slots in crafted gear would be useful, considering the expense of the alternatives.  However, this would require:
 
1:  Easier/cheaper/faster ways to earn Vouchers to enable Talent respecs at a reasonable cost for min/max crafters.
 
2:  More comprehensive control over every Rune Slot output, not just "no Life Rune Slots".
 
3:  Alternate method of attaining Service Tokens, like exchanging them for currencies other than NCoin/Omnibits.  For example, trading in Elder Gems, Glory, Vouchers or Protostar Rep tokens.
 
4:  A Singature Service perk that improves any combination of the above.
 
As Kitsune has mentioned, this would still require a massive overhaul of crafting.  The terrible UI would definitely need improvement, for sure.  But H3rBoss' assertion that a sub shouldn't have such an emphasis on crafting is also spot on.  There are plenty of ideas out there for making subs more palatable to non-crafters, but i'll unsub until they do that or make crafting worth subbing for.
			
				
	Edited November 25, 2015 by Dreaming in R'lyeh	
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All these posts, made me reconsider if I should ever continue playing Wildstar, as its current trends, the economy of this game isn't just rewarding enough for new players (look, im not a veteran, but CX always made me cringe whenever I'm trying to make gold there, see current pricing and the demand, like selling canvas was a thing before, but now it's just major garbage, seriously it's now worth only for 1 copper, yeah 1 copper, u don't misread it, thanks for the survival mats drop change CARBINE, that was a sarcasm anyway). Plus, for now crafter thinks crafting isn't worth it like what it was b4, BAAAAM that would make CX even more like a cesspool.
 
If making gold is now actually harder than it was before, why should a F2P player like me waste their time on this majorly cupcaked economy system? The only MMORPG that I can remember where crafting was ACTUALLY rewarding is only Lineage2 (that's another NCsoft game), the other WoW-ish MMORPG usually got garbage crafting system, where crafted items is ALWAYS inferior to dungeon-generated drops, wtf man, why we should even craft if that's the case?
 
Seriously, gimme one real excuse (as f2p player) to keep playing this game? Pug dungeons is always a nightmare, economy got cupcaked, and now what?
 
Okay, thx, getting back to MOBA, I know those genre is toxic, but at least I got rewarded for my time being spent there.
 
And probably, im not the only f2p newcomer of this game that thinks like this, just think of that CARBINE.	
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Crafting needs an overhaul and we need to talk directly to the people at Carbine about it.
While in-game, go to Submit a Support Ticket, then go to 'Gameplay' category and 'Suggestions' subcategory.
 
If they get enough of those, we may (possibly) get a response to this issue.	
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