The idea is simple: a matchmaker interface for crafters who craft for mats and people who have mats and want something made.

 

As a customer, you open the Craft Finder window, select the recipe you want made, and if you have the mats needed, you can click "Submit," and the mats are taken and put into a public queue, tagged with the recipe you selected. It would also be nice if you could add a tip amount to submit with the job. You can see your submitted jobs and cancel them at any time before they're started by a crafter, or see how long they have left if a crafter has started one. Jobs should have some reasonable maximum lifespan in the system, like 2 days. If a job expires without a crafter completing it, then the mats and tip are mailed back to the customer.

 

As a crafter, you can select a second tab in the Craft Finder window, to see what jobs are available (it should show all jobs currently queued up, server-wide, filtered to only those that can be crafted with the crew skill and level of it you currently possess). Pick a job, assign a companion, hit the "Craft" button, and you will make that item. The item will be automatically mailed back to the buyer by the Craft Finder system when the job is completed. If the system rolled a crit, then the crafter will get a mail with the bonus item attached. If any tip was submitted with the job, you would also get that by mail upon completion.

 

If you cancel the job partway through, then the job will be re-queued for someone else to pick up (there should probably be a lockout so you can't start another Craft Finder job within some reasonable time after canceling a job).

I have no issue with this idea as it would help many people and crafters as well, yet if the craft crits the extra shouldn't go to the buyer it should go back to the crafter.

More stress on the server, less reason to speak to your fellow players.

 

I actually like the idea a lot, but those two cons above - particularly the first one - puts me off somewhat.

This would be an big help. One thing I always struggle with is that I don't even know what I want to order. This would be really helpful for those of us not in large guilds already.