But the master crafter is making a higher quality item, that means he has to be more picky about the materials, so it takes more materials to be sure you have enough of the higher quality materials.
lol
Lol, I guess I should have worded that better to not sound serious. Was more trying to give a downside to "dropping the backpack" that would make it not worth it. :)
I like the way encumberence works actually. Typically it is me, my wife and a friend playing on a private server together...
What if....
What if dropping your back pack in such a manor locked you out of being able to use the backpack inventory slots until it is retrieved. Saved from your being encumbered in an emergency but now you are restricted to just being able to put things on your belt until you retrieve your...
Just a thought on things quality would make sense to affect (not that you haven't thought of some of these but just tossing out stuff):
1) Random stat ranges. So maybe a particular stat will have a base range of 1-10 and you could throw in there maybe something like making the range 1+2*quality...
Art
I think a lot of people tend to forget that computer games are an art form. How the art turns out is entirely up to the artist. I can just imagine Mozart releasing a test copy of a symphony online and dealing with all the comments from people who think this or that needs to be changed.
What about a quest to deliver to POI where you have to restock the vending machines. That would then answer the question of how do they constantly get restocked.