If you could reforge one part and not the other it would invalidate the latter. In other words, no one would ever buy crafted gear. Its better that the crafted gear fills the rule of the “common set”, which people generally go to. For this reason fundamentally it cannot be expensive. The third perk is a very serious problem. The power Levels that come from it are the cause of people not taking zones like everfall (etc).
We need to address crafting and its issues seperately. The economic model likely needs tweaks to improve it. One of the things that have puzzled me is that the ags team seems to provide resoruces in the game much like they do with amazon.com, in a great amount. I am unsure if this was a design based choice, or if this position was taken by some economist; Either way it provides lots of resources for very little gold return.
This in return creates a economic model where people may very little return on their investments, which invalidates crafting and resource harvesting for many people out side of a few items that are in high demand. I think reducing the amount of resources that each node (for example a tree) provides will improve this situation and allow a more casual friendly position of gold making via resource harvesting etc. The problem is however, this may help validate goldbots, so the question really is “is the trade worth it”. I believe it is as i always advocate for a casual friendly/pve oriented position as a designer, even though i am a hardcore pvp based player myself. My intent is to do what is best for the larger population (and i am speaking of those that left the game as much as the ones in it).
AoC has caught my attention for a few reasons. First, their criminal system may very well solve the eternal debate of “pve vs pvp”, and has the potential of changing and improving the gaming industry if they do it correctly. I have seem similar systems in many games, eso is one of them, however, they have never really worked in a pvp setting.
If we look back to runes of magic, or silkroad we see similar systems. For example in silkroad there was traders, bandits, and bounty hunters. The traders would physically carry stuff (via a mount) from city to city. Some times 30-40m gold equiv in new world evaluation. The bandits would try to kil them and the mounts, and the bountry hunters would get paid gold to kill bandits.
To my or any other reasonable designer worth their salt we’d assume that this system would work because it uses a value of “three”, its basically the magic number in game design, however, that did not happen. What took place is that people eventually learned that being a bandit paid far more gold than a bounter ever could. The result was a bunch of pvpers killing pve based traders (which you can imagine was not good for retention rates).
The AoC Team has also done something very interesting with city building. I had done some limited thinking and napkin design at solving the old “how do we let people build cities anywhere in the open world” but those answers often come up with very complex systems, which mine did. While i did think of limiting each zone to one city, i had not considered forcing that location because i had ruled that it was “to restrictive” to the “build anywhere concept”. AoC took another path on a road that i did not feel like walking. I am very eager to see the results of such a choice.
It is from the many things that other designers do that empower me to expand my positions and understanding of design. I am greatful to them for making mistakes for me, some may call it wisdom on my part, but i admire them for working through such hardships.