In EverQuest Next, should one character be able to learn all types of crafting?

I am of two minds on this topic.

First as a crafter I will have every craft to max, either with one character or with multiple alts. Crafting with alts makes most players only focus on one or two crafts which is a good thing. It means there are less crafters in the game which helps the economy more than if everyone was able to craft everything.

I want crafting to be a hard long road to become a master at their craft. To master all crafts should require tremendous amount of work, and only those who put in the effort should be able to master them all. In FFXIV system crafting is a joke where everyone pretty much has all crafts max which makes crafting overall pretty worthless, and hope EQNext does not follow the same path..

If crafting is too easy then I do not see how they can make crafting gear worth it, because everyone will be creating it. The gear would become pretty worthless. If Crafting were challenging and required effort and skill then the crafted gear wont flood the economy and become worthless.

No.

I am already not a fan of everyone being able to be every single class with one character.

I also fear that anyone can too easily master all crafting disciplines. I would like to see some interdependency in an MMO again. The modern MMO has gone too much in the opposite direction where everyone can do everything and never having to communicate with anyone. The modern MMO is too much of a single player online game.

Edit:
Forgot to mention that in my opinion you should only be able to focus on one or two crafts per account. I understand this won't be a popular opinion.

Time spent is time spent. Forcing a player to change characters is simply an inconvenience.

Maybe, if people do want specialization, there could be an "expertise", which could be limited to a character. Said expertise might give someone a higher chance to produce a higher quality item, or gather more resources of that type. And maybe a player could only change their expertise once per x real world time (maybe once a week?) And expertise ranks go BEYOND normal ranks or add to. Limiting, IMO, isn't the way to go for new MMOs.

Yes, yes, yes. If I can master being a paladin, bard, necro and 35+ more classes all at once I think I can saw wood and mix potions too. Focus on ONE character is a big draw to this game, please keep it up.

YAY! About time we heard about crafting! I play 1 character so eing able to do all crafting trades should be fun!

I misread the question. However, you should be able to learn all crafting types BUT only be able to master 1 or 2. Make SOME choices matter in this game at least.

Well, if you are only going to be able to have ONE character they better be able to do it all. (I don't recall if they have come to a conclusion on the number of characters but last I heard on that was still hovering around 1.)

In EQ1 I was known as the trade skills expert for the guild and among my friends. I even created a gnome rogue alt so I could take up poison-making and tinkering. I played WoW where you are only allowed 2 professions (plus cooking, first aid, fishing and archaeology) and that drove me to an altoholic frenzy. I would like to be able to settle down to 3 or 4 toons, but if I have to create "trade skill alts", they won't be alts to me - they *will be* fully developed characters of their own, sapping time spent on my "main".

I think it would be nice for all to be able to do basic crafting with the more advanced stuff either under mastery (with branching) or advanced recipes which can only be gained from dungeons/loot/quests of which some are not tradable making them unique.

Yes, they should be able to learn as many crafting skills as they want. However each skill after the first should be cumulatively harder to skill up in.

This would enable people to have all the trade skills they want and a sense of accomplishment for doing it the hard way. Also people could make alts if they wanted to do it the easier way.

Unless they create "group crafting" content, I feel it will remove the social aspect of a crafting system. Depending and relying on other crafters for base components promotes a community. The Earring of the Solstice and the Coldain Prayer Shawl are prime examples of needing other players' help and through those quests I met other crafters and in turn helped others attain these goals. A server economy will also be hampered if every player, with enough time, was able to create every item in the game.

I have 7 crafters in EQ2 and have had crafting mains and alts in every MMORPG I have ever played. Not once have I desired to have every crafting profession on one character. It helps to make different characters special.

My dwarf is a master blacksmith, my wood elf is a master fletcher, my dark elf a master poisoner. I know these old races don't matter a hill of beans in new Norrath, but one character with all tradeskills just seems to lead in the direction of every character being the exact same.

The "modern MMO" caters to a larger group of people. It allows people to be social if they are, and it doesn't force them to be if they are not. Nothing prevents you from playing one class and learning one craft and forming a guild of like minded people in a "modern MMO." Nothing keeps you from grouping, nothing keeps you from raiding, all the tools are available for you do get with your friends and do whatever you want to do.

Forcing people to do things that they do not enjoy or are not comfortable with is not a way of making a game better. It is not a way of getting more people to play with. It simply makes the game more exclusive to people who think like you do. Maybe that will work economically, and maybe it wont. Personally, I think games that support multiple play styles have a better chance of being successful.

I voted yes, but i really feel crafting should still involve cooperation to get the best final result.

Maybe trough grouped crafting. I remember crafting in EQ 2 was some sort of encounter. I guess the most epic craft could require a blacksmith a carpenter and a jeweler at the same time to complete, then one character could wear only one hat at the time even if he's a master of all 3.


I'm not sure about about this one.

Eh, I'd rather not. It would have some negative impact on the player economy, I think, if everyone could do -every- craft.

Since we can unlock basically all classes with one character, I think we should be able to learn all crafting disciplines on that character as well. Having said that, I do not think leveling crafting OR unlocking new classes should be a trivial task. Since there are no traditional "levels" in EQN, these aspects of gameplay are precisely where a player should be spending significant amounts of time.

Some classes can be easier to unlock, and some crafting disciplines can be easier to learn; however, some classes and crafting disciplines should be MUCH more difficult and/or time consuming to acquire. This way, players who make the considerable effort to unlock these things can be of great value to the community, and not everyone will be running around with everything.

let us play the game without too many restrictions, if people want to do all the tradeskills then let them, if people want to learn both spell casting and sword fighting then let them... from how I understand the game there is no classes per say like the original so keep it open so people can do what they want so we get rid of all the cookie cutter stuff too

I vote for letting 1 character learn all trades. Limiting it means I would just end up having mutiple characters doing tradeskills. Even if EQN only allows 1 character per account, what would stop someone from creating multiple accounts to get around that restriction and still be able to do them all. It just makes it very inconvenient.

Crafting that involves building or props should be able to be learned. this is a building game after all.
Other types of crafting should be one per character.

so
Props, creation of building materials...and any other crafting involved in building should be all one type.
Armor
Weapons should be one per character.

Can't make a proper list if we don't know what types of crafting skills are in the game.

The problem I see with that is that it can be applied to everything and then the dependency is actually lost. Slowly but surely MMO developers have reduced dependencies to the point everyone can achieve everything without any true social interaction.

If a lot can be achieved solo there is little to no dependency and we are once again playing a single player online game instead of an MMO.

Socialization gets highly encouraged and rewarded in most modern MMOs at the end game but yet there is no true socialization to be had any longer. It is as if most of us are playing together with bots nowadays.

Then hopefully mastering any profession will be difficult. If it is easy to master there is no dependency. In a lot of modern MMOs crafting has been dumbed down so much everyone can master it within no time because timesinks are bad. But timesinks and time taken is necessary to make sure we have a hard to reach goal. Actual goals which take more than a day to achieve make people play a game longer. There is little to no longevity in the modern MMO.