I once suggested Crafting be revamped to allow us to ‘add azoth’ in order to customize our gear’s attributes; well beyond what is currently allowed. - Stats, Gem Slot, Perks… customize each for a price
Now that Patterns are a thing. I would expand upon that.
Make Patterns a learned customization that can be applied during crafting. Got a really rare pattern from a raid boss? Craft weapons with that appearance and sell for gobs of money. Did an event and got a bunch of unique patterns? Corner the market!
EDIT:
As I envision it, you’d learn them just as you do now with Recipes/Schematics (salvage them). Then during crafting you’d have a new “box” (Boxes meaning like the Add Azoth option).
From there you would simply select which ever design you wanted to apply to the item.
AGS, you said you wanted this to be a ‘player driven economy’. This is how you do it. By letting crafters make items tailor-made to the buyer/potential buyers with amazing-looking skins that not every crafter will have gotten.
As I envision it, you’d learn them just as you do now with Recipes/Schematics (salvage them). Then during crafting you’d have a new “box” (Boxes meaning like the Add Azoth option).
From there you would simply select which ever design you wanted to apply to the item.
Side Note: I’ll add that bit to the original post so it doesn’t get lost.
The problem with this is that if you limit it to much, you have a problem if they go inactive or leave the game. The second problem is that if you dont, then your “gobs of money” are not a thing.
The best solution to this i have found is creating a “pic from the legendary plans”, so a player is limited to crafting 3 types of legendaries; lock it to 3 or 6 months to change it (each individuall with their own timer).
And this isn’t about crafting legendaries. This is about being able to craft items with specific appearances as often as you like after you’ve learned the pattern.
As it stands now, I’d be an utter fool to craft Winter’s Warhammer (provided I get the 10 more levels to craft it). I craft it now, the best I could hope for is probably around 560GS (I read that these event patterns top out at 585GS with top-tier materials; rip if true).
…and inevitably they’ll raise the max Gear Score (they haven’t setup the game like ESO; it’s still following the WoW trail with gearing being ‘endgame’). So what then? Even if the 585GS cap is untrue or later removed. Anyone who crafts a Winter’s Holiday item now will be scrapping it when the new max Gear Score comes out (probably part of an expansion).
((They might bring back the patterns each Winter holiday. Or they might not.))
That’s why I think you should be able to learn the pattern, and then craft the appropriate item type (ie Warhammer) with that ‘look’ as often as you like for any range of Gear Score.