What about a shard timer?

[EllisDee37]

Buried on page 34 of this thread, I proposed the following alternative for limiting the production of crafted uber gear:

I like the idea of focusing the bottleneck on shards of potential. I don't like the idea of it being super expensive to make them, though, since that serves no purpose other than widening the gap between the haves and the have nots.

What about a shard timer, like a raid timer? Isn't that already a tried and true method of limiting raid loot? How about any shard of potential that raises an item's level above the current level cap, you can only make one of them every x days, x being the difference between it's expected ML and the level cap.

Specifically, a +11 shard (ML21) would be on a 1 day timer, +12 (ML23) on a 3 day timer, etc... This would have the added bonus of being a self-adjusting system if you ever raise the level cap.

EDIT: I imagine all three "flavors" would be on a single timer, but hey, that's not even necessarily a requirement. It would still stop an uber-crafter from flooding the market if they had three timers per level.

IMO the best part is that the recipes themselves don't have to be made more expensive; all 9.2 shard recipes could stay as-is. This allows the more casual little guy a real chance to even the playing field, if only a little, while also limiting the powergamers from flooding the market.

Thoughts?

[Darkrok]

It all depends on their goals. If they want to stem the flow of these but have them reasonable to make for anyone that braved the crafting grind then a timer is perfect. If they want to stem the flow of these AND limit them to people that have high amount of resources then expensive shards of potential would be the way to go.

I will say I've played a game that was timer-based on crafting and I really wasn't thrilled by it. You almost felt obligated to drop what you were doing just to log in to hit those timers. That's just me though and it's not a strong enough argument for me to even want to see it dropped. I just know it annoyed me when I had to deal with it.

[pezuwarrior]

./signed