Where's the Emphasis on Trade Skills?
 

As all of us know, we have some great trade skills on 2k2. We have the lovely use_tools skill, which allows us to mine minerals, take them back to the blacksmith and craft them into wonderful items. We also have the ability to cut down trees and make boats and bows with them (note: I personally have not had the chance to pick up a bowyer scroll yet, so I do not know much about it). We also have the ability to plant and harvest corn, making bread. Yet, once we have all we need to start fighting, it isn't worth making any of the items anymore.

Since you can make the best armor right away and you don't need to bake bread to get food, fighting monsters gives us all we need. There is no real emphasis on trade skills. Fighting gives us food, it gives us XP, and now, it gives us the best weapons and armor in the game. You could pretty much throw out all the trade skills and no one would notice. Employing trade skills just cannot make a lucrative business.

Is fighting really all you want to give us? The use tools skill is listed under mental, but I receive no XP for using tools. Why? Is it because you're afraid that people will level too easily? Maybe the question should be, why not? Why don't we give XP for doing a task that requires the use of skills? Maybe if we implemented a system where weapons and armor would require a certain level to create, we could put trade skills back in the game. The best blacksmiths would prosper, and it would widen the scale of the game overall. People don't want to fight all the time. Since tools, blacksmithing, and the rest of the trade skills are already implemented in the game, why not use the architecture already built to improve 2k2?

The very minimal that must be done is allowing the use of tools to increase our XP (and I mean actually chopping/mining, not just swinging it in the air). It would be even better if a system was implemented that allowed higher level "blacksmiths" to create better items, and the same can go with bowyers too. Trade skills are far too great of an idea to just throw away.

(let me know if this subject has be touched on already or if plans are already in the works)

I think that this is planned, but mostly on a larger scale... things like house building and building defense for kingdoms and such will be a good source of experiance and will require masters of the trade.