[arfindel]

One important thing is combinations possible of professions. Lotro has a nice idea implementeing traits. At level X you get a new trait. You buy it. But to make use of it you have to equip it. Now the creativity of the player comes from the combination of traits equipped in acertain situation because there's a huge list of possible traits and only say 5 slots to equip them.

Traits can be a mixture of grind (kill 500000 frogs), of quests completion or of exploration (you have found all the 50 POIs in an area).

SWG had a different way of combining. You coudl only have 2 masters in 2 proffessions and a third about half way. Instead the advancement to a master was easier. So you kept levelling untill you found a combo you enjoyed and identified with it or bought second, third characters etc.

A marketing idea is limit all skills in same box. What I mean: allow only 2 or only 5 masters whatever they are: dancer, fisherman, tailor or brawler. This will encourage players to create specialised characters and it's also pretty true to life. Don't imagine an accomplished sorcerer with all 4-10 (name it) masters in magic arts taken who also is a star at playing piano, dancing step and fishing. For the game economics it is also good.

Make cathegories depend on each other. Not only crafting. An ancient greek belief was that warriors were mad at seeing so much human blood during wars so when they got back home they needed to be surrounded by specialised women to become human again. Give role players some importance in game economy, let them be useful to fighters, it helps both the game community and the market of the game.

Never ever give any ready made object as reward for a quest. This destroys forever the game economy. Rewards should be always materials and in some special cases schematics.
That's maybe the most important failure I've seen in all 10 years of gaming.

Want people be crazy about game economy? Invest in it from the begining. It starts with the humble email system. It seems nothing hard, but I've seem too many splendid games with stupid primitive email system. Make it hot, make it modern, connect it to a private vendor and auction system. There are people who won't sleep many nights to win their beloved sword in an auction. And you'll have a huge mass of people who won't play any MMO at all spending weeks to decorat their shops and vendors, cretaing customers catalogues and sending thank you emails or just newsletters with their products and their stats. Make it sturdy. Money dupe has to happen only once to destroy all your work and create a wave of inflation nobody can control anymore.

Give crafters the opportunity to make a difference. All crafting systems should allow creativity. Allow people create unique items. If everybody makes the same stuff why bother to make it in the first place? Hire a mathematician! First you need complex combinatory systems to allow crafters work their brains out to improve, secondly create aleatory systems (everybody loves lottery), but not both in same stuff. SOmebody who worked too hard to get his special mats can drop the game if he loses the lottery, it happened before in Ryzom. Hire a mathematician! He should run simulations to check what happens if players get hands of best ever possible mats and create things out of them, see if economics can be kept stable in this situation. Hire a mathematician! (did is mention hire a mathematician before?) He should check to see how pvp works if people create the upper end dodge or parry suits.

Fashion brings you customers. There is a slice of crafter market who don't care about stats on their products, they enjoy to create beautiful things. They are few, but their admirers are many and their work creates by itself events in the community. A great idea in SWG was that objects were by design part of environment. Example: you found a spider web in your hunt? you can come home, drop it in the right corner and decorate your home with a visible spider web. You wanted to create a curtain? Ok hire a tailor, order 6 lady purple skirts, drop them on the floor with a little imagination or hang them on a wall and ... voila.. you have a beautiful purple curtain in your home.

Isolate pvp from the rest... but not explicitedly. Games that have pvp all over are avoided by a majority of the Ryzom-like market. Games where pvp is completely isolated like LotrO have little to no pvp. Solution? Isolate pvp culturally. Allow all to have pvp everywhere (if they desire so only) but create what I call cultural arenas. Cities where there are constant squirmishes, state it in the story, people will follow. Only seldom they will pvp anywhere else.

Conceive from the begining player housing. Player housing connects the players to the game like nothing else. Somebody who invested hours of his life to build and decorate his house(s) is less likely to leave even if he has just got stuck (as it will happen anyway) in an annoying bug. Allow place for expansion. Communities grow up much better if you allow small communities like guilds and factions to work for same target. Big guild houses, player cities, faction citadels have a huge importance if it's not just the richest crafter who buys them but the whole guild, group of friends or faction working hard for months to create them. never underestimate the home need of human mind. Such places are in player minds as much a home as their own real estate.

There is a difficult balance between freedom and a fascist approach to this that should be handled with care. I have again 2 opposite examples: SWG had complete freedom. You go in a desert where the dunes look welcoming you, you build your house, or your city. The feeling is great but soon you cannot visit any oasis or nice place without a huge number of player houses cluttering the scenery. LotrO is on the fascist side. All cities are instantiated, you cannot build your own home just buy an existing one. No possibility to create a guild town, or group of friendly guilds, even inside the house any object you want to place (from a small list) should get to a clearly defined slot. Between these extremes you should find a way to define areas where people can build and maintain community functions alive.

Can come with more ideas, that's what very fast came to my mind.