I noticed 4 issues which make the game wrong for crafters :
1. Too many loots from mobs.
Massive loots of gear are flooding the server, making crafters useless, killing economy, killing the fun.
Solution : Purple/orange should be droped by specific mobs with a low rates. Not necessarily an end game boss from Lazarus. It could be even a mob level 30. Player would farm this mob and it will increase PvP at a specific place.
2. Wrong balance between crafting mechanics and ingredients scarcity.
implementing new levels for professions 200+1+2+3+4+5 was not a bad idea. Apart from, you have (again) artificially lengthen the time life of the game, you killed the market of crafting legendaries ingredients. Giving rewards of Cinna/Tolvium was a good intention but these ingredients became useless. They cost 9 gold at the TP and we cannot use it because of the Asmodeum x10/day cap.
Solution : Put the Asmodeum cap from 10 to 20 (or more) or reduce the quantity of legendary ingredients available in the game. Soon Cinna/Tolv will cost 1 gold soon if we must store them without possibility to use them.
3. Loot of the Timeless Shards
You implemented the[Timeless Shards] which is also a good idea but they cost a crazy price (5-10k gold). Any normal player will wait to have enough [Timeless Shards] to start crafting. Now I have 230 Asmodeum and 1 [Timeless Shard].
Solution : Make these Timeless Shards available on more specific mobs/chests for solo/casual players who cannot go to Lazarus everyday.
4. Loots are far too random
I think it was simpler for you to put same mobs and chests everywhere in the game. But it would be MUCH more fun if you would implement a bit more logic in loots. Specific items should be looted in specific area by specific mobs. Now, we are completely lost in the random.
Solution : Make an official database with the drop rate of items, give exlusivity of loots to some specific mobs/area. Players will go to farm it, and it will increase interactions.
This was always the way since launch because players tended to level faster than crafting. You might as well get random drops all the time because you couldn’t craft anything better.
Even special crafts were silly in their design: E.g., special crafts like Dryad Walking Stick
Then there was the issue of an enormous amount of basic materials to process the higher-level materials. Now they have made crafting harder and require higher-level crafts to level, so that puts even more pressure on.
But probably no one is complaining about this now because they are just buying bot-harvested rock-bottom-price materials from the Trading Post. Is this why they are slow to take action on bots? Because it would just generate a different round of complaints?
Once players hit crafting level cap they would also hit the crafting caps and then suddenly not have to get so many materials to feed the huge pyramid scheme. So in theory, those caps were necessary and useful because there was a sort of slow-down or end to the pyramid scheme of needing massive amounts of materials and harvesting.
But now they have unlocked crafting beyond max skill and it gives you rewards. So now players chase those rewards and want to craft more. Which causes them to complain about those crafting caps.
Overall, AGS has ruined their original design as well as the economy and server inventories. They needed to instead examine closely their base system designs first instead of rushing to push out Expertise.