Coming from the macro standpoint of player time spent in game there is very little difference between having 8 alts each with a different craft and one character with 8 different crafts. Your character with the furthest adventuring progression will be the path of least resistance to collecting resources regardless of the craft or character that uses said resources. The actual process of leveling a craft will take the same amount of player game time regardless if it is on 7 different level 1 alts and a level 50 raider or all on the level 50 raider.
If: crafting interdependency is only in requiring prefabricated ingredients, it is easy to send resources from one character to another on the same account, and you can have enough characters on said account to cover all crafts on the same account, then a cap of 1 or 2 crafts per character is completely superfluous and might as well be done away with. The effects of having access to two accounts should also be considered as many households will have two players or one player with two accounts. Two accounts will negate any resource transfer issues that could be put in game deliberately to solve this issue.
Being limited to one craft only matters if there are true opportunity costs to not having access to specific crafting skill at finite moment in time such that switching characters is not possible.
Possible opportunity costs:
1) Adventuring sphere opportunities where there are crafting checks that are short enough time window that only those currently present can participate.
2) Some crafting interdependency requires simultaneous crafting actions by 2 or more crafters.
Those two possible opportunity costs cover pretty much everything. (benefits of generic generalizations) I believe having both opportunity costs in game and the crafting choice is a good thing overall. I would hope that crafters will have some way to offline exchange commonly used components when the crafting does not actively require more than one crafter.
It is arguably much more important to limit gathering skills than crafting skills as gathering skills generate game resources whereas crafting skills consume or transform them. Crafting skills technically do not add any game items to the system that is not already there in constituent parts and depending on failure rates could consume a great deal of items to create a single item.
To that end I am in favor of condensing the gathering skills into Hunter (skinning, butchering, fishing, and trapping) and Gatherer (herbalist, mining, woodcutting, and farming) into professions that compete with crafting for your profession choice.
It must be in loss of mats, both main ingredients and in any catalysts.
BUT...
This means that there needs to be a very tight balance between availability of mats and experience gained. If it takes me hours to get just one stack of mats to create something and the coin to purchase the catalysts, I'm fine with making the success rate lower but I need to at least have the ability to be getting experience from fails. If it takes me hours to get a handful (haze panther skins anyone?), it should be worth my time in experience when I go to attempt the combine even if I don't get the item, and the value of the item should be relative to the availability of mats, not just skill level. Anyone can grind out levels, but if mats are hard to come by, that's the great equalizer.
When you think about risk. The very basic of risks seems not in the picture;
Choose a class and risk having moments in the game that you'll struggle more with your chosen class. We accept this without a second thought, for our adventure class. We are so used to having to make that choice that we might not even see that as a risk factor. But it is. No examples are needed, just imagine trying to solo with your preferred class.
Same goes for harvesting and crafting. With some thought, you can imagine situations where harvesters with different specialities would be able to access the same resource. But the process, the outcome or the challenge rate to be succesful is experienced differently, depending on the designed mechanic behind it.
Especially for crafting you can imagine the experienced challenge being different for different crafters attempting the same product. (I'm thinking in line of certain (not all) subcomponents being recipes that are available for different classes. But the final recipe or more advanced recipes rely on specialities.) A well thought out spiderweb of recipes, will enable just that. And have that sense of risk and increased challenge based on your chosen profession playing against the designed mechanic.
You'll experience less difficult challenge rating, depending how close it aligns to your profession.
You can work this out even more, to a degree where it's not profitable to attempt the challenge (on your own, or as your chosen profession). Sometimes you're succesful as a healer but not with your tank. It's not a bad thing, it just stimulates towards either creating alts or reaching out. The first leads to more time invested by the player (and slower overall progression?), the second stimulates community interaction.
You can't roll back on your adventure class, so why not have that same risk for harvesters and traders?
I am continually surprised that people find it acceptable game design to require to bulk Harvest for hours just to be able to Craft for minutes. If the goal is to be a Master crafter then it should be achieved by spending a lot of time crafting, not by spending a lot of time farming. Farming can come in when you are trying to make an item with a specific stat combination, and you need a really rare dropped or harvested ingredient. You only farm enough for one or two crafts then go find a crafter who already has the item mastered.
If I am trying to master a craft it should be using cheapo generic materials to practice with first. Any time you mess up you spend more time to go back and reverse what you did wrong and start over. In the real world you alter your design a little to use your salvage but in the game world your ingredients could just have durability that gets lost when you mess up and back track to start over. Eventually too many failures will turn your work piece to slag then you finally need to get fresh materials.
Once you have mastered the general recipe with cheaper materials you now have a high enough skill with the general recipe that your probability of success is worth chancing good material on. You can still fail and lowering the durability will adversely affect the final product in some way so you don’t want to do it too often. Only once you have mastered the general recipe and the exact materials you want to use do you add that rare material you spent hours farming to make a magical piece of gear you really want.
Make crafting about crafting, not farming.
Trasak said: Coming from the macro standpoint of player time spent in game there is very little difference between having 8 alts each with a different craft and one character with 8 different crafts. Your character with the furthest adventuring progression will be the path of least resistance to collecting resources regardless of the craft or character that uses said resources. The actual process of leveling a craft will take the same amount of player game time regardless if it is on 7 different level 1 alts and a level 50 raider or all on the level 50 raider.If: crafting interdependency is only in requiring prefabricated ingredients, it is easy to send resources from one character to another on the same account, and you can have enough characters on said account to cover all crafts on the same account, then a cap of 1 or 2 crafts per character is completely superfluous and might as well be done away with. The effects of having access to two accounts should also be considered as many households will have two players or one player with two accounts. Two accounts will negate any resource transfer issues that could be put in game deliberately to solve this issue. ...
Yep, these above realities of artificial interdependency (and it's trivial bypasses) is why I'm a proponent of solo crafting recipes and group crafting recipes, with commensurate risk vs. reward for each.
I would even go so far as to recommend that nothing magical or subsequently enchant-able should be craftable from a solo crafting recipe, unless it's a consumable.
In other words, if you want to craft a potentially magical sword? You need 2+ players. If you want that to be the best sword in that tier? You need a full group of crafters.
I mean.. if the best adventure gear drops from a boss that requires a full adventure group, why not have the best crafting output result from a full group of crafters?
It does provoke some interesting thoughts and consideration around time-to-kill vs. time-to-craft and the risks involved. :D
@vjek
Magic items being small group crafts and raid items being full group crafts pairs well with practicing on readily available materials. You solo time practicing your personal skills and make base mundane items, not harvesting mountains of worthless material to quick craft into material that is even more worthless. You get your skills up high enough to make mundane items that are worth making magical. Then you finally group up to make items with another crafter where you both need to have a certain skill, technic or recipe fully mastered and consume some rare component to make a rare mob drop equivalent item.
Eventually you can collect multi group material and have the opportunity to make items of power that may require 5 or 6 crafters at the crafting station in an adventuring zone with the required masteries for the item represented, the primary craft could even use helpers in their own craft to supply crafting mana (or some regenerative crafting resource). Holding down the area while the item is made could itself be a raid encounter with its own boss. If the raid wipes, then the materials being used would be lost.
It’s occurred to me after reading this thread, and giving this a lot of thought that there was something that I overlooked, and that was something Joppa said during the State of the game July 2020 in reference to death penalty.
State of the Game July 2020 Joppa said:
https://youtu.be/J24qkCOmnQY?t=1928
"We’re still at the point were it’s hard to understand how challenging pantheon is going to be um and there’s so many facets to that uh statement you know one facet and the one I have primary in mind right now is the way our stats work um we’ve said for a long time we want stats to be very meaningful we want each point of an attribute stamina strength intelligence whatever it is to feel very significant.What that means is if you don’t have any gear on then you’re not you’re going even if there’s a full group of players that don't have any gear on, your ability to actually get back to where you died is going to be nigh impossible because of how significant you wear is, and so when thinking about you know one of the big questions that come of is why no naked corpse runs, you know why if you want death to be punishing then you know you should respawn with nothing and have to figure out how to get back um and yeah you know I understand, I’ve been the recipient many times even recently on going back to um to p99 green like of needing to find a rogue to drag a corpse and it’s a thing um but again pantheon is not the same game.".
Considering that Everquest or any old school MMO was harder than anything post WOW at least in my experience, and that pantheon is apparently more difficult that EQ, it stands to reason that it’s far more difficult than anything played in recent years.
Stats IE gear will be necessary for movement throughout the world to collect resources due to the dangers of combat.
So, What form should Risk take in Crafting and Gathering? The environment is probably perilous enough for any harvester professions, as to crafting, this will depends greatly on whether Crafters are required to seek out specific locations for their trade.
Barin999 said: 5) You are flagged as 'negative' (doesn't have to be Kill On Sight alone) when you have harvesting resource X in your inventory.That would depend on an entity that could smell (pet/skill/ability) or have a look through skill (same) as to ascertain the infraction, if resource x is small. Can you be held and frisked by monks? Or other (npc) locals.
((Yep, these above realities of artificial interdependency (and it's trivial bypasses) is why I'm a proponent of solo crafting recipes and group crafting recipes, with commensurate risk vs. reward for each.
I would even go so far as to recommend that nothing magical or subsequently enchant-able should be craftable from a solo crafting recipe, unless it's a consumable.
In other words, if you want to craft a potentially magical sword? You need 2+ players. If you want that to be the best sword in that tier? You need a full group of crafters.))
Not at all surprisingly I disagree. Emphatically.
To succeed Pantheon needs to balance group play and solo play. Group play should be encouraged and rewarded but solo play at all levels should be both possible and productive. Just *less* productive than group play. In other words Pantheon should be a game of encouraged grouping not forced grouping. If there is no point to even logging on unless one is both in the mood to group and has two or three or more uninterrupted hours to spend - population will plummet quickly. Almost all of us sometimes want to group and sometimes do not want to or simply cannot that day.
One of my greatest fears is that VR will focus too much on the group nature of the game and not leave enough of a safety valve for solo play.
As multiple people have noted in this thread - crafting is one of the areas where that type of safety valve can easily be provided. If we require groups to make high quality items that safety valve is greatly compromised.
Interdependece of crafters can be encouraged in many ways. It does not require that two or more different crafters work on the same item at the same time. Nor is this even remotely realistic - indeed the contrary. How many swords are made with the smith hammering at the blade at the same exact time as the leatherworker completes the attached grip. None.
D, the issue though is that crafting rewards compete for use with adventuring rewards. If all rare mobs that drop usable loot require a relatively competent group of 6 appropriately leveled characters to defeat then it would break the game reward balance for a single crafter to be able to do so solo.
There are 2 or sort of 3 ways to fix the balance issues.
Solo crafting magical items is possible but at a lower result than possible in a group. This reduction would be similar to the level difference required for a single PC to solo a named. ( A level 50 crafter can make a Level 33 item solo but a level 50 item takes more than, possibly 1 plus one for each full group required to be rewarded a similar item from adventuring.)
Solo crafting takes longer. Roughly the time it takes for the group to Craft it raised to the power of the number of crafters required. This is hard to model until we see what crafting gameplay Nephele has in store for us. It could be in the form of increased minigame stages, increased crafting mana cost such that you need to wait longer between stages, hard coded timers(yuck), and or added work station start up expenses.
Solo crafters can only reforge items. Taking one dropped item, adding fuel, secondary ingredients and required skill to move the enchantment from one item base to another that can accept it with no increase in power magnitude. This is a net negative server item balance so it should be acceptable.
Not to nitpick but in nearly every craft apprentices played vital roles in an efficient, successful shop. "Many hands make light the work" and "Get the FNG to do that" are in the vernacular for a reason.
I do hope there is an enjoyable solo crafting gameplay loop but I do not think it would be appropriate to reward it any more than the soloing adventuring gameplay loop.
I should also add that the time it takes to level an adventuring class vs the time it takes to level a crafting class also needs to be compared in order to create a power scale ratio. If it is expected to take 100 hours of game play to max crafting but 100 hours should only get you to level 30 in adventuring then crafting output needs to be limited to level 30 items.
Vandraad said:For those who are proponents of crafting an item requiring multiple people, tell me how you determine which person get the final product?
Best I could come up with was that each "crafting encounter"? will have a master crafter that starts the up the workstation. They can invite other craftsmen to join them to provide crafting mana and or reaction abilities to the minigame, turn based or real time. Ideally and to reinforce the point of group crafting different crafts would bring different mini game abilities that when combined make for the best possible result.
To answer your actual question the master crafter that started the workstation would load all of the ingredients needed for the processes into the workstation and would be the one to remove the item from the workstation.
Vandraad said:For those who are proponents of crafting an item requiring multiple people, tell me how you determine which person get the final product?
Using the sword as example; any weaponsmith can make any part and assemble but to achieve the best possible version you need cooperation.
You have The Pommel, Handle,Guard,Hilt, Blade. Five individual parts that Weaponsmith can can have specialties in, plus one more the Assembly. So you have 6 weapon smith specialties.
So a weaponsmith who specializes in Assembly can contract out the production of those 5 parts from 5 different weaponsmith who specialize in their respective areas, not at all mandatory, but increases the final products value.
The final product for each smith was a bit different, nothing stopped each smith from making a complete sword, but they also have their own high end part to offer.
dorotea said: ... To succeed Pantheon needs to balance group play and solo play. Group play should be encouraged and rewarded but solo play at all levels should be both possible and productive. Just *less* productive than group play. ...
Agreed. Some more theorycrafting and OPINIONS, below..
So, how do you propose, specifically, for crafting and harvesting to be delineated, separated, or provide distinction for the two groups?
I think a way to do it is to have group crafting recipes be the bonus, extra, magical crafting. The thing that is special.
Solo crafting provides all the consumables, and all end un-echantable end products. Everything. All potions, food, spell components, poisons, furniture, armor, weapons, packs, widgets, all of it.
Absolutely everything in the game except one category, and even then, to possibly craft those items, you only need 2 players concurrently or involved.
It would likely end up that over ~90% of the recipes in the game would be solo craftable, using those guidelines. That leaves ~10% crafting recipes for group-optional combines.
Otherwise? If there isn't a similar distinction that provides the same result in the end?
As Trasak says, then interdependency means nothing, just like every other game who has tried something similar, EQ1/2 included.
Most if not all hardcore crafters will simply have as many characters, alts, accounts, or whatever other thing is required to be self-sufficient.
Just like Adventuring. :)
Consider this in the context of solo vs. group adventuring content, dorotea. If meaningful risk vs. reward is a design tenet, there's no question, debate, or argument that solo content should provide solo/less rewards and group content should provide group/better rewards. If it's a valid permise and logical conclusion for the Adventuring loop, why not Zoidberg ... err.. why not the Crafting/Harvesting loops, too? :D
This thread has been promoted as part of my CM content, please remain on topic and follow the forum guidelines.
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Vandraad: For those who are proponents of crafting an item requiring multiple people, tell me how you determine which person get the final product?
All you need is a game mechanic to solve this. Ranger Bob has a bow shaft and some magic thread, but doesnt have the skill to make a bow. Bowyer Joe does.
The example is a bare bones example showing a two-person craft, but the group could include as many as required, each with the same display showing what they are adding to the mix or getting from the mix. The one recipient is shown to all. If one participant doesnt accept, nothing is done and the "transaction" can be cancelled. If all accept, the item is made and given to the recipient. This is one game mechanic that would work. There are countless others. It just needs a product recipient and each participant to agree, which then fixes that agreement. Not a biggie.
chenzeme said:Vandraad: For those who are proponents of crafting an item requiring multiple people, tell me how you determine which person get the final product?All you need is a game mechanic to solve this. Ranger Bob has a bow shaft and some magic thread, but doesnt have the skill to make a bow. Bowyer Joe does.
- Joe invites Bob to a group and opens a woodworking crafting station.
- Because there are two people in the group, the crafting station is also opened for Bob.
- A drop down on the display states who is to receive the final item.
- Bob puts his items into the crafting station (Joe cannot remove these as he did not put them in) and whatever is to be the transaction cost item/amount in the Offer section of the display.
- Joe selects the recipe that will create the desired bow.
- Joe reviews the display and selects Accept Terms option. (Nothing can be changed at this point).
- Bob reviews the display and also agrees and selects Accept Terms (or Cancel if he is not happy with the selections and everything is returned to the original owners).
- Joe then selects the Begin Crafting button and on completion the new bow is automatically given to the person identified by the recipient drop down (in this case, Bob).
The example is a bare bones example showing a two-person craft, but the group could include as many as required, each with the same display showing what they are adding to the mix or getting from the mix. The one recipient is shown to all. If one participant doesnt accept, nothing is done and the "transaction" can be cancelled. If all accept, the item is made and given to the recipient. This is one game mechanic that would work. There are countless others. It just needs a product recipient and each participant to agree, which then fixes that agreement. Not a biggie.
Perfect example of proper player agency!
Hello. Nicely put @chenzeme. If that was implemented in the crafting system, think a lot of folks would be eager to find/hire said crafter to make said item. At sametime, maybe skill up from it while attempting to make something for someone. This way, you know that person/crafter didnt botch on purpse or kept the resources and said the combine/attempt failed (when he/she pocketed the materials/resources.
Ravenwolf: ...At sametime, maybe skill up from it while attempting to make something for someone. This way, you know that person/crafter didnt botch on purpse or kept the resources and said the combine/attempt failed (when he/she pocketed the materials/resources.
As an incentive to not botch up on purpose, the amount agreed for the item by the client would not be given to the crafter unless the item was successfully completed. But a xp boost is a good idea too. I would also say that the crafter could not recieve any of the mats provided by the client. They would only ever have access to the items the put into the mix, no one elses.
I havent read all, but I promise to go back
Dont make getting rare items rare in drop frequency, make them rare in danger. Like, if I need more acclimation to be able to dive into the lake of lava, and have the right goggles on to see through the glare while under lava, to stay under lava while I sift the brassy silt of the volcano floor carefully like a miner panning for gold before my breath runs out! , and provided my swimming is higher than normal (because lava is thicker than water) then, ok. But dont make it a rare drop where I am camping a wurm for 10 hours waiting for the RNG to favor me with a spawn for a drop.
OR, like the above if my fishing is high enough and I have travelled all across the continent for RL days to get a bunch of Mats to make special lures and fishing wire to fish in lava and...the lure burns up? thats ok I can make another right there and try again because its fishing skill, but I at least have the mats and when I make the catch I can say how cool it was to have had to travel to all those places to get the things to make the lure to spend time in the dangerous spot, to fish.
As far as the crafting mechanic? why not model it after Golf games? that would also involve player skill instead of just clicking to combine. golf swing arc- smithy hammer swing. wind strength- furnace heat bellows. Stiching like lining up a golf Put, working a loom like making pool shots as you shuttle the bobbin or something- getting the angles between the weaves just right. Baking is easy, just take it out of real life! lol watch some old Julia child when she messes up, have the souffle fall, the scrambled eggs too dry- can even have charisma or faction play a role- if you are baking for an NPC they may be more likely to accept your burnt bread as toast if you are charming, or known. Have sourdough yeast clump starters be a sought after recipe and a portion hoarded and kept to ensure a good rise on all breads going forward. Mouse swipes for fletching shaving like a golf swing above, wobbly or loose pointers for stringing , affected by dexterity or meditation.(secret discovered counter being booze or being tipsy, your wobbles and the games wobbles cancel each other out- shh dont tell the devs) I could go on.
Manouk you make a lot of sense but, sadly, I have to disagree almost entirely.
1. Rares should be rare. As in a very low chance to get them. If the best player in the game with the best gear in the game with the best reflexes in the game can get them more routinely we will have one very rich player and a glut of not so very rare at all materials.
Reinforcing this concern - MMOs are time sinks. The idea is to keep us hooked - even if we aren't the majestic fish referenced by Nephele in a different crafting thread. The developers need, for the sake of the game's health, to give us things to do to encourage us to play for endless hours, and renew our subscriptions. If any of us can get a few rares with 10 hours repetitive harvesting is that more of a time sink than if the best of us can get a few rares in an hour and drive down the price so it isn't worth the time for the rest of us. The answer is obvious. All design decisions need to factor in the question of what makes this a better game but also what makes this a more profitable game.
2. Anything involving player skill runs the risk of turning the game into a first person shooter where gear is distinctly subordinated to vision, reflexes, internet connection quality, and expensive computers and monitors. We have enough games like this. Anyone that was playing in 1999 is more than 20 years older now and we weren't all kids back then. Tailoring game aspects to reflexes and vision (as well as the other things I mention) is not necessarily a benefit to this demographic.
My personal favorite part of harvesting is selling the materials so I can buy better stuff as gear or even just better harvesting materials.
My favorite part of crafting is making stuff I can sell to people.
I like trade.
I could see risk put into crafting by using ideas I believe are already in place-putting a unique forge in the middle of a dangerous zone that all blacksmiths need to craft certain things.
You might make harvesting riskier by making mobs that see it go to it.
You might make actual production riskier by putting a random factor into the quality of what people produce. You could produce the same backpack twice but get one with 11 slots and one with only 10 slots. As players grow more skillful you could reduce the chances of a "low quality" production.
I like the ideas put forward here of making harvesting/crafting take a while as well on a personal level, but I could see it going wrong with all the QOL players deciding they aren't gonna craft.
dorotea said:
*snip*
2. Anything involving player skill runs the risk of turning the game into a first person shooter where gear is distinctly subordinated to vision, reflexes, internet connection quality, and expensive computers and monitors. We have enough games like this. Anyone that was playing in 1999 is more than 20 years older now and we weren't all kids back then. Tailoring game aspects to reflexes and vision (as well as the other things I mention) is not necessarily a benefit to this demographic.
BeaverBiscuit said:
*snip*
I like the ideas put forward here of making harvesting/crafting take a while as well on a personal level, but I could see it going wrong with all the QOL players deciding they aren't gonna craft.
I would like to comment on these two quotes together as they are sort of pointing at the same issue.
This is a big game design question I guess but “Should capping out a Crafting class be any easier or quicker than capping out an Adventuring Class?”
I contend that if Player Crafted items are intended to evenly compete with Mob Drop items then they need to represent a similar amount of play time to acquire. Time spent can be broken up into; time to level to be capable, time spent to access (faction grinds or keying), camping the opportunity (rare mobs or rare harvest nodes), chance of redo (crafting failure or low drop chance on a rare spawn), and time to acquire needed gear. The exact weighting of where the time is spent is up for debate and design but on the Time Spent vs Reward scale they need to be pretty balanced and Risk really is just a contributor to Time Spent.
So I am of the opinion that if Crafting is to actually matter in the game then it cannot be trivial to master or a given that everyone can be a top end crafter. Just because you made a level 1 adventuring character does not mean you are guaranteed to become an end game raider. So likewise just because you picked up a hammer does not mean you should expect to be able to forge an artifact sword without a lot of hard work.
One of the easiest and best ways to control how much time is invested in leveling crafting is the time it takes to craft a non-trivial item and the number of items you should expect to need to craft. Just like adventuring experience required the right gear, the right target, and paying attention crafting should too. As Vjek said in the difficulty post its all about the intended time to kill/craft. Once you know that then you can project how long leveling either would roughly take if you could pull/craft end to end.
I can agree with dorotea that we do not want a twitch based crafting experience any more than we want one in adventuring. Likewise with BeaverBiscuit we don’t want to push the decision tree too arcane or it would drive people away due to poor QOL experience.
So the question becomes how complex is too complex and how fast a rate of decision making can you go before the game play switched from tactical to twitch.
Personally I would say that copying Pantheon combat is not a bad option for both the pacing and complexity. Having a crafting class being able to acquire 20 active technics and 10 passive technics then needing to pick 8 active and 6 passive for what you are planning to do. Then have a 6-12 second turn based pacing where you pick what to do next based on what happened last and where you are trying to go. Your crafting mana and its regeneration will dictate how long you can keep trying and how often you can start up a new recipe.
Crafting would be more about leveling up those 30 abilities rather than a core crafting class as your ability to complete a recipe before you run out of crafting mana is dependent on a combination of your ability rank, your equipment, your raw materials and how complex your target item is. This could also feed into a great group crafting system where different crafters will pick their own set to apply and or spread out the crafting mana expenditure.
((D, the issue though is that crafting rewards compete for use with adventuring rewards. If all rare mobs that drop usable loot require a relatively competent group of 6 appropriately leveled characters to defeat then it would break the game reward balance for a single crafter to be able to do so solo.))
Trasak you have cirrectly identified one of the critical issues in many MMOs. Crafting gets hind tit because the developers have a vision of raid gear as tops, dungeon gear as next and anything else (quest rewards or crafted items or drops) as relative junk. And there are good reasons for this - raiders tend to be among the most dedicated players who spend the most and subscribe regularly.
This dynamic may or may not apply to Pantheon. Gods willing raiding will not be the center of the game even at level-cap. Grouping will be the center. Raiding will have its place but so will solo play. Grouping will be the beating heart of Pantheon. They have said this over the years - whether they keep to it - I don't know.
Gods willing there will be no in-game store. So from a purely business point of view VR will have incentive to do whatever causes the maximum number of people to subscribe but won't have any incentive to push them to compete frantically and want the best gear that store-purchases can help them to get. So good crafted gear won't kick VR in the nuts, economically.
Back to the quoted sentance. This is the norm today for reasons that may not apply to Pantheon. But is it necessary? Is it even logical. What is more difficult - forming a group, going into a dungeon and killing a boss, or becoming a top-level crafter? What is more of a time-sink - doing a dungeon or two or harvesting for days or weeks to get materials. Time sinks are what keep us subscribing.
Final point on this theme. A high quality item may require materials from a dungeon boss to complete. This satisfies your concern in all respects. But once the item is in the crafter's hands because she did the dungeon or bought it from someone that did the dungeon - why should she need 5 friends standing around the forge getting in the way to actually construct the final product?
((Personally I would say that copying Pantheon combat is not a bad option for both the pacing and complexity. Having a crafting class being able to acquire 20 active technics and 10 passive technics then needing to pick 8 active and 6 passive for what you are planning to do. Then have a 6-12 second turn based pacing where you pick what to do next based on what happened last and where you are trying to go. Your crafting mana and its regeneration will dictate how long you can keep trying and how often you can start up a new recipe.))
I agree in all respects - this sounds a lot like Vanguard which would be a wonderful model. Crafting should take a long time and a lot of effort to master. The crafting process should be complex and require player interactions - not be doable while afk. Player knowledge of the process should allow for better reaponses and better products as the player makes the right choice when given a choice. As long as it isn't so fast-paced that a player with slower reflexes, poorer vision or a mediocre internet connection is barred from crafting. Exactly my view on combat. It should be challenging and interactive but in combat gear and knowledge and character skill should, within reason, trump the speed at which the *player* can click a key.