Gear and Crafting System suggestion

I'd suggest you read up on the currently planned design, because 80% of the things you suggested are already the case and the other 20% are already planned to be designed better than the grindy version you suggested (at least imo).

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Crafting

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Dunno how it was in Star Wars Galaxies (as that is one of the inspirations for the crafting system), but this was the case in Lineage 2 (another big inspiration for the game) and it worked just fine through word of mouth and market sales. If you found a rare new recipe that no one else have gotten yet - you get big money. And you now have the info to sell to other people too.

Obviously there'll be some guides, but considering how the Node system will work, I highly doubt those guides will be too helpful for people. Some guide might say that a particular mob in Node 23/45 (when that node is at stage 4) drops a particular recipe. But when you go to your server's Node 23/45 you see that it's not even at stage 2. So now you can't even use that guide and have to either find another way to find said recipe or just craft smth else.