As with most of the PTR announcements, the crafting changes seem to have good intentions but questionable decisions behind them.
Instead of making some band-aid changes that don’t address the real issues in the cost/reward built in to the current crafting system, let’s just do things in a way that make sense and fairly reward effort/cost.
Every crafted item should have a base experience value and every material used to craft should have a multiplier attached to it. This would make all crafted materials have value at all stages of crafting. Base level materials like Iron Ingots, Linen, and Course Leather would all have a multiplier of 1.0 (aka no bonus) and higher tiers or rarer materials would increase from there. Right now only the item being made is taken into account, which basically only factors in the main material being used.
After that it’s just some basic fine tuning for multipliers and the total XP to max out a crafting profession and you’ve got a scale-able system that maintains value for the life of the game.
I also mentioned gathering in the title, and while less important, I think it would be cool if players could edit their maps with information (like they would a real map). Wishful thinking. A lot of people are crying about minimaps and how much they need them, but that need could easily be met if players could add notes to their maps after they’ve explored an area.
Thanks.