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

Reposting my thoughts from the Landmark forums...

Trying to think outside of the box...

What if crafting became a tiered experience where you were able to do more as you leveled up in crafting? You would start by choosing one profession, this would be your specialization class. You would be able to skill this profession up to max including legendary and special items. When you reach certain skill levels (apprentice,journeyman, master) you would unlock the ability to have an additional profession. As you level up more you would be able to unlock a third profession or raise your secondary to the next tier. The more you craft the more professions would become available to you. I think this rewards people who like to craft while not being too limiting in choices.

I also think there should be an alternate advancement path for crafting. With an AA path you could customize your crafting experience by putting points in abilities to increase resources gathered while harvesting, increase chance to find rare mats, crit success to crafting, alternate recipes, alternate skins. The options are abundant and make the crafting experience a progression for the player much like adventuring.

Further, no secondary profession would be able to skill higher than your specialization class.Your specialized class would always be open to advancement, but other professions would require unlocking of higher tiers. Also, legendary recipes would not be available for the additional professions. This helps to keep the decision of specializing important and supports player interdependence.

Just a rough idea of a way to shake crafting up.

The unfortunate part is that ever since WoW mastering of skills (or leveling up anything) has become faster with each new MMO, this includes Everquest 2. Even Everquest has been dumbed down over the years.

If they do it along the lines of classic Everquest, good. I am all for that. But the unfortunate reality is that modern gamers have come to expect that all MMOs can be completely consumed within a few months. No developer is immune to this expectation.

As an addition to my comment on being able to play all classes. I said I am not a fan of it. This is true but at least with multi-classing you can't be everything at once. You have to make a choice at some point during gameplay, be it before you commence combat or be it inside a town in order to respec. Both ways make it so you can never be everything at once. With tradeskills you theoretically can be. There is nothing stopping you from being completely self sufficient. There is no real con in the system other than time to master everything but that is the same con multi-classing has only multi-classing has more than one con. Another con of multi-classing is that theoretically no build will ever be counter the entire build of another mob or player.

Another reason why I am not too fond of unlocking all classes is that it makes everyone the same in the end. Nobody is truly unique in a system where everything is achievable with just one character. It is "the bring the player not the class" brought to its conclusion.

Yes, I should be able to practice any type of crafting, but perhaps you could ramp up the difficulty for learning more than one type of crafting, and benefits to learning multiple on one character alongside it.
I don't want learning every profession in the game to be a grind, or way too easy. If I have mastered all of the professions I want it to mean something.
But at the same time, I don't want it to be possible to be the best at everything, because this way the game looses a lot of it's replay value. You should be able to devote "skillpoints" or some kind of mastery towards one set of talents, this way each character is unique. At the same time it shouldn't be purely permanent, incase I make a mistake, I want to be able to fix it.

EDIT : I noticed a lot of other people bringing in economy into the problem, and this supports "mastering one set of talents" as well. If everyone is effective at doing everything, then nobody needs anyone else. But another kind of more natural balance, is time. If I like adventuring in games, then I'll spend most my time adventuring and not crafting. If time comes where I need someone to repair my armor, or craft me a weapon, I can communicate with other players that enjoy the crafting element of the game and that devote their time to crafting to craft that for me. I also think crafting should take some skill because of this reason

i'm a fan of only being able to learn a couple. the more people can learn on one toon the less they need anyone else.

the less people need each other in an mmo... well, why bother playing an mmo

If your focusing on becoming a Warrior and the best warrior ever, you shouldn't be able to just switch to ranger and be the best ranger. It should be the same with crafters.

Yes, and this is why I think there should be a mastery type of mechanic. When I said that I would like to fix a mistake that I make in what I choose to master, or simply change my mind. I do not mean just moving around some skillpoints, I think it should take time to move your talents from one set to another. But I do think you should be able to at least be able to woodcraft with a tailor, but someone who spends time with tailoring should be better at tailoring

I think it should be an in between.

If everyone can master EVERY crafting type then the markets will suffer and become essentially useless, and crafting materials will be extremely hard to come by.

But, if a character can only learn one crafting skill then crafting can become a burden and boring.

Let players choose up to two crafting skills to balance it out.

Because of the fact that it is "not to your liking" you insist on making repeated posts to try to change the game to something YOU would prefer playing, regardless of how many people disagree with you. You make repeated post after post after post arguing, thumbing down, or otherwise committing yourself to any forum action that will diminish another's point of view, while trying to hammer in your own.

EQN's development team already said, on multiple occasions, that they were going to completely re-define what the EverQuest franchise is going to be, and, that revision is the reason that many of us are here.

We do not want a return of the mechanics. We want a return of the MAGIC!!!

Magic that is continually being destroyed by forum lobbyists in game after game after game..... with developers wondering what they did wrong game after game after game.

Companies, in the act of trying to secure an audience, needs to be careful not to incorporate diametrically opposed elements into that audience, and then rely on those members for feedback. Electronic Arts recently did a study that was very enlightening when it came to forum feedback in the case of battlefield heroes and the whole "pay to win" debate. Just to show you how misleading forums can be, as well as give you some insight as to what part of the population the forums actually represent:

http://www.slideshare.net/bcousins/paying-to-win

Now, for those of you that do not understand; MMO's are not only direct delivery markets, but we can gather information on any metric that can be devised in REAL-TIME!! All it takes is enough pre-production to define those metrics and that data, and then post production to gather and parse it. All your habits, everything you say, how many times a specific word is ever spoken, most popular activities, populations around specific coordinates to determine real POI's versus designed POI's....... all of that and more can be known for certain.

The problem, when you do decide to incorporate forum feedback is first with dealing with cognitive biases, one of the most recurrent being the base-rate fallacy: people paying more attention to their own observed specific experiences than being aware of the actual probabilities of that experience occurring.

But, that gets into two subjects that I really don't feel like spending all afternoon explaining: Meta-Cognition and Bayesian Statistics. I've digressed far enough.

Some of us doubt your willingness to let the game take shape by the fact you consistently fight our input and try to overshadow everyone else with how YOU feel the game should be and what YOU like. If EverQuest is the game you are playing, why would you play anything else? If you've played other games and left EverQuest, what was it about the game that made you leave? Obviously, the mechanics had something to do with it.

Most of us are here because we do not want to see EQ with voxels, nor do we want to see EQ2 with voxels. We are here because we want something COMPLETELY different. We don't want to have the same-old same-old re-skinned game that we've been playing for the past thirty years; we want something new!!

EQN is that new game for many of us. All of us have our desires; what makes yours any more right than mine? Nothing. It all comes down to how many people this idea appeals to, and all you are doing is attempting to subvert that entire process by repeated postings to hammer "what you want" into something that isn't meant to be that way.

That is why some of us doubt both your sincerity to contribute to what EQN was declared to be, as well as your motives to move in the direction that EQN was stated to be moving in. All you want is EQ with a face-lift. EQN is not going to be EQ with a face-lift. So, why are you continuing to lobby for it and drown everyone out by the sheer number of postings you make?

In most of the threads, I've posted once.... if at all. This is the last time I will post in this thread, because my opinion is known. Do us all a favor and let other people speak; let other opinions be heard without trying to dominate the thread and bury dissenting viewpoints under pages and pages of your disagreements (thus making it more difficult for the developers to actually read).

This is a tough one. My first thought was it would be nice to have all the crafting skills on one character compared to spread out over several toons, but then I started thinking about how group dynamics work when it comes to crafting and gathering skills. I could not imagine being in a group and fighting everybody for resources or recipes that drop as loot. So, in the end I have to go with not allowing all the skills on one toon.

Just because all professions are available to anyone doesn't mean that everyone WILL max all professions. In fact, I'd imagine that it would be very time consuming to do so and that only the truly dedicated crafter will be able to max all professions. So to those of you saying players should be limited, consider this: if someone is willing to put in the work to max all of them, why shouldn't he be able to? and, what does a limited system offer that can't be bypassed by creating alts? If the limited system just pushes people to making alts, what have you really accomplished?

Scarcity though resources, Skills through practice and aptitude.

I would like to see Skills being tied to learning / practice. Not just random luck, like scroll drops.
I think it would be interesting to tie maximum skills in a craft to traits and attributes. Anyone can be a blacksmith, but your strength would determine the maximum mass of a hammer you could wield which may limit the materials or type of objects you can complete well. So if I need an iron beam I have to find a big strong blacksmith to make that. That same black smith may be really bad at making locks because his fingers are too large to hone mechanisms.

To make potions I may want a really smart lass that does not make foolish mistakes, yet such attention to detail makes her resistant to change and a rotten inventor.

I would hope this would drive community, because to get an item of worth I might need parts made from multiple crafts and even multiple experts within a craft. Some games have done this through things like hilts + large blades = sword.

I think it could be taken further, after all that Ancient Iron Blade of Infinite Pain through Fire and Lightning with a Hilt of healing, sheathed in a scabbard of Dexterity, had to begin somewhere as a simple dagger loved by a child.

You know dumb stuff like, you start with a blade and wooden handle an keep the darn thing upgrading it, stabbing a boss with it to imbue it with magic. Loaning it to another player to purge evil. I dunno, It just feels that with modern object design our stuff could inherit attributes as we go. Some of which would not even be crafted, but acted. For example, I don't like to PK but I need a touch of evil in my dagger to make it more "agile" I loan it to another player who will PK with it, she returns it to me for a fee, now properly endowed with evil, and this step must be taken to create a legendary "Blade of Infinite Pain" Oh and btw, players have to figure this stuff out, there is no open cook book, you find hints in tomes or lore throughout the world. The strange thing is you end up with really rich objects and wonderful variety.

There may be a BiS, but there is only one of them for now until someone figures out how to make one better or to counter its advantage. pfft I rattle on .. this is not the place to write a design doc <laughs>

I am sure its been pointed out by now, but if you are able to master EVERY crafting technique, skill and plan on one toon you greatly reduce the following:

• Replay ability: When you have crafting done on one character and can swap classes also, whats the point of creating a second character?
• Economy and Monopoly: If you have all crafting abilities on one character you are no longer required to go after anything in the market...essentially you can create it all yourself. This would greatly impact the type of economy that is unleashed on this new world of Norrath.
• Communication and Collaboration: If one character can do everything, whats the point of making friends that specialize in other crafting? You would make this more of a solo game versus that of a MMO.

Overall I think this should really be broken into tiers. Every character should be able to craft and gather up to a CERTAIN POINT. When they don't specialize in an area though, the gathering and crafting in the areas can only progress up to a max level. Since we have the ability to adapt which classes we play dynamically, so should be our masteries. For example:
I start out leveling out all my skills up to 100 skill points (SP) in the category. Fishing, Mining, Skinning, Leatherworking and Blacksmithing all are maxed out at 100. I decide that as I am a warrior, I might as well choose to advance my Mining and Blacksmithing skills allowing me to advance them to 200 SP, while my other skills can't go beyond 100. Later on my community drives me to change to a Druid. I now see the need for skinning and leatheworking. I pay a handsome fee and drop my Mastery skills, reducing all of my previously skilled up 200SP skills back down to 100, and I get to select a new mastery and level up those skills. You aren't truly allowing everyone to master every crafting skill, but you are giving them an easy but expensive way out of their current setup.
This way we still have collaboration throughout the marketplace on items and working together to make epic items, as well as an economy that isn't solely based on one character having a monopoly on items.
Just my two cents.

While making my commute,I was considering what benefits there would be to having this system, and from a modern tradeskiller aspect, I can't see any that aren't purely self serving in nature UNLESS they totally rehaul the tradeskill process to reflect their new philosophy.

let me pose a new tradeskill scenario: i am a stonemason, carpenter, architect, etc. I have discovered a plans for a castle tower that needs a tier 3 stonemason, carpenter and architect. I can only choose one skill at a time to use, as tradeskilling is more interactive, countering moves, etc. What i need to complete my project is two other tradeskillers, both with the ability to make up for the missing tradeskills i actively can't use. In my example, gwaha joins me as a carpenter and talathon acts in the role of the architect. The 3 of us then can complete the tradeskill encounter, each actively countering complications, etc to create our masterwork tower.

in this scenario it would greatly benefit the community to have multiple tradeskills per character, as it may be difficult to find up to 5 other players with the necessary tradeskills needed to complete more difficult projects. I could see myself totally on board with a group based trade skill system. This is not to say all recipees would require more players, but the comparison could be made to effective group adventuring.

itrade skills are treated as solo events, then make them one or two per character. If there is a new group component, than i am all for many or all for one character.

I have a unique view about this, all of my life in mmo's, what i love must is crafting and economic system, and i usualy love good systems where the craft can rule a economy, or change that if we "crafteres" want!
I play lineage 2 for many eyears and with the time they make the game in a thrash when they change that, in the early years of the game, the craft is the main source of money, and to get the weapons/sets and almost everything, dwarfs are part of the world, then they change everything, the game don't need craft and dwarfs like before... and i hate that, i want to see a game where the craft system can make a world spin, make the market move, and a economy changer.... not get all weapons and armors by drop, craft everything if this is a sandbox game... with many craft systems for everyone, not all in just one!
in real life no one can do everything by his own.... it's like a profession.

Sry my english

How about allowing unrestricted multi-classing, but limiting the number of recipes you can have "ready", no matter what the class is?

The recipes that are kept ready would have to be maintained in some way, so that leaving them dormant will make them fizzle, until they have been maintained back up.

This way, it would be ludicrous to try to maintain 1000 recipes of all classes all the time, it almost wouldn't matter if someone create alts or not. There will be a practical consideration to decide which recipes are maintained, this would give some identity to the crafter, and instantaneous needs of the market or the guild would be filled by the players who have concentrated on those recipes.

To become the best armorsmith for example, you might need a helmet and cloth armor made just for armorsmithing. Same with other classes. It should cost a fortune to become the very best of one and become legendary for it.

I really would like to see a tradeskill system that had the timesink EQ1's did. This would make dedicated tradeskillers incredibly valuable, especially if crafted items can be as potent as looted ones (or maybe a situation where someone with sufficeint Mastery/Masteries can make a looted item better).

As for being able to multi-class all the classes, I like the idea because eventually you would be better-able to tell the truly quality players as the majority of the slackers would just be bland everything. In such a scenario someone that has mastered all the classes just to do it but specializes as a healer would shine above most other "healers".

EQ1 crafting difficulty/tedium/whatever then sure. EQ2 no.

Yes, to an extent. I think that any player should be allowed to learn any crafting discipline, but may only be allowed to max each one to a certain level. Suppose, for example, there are 10 tiers of crafting prowess, from mundane(0) to artisan(5) to ungodly(10). Each character should be able to get all disciplines to a certain level, but from there be limited in how many they can advance. Perhaps only one skill to tier 10, and another to tier 9. Perhaps all skill to teir 9, and only one to teir 10, which would be reserved for skin, effect, and animation changes only.

Another possibility would be to create crafting skill couplings. These could be done in several ways, such as "Weaponsmithing," which creates all weapons up to teir 5, at which point a crafter must select to advance "Swordmaking," and forgo "Bowmaking" while continuing to advance to teir 10.

I could also envision a "collect them all" type of system where players are required to complete difficult quests to advance to the next level of crafting teir for any discipline, but would be allowed to pursue any discipline.

Docc and Flerbkin. Over a decade later I still remember the names of the only two ogre grand master smiths on my server at the time.

I'm all for making certain crafters rare. Sadly I don't think developers have it in them.