This could really apply to most any MMO but anyway...


Crafting should be a time-consuming but rewarding alternative activity to regular gameplay. It should feel like something that is worth doing but not required to enjoy the game. At its worst crafting should be an alternate source of in-game revenue.

Low-Level Crafting

The results of crafting at lower levels should never become entirely obsolete so as to allow entry level players to engage in crafting and gathering of required starter resources without feeling as though they are wasting time that could better be spent leveling.

In the beginning having resources typically found in lower level missions or as drops from low level NPCs allows player to immediately begin gathering materials for their crafting career.

Anything crafted at this level should still be in demand when characters have leveled beyond the range they can get drops from the appropriate NPCs. This creates demand as more players grow in level and skill. They can still replay old missions but this would be more time-consuming than street sweeping and getting a team together to quickly take down numerous groups of NPCs at the lower level. 

Players create new characters to progress through early content and farm low level drops keeping a steady population of experienced players in low level zones to greet, guide and even recruit new players. They also take their higher level characters in and team down to lower levels.

Mid-Level Crafting

Still utilizing low level crafted components and even low level crafted items Mid-level crafting encourages the same activities as the  low-level crafting experience. The difference being that  now the player is combining components from low and mid level crafting to make components directly used in Late-Game crafting as well as their own equipment.

The ability to break down older items or items acquired in missions or as rewards in order to acquire components or resources is unlocked here. The odds of gaining high numbers of resources or even high quality components from breaking down items in lower level ranges is automatically a set percentage. The odds increase as skill in this crafting range increases to include the ability to break down and salvage resources and components from  mid-range items and components with minimal success at the highest level. Increases in the success of mid-range salvaging would only occur at higher levels this allows room for the system to continue to grow with future character progression and levels. 

At this point Crafting missions would also be advisable. Missions that are repeatable daily and allow the gathering of rare materials with a chance for multiple rare or very rare materials to drop. These materials can be used to augment already crafted items or in the crafting of components to increase the number of components crafted. Making them desirable but not required for the average crafter. 

Late-Game Crafting

Late game crafting introduces rare drops from raids and other group activities. In addition to more Crafting dailies and even weeklies there is also Raid and PvP resources. Items rewarded from various bosses in Raid content, perhaps offering the ability to craft keys that unlock special Raid zone areas. These areas would be offering even greater rewards with a risk of failure that results in the consumption of the rare and high level crafting resources used to unlock it. These Crafted Raid keys would be bound to character and unable to be broken down. Their components found as drops in the normal raid areas would be completely tradable.  

Raid components and Unlocked Area components as well as PvP components could be used to create Raid gear or PvP gear respectively. They can also be used to increase late-game gear or other group gear to high levels. Max augmenting a level 50 piece of equipment with raid components would provide the player with a piece of equipment nearly equal to Max augmented raid gear. If an item is crafted entirely from high end rare components and augmented further with them it would be approximately 10% better all around than the aforementioned gear. 

The difference would be relatively minor overall but for players that spend a great deal of time in game and want every edge they can get it would be worth getting. Even other players could still purchase components or equipment from the vendors around the world stocked by Player crafters. 

The ability to craft various costumes using components purchased with reputation currencies or as rare drops from NPCs would be great as well. This could be monetized by selling these components as grab bags in a cash shop and/or entire sets of reputation costumes in the cash shop. Any reputation components would be account bound and their subsequent costume unlocks would be account wide. 

Note any performance related enhancements would only be acquired through gameplay. 

A lot of very interesting ideas here. Something that has me interested in the game "Shroud of the Avatar" is that it advertises you could just have your life as a blacksmith, crafting unique and powerful magic weapons for the world.

Talking about rare drops and raids reminds me of swtor. Especially when crafting the highest level equipment requires materials that you can only get in either raids or the weekly stronghold event where you do certain tasks to gain points that unlocks this ultra-rare salvage as a prize for you. I was SOOO addicted to salvage when it first came to CoH as all the items had some interesting info about them, especially items that were specific to certain factions too.