I prefer to not have a crafting system.
Give me the items I'm going to use.
I agree with this. Putting crafting in all the games is becoming a trend, and not always for the better.
Think hard about what you want, then prototype it and have it playtested.
That being said - I have a question for you. Why would someone in your game want to make a new tile?
Thanks for the answers! In our multi-player, persistent game in addition to combat there is a building and customization component. Everyone is on a gigantic space ship/station, you can claim rooms in that ship where you can build a base and make things to place in it for defense or for kicks.
As an example, you can create walls of different materials and looks, you can create pressure plates that activate things or traps, treadmill floors, various floor tiling (metal grates, wood flooring etc), turrets and other stuff to customize your base/room.
So, we were going to use crafting to facilitate the building component and incentivize exploration.
That's the idea anyway. We have a working prototype but arent ready to bring players in yet until we have the full game loop in. Crafting and exploration/loot is a big part of mmo's and something that we like in games so we would like to include it. I suppose we could use a tech tree and resource system instead, although I think crafting is still fun as long as the game is not the same as every other one.