Crafting Rifts are Fun – But They Still Need Some Work #RiftGame
stargrace 
Yesterday marked the magical day where the weekly crafting quests for lures re-set, and so myself and many others eagerly headed to Shimmersand to spawn crafting rifts and obtain hot crafter loot. On the far west coast of Shimmersand two rifts spawn every few minutes. On my server (I can’t speak for the others but I play on Deepwood) these are the dedicated crafting rifts unless someone triggers a combat one out of spite. It doesn’t matter if you’re guardian or defiant, or what time of day you show up, chances are there are raids here with crafting lures.
I really like the idea that players can spawn crafting raids but there are a few issues with it. Number one, I have two level 14 characters who happen to be 300 crafters. They can’t participate in these crafting rifts because they’re level 50 and the chances of me actually counting towards contribution (let alone getting to the area without a guild rally flag) is pretty much zilch. I’ve saved up my weekly lures in the hopes that one day I may actually level them and make use of these lures.
The next issue is the mass number of people who participate. The rewards are based on your contribution, and when you have 100+ people at one non epic rift things die pretty fast. In fact I’d be confident in saying that they die instantly. This means that a lot of people never get the chance to contribute at all, no one is taking damage so healers are forced into dps specs. If you have no instant attacks at your fingertips you may find yourself moving from rift to rift just hoping that someone neglects a mob for a second or two so that you can get a single hit. For myself personally I spam my instant attacks, it’s all I can do to try to hit something at least once. I’m better at it during some crafting rifts then others. My solution would be for the rift to take into consideration (some how) the amount of players in a given location, and spawn as epic (or major) rifts so that everyone in the area has a chance to participate. Yesterday there were many complaints from members of my raid when they were forced to leave a completed rift empty handed.
I’m finding plaques almost impossible to get, and with the new player crafted items available that rival pretty much any other gear I could possibly obtain even those seem daunting for a casual player. Things are expensive, each piece costing upwards of 100p and unless you’re playing rift on a fairly frequent non-casual basis, I don’t see how anyone can afford more then a piece or two without resorting to ‘other’ means.
I’m glad some focus was given to crafting, but personally, I just feel that it could use a little more tweaking, a bit more work in order to smooth out some bumps.
Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!