I’ve clocked 160+ hours and have reached the point where i can make Phoenixweave and Runic Leather, and craft tier 5 armour/bags.
In short, I think the rewards from PvE make crafting obsolete except for tools, bags, trophies and some of the named weapons (I’m leaving out potions/food for this discussion)
The problem can be illustrated with the following example: yesterday I bought a 546gs chest piece with my desired stats, gem slot and a luck perk for 100g. In order to craft this myself I would have needed 200 armouring, a food buff and at least 1 of the tier 5 epic craftable materials to even have a decent shot at that gear score. I would then need to control for the perk, spend azoth and roll the dice on the stat. I have a 2/15 chance to get the stats that I want (since pure damage stat or damage stat plus con are more or less the same).
Assuming that crafting mats cost 15g each and the tier 5 epic mats costs 50g on a chest piece that requires 22,12,1 mats, where I have a 2/15 chance to get the stats that I want, the cost of crafting the piece that I bought for 100g works out to be approx 4200g (not counting azoth or perk cost).
The math might be a bit off and prices of course depend on the server but I think the point is clear. This isn’t just a case of PvE drops being better than crafted gear - crafting gear is more or less pointless when you can just buy the same piece at a fraction of the cost.
The math gets even worse the higher gear score goes up since you need more and more tier 5 epic mats to hit those higher numbers + gear perks + trophies to craft the piece.
Another example would be the Ill Gotten Gains earring that is farmable at lvl52 (I got one in about 30 min). It just seems to completely dwarf anything that is craftable except for in ultra end game.
The only real area where crafting has utility is bags and tools (because there is no PvE competition) but the market for those will dry up quickly once people have hit 60 and gotten their bags. Given the astronomical cost in crafting 600gs items it’s unlikely that people will fork out that kind of cash for additional weight in replacing tier 5 500gs bags.
The market for lower tier items is virtually non existent since there are no alts in this game and few new players coming in.
I get that the cat is out of the bag on this but its a shame that the entire crafting system (which is well designed in isolation imo) becomes pointless because of improper balance of another system.
I also get that there isn’t a traditional ‘crafter’s mark-up’ in the game because of how crafting naturally levels up through game play. So for the most part the money that a crafter can make is limited until late levels where most people wouldn’t be able to craft the item themselves. But then you run into the above problem of the cost of creating the item vs the price that item could sell given the competition available from PvE gear.
If the issue is not addressed I feel like the game will become very one dimensional with a too heavy emphasis on PvE (and New World’s PvE isn’t exactly generation defining).
One suggestion would be to reduce the input number of mats when using tier 5 epics. 45 Runic Leather to raise the gear score on a bag by 15 is just sadistic. It could instead by 10 or 5 or whatever when using a tier 5 epic mat. The same could apply to armour/weapons.
Another idea would be to limit the gear that’s dropped through PvE to named items so that the market isn’t flooded with cheap gear that for the most part does the job.
One way or another I think that crafting and PvE needs to be rebalanced for the longevity of the game.
Edit: clarified math