Discussion: Similar recipes

Given the recent changes to the availability of the recipes, I would like to open a discussion specifically about the similar recipes. I define these as recipes that are identical except for one item. e.g. Iron/Copper hilt, iron/gold ingot, etc.

I can see some reasons for simplifying these down to single recipes (e.g. hilt, ingot, etc):

• Easier to find recipes in the book
• Less time hunting (vendor or mobs) for that one recipe for your awesome <thing>

I can see some reasons for keeping things like they are:

• Everyone should not be able to make everything
• It provides another way to keep a vibrant economy going

While I have my own opinions based on input from those I adventure with, I'd really like to get wider input. Please, no rants and keep it civil. I'm most interested in your reasoning for your opinion on this topic.

 

My opinion:

The have a "single recipe for each type, each component, and each combination thereof" clearly was constructed while we had full discoverability of all recipes.
Back then it worked since the player could look at one and deduce the next try it and get it added to the book.

It does not work with recipes spread out over multiple vendors and sometimes regions where each has a cost to them. Or where they are drops.
For higher tiers cool recipes I don't mind as much but lots of the recipes that are drops don't seem high tier and lots that can be bought seems like they should have been drops.

Compounded with this issue is that the majority are teachable or re-teachable.
Thus giving the organized guilds another big advantage over solo crafters. As if they needed more.
Where we know if we look at other games that about half if not more of dedicated crafters wants to be sort of solo and not have to rely on others than a market to buy from.


Some suggestions that have so far been rejected by the team:

• "Apprentice bags". Where you buy a bag, unpack it and you get a multitude of recipes. Ex an Ingot Apprentice Bag would contain all the standard I got recipes in one package priced accordingly. These would then make more sense for refining than end products. Although a Blades Apprentice Bag with dagger up to two handed would make sense as well. This was not rejected outright but rather got a 'will see' kinda lukewarm response. This would be a rather easy implementation with doing 2-5 such apprentice bags per school.
• Generic recipes. We see these recipes that take input of "metal ingot" or "wooden timber" where the output gets different characteristics dependent on ingredients used. This could easily be applied to things like Ingots where one generic recipe could take any common ores and the outcome would change on the ore used. This was not liked by the devs since it means a lot of work. While it would have made more sense.
• Discovery trial and error. Right now it is just a flag, either you can or you can't. That is causing dissatisfaction. But what if you could try discovery but had a % chance based on proficiency? If you fail the ingredients are lost, if you succeed you get the recipe. Then the price could be set indirectly by the difficulty. This one was rejected with a 'no' with no further detail given so unclear why.
• Unlock discover. Combined with the above. What if you bought and got one recipe of type X which would then flag all the similar X recipes as Discovery Trisl and Error? So you buy Iron Ingot and learn that. Then all common ingots could be discovered by trial and error as above.
• More crafting quests with basic recipes as rewards or discovered along the way. One such Apprentice quest per higher school would make sense.

The problem lies in that all good solutions require that recipes have some sort of knowledge added to them. With the amount of existing recipes that represents a change the devs are smart to be reluctant about.