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

there's nothing wrong with this. some people just want a different look. some people just want their tank character to only hold tanking equipment in their bags, with only tanking addons and their UI setup for playing their tank at a high level.

you have that option.

there are other players who want to do everything on a single character. maybe they prefer that their time spent logged into the game was counted toward improving their main character. or they don't want to have to redo content just to take part in other aspects of the game.

the option to NOT roll 5 alts, and still experience all play styles, is there as well.

it's just an option. though they have said that they're trying to encourage players to play a single character. i don't quite know what that means.

That mostly sums up my feelings on this topic.

The only thing I'd add is that MMOs are, for many players, a social experience. Spreading yourself across alts detracts from that / makes it more difficult. You have to try to remember all of your friends' alts' names and they yours. It's annoying.

EQN allowing me to play just one character and learn all classes is one of the main draws for me so I'd really hope it applies to crafting.

Sometimes I play an alt to avoid my friends. I've also found it pays to have alts just to open up all the crafting skills as some games limit toons to 2-3 (1-2 gathering, 1 crafting), which is annoying since the hard part comes down to remembering what alt does what job...

EQN is going to be a fairly open world quest type game - be the hero you want, etc.. so why can't hero's learn all kinds of skills? There's the real world head is full argument - you can only store so much in a cranium before it starts loosing information, and there is the my hero slays giants thus can do anything argument - you toon is no mere mortal and can do all kinds of world saving things so why can't he manage to build a uber battle axe and a delicately crafted wood chair for his homestead equally well? I'll vote for the latter as if I am the only one who can save the world my toon should be able to put together a nice set of armor or tea set since he is a super hero.

I think the problem with this statement is you confuse interaction with socialisation. They're not the same thing. What MMOs encourage is interaction eg. by way of teaming up for certain content.

That doesn't mean anyone will talk to each other.

It differs across games but I think this is a result of group content design, especially the end-game grind. Many players just want to get through it as quickly as possible and move onto the next bit of grind. Attempts to socialise with them won't be welcome because you're just wasting their limited time.

A lot of that content is so rigid and tightly defined that it reduces players to the status of bots. Many dungeons are designed so players just have to repeat the same set of steps each time they enter.

Judging from what I've heard and read from the Devs, EQN is promoting the option to be able to fill many (or all) roles with one toon. They say that it will not be easy to unlock every class or ability in the game, and I sincerely hope that this is true. For instance, you may have to become friendly with completely opposed groups of NPC's to gain abilities from classes associated with those groups. There should be consequences for your actions in game, but nothing that can't be turned around. If you spend your time burning down villages and pillaging, it should take some time to repair your image enough to be able to start gaining Paladin abilities, for instance.

So why should the crafting class model differ from the adventure class model in this respect? Gaining additional crafting classes on a single toon should be comparable in time and effort to what it would take to gain those same additional classes and abilities on an alt. I don't feel it should be easier to become, say, a blacksmith only because you're already a good tailor. As an example, it may require more effort for an existing toon to switch paths from a blacksmith to a tailor based on NPC reputation or similar factors, while a new toon would start with a clean slate. However, it will require less crafting effort for the existing toon because he will know how to make intermediate items that are used in tailored items but require blacksmithing, and he will have blacksmithing abilities that may be helpful in the tailoring process. Therefore, the overall effort to learn a second profession would be roughly equal for an existing toon vs. an alt.

Personally, I agree with this philosophy. The more different aspects of game play that I can enjoy with my main toon, the happier I'll be. The main reasons I have alts in other games are to experiment with other roles or to craft items I can't craft with my main toon. Some people love alts for other reasons, and I don't feel that players should be denied the opportunity for alts, but they should not be forced to have alts, either.

As a side note, I also think that gear should factor into crafting, such that you would need different items to excel at blacksmithing than you would to excel at tailoring. Please note that I said different gear to excel in these professions, not just to learn them.

i use to ride a bicycle and did so just fine last week after 30 years of not riding one so forgetting skills is ridiculous but again I do not think mastering all should be a easy task but attainable

How about a point system for crafting? You have the ability to "learn" all crafting skills but only enough points to become a master of a few of those skills. If you want to become an expert at something you have to devote enough points into it to become a master which will cause the player to have to sacrifice their skill in other professions. They may be able to spread the points out to still enjoy benefits from other professions but not be masters at them.

Hmm, first of all Hi!
My first opinion on the subject at hand is, that this is a tricky question to answer it on the fly.
I am one of those that dislikes to alt character, in fact I actually like when there is only one char per account allowed but that's a different topic.
Regarding crafting yes the players should be allowed to learn all "jobs" of crafting, but only be able to master and maximize the full potential of only one or two professions.

My reason is even tho I dislike alts and maybe there are players out there than want to make everything themselves, it's even worse when players can do everything themselves.

Any game needs an economy, markets, auction houses etc. if everyone is turned into a cheapscake and does everything themselves, then how the system of the game will encourage economy growth?
I'm one of those guys that likes to play and coordinate together with friends, if you take this away from players similar like then how will SOE deal with players that i.e. want to be masters of mining and blacksmithing and maybe a friend of theirs to be farmer(yes, I am suggesting farming at the same time) and alchemist just so they can focus their resources in specific areas.

In the end, no matter the final decision of SOE will be, it needs to be really well thought before, since it will decide a core feature of the game that might make players come in the game, stick around or on the negative side... make them leave.

In addition to my thoughts on being able to learn all crafting professions, I also think that there should be some sort of mechanism in game for group crafting. Here is my reasoning:

We can assume that in the adventuring side of the game, there will be solo content, group content, most likely raid size content, and possibly even super large group content. My opinion is that the larger the group needed for the content, the better the rewards should be, due to the difficulty in organizing and coordinating larger groups. Also, there should be ranges of difficulty within these categories, with more difficult encounters granting better rewards.

I feel that crafting should mirror this type of setup such that gear crafted by individuals should be sufficient to complete (and comparable in reward to) solo encounters. Similarly, gear crafted by groups should correspond to group encounters, and so on for all group sizes. Of course there should be some amount of overlap between these groups. Just as an extremely well geared individual can sometimes complete low difficulty group encounters, a highly skilled crafter should be able to produce gear comparable to low or mid range group crafted items.

If... (and I say if because I have no way to know if this will be the case) If crafting materials can be obtained through adventuring and traded to crafters that have little interest adventuring, than the items crafted with these materials should range in quality based on the difficulty of the encounters where the materials are obtained. As a simple example, materials obtained through low level solo encounters could be used to produce gear for mid level solo encounters. Materials obtained through high level solo encounters could be used to create gear for low or mid level group encounters. This gives the solo adventurer a way (and hopefully not the only way) to obtain gear that will allow him to increase the difficulty of his adventuring content.

One last point: I don't believe that any gear purchased through the SOE marketplace should be higher quality than gear looted or crafted by players. The marketplace is wonderful for cosmetics, and it could possibly provide gear comparable in quality to entry level gear obtained in game.

But what does that add to the game? Like another poster said, "time spent is time spent." What is to be gained by limiting players in these arbitrary fashions? IMO, you should only be limited by what you are willing to put into the game in terms of time and effort. I understand you're trying to come up with a compromise solution, but personally I don't think a compromise serves to make a better game in this particular instance.

I see it as a way of making it so choosing a profession is something you have to think about and it makes it so you might have to interact with others to take advantage of the professions they have chosen to master so you can achieve whatever it is you want and then in turn help them achieve whatever it is they want perhaps. I'm thinking it adds an element to the community aspect of the game.

Another possible option I could see alongside the point system is mastering say the first 2-3 professions is a challenge but attainable. After that any others you want to master might be more challenging require more from you to master them. Just some ideas I had in my head.

No, it should be based off of VERY expensive gear that also loses durability whenever you craft. Same as adventurers. Crafting Gear and high end crafting gear should require the same if not more resources then what adventurer's have so the adverage (or only above average) player can be a "master crafter". This way, you can still be every crafter mind you, you just won't be good at any of them less you really focus on one.

For most people, though, crafting is not something they want to do as a community. Crafting is something they want to do solo during their downtime between adventuring with a group or guild or doing PvP with their friends. Especially when you're just trying to level up your skill.

It seems like a lot of people are assuming that a large number of people will try to excel in all crafts. Even if you can do anything, look at other MMOs and alts, most people don't have the time or energy to try to gain mastery of everything. Yes there will be a subset of people who feel the need to master everything but I suspect that time, in game materials, and the like will both limit the number of people and rate at which people can gain those skills. Even if everyone had mastery of everything, I don't think that it would actually cause us to lose the benefit of things like auction houses. Materials will be limited. There will always be a shortage of some key material needed to make that next great weapon.

I suspect we will see a few people who become experts in one or two areas but most people end up with some average level of competency across many areas. Each person gets to be a bit more self-reliant but rarely will anyone be able to do everything on their own.

That is why you need things like gear checks and other things. There should be few "MASTER MASTER" smiths on the server, but like Raiders, there are few 1% very best raiders as well. These are the people who literally put everything into that single profession, and they deserve that extra craft and the extra experimentation.

Rather than a gear check, I'd love to see efficiency gains for those high end players. Eventually they can start to craft the same weapon/armor/etc. but with less materials. That would be a great carrot at the end of that chain. You spend a ton of time perfecting your profession and eventually gain the ability to make the same thing with 80% (or pick your number) of the same goods as the other players.

That would hurt the economy because certain people would need less and less. A master smith should make things better and better with worse resources, and with better resources make things that are legendary.

I think you should be able to learn all of them, but it should be very difficult to learn all of the crafts. In fact, you should loose some crafting knowledge if you do not maintain it. As an mechanical engineer in real life, I spent a long time studying just that, mechanical engineering, and I know little about chemical or electrical engineering. Nor will I without investing a significant amount of time into learning the stuff. I would imagine it's the same way for anyone who is a real life blacksmith: You spend years and years training to perfect that craft and picking up another craft would require a large time investment.

Furthermore, you should be able to specialize in each craft. I'm specialized in noise and vibrations, which I worked very hard to get this specialization, and as a consequence I know very little about fluid dynamics as an example. In game, I would become a blacksmith and as I hone the skill I may decide I want to focus on weaponsmithing. Then finally as I progress through that specialization I may find that I really enjoy forging swords and I'm really good at it, but I'm not good at and don't enjoy forging maces. Thus, I decide to focus only on crafting swords.

While true that those people would be more outside the economy than others, this is again an issue of scale. If it turns out that only a relatively small number of people get to these high levels then there will be minimal to no impact to in game economy. If, a relatively large number do then yes this could be an issue. This is also somewhat dependent on what other economic sinks are in place. We haven't heard about those yet but, as with any economy, there needs to be a way to get money/goods/materials out of the economy. Blizzard faced this multiple times in the Diablo series with battle.net. It took them a long time to get right but I'm sure that the EQ team has looked at their model for ideas/concepts that they can adapt.

Not really, your thinking of this as a cycle. With no cycle of death. Only more and more people will reach that ascension. This would actually hurt newer players instead of helping them. Which should /NOT/ be encouraged.

This means more and more people will be using less resources because less and less resources are being used. This means miners/harvestors/skinners are needed less, so they are payed less. Then inflation sets in..