Crafting Grind

[JTSpender]

On the one hand, I agree that some parts of crafting can be a bit grindy. On the other hand, I also don't want it to be too easy, because I enjoy spending time gathering ingredients, and like that those people who are willing to devote more time to crafting are "better" than others.

I realize they're probably way past the point of doing basic crafting system design, but since we're brainstorming I'll throw this out here anyway. I think the fundamental problem with crafting in a lot of MMOs is that crafting level is directly related to the combat class level of items you can make. This means that unless you always keep your crafting level the same level as your combat class' level, you can't really use the items you create. I would be much happier if the system were such where, say, someone who was, say, CNJ level 80 could with a moderate amount of effort (say, Weaver 30 or 40?) get to the point where they could make basic level 80 NQ gear they could use which would be adequate for their level (the kind of stuff you might buy from an NPC), and maybe occasionally +1s to keep it interesting. But only someone who put a lot of time into crafting and was, like, Weaver 80 or so could make HQ versions of that gear, or some of the more specialized/customized gear that a more advanced (skillwise, not levelwise) or wealthy player might use.

As alternative is to have two parallel sorts of skill levels, one of NQ/basic gear which goes up really fast, and one for HQ/specialized gear which goes up more slowly. I'm hoping that's what they actually meant by separate systems for NQ and HQ, because that would be super rad.

The idea here is that someone who is really into combat but only wants to dabble in crafting can make things that are useful for them, while the player who is really into crafting can make the best things. Otherwise, you either have to dumb down crafting so that everyone can feel successful (and disappoint the hardcore crafters) or make things so complex that those who want to dabble never craft at all because they get bored by level 20 or so.