Integrating Crafting and Gathering. Ideas?

[Shurrikhan]

TLDR I don't really feel the 'disconnect' between gathering and crafting that you are feeling.

I apologize if I was unclear; what I meant was that it felt to me like (subject) crafting and gathering (both, together) missed opportunities to better connect or integrate themselves into (object) the overall game experience.

Take gathering for instance. By requiring a completely separate class and separate gear stats their are very few places that SE was willing to develop gathering nodes, and even then it relies on the crutch of a very unimaginative "Stealth" mechanic as not to come in further conflict with battlecraft spacial needs (i.e. having monsters). Because of this, there is virtually no sense of exploration involved in gathering, as it is limited to more or less exact locations (+/- some 8 meters up or down the cliff face or around a large rock), in exact loops, and only in certain zones—all because it put its design, and therefore needs, in conflict with the needs of other disciplines. By no means is this an issue with Gathering designs alone—to me it signals design issues on an overarching level—but they are probably the discipline most obviously affected.

Alternatively, look at crafting, which is dependant on far more cross-class skills than the Battle/Magic (or obviously Land) Disciplines. Despite an Armorer requiring barely refined pieces from Leatherworker, Weaver, Alchemist, or more, just to make a pair of plated boots, and despite that those pieces would still likely require skill in their respective class to even affix to the larger whole, all leveling is absolutely separate; for stitching together the actual boot out of leather, hardening it thereafter, firmly adhering the sole, stamping in the designs, and adding the trim, the Armorer receives only "a higher nominal offset/input on strange RNG calculations" for Armorer alone.

<Workshops> "Please not like WoW's"

Let me throw out an alternative to the "workshop" idea, since I too have a staunch dislike of any take on "offscreen" crafting that would seem like WoW's garrison crafting. Guilds. Making crafting guilds matter. While to really pull this off, one might actually need a living NPC economy, let's just look at the side-effects that such could produce for now, if guilds were involved in this, namely the hierarchical allotment of tasks (assigned at labor + guild values). At a glance, this would simply be an alternative to crafting leves, but in practice, this also allows more advanced crafters to delegate tasks, be that to NPCs or players, letting them borrow materials, or quoting a price over to a gathering guild for x amount of material to be later used, to be turned into refined ingredients reserved for your later use. The guild, in turn, by specific mechanic or through living economy AI, would be buying additional materials to be used by their own crafters, the excess (if only a mechanic, the whole) of which can be purchased at guild price or for guild currency (alike to favor exchange) to replace wasted ingredients, etc., the deposit for which can be required before accepting another's materials.