I've read that repeatedly dozens of times over the years and just want to know if anyone who has put some thought behind it thinks it is a valid statement, or is it only crafters trying to make their character's over powered?

Everquest used to have a pretty good economy, and player crafted things (with the exception of potions) were definitely not the best items.  In the "real wordl" the analogy I apply is "the economy of Texas is broken, because you have to buy cars from Detroit", which again is a false statement.

EVE Online

In my opinion, to have a functioning player economy there needs to be no Bind-on-Pickup or Bind-to-equip, or bind-to-account.

Secondly there needs to be item decay. Items should therefore be possible to replace and very rarely should they be repaired instead of replaced. Only the most valuable items should be reparable.

Crafting components should be obtainable from all spheres of gameplay and crafted items should be in general high demand for most activities.

That statement only works if the economy is designed around crafting.  For example, DAOC was designed around crafting because your gear wore out eventually and had to be replaced.  The complexity of the results of the crafting system also ensured that you would frequently need several new pieces of crafted gear when you added a new dropped item to your template (assuming no planning for such item took place when you designed your gear stats).  DAOC also had stat caps, which meant the typical stat scaling in today's MMOs wasn't present.

Runes of Magic does not have a crafting-based economy, yet it is arguably a healthy economy.  The most desirable purchases in RoM are high-end stats that you can put on your gear.  It is close to crafting, but there is no traditional crafting skill associated with it.

So, it all depends on your definition of a working economy.  In my opinion, any economy where the average player can participate and the trading is occuring frequently can be considered a working economy.  The average player should not be able to afford every item in the game without significant effort (time) first.

It works both ways, and both have different focuses.

for a game without crafting I would expect a drop based economy.   I would also expect design balances along the lines of logrithmic type power progression.   To get your character to the 1% to 50% power tier level I would expect it to take a minimal amount of time(for demonstration lets say 1 hour).  To get from 95% to 96% power tier level I would expect it to take quite a bit of time(for demonstration lets say 8 hours).   I would also expect gear to be around forever or have a minimal amount of maintence required.

for a game with crafting I would expect power tiers to be a lot more linear.   To get from 1% to 50% something like 1 hour, to get from 50% to 100% something like 3 hours(refering to power tier).   However I would also expect gear to degrade, essentially losing a +1 here gaining a -1 there as you use the piece of gear(or repair costs being expontial as gear 'ages').   I would also grant players the ability to continously swap stats around on gear by going through the crafting processesses(and level more effectively from it than new creation, to prevent item spam).

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in the end though you're going to end up mixing and matching.   For instance in a crafting game you're still going to need a way to get resources.   In a game w/o you're going to want ways to get "partial pieces" of gear(kill X quests, collect X).

Originally posted by grimfall

I've read that repeatedly dozens of times over the years and just want to know if anyone who has put some thought behind it thinks it is a valid statement, or is it only crafters trying to make their character's over powered?

Everquest used to have a pretty good economy, and player crafted things (with the exception of potions) were definitely not the best items.  In the "real wordl" the analogy I apply is "the economy of Texas is broken, because you have to buy cars from Detroit", which again is a false statement.

The issue is that if "regular" players (adventurers) can get what they need from the activity they would do anyway, then crafting is useless.

Adventurers might have a thriving economy among themselves, but they won't buy anything from crafters.

So, it's not about crafters trying to make themselves overpowered, it's about making the crafting game playable at all.