Economic/Crafting Suggestion

[Thomas Goodman]

I finally got around to leveling up my crafting skill a bit and I'm a little worried about how this system will affect the economy of the game. I believe that in order to spur a player driven economy you need to force players to interact. If every player is able to craft everything, then you have no incentive to actually trade. Instead players will just hoard commodities. I would propose that there is some kind of skill cap on certain items that are crafted. For example a player could be a master caster, woodworker, etc. but not master of them all. If i'm able to craft everything myself, what incentive do I have to trade at all?

 

This game will grind down to a few people sitting in ports for the most important items just buying all of them the instant they become available. It's very stagnant.

[JookySeaCaptain]

 

 

This game will grind down to a few people sitting in ports for the most important items just buying all of them the instant they become available. It's very stagnant.

 

This has already happened. For example: My faction on my current server controls one port on one side of the map that produces hemp. That port only produces 360 hemp per day. To make a single Cerberus requires 72 hemp. In other words, if the entire hemp production of that port is devoted to nothing but building Cerberus class ships, only 5 can be built per day. Everyone has the ability to craft ships, but in reality only five people each day will have the capability to do so (assuming of course that 30 people don't all come to the port and everyone takes away a fraction of what they need). This is on top of the labor hour issue of course where to actually craft a Cerberus requires slightly more labor hours than you generate in an entire day. So what happens? Hemp is instantly bought the moment it appears in port because people sit there and snap it up as soon as it spawns. This discourages shipbuilding because only a few people will be able to actually make anything - a problem when the entire economy, such as it is, revolves around making ships.