I'd like to see crafting be something a bit different.
I think it would be neat if crafting was a social and community effort.
What if for instance in your starting area if as a newbie you could contribute to the
building of a windmill or water tower. These structures would be made of many pieces and
would provide a bonus of some sort the area.
Or as a guild you could construct a monument to the gods that would allow sacrificing of
items.
If these bigger projects were made of many sub components and contribution was somehow
noted I think it would be a good way to bring people together working on a project.
Maybe in the mid levels there could be a town that is destroyed and if you help to rebuild it
some new npc's may show up.
At high level you might be trying to build a portal to a new plane with the help of the other
high end guilds.
Anyways I don't want crafting to muscle in on any of the class defining abilities like tends to
happen so it would be nice if there was another goal to it besides just making consumables.
Thanks for reading,
Kiz~
I love all of these ideas Kiz. To me they are an extension of crafting quests and I loved the fact in VG that, if you wanted to, you could (mostly) just make a character to craft and have that as a full time career. It felt almost the equal of adventuring as opposed to a tacked on afterthought. I also loved that you could group harvest to gain greater yields - it encouraged grouping and socialisation.
The thought of working towards a larger common goal is part of the fabric of what I hope is being built here and your suggestions resonate really well with that.
I guess the question I have is how much resource are the guys going to be able to put into crafting at launch (Brad confirmed they wanted it in at the last RT). I want a VG complex, stand alone system for crafting but I recognise the constraints in place.
I have a larger thought for "quest hubs" that offer a full range of tasks, goals and missions for adventurers, harvesters and crafters which I'm going to post elsewhere (which is nothing new of course but it's never really been done consistently well in other games) which is almost an extension of your thoughts.
The "Clarion Calls" (or whatever they are called) being mooted for EQN are the logical extension of this sort of thinking and that's at least one mechanic from there I hope they get right. Why couldn't we do something similar here?
Geth