Quote Originally Posted by kernal42 View Post
Sort of.

In my opinion (whatever that's worth), it's fine to have a craftbot; it's not fine to encourage players to have a craftbot, which is what this system is doing.

Regarding what MadFloyd said:
It's certainly true that I'm stretching his words to apply here, but I don't think my interpretation is unreasonable. A craftbot that does not quest is a level 1 craftbot, which is a pretty useless craftbot (can't take dragonmark feats, gets no artificer bonus).

This change demands that every crafter be a capped (more or less) human artificer with 3 dragonmarks; this requires that the craftbot quest to get the exp needed to levelup, which goes against the (somewhat stretched) interpretation of MadFloyd's statement.

I do think it's the better of the two interpretations that you provided, soley because I doubt MadFloyd would be advocating the use of craftbots (another reason he should understand that the current change is a bad one).
The game encourages one to have a Hagglebot, but not everyone does for a number of reasons. That CHOICE is what is important. If you HAD to have one I would agree with you, but as that is not the case I do not see it as a problem. There are advantages to having one, just as there are disadvantages.

As for the craftbot itself, presumably like a Hagglebot it would be a Vet so you are looking at lvl4. You can get the first Making mark, and that would be at +5 right off the boat. Run Korthos and you are at Art6 with the second mark for +9. Pretty much the same amount of effort for a basic Hagglebot. Art10 with the third mark would give +15.

That said, it is clear that even as a lvl1 Cbot, you could still reach the crafting cap without earning a single point of XP questing – which is pretty much the definition of bot and goes nicely with the non-requirement for favour.

I do think that you are reading much more into his comments than is there. I do not believe he is advocating Craftbots, merely indicating that they will be supported.