This more than anything. The loss of this is one of the major reasons I no longer play.
Player-made gear was never the best available, at least not until the first runic weapons came out. Indeed, technically speaking, player-made stuff is the best stuff available now, moreso than then, hence all those complaints about stuff that was allegedly made from duped crafting tools.
What was true, however, was that player-made stuff was, especially in the very early days, better than most of the stuff you could loot. Not the best, but definitely better. (A GM weapon was better, considerably, than the first 2 or 3 categories of magical weapons you could loot. I'd trust a DPed, GM katana better than a looted katana any day.)
You could be viable paying a little gold for a GM Studded leather suit and a GM katana. After the "new leathers" came out (I still call them that)
I've been thinking a lot lately about crafting in the old days versus now. I used to ardently argue against the idea that crafting was hurting now-a-days, let alone "dead," as some claim.
However, I think I've come to realize that those claims aren't so much as incorrect as coming from a different perspective from mine. I pay 5 million or so (exaggerated amount) for a good pair of leggings. And I think, "crafting is VERY FAR from hurting. I just made some guy a few million for leggings!"
But those of you who argue that crafting is hurting or dead aren't thinking that way, you're thinking of the ability to grab player-made stuff straight off, and be viable, and have a constant revenue stream as long as you're willing to keep up with your buyers.
So for example....Once I found a regular seller of GM studded armor, or later on GM "new leather" studded armor, that seller had sales for MONTHS. I'd stock up, I'd replace suits lost or beaten to death by macers, etc.
Because a player could buy stuff from a random player vendor and be very, very viable, crafters had a constant revenue stream and a constant need to keep up their stock.
And it's THAT world which no longer exists.
Maybe I'll put together a post one day, "reflections on crafting from a non-crafter," and explain why I argued for so long that crafting wasn't hurting, and how I've come to see not that I (or you all for that matter) was wrong
per se, but that I was writing from a very different set of assumptions.
Problem is, will that post be worth the time to write it when there's so many people with odd notions about me (that I couldn't possibly have played early on because I refuse to romanticize parasites for example), that I doubt the post will be read.
-Galen's player
