The Friday livestream brought a lot of hope

I watched this one, and the one after. Neither have me much hope for crafting revisions. At best, I'd say they have ideas to expand the available components. But nothing good about masterwork or enchant, which is the actual pain point.

I'm really regretting buying a merchant home at this point. I had plans for a bowyer shop, but a few carpentry deco are all the craftables I've ever been able to sell.

 

One of their design plans was to make crafted gear difficult to make and high value. To balance that, most gear lasts a very very very long time. Weapons recently became quicker to break, but still last a long time and are cheaply repaired in comparison.

My guess is they don't want the "make exactly what you want" because the decay rate of gear would have to be increased drastically, otherwise just a couple of really dedicated crafter/merchants could supply 2 years worth of gear to almost the whole game by themselves, which would reduce the demand for materials over time by a lot. I think that because they mentioned raw material market as a reason.

 

1. There'd be demand for raw materials, because there'd be a lot of stuff needed to be constructed.
2. A couple people being able to dominate the market isn't because people can make what they want (once again, take a look at any other part of the economy outside of masterworking/enchanting).
3. It's because of a cascade of failures, like allowing unchecked progression, failure to establish/enforce specialization, making mass-production too quick and easy, and complete lack of crafted-item sinks in the game. Games like Eve online, again, do not have this problem. Anyone can make whatever they want, and somehow, individuals physically can't keep up with demand, and that's not even counting market forces.
4. Why are they so concerned about "value"? Is it just another RMT thing? I'd gladly give up having high-value items, to an actual, competent, functional economy.
5. "High value" item difficult does not need to be through RNG. That's just a total and complete failure of imagination, trying to solve a problem with one of the most anti-player mechanics available.

I though Garriot was involved with this game? Was RNG the best he could come up with?

The "economy" in this game is completely inside-out. Only the most maddening-tolerant players stick it out, while it drives away everyone else. One of the main selling points of the game is the player crafted economy, and yet what was constructed was a torture chamber that few can bear, devastating the player retention, because they can't seem to implement - or even thinks it's a good idea to implement - rudimentary Economics 101.

 

Part of it is that the value of an item is not determined by how good the stats are, but what they are. If I manage a 3/3 bow with the exact stats I want, it is far more valuable to me than a 4/4 bow Elrond makes, if half of those stats are not ones I want. Mostly, because for all his skill, that translates to maybe a +3.1 STR instead of my +3.0 STR. If he can get a +4 or +5 where I can only get a +3, then maybe his bow ends up being better than mine, despite having some stats I don't want or need. If they want RNG, put it in the stats, not the result options. Maybe on average at lvl 100, you get a +3 STR, but once in a while you get that +4 or +5. Get those skills to 120 or 130, and the odds of that big bonus increase. (And not by just a paltry 1%; it is insulting to make it cost 30 million xp to get a +1% gain.) It could even be set up so that a new player crafting for the first time could, through RNG, have a small shot at getting that big bonus. Beginners still have a chance at competing, and even the "junk" items are still useful rather than trash. PvPers will still want that "perfect" all high-stats item, but for PvE, most would be happy just getting the correct stats, even if they could be higher.

For the record, I pulled those numbers out of thin air to make my point; I don't know off the top of my head what those numbers would actually be. I think they're roughly accurate for some enchants, but if they are off, the point is the idea, not the actual numbers.

 

(And then, maybe some day, we can get this system applied to potions, so I can live out my dream of being the best alchemist in Novia, instead of never making anything any better than anyone else. But that's another gripe for another time.)