Personally I think it's a good idea, but at the same time I'd rather see Zwiebels time and resources going into new content and finally releasing D4. It takes him long enough to release content (which I get he's doing it mostly on his own and I'm just happy he's doing it at all) and things keep coming up with over hauling old systems and changing things in older verions but imho let's focus on the future of gaias now and we can always back track to the old content later.
I agree with this.
Now with the removal of the skill system and it's correlated flaws and the implementation of the cool new talent system, I think we have reached a point where I think the game can and should be feature-locked.
In fact, I'm even re-evaluating the idea of quest tokens that I planned as an integral part of the 1.2B content. I'm simply not satisfied with the stuff a possible quest token system has to offer. In other words: there's a severe lack of interesting rewards here.
The idea behind the quest token system initially was to have a resource that a solo player could farm that is different from mana crystals, as mana crystals can and should only be awarded by group activities.
But then I figured out that we already have this resource. It's called gold. Instead of pointlessly creating a new resource convoluting the current endgame goals, I'd much rather move all the rewards towards gold and mana crystals, to add much needed sinks to those resources.
I'm actually thinking about adding an endgame crafting material called Mana Dust, which basicly serves as a currency for crafting used in all lategame recipes, which can be obtained only by disenchanting magical gear or doing quests.
This actually serves two functions:
1) it creates an indirect gold sink, as disenchanted items get destroyed and thus, can not be vendored anymore
2) it creates the opportunity to place non-gold, non-equipment rewards on quests and repeatable quests
An endgame crafting resource obtained from either quests or disenchanting items makes a lot of sense, gameplay-wise, as it can be obtained both through doing group content and through playing solo, but eliminates the possibility to endlessly grind it by just sending your hero on a patrol command in a low level area.
To avoid the "number creep" we experience with Mana Crystals (endgame bosses must yield significantly more MCs than D3 bosses, as D3 can be farmed much easier) and to keep the stack numbers of the materials low, I can just create 2 different tiers of these dust resources, which all stack up to 10 per inventory slot:
Mana Dust: obtained from greens and blues at level 35-45 in different quantities depending on level and quality
Mana Essence: obtained from level 45-50 blues and repeatable quests
To disenchant an item, you just have to drop it on top of a so-called "enchanting rune". There will probably be a fancy animation here.
To avoid duping issues; the material will also be bound if it was generated through disenchanting a bound item.
You can also break down mana essences to mana dust at a 1:3 ratio by dropping it into the same circle. However, you can not turn the dust back into essences.
The number of Dust materials you get from disenchanting depends on the level and quality grade of the item.
Of course, this feature only makes sense with a huge amount of new crafting recipes. So it will be part of 1.2B, when a lot of new items hit the market.
