There now follows something of a rant, but all very valid points, so please bear with me, and apologies in advance if my writing is a bit all-over-the-place.
New players need a way to make signficant amounts of tria more easily. Crafters need an easier way to sell and to find buyers for their wares.
The game mechanics, are contributing to a huge problem here. New and nearly-new characters can't possibly afford to buy crafted weapons, and crafters can't afford to slash prices, even on "low" quality (Q100-200) items. It takes way too much time and tria to create a weapon.
It takes even more time if you work your own ores into steel, or even more tria if you purchase readymade steel from a metallurgist.
The crafter price needs to be high as a result of all the time and work involved. The npc buying price is quite frankly a joke. 167 tria for a crafted sabre? You must be having a laugh.. that just ain't gonna happen.
The only way somebody can actually afford to learn crafting is through developing a higher paying skill such as mining. Whoops, there goes another obscene amount of time, because it takes bloody ages to actually mine any significant amount of paying metal, in this case gold or
platinum, because all other metals are prettymuch worthless as for-sale items.
I find the dev's disregard for player's time in this matter to be shocking. It gets worse however. The dev's don't seem to recognise this as a problem, and there are actually certified idiots around who think the current situation is acceptable.
The current game mechanics are unreasonable, and very damaging to roleplay, and indeed to the game as a whole. How many players have been lost, not because of bugs, but because it is too time consuming to play the game, to make tria and develop your character.
I believe that there are tens (hundreds?) of thousands of inactive characters who have had no choice but to leave the game, not because of bugs, but because of the broken mechanics and excessive demands on RL time. I also believe that this number is not likely to stop growing any time soon.
RP should be encouraged, but for good RP to develop, the game needs players to stick around. As things stand at the moment, there is only a small hard-core of players who can afford to spend the kind of RL time that is required by PS presently.
XW