Useful and meaningful crafting system

[kandrathe]

Kandrathe, in the expansion delay thread, wished for a useable and meaningful crafting system.

I was wondering what sort of system people would would like to see, perhaps based on some ideas from other MMO's that got it right.

I personally think the way they handled the Thorium Brotherhood is pretty cool, where it takes a group effort to get several skilled crafters the tools they need to put you over the top in the dungeon the materials come from.  Also on the horizon: Zul'Gareb where to get the set bonuses from items you apparently need to be a crafter.
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Assessing the current system, let me be critical by craft;

Alchemy - Very useful, and very consumable. It should be harder to achieve mastery, with difficult quests and back story and such. There is a lack of high end recipes. I've never even seen a black lotus, so making an extremly rare BOP (soon to be BOE) herb is currently what reigns in the craft. I'm glad to see they added more recipes in Zul' Garab and I hope it is a trend. :-)

Blacksmithing - OMG what an undertaking. It is the one crafting I have not taken, due to the lack of appropriate utility of the items. It is the craft to take if you are really into crafting and consumes vast amounts of materials. There are a bazillion recipes, and specializations in Armor, Blunt , Axe or Swords. And, it takes a bazillion hours to master, do the quests, go everywhere to get the recipes, get all the reputations, to get the materials, and all along the way you keep thinking if only I can get my mastery maybe I will craft something useful, only to find that 95% of what you can do is useless. Along your way you will find the "Mega-UberSword", or "InvincibleArmor" drop off the boss who is guarding the chest that might contain the crafting recipe you *really* needed. Blacksmithing should be able to create items useable by lower classes that are mostly better than what they can find, or get from quest rewards. It is a hard balance between offering phat lewtz to motivate people to run instances, complete quests, or purchase from crafters. Currently smithing is unbalanced, and instances and quest rewards are THE way to equip.

Enchanting - First, to be fair, disenchanting and enchanting items really should have item level requirements. Otherwise, it is really pretty balanced, although hellaciously expensive to level since you need to destroy items (a source of income) to gather materials for enchants that nobody wants (to pay for). For most people they take another crafting profession (Tailor) to produce more useless items that nobody wants from grinded cloth, and then disenchant the crafted item for enchanting materials. That is until you get to higher levels of enchanting skill when people will pay you for an enchant when they change an item. Like alchemy, there should be more quests and back story. Making the master trainer in an instance is a tad cruel.

Engineering - is by far the most useful craft for personal use. Most of the items are only useable by engineers (who would rather make it themselves than buy it from you). This really is not so much a profession as a hobby. A profession is a way to earn money, and engineers do not really have much they can produce to sustain themselves. Luckily, most engineers take Mining where they can sell ore and smelted bars, stone, and gems to other engineers or smiths who require vast amounts of materials. My suggestion is to add more high level engineering items that are useable by non-engineers.

Herbalism - is way too easy to skill up. They should add quests and the need to learn to pick herbs by herb. Maybe even a herb preparation skill, similiar to smithing/smelting picking raw kingsblood is one thing, but prepared and bundled is another. Go ahead and make Black Lotus BOE, but make the skill to pick it and prepare it require an extensive quest line. If it is harder to get the skill to gather dreamfoil, then it is balanced to lower the number required per potion. The trend I'm going for here it to require the players to inculcate themselves into the game before they can "farm" it. You don't see gold farmers selling potions of Chromatic Resistance, or Dark Iron Helms at the AH.

Leatherworking - Pretty well done until level 225, and has some quests built in. Needs more leatherworking quests, like perhaps a scorpid armor quest from Taneris, a turtle scale quest from Hinterlands. This craft becomes abysmal after specialization, for the same reason that smithing fails, but also in that there is a dearth of recipes after level 225. Leatherworkers should be able to create and entire set or three within their specialization catering to Druid, Rogue, Shaman, and Hunter.

Mining - Like I mentioned with herbalism, the problem with mining skill is that it is too easily acquired. I really think the only solution is to immerse gathering skills within the quest reward/instance boss killing PVE system. If you make getting the ore more difficult, then you can reduce the amount of ore needed per item and make the crafted item have value, not the raw materials. How messed up is it that we have an economy where by crafting ore into a finished good you devalue the item. The problem is that there is more demand for the raw materials, and zero demand for the finished goods.

Skinning - See above regarding gathering skills. Skining skill is too easily leveled, with no quests and one objective (Finkles Skinner) at high levels. Require more quests, and learning skinning and hide preparation on different types of beasts. Make more types of hides (e.g. shadowcat, yeti, bear) which can be used to differentiate from the 30 stacks of heavy leather. Maybe in the wild leather items, rather than random Wild boots "of the Monkey" require gorilla hides, and "of the Bear" require bear hides. I dunno about "of the Eagle". :D

Tailoring - This skill, like smithing has many very useful items. Useful for disenchanting if nothing else. Smithed items are too expensive to disenchant, but hey, cloth falls from humanoids like leaves in fall. I resent the cloth hierarchy, but I understand the need for some "level" system. It would be nice to see more specializations in tailoring (holy, shadow, arcane).

Cooking - This is done very well. Lots of cooking quests and many useful eats. I'd still like to see more recipes (savory deviate delight style would be nice too). What's the harm in finding a way to cook most anything in the game? Rotted bear carcass soup anyone? Anyone?

First Aid - It's done ok up until the quest in Theramore, then *yawn* boring after that. Make this more intricate, require more than just cloth to make bandages. *broken record* More quests, more story line, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Fishing - I'd like a little more adventure and a little less drudgery here. Again, more quests like the Nat Pagle one, at lower levels as well. I've suggested before that I think there should be the off chance that "THE BIG ONE" takes a bite on your line and you have to fight a zone appropriate battle (with a nice drop of course).

Also, in general, more work should be made to make the crafts interdependant. There is a good amount of this and it makes everything have more value if it can be used by another profession.