Ok ok... let's see... A, this one's been bugging me for a while.

I play online RPGs (Final Fantasy 11, World of Warcraft, stuff like that). In these games there's usually an item creation system, "crafting" if you will. In WoW, there are skill like mining and herbalism (digging for rocks and picking flowers). How is it a character can fail at these things? When first starting out on FFXI, I was a cook. Somehow I didn't have enough skill to squeez oranges to make orange juice, or to even make pebble soup, y'know, boil water with rocks in it.

Well, there's a system in place for that, you didn't actually make the item, the character had to visualize it and magical crystals turned the ingredients into it (man... that would make everything so easy).

How about herbalism then? A character is running around some huge landscape, killing dangerouse monsters and fighting a war. Some people like to stop and look at the flowers. What if they want to pick those flowers to make something out of them? What, not high enough skill to pick that flower? That's weird, maybe that flower over there. Picking... Picking... Picking... failed to pick the flower. Wha!?

So let's broaden the topic. Should those uber strict rules be kept in game, or should there be a change in the system?