108657-tradeskills-why-does-every-mmo-do-this

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Hey Dev's
 
A buddy and I were discussing some of the dynamics of the Wildstar tradeskill system, and while I do not know what you have planned for the future we started to slap together some idea's. Now a lot of MMO's follow the current crafting system that wildstar provides, and while you don't fix what isn't broken there are some fundamental problems.
 
What they can create?
 
Alright so every mmo has always had armorsmiths, weaponsmiths, some sort of alchemist(technologist in this case). The problem is the armorsmith can make what, 5-6 pieces of useful items for any given character. The weaponsmith can make a weapon and an attachment? the technologist makes cores(not for himself) and gadgets to my understanding.
 
Why not make it more diverse? this basically means the bulk of players will go for armosmithing (light,med,heavy) because it is the most useful to them. I don't blame them, if you can make more items that are useful for you, that also means you can sell more useful items. 
 
Why not have a system where a weapon smith can modify certain parts of peoples weapons? selective stalker blades, to ammunition type that engineers fire? to barrels of a spellslinger? Give them more components to tweak and mess with that actually matter. Add imbuement stages perhaps so players must visit a weaponsmith to basically "enchant" a weapon, but then they have to do the imbuement for that weapon thus driving a pre-existing mechanic that the game has to offer. Replacing or upgrading pieces of a players existing weapon, possibly even naming that weapon would be pretty cool as customized idea. Slapping a design (pre-determined) that you got off a boss to make your big kickass warrior sword look and feel different, it would be an extension of a costume or rather it would just be more of a performance gain that looked badass?
 
The technologist, now I've been told they were incomplete so there's not a whole lot I can say without speculation what could happen or rather what I would like to see. Implants, support systems, anything that would be deemed an accessory (fantasy this would be rings, neck, relics, etc). Give them more items to craft for players to use, potions don't seem to be too high on peoples priority list and are mostly for crafting dailies. Maybe you will prove me wrong, but most mmo's this stuff gets left behind because the usefulness is slipping (excluding Flasks in WoW). 
 
Put simply, make sure that each crafting profession has enough weight to make players want to pick it over another form of crafting. I play a technologist and was in for a surprise when I hit max and there was nothing for me to do. My friend picked a weaponsmith but is quickly finding out that it would of been far more useful to go armorsmithing. That or let me pickup all the professions, a few games have done that and it's worked out well.
 
That's it, feel free to add anything.. 	
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			While the crafting system is well designed... the schematics are a bit underwhelming. 	
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			We were having a discussion about tying it into endgame here.	
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As an armorer, the stuff that I make can be absolutely godlike pre-50.  Even at 50 it's pretty good.  Of course it's outshone by purples acquired via raiding, but that's a completely different discussion.  This is true for weaponsmiths as well.  I know several warriors who swear by crafted swords.
 
Not to mention that the costume system promotes purchasing crafted gear to make costumes with.  I have four costume slot filled right now, but if/when I get a fifth, I'm going to be asking my tailor friend for that t3 set that just looks amazing.  Sure, I'm not buying it for the stats, but looks are just as important.
 
If we want to talk about crafting in general, technologists and architects have it the worst right now because they're stuck on the coordinate crafting system.  And chef recipes could probably use a bit more progression and a bit less... randomness in terms of the stat boosts on the food.
 
For endgame crafting, the only thing that is really missing is raid dropped power cores or components that can be used to make really fancy, raid-quality crafted stuff.  Otherwise the balance is right about where it needs to be, in my opinion.  And from watching the last livestream, I think the devs are watching it pretty closely and thinking about this too.
 
Of course, more schematics would always be awesome - more armor sets, more unique-looking weapons, more house stuff, more gadgets, and so on.  No real crafter will ever say no to having more stuff to create.  For example, it would be rather awesome if we could craft some unique mounts - maybe a custom Grinder or Retroblade?
 
But anyway, I think crafting in Wildstar is in a pretty good place right now overall.  Like everything else there's a few things that could be better, but by and large it's a happy place.
 
Edit:  Re-read OP and realized that I actually agree with *most* of what he's saying.  Sorry!	
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			Guess you didn't know... You can switch professions without losing what you have learned. It just costs a bit to switch.	
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