I've been thinking of ways we can improve crafting, the in game economy, interaction in the game, and benefit Micro Trans events too, and have an idea.

Crafting at the moment is hard work to train and pretty much requires a script to do it - You need to dedicate a lot of hours and it involves masses of scroll and moving rooms, which makes interaction hard. This leaves players with a choice of either training crafting, or interacting with other players, as it's tricky to do both especially in a forge where only one players can work at a time.

An idea would be to shape crafting like magical research - Shaped to be a process in the background that takes X amount of time to craft an item, provide some atmo messages as you go, limit you in the crafting hall, but in general let people sit in the same room, without masses of scroll, so they can interact and have fun while crafting an item.

I image the process going along the lines of...

Hold raw materials
Read book for what you want to craft
Receive message saying "using this material, you have a 80% chance of master crafting this item, put YES to craft or NO to cancel"
Crafting starts and raw materials change to unfinished item in hand, which must stay in hand through the process.
(insert generic atmo messages about the crafting process for 3 minutes)
Item complete, appears in hand, crafting of item done.

This would free up people to actually interact and have fun while in the crafting process.

On the back of this, I'd love to see crafting play a much larger part in the game, and be fed by the micro trans events.

Shape the micro trans events to offer more items like rare materials, rare templates, rare look/color/atmo messaging vouchers that can be applied to weapons/armor/clothing that have been crafted. Add to the enchanting the ability to create the flares we see on weapons, but sell the flare "gem" at the micro trans events. Players would buy a blank "gem" and enchant it to be the flare of their choice, then add it to crafted weapons or armors that have been made.

This puts all the focus into crafting, interaction, game economy, and still allows for Simu to make money from materials and items being bought from the events.

I personally find that a bulk of my own interactions with players often came on the back of buying/selling items, or crafting things from rare materials. I'd be much more tempted to buy into micro trans events if I felt I could pick up rare materials, craft them into something good, and sell it on for a profit in game.

Anyway, just an idea I had to help improve several aspects of the game for the players, while factoring in the need to sell things at MT events.

Would love to hear views on this