Just something to think about as a Crafter.

I fully agree to your post. If the developers really want to make crafting a full-blooded aspect of the game then they also have to consider that not all players will have the same amount of time to play. Therefore I think the developers needs to implement a system i.e. an achievement system as seen from other MMO's. The achievement system can be setup so that players with a lot of play time has achievements to work at and be rewarded accordingly and vice versa for those with less play time. Each player will be able to set their own goals for which achievements they want to go for. Another idea could also be daily achievements/tasks which reward you with materials which typically take longer time to gather.

The crafting I have seen so far is very positive - but there's still a long way to go, and I truly look forward to start playing the game.

 

I"m not a fan of PK as a driving mechanic for the economy either. Already experienced being in an MMO where a necessary low level quest was placed within a PVP flagged area. High level players got their jollies spawn camping newbies , killing them as many as 30-50x over.

As long as the economic driver for craftsmen doesn't mean this kind of pain for many for the benefit for a few - I"m ok with it.

 

Funny, we had this kind of discussions over at SC too. The controversy was over the PVP slider mechanic where players could set the slider to low - which meant your next encounter was likely to be an NPC fight instead of a PVP fight. No matter how many times it was explained to the PVP factiont that this slider mechanic wasn't likely to work the nearer you got to the lawless borderlands of space - they still wanted non-consensual PVP to extend to areas which were supposed to be highly civilized and controlled.

To be fair , there were PVE fanatics too which wanted the slider to work 100% of the time. It was explained to them that it was possible to have a private server that could fullfill this condition. ( Same argument was given to hardline PVPers btw).

I told one particularly annoying permadeath supporter who was making a pest of himself : " Fine, I believe in choice. Since you love permadeath so much how about a switch for it ? That way you can turn it on & die permanently while I can keep it off and have my regeneration/rebirth sequence".

He kind of shut up after that

 

That last sentence made me lol. Ok, I have to say yours is the first argument about this where I can actually see what you mean, and even sympathize. Put that way, I can see how you'd see it as more risk. On the other hand, as a pvper you wouldn't exactly be out there in your overalls though would you? Aren't pvpers always prepared for a fight? I don't pvp so I won't even pretend to know how you'd go about it. As long as they don't make the differences too much, I'll be fine with it though. I wasn't really lobbying for a change anyway, just rambling my thoughts. (bad habit of mine, hehe). Most games I've played does it pretty much the same anyway so I'm used to it. I still hate it but I'm used to it.

...Forgot to add, since we will only have one character in this game we won't really have lumberjacks and miners per se unless our only character is solely a crafter. So pvpers out gathering will presumably always be fully prepared for a fight, if I'm understanding this right. Not sure how that is going to change the dynamic from most games out there.