Crafting ISN'T USELESS, the schematics drop in raids

[Ravenelle]

There are numerous patterns from hm flashpoints that are capable of being reverse engineered and critted to achieve an amazing item after a good deal of time and patience. There are a good number of level 50 blue patterns that are returns from various missions and in drop boxes and world drops that you can find on the galactic market and start working on getting a better version.

 

Even the level 49 crafted items when reverse engineered twice and critted for an augment slot compete with base level raid gear up to rakata. If anything people can craft very very powerful gear in this game. Much more so than any other game, even outside of raiding you can create items that have over a 100 of a base stat like willpower, strength, cunning, and aim and have several secondary stats. It takes patience and time and credits but there's not going to be any shortage of discoveries for patterns even outside of raids.

 

Those raid dropped patterns require a bop reagent so reverse engineering those is going to depend on raiding and you won't get many and you have to be very luck to discover or crit. The base stats on those items without critting or reverse engineering is comparable to what you can achieve from level 49 and 50 recipes on vendors and the market. Now hard mode flashpoints drop a reagent and patterns, and they don't require a raiding commitment. We did heroic black talon and a level 50 epic biochem implant bop pattern dropped our first run through. We didn't have a biochem but it just shows that there are very powerful items and heroic black talon is not that hard if you just spend a little time gearing up then everyone will be running hard mode flashpoints just like hard mode dungeons in wow and you can get some very nice patterns there and bop crafting reagents without raiding.

[Tarka]

There are numerous patterns from hm flashpoints that are capable of being reverse engineered and critted to achieve an amazing item after a good deal of time and patience. There are a good number of level 50 blue patterns that are returns from various missions and in drop boxes and world drops that you can find on the galactic market and start working on getting a better version.

 

I have not seen one single artifice schematic on the GTN ever, and I've not seen one drop. Right now, outside of the schematics vendors and raids, I only know of the magenta (and perhaps white crystal) schematics for artificing that exist. And they are from the world bosses.

 

So again, emphasis is placed on raiding for high end progression in a completely different gameplay activity.

 

Even the level 49 crafted items when reverse engineered twice and critted for an augment slot compete with base level raid gear up to rakata. If anything people can craft very very powerful gear in this game. Much more so than any other game, even outside of raiding you can create items that have over a 100 of a base stat like willpower, strength, cunning, and aim and have several secondary stats. It takes patience and time and credits but there's not going to be any shortage of discoveries for patterns even outside of raids.

 

Patience, and time maybe...but not really much emphasis on actual effort.

 

And patience isn't infinite.

 

The progression in the crafting system is primarily reliant on RNG (i.e. chance that you'll get a blue schematic from a green, and purple from a blue). And in some cases, that RNG does not actually work to any degree of fairness. Some of us have been re-engineering 100 or more of one single top end green or blue schematic and not actually getting the next level up in schematic quality.

 

Those raid dropped patterns require a bop reagent so reverse engineering those is going to depend on raiding and you won't get many and you have to be very luck to discover or crit. The base stats on those items without critting or reverse engineering is comparable to what you can achieve from level 49 and 50 recipes on vendors and the market. Now hard mode flashpoints drop a reagent and patterns, and they don't require a raiding commitment. We did heroic black talon and a level 50 epic biochem implant bop pattern dropped our first run through. We didn't have a biochem but it just shows that there are very powerful items and heroic black talon is not that hard if you just spend a little time gearing up then everyone will be running hard mode flashpoints just like hard mode dungeons in wow and you can get some very nice patterns there and bop crafting reagents without raiding.

 

Whilst I agree that it's good to see group based flashpoints offering a means to obtain CERTAIN schematics / materials. I don't think it's wise to place complete dependance on raiding or hard mode flashpoints for progression in crafting.

 

 

Right now, to me, what we have is:

• Fully customisable items that eliminate the need for buying new ones, thus rendering certain professions that make "complete items" (as opposed to modificiations) largely useless.
  
• Mods that are purchasable via dailies or as drops, thus circumventing the need to buy them from crafters. In some cases, these mods are BETTER than what crafters can make (e.g. the daily mission rewards).
  
• Schematics that don't seem to want to upgrade via RE. This is yet again a prime example of why basic non-weighted RNG systems do not work fairly in an MMO.
  
• Some professions not seeing ANY BoE schematic drops at all.
  
• Progression being offered solely through raiding, HM flashpoints and world bosses. If at all.
  

Edited January 15, 2012 by Tarka

[Raeln]

1. Killing deathwing isn't the same as raiding. How many people have participated in some form of raid? How many have done it more than once? Even if they didn't win, did they enjoy it enough to want to try it again? If they didn't like it, was it because it was too confusing? Too hard? They didn't get the reward they wanted? It was just easier to grind out some heroics? There are a tremendous number of variables that don't lead to the same conclusion that you did.

 

More players than not have tried raiding and decided they did not like it.

 

Do I have rock solid hard numbers for this? No. I don't need them. The mere fact that raiding requires enormously inflated gear just to entice the few raiders that run the rat maze is enough of an indicator that raiding is not popular in general.

 

I'd go as far as to say that most MMO players would be content if their MMO end-game content was multiplayer in the "Left 4 Dead" style of group size. From my history of MMO playing (which included hardcore raiding in EQ1, thank you) - the typical player that I've met has between 4 to 7 close online friends. These friends may be real life friends or they may just be in game friends, but from what I've experienced, it's rarely more than 7ish. It's not 16, it's not 25, it's not 40 and it sure isn't 72. This is another factor why raiding in general is not that popular. Many players don't want to have to juggle a relationship with so many people at once in a video game.

 

2. How many people have maxxed out a crafting profession? How many of them found it rewarding? Did they do it so that they could make things, or because of a "perk?" Even if we accept the conclusion that people in general do not like raiding, it does not follow that they therefore must like crafting more.

 

I'd be willing to assert that more people take Profiteering (3 gathering) than do outright production professions - or will after the galactic market settles down.

 

This will be especially true if the good schematics only drop from raiding.

[Raeln]

My apologies for quote splitting, but I had to address this point. It is, unfortunately, a logical fallacy.

 

Putting aside the ancient numbers, all they show is that 60% of the playerbase at that time hadn't attemped the raids. Those numbers can't gauge "appreciable interest" because there were other barriers to entry besides interest.

 

For example, raids required 40 people in Vanilla. That was considered more forgiving than Everquest raids, which had up to 72-person raids at one point. We have no idea how many of those people wanted to try them but felt overwhelmed by the requirements, or even how many of those people who didn't want to try them might be willing to try a "raid" of 8-12 people. (To that end, numbers that discuss the popularity of WoW's 10-person format would be more appropriate, but we don't have them).

 

If you are willing to accept the numbers from the myriad of raid tracking sites that tracked raiding progress during the history of WoW - you'll find that less people raided during TBC. I believe the records were set during Wrath but drastically fell again during Cataclysm.

 

During Wrath - the most friendly expansion to raiding before the LFR tool, the believed number of raiders was still drastically smaller than the general population.

 

No matter which way you slice it - no matter the game, raiding has never been a "majority" sport in MMOs. I think it'd be nice to have an official poll taken by the game developers in game (to ensure accuracy) to reflect the thoughts players have over raid content.

 

I imagine the results would not look good to the raid design team. My people thermometer says that players are more excited about new Flashpoints/Dungeons/daily hubs than they are about Operations/Raids.

Edited January 16, 2012 by Raeln

[Aricus]

If you are willing to accept the numbers from the myriad of raid tracking sites that tracked raiding progress during the history of WoW - you'll find that less people raided during TBC. I believe the records were set during Wrath but drastically fell again during Cataclysm.

 

During Wrath - the most friendly expansion to raiding before the LFR tool, the believed number of raiders was still drastically smaller than the general population.

 

No matter which way you slice it - no matter the game, raiding has never been a "majority" sport in MMOs. I think it'd be nice to have an official poll taken by the game developers in game (to ensure accuracy) to reflect the thoughts players have over raid content.

 

I imagine the results would not look good to the raid design team. My people thermometer says that players are more excited about new Flashpoints/Dungeons/daily hubs than they are about Operations/Raids.

 

Pretty much this. Raiding didn't become popular for the majority until the release of the LFR tool. But this tool has it's backfires as it makes players less dependent on a guild and their community. It's basically sign up, wait for queue then raid, log off.

 

I wish BW would had added another element to this game, other than raid or die. Crafting could of easily been part of the end game but however it isn't and that's pretty sad.

[Merced]

How does this, in any way, make up for the complete lack of tanking mods from level 30-49? It doesn't, and the fact that most if not all the mats are raid drops as well only further exacerbates the problems.

[TrevNYC]

Whilst I agree that it's good to see group based flashpoints offering a means to obtain CERTAIN schematics / materials. I don't think it's wise to place complete dependance on raiding or hard mode flashpoints for progression in crafting.

 

So again, where else do you put it? Now we're at the point where it not only is it too much to ask crafters to do something in a raid for a few schematics (if they happen to want those things), but now *flashpoints* are too arduous? How do you answer the critics who have been saying that you want to break the risk-reward model and just have stuff handed to you?

 

This game does not have an active crafting system. Maybe there's an argument that it should (I don't think so personally, but that's for another thread), but given that it doesn't, it's dangerous to give rewards and incentives for things that require no element of skill, and can even take place while people aren't even online.

[Athrian_]

So again, where else do you put it? Now we're at the point where it not only is it too much to ask crafters to do something in a raid for a few schematics (if they happen to want those things), but now *flashpoints* are too arduous? How do you answer the critics who have been saying that you want to break the risk-reward model and just have stuff handed to you?

 

This game does not have an active crafting system. Maybe there's an argument that it should (I don't think so personally, but that's for another thread), but given that it doesn't, it's dangerous to give rewards and incentives for things that require no element of skill, and can even take place while people aren't even online.

 

The problem is the assumption that the only thing that requires "skill" in a game is raiding. Think back to all the games you've played in your lifetime, were none of them challenging except when you had to group with a large amount of other people? If so, what's the minimum number of people that a task should require for it to be "challenging"? WoW raiders would laugh at the notion of "high end raids" requiring less than 25 people, clearly not challenging. Vanilla WoW and oldschool EQ raiders would laugh at the notion of less than 40 people doing raids and calling it challenging.

 

Other MMO's have accomplished having deep crafting systems without resorting to "put everything in endgame raids". It is not impossible to make solo or small-group content challenging when dealing with instanced content and optional difficulty levels. Nobody is asking for "push a button, get rich in 1 hour" crafting. Nobody is asking for "remove all high-level schematics and mats from raids" either. Crafters would actually like for a lot more rare schematics and hard-to-obtain mats, just without putting ALL of them in raids because of the warped view that "raiding is the only thing that requires skill".

[Blutelf]

Have fun reverse-engineering a dropped schematic 500 times to learn a useful prefix. Which uses a BOP HM reagent.

[Lokai]

I don't understand why people keep going on and on... if you LOOK, crafters can make stuff that's MUCH better than daily/comm gear

 

http://www.torhead.com/schematic/hfZKtyh/advanced-robust-mod-25b

Epic 25 BoE mod, raid schematic and mats are raid drops

 

http://www.torhead.com/schematic/4mMoO78

A group summon for Cybertech

 

http://www.torhead.com/schematic/bdKFd0O/advanced-skill-armoring-24

Crafted epic BoE armoring 24

 

There's schematics like this for all professions. They can be sold.

 

The problem is that Biochem simply gets their's from the vendor. That is ALL.

 

What is the problem here?

 

the problem? not everyone raids or cares to raid... and maybe just maybe we expected at least 1-2 level 50 sets to get us started in level 50 content and pvp...instead we get level 49 gear is worse then our crafted stuff... thats the problem.

[Ozymandous]

I don't understand why people keep going on and on... if you LOOK, crafters can make stuff that's MUCH better than daily/comm gear

 

http://www.torhead.com/schematic/hfZKtyh/advanced-robust-mod-25b

Epic 25 BoE mod, raid schematic and mats are raid drops

 

http://www.torhead.com/schematic/4mMoO78

A group summon for Cybertech

 

http://www.torhead.com/schematic/bdKFd0O/advanced-skill-armoring-24

Crafted epic BoE armoring 24

 

There's schematics like this for all professions. They can be sold.

 

The problem is that Biochem simply gets their's from the vendor. That is ALL.

 

What is the problem here?

 

Umm, you do know that the items on torhead aren't necessarily available in the game, right? Form raids, op's or anything else? For example, I have yet to hear or see anyone with the portable transport beacon. It was in beta at once point, but I have yet to see it IG now.

[Chromiie]

Other MMO's have accomplished having deep crafting systems without resorting to "put everything in endgame raids".

 

What I find terrible is that Bioware could have had some help with the crafting and made it similar to SWG's amazing crafting system I didn't expect it ofcourse but I did think some of the ingenuity of the SWG crafting system would find it's way into ToR.

 

I guess I'm a fool for having believed Erickson when he said this. Really this quote had me more excited for the game than anything else shown and I'm dissapointed. I really wanna see some real work done on the Crew Skills system.

 

 

 

The best stuff is always going to come from other players, and then be made by other players. There will be stuff that you can craft that is among the best stuff in the entire game. So very close to the top tier that you could get for anything.

 

http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/11/12/massively-interviews-bioware-on-swtors-crafting-and-pvp/

Edited January 17, 2012 by Chromiie

[pokota]

So again, where else do you put it? Now we're at the point where it not only is it too much to ask crafters to do something in a raid for a few schematics (if they happen to want those things), but now *flashpoints* are too arduous? How do you answer the critics who have been saying that you want to break the risk-reward model and just have stuff handed to you?

 

This game does not have an active crafting system. Maybe there's an argument that it should (I don't think so personally, but that's for another thread), but given that it doesn't, it's dangerous to give rewards and incentives for things that require no element of skill, and can even take place while people aren't even online.

 

You under-estimate greatly the requirements of crafting. People who claim it's as simple as going AFK don't seem to understand the patience, dedication, and massive amounts of credits it takes in order to generate a few Masterwork pieces.

 

I've had to level up another character with Underworld Trading just because there aren't enough rare metals on the GTN, and when there are, they are often priced at ridiculous amounts. I've spent fortunes on materials, I take forever to finish worlds because I'm always hunting down nodes, I've crafted and RE'd over 250 level 49 ear-pieces alone, just for 5 patterns, 2 of which are garbage (thanks, BioWare, for +presence).

 

AFK my ***.

 

Does the idea that someone in a raid, who hasn't put a single bit of effort into their craft beyond simply leveling it up, can get lucky on a schematic drop and walk away with the ability to create an item that trumps what I put 200k and an a week into getting, does that bother me? Yes, it does. If that turns out to be the case, then it will bother me a great deal.

[Racheakt]

What I find terrible is that Bioware could have had some help with the crafting and made it similar to SWG's amazing crafting system I didn't expect it ofcourse but I did think some of the ingenuity of the SWG crafting system would find it's way into ToR.

 

I guess I'm a fool for having believed Erickson when he said this. Really this quote had me more excited for the game than anything else shown and I'm dissapointed. I really wanna see some real work done on the Crew Skills system.

 

 

 

 

http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/11/12/massively-interviews-bioware-on-swtors-crafting-and-pvp/

 

You realize WoW backed off the very same thing?

 

Any time you have raids you must give the the epic lootz, else they leave.

 

I plyed WoW from launch to WotLK, nary did I raid the entire time. WoW offered many other things to do at max level. This game sadly may not. We will see once I have had my fill of story.

 

Edit: not anti rading, I want something worthwhile to do at max level, and super-mario -datacron is not it.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Racheakt

[TrevNYC]

More players than not have tried raiding and decided they did not like it.

 

Do I have rock solid hard numbers for this? No. I don't need them. The mere fact that raiding requires enormously inflated gear just to entice the few raiders that run the rat maze is enough of an indicator that raiding is not popular in general.

 

Even if we pretend that it makes any sense at all to quantify whether one group of something is larger than another group without knowing what the numbers of either group are, this argument still suffers from significant flaw that "raiding" isn't equivalent across all games. Even if most players hated raiding in EQ1, EQ2, WoW and so on, that still doesn't mean they feel the same way about SWTOR raiding because the requirements are different.

 

I too played EQ1. In that game I was a hardcore progression raider -- from 72-man raids to the "slimmed down" 54-person affairs. I never did any PvP. In EQ2, I did neither, focused on crafting, and got bored and stopped playing. In WoW I do raiding, and a lot of PvP (which I never did in an MMO before, note the foreshadowing). In SWTOR I have yet to do any PvP or raiding.

 

My abbreviated gaming resume isn't intended to try to impress anybody. I only list it to make the point that it wouldn't have been possible to predict what I liked in one game based entirely one what I did in other games within the same genre. For example, after EQ1 I would have been placed in the group of people who "hated" PvP, but that all changed in WoW, where I would have been put in the category of people who "loved" it. At the end of the day this game has to stand on its own merits, and people have to judge it accordingly.

 

I do think your point about raiding requiring "enormously inflated" gear just to "entice" a few people to endure it is interesting, particularly since you and others have been dismissive of the argument that it's questionable why we should care whether people who have no interest in doing any activity that actually uses that inflated gear nonetheless should have unfettered access to it. The stats (as opposed to the looks, which can be solved in myriad other ways) are geared toward people who at least would consider trying a raid, and the people who don't have much less reason to care in the first place.

 

I'd go as far as to say that most MMO players would be content if their MMO end-game content was multiplayer in the "Left 4 Dead" style of group size. From my history of MMO playing (which included hardcore raiding in EQ1, thank you) - the typical player that I've met has between 4 to 7 close online friends.

 

I hardly know where to start with this one. It's bad enough to assume that people feel the same way about the same type of activity within different MMOs, but it's even worse to assume that people's ideal group size is based on non-MMO games. In that vein, why Left 4 Dead? Why not Call of Duty or Battlefield or Gears of War or for that matter, Minecraft?

 

Plus, the number of "close online friends" players have would be relevant if you needed to do things with close friends in order to advance. It's pretty obvious how I feel about making bold pronouncements based on limited data sets, but if I were to make a guess about online activity in MMOs, I would say that the majority of time spent interacting with people involves people who are neither close nor friends. They are just online.

 

But even if we assume that you're right, the numbers you listed put people well within range of doing operations. If you have seven online friends, then you have enough for an operation in SWTOR. You only need eight. If you have four online friends, then you only need to find three idle strangers to get going. SWTOR has two raid sizes. The smaller size is 8-man.

 

If you are willing to accept the numbers from the myriad of raid tracking sites that tracked raiding progress during the history of WoW - you'll find that less people raided during TBC. I believe the records were set during Wrath but drastically fell again during Cataclysm.

 

I'm not willing to accept them, for a variety of reasons that aren't worth going into because my ultimate point is that it doesn't matter. You keep insisting that it's somehow important whether the majority of players like raiding, when this thread is about a significant minority of crafting items being available through that activity. Why wouldn't it be okay for a minority of crafting items to be available in an activity that only a minority of players enjoy, then?

 

You can't just ignore the numerous other ways for crafters to advance once they've trained everything from the crew skills vendors even if they never set foot in an operation and never intend to. You can't ignore the number of people (even if it's a minority) who find both raiding and crafting tolerable. There are different playstyles being served already, and no one is left out with the possible exception of people who only want to craft and PvP without relying on the GTN or mission drops or random world drops. Those people might be screwed.

[Athrian_]

What I find terrible is that Bioware could have had some help with the crafting and made it similar to SWG's amazing crafting system I didn't expect it ofcourse but I did think some of the ingenuity of the SWG crafting system would find it's way into ToR.

 

I guess I'm a fool for having believed Erickson when he said this. Really this quote had me more excited for the game than anything else shown and I'm dissapointed. I really wanna see some real work done on the Crew Skills system.

 

 

 

 

http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/11/12/massively-interviews-bioware-on-swtors-crafting-and-pvp/

 

Yeah, after all the pre-game hype and interviews about how much they were working on crafting and they wanted it to be a major part of the game, it's an incredible disappointment. The reverse-engineering to get new schematics and crew missions to gather some rarer materials have potential, but in the end the crafting feels just like WoW: grind it to max level and then do raids for the majority of stuff that is either useful or desirable.

[Cemellyn]

I don't understand why people keep going on and on... if you LOOK, crafters can make stuff that's MUCH better than daily/comm gear

 

http://www.torhead.com/schematic/hfZKtyh/advanced-robust-mod-25b

Epic 25 BoE mod, raid schematic and mats are raid drops

 

http://www.torhead.com/schematic/4mMoO78

A group summon for Cybertech

 

http://www.torhead.com/schematic/bdKFd0O/advanced-skill-armoring-24

Crafted epic BoE armoring 24

 

There's schematics like this for all professions. They can be sold.

 

The problem is that Biochem simply gets their's from the vendor. That is ALL.

 

What is the problem here?

 

 

It sure isn't but I believe the whole point was to have alternatives to attain better gear rather than just rely on schematics dropped from raids. This alienates a certain portion of the player base who aren't interested in Raids or the logistic/drama it brings along.

 

Crafters should be able to make something equally powerful w/o raiding but through a significantly more ardous and time consuming process to balance things out.

[TrevNYC]

You under-estimate greatly the requirements of crafting. People who claim it's as simple as going AFK don't seem to understand the patience, dedication, and massive amounts of credits it takes in order to generate a few Masterwork pieces.

 

I actually said crafting requires those things, and I also said I'm not trying to discount them. What it doesn't require is skill. When I say you can be afk I mean that literally -- the things don't get made while you are at your keyboard. It's a behind the scenes calculation that can take place while you're offline. I don't mean that you log in, press a button once and come back to an inventory filled with purples.

 

No matter how you feel about the validity of operations or pve generally, or pvp, it is undeniable that you can't rely only on patience, dedication or a massive amount of credits. You have to push buttons and move your character and react to things that are happening on screen. Your success depends on coordinating with other people, sometimes in fairly large numbers. You can't queue your companions up with eternity vault strats, log off, and then come back to see if they won.

 

In other words, I was only trying to distinguish SWTOR crafting from other games, where the actual crafting of an item is a skill-based minigame in itself (consider EQ2, for example). The developers chose this model on purpose, though, and they explained it in the various interviews and previews leading up to the game's release. Some of the ideas in this thread attempt to shoehorn the rewards system from a completely different model onto this one, without acknowledging how the one we have is very deliberately different.

[Droidist]

If high end crafting in this game = raiding I will be so out of here....

[Athrian_]

You have to push buttons and move your character and react to things that are happening on screen.

 

There is nothing that prevents an epic solo quest from having that type of difficulty. An encounter can be made that only someone playing their class very well, or strategizing, can pass. You can even have "gear check" solo encounters if you really wish. Same thing for small-group content. What are considered raids in SWTOR would be considered small-group content in other games. You've played them, I'm sure you see this.

 

What it doesn't require is skill. When I say you can be afk I mean that literally -- the things don't get made while you are at your keyboard. It's a behind the scenes calculation that can take place while you're offline.

 

When you craft something from a schematic that came from a raid, it's the same "no-skill/afk" process. And yet that is somehow seen as being 'earned', because someone had to raid to get the schematic or mats. And that is all crafters are asking for, is ways to earn high-level and rare schematics and mats from mechanics other than raiding. And yes, it can be made challenging.

[TrevNYC]

Yeah, after all the pre-game hype and interviews about how much they were working on crafting and they wanted it to be a major part of the game, it's an incredible disappointment. The reverse-engineering to get new schematics and crew missions to gather some rarer materials have potential, but in the end the crafting feels just like WoW: grind it to max level and then do raids for the majority of stuff that is either useful or desirable.

 

It is exactly as they said it was. It is a major part of the game. There are numerous ways it can be improved, but unless they promised that every crafter would have access to every schematic no matter what they did in the game, then they didn't lead anyone astray.

 

Anyway, it's time to log in and collect credits from all the non-useful and non-desirable stuff that I keep crafting and selling, because none of it is from any raids. I'll check back later. Subscribe feature FTW!

[Athrian_]

but unless they promised that every crafter would have access to every schematic no matter what they did in the game, then they didn't lead anyone astray.

 

Nobody is asking for that, please stop assuming we are and putting words in our mouth.

[moxpanda]

"Guys, why cant I get cool stuff all on my own in this MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER GAME."

 

"Why does MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER GAME expect me to group up just to do stuff?"

 

Jesus...

[Amp_]

I'm not a fan of crafting being tied into raiding. Crafting progression should be done through crafting.

[Steltor]

I only read through half of the 13 pages, so maybe this has already been put forth.. but here's a suggestion:

 

What if crafters could craft raid-quality items that have raid requirements in order to use them? So they could craft really nice stuff, but couldn't wear it themselves unless they were also raiders, for example maybe it would take a BoP raid drop to "attune" the item or something before it could be worn, which would bind the item to the attuner.

 

Seems to me that would satisfy the hard-core crafters who just want to craft and sell stuff, AND the raiders who only want fellow raiders to wear top-end gear. To be fair, the schematics for such items should only be learnable through "end-game crafting progression" not associated with raiding, not just available to anyone who happened to power-level their crafting to 400.