The new and simplified humour system (compared to haven) is certainly an interesting concept, but I think there's a potential long term impact that has been overlooked. In haven, all the big bear bangers went to the miners and fighters, but all of the cave bulbs went to the jeweller. There was a clear distribution of resources, warriors needed some things, crafters needed other things. One very common thing that was seen in Haven villages was the concept of "warriors first". It's very easy to justify taking all of the con food if the defence of the village rests upon the quality of that character.
The main problem right now is that warriors need all 4 stats, and technically speaking, crafters basically need none of them. It's very easy to play the crafter role with only 20/20/20/20 stats. It's not great, but you don't really need more. Warriors can easily justify needing all the food. Now that's not necessarily a problem, but it seriously shallows the grinding for improvement aspect of haven that made it a game worth playing in the long run for the crafting side of the gameworld. The problem is, we're also seeing the exact same issue with skills. The Stocks/Cultivar bonus is definitely worth getting, but I'm seriously concerned about skills like Frontiers and Wilderness where the benefit is indeed very minor. Once you've got all the skills in the game, if we see more very minor benefits like reduced wear on fishing gear, the crafting end of the game is going to stay shallow. For me, and I think for many crafting oriented players, it's going to severely hurt the long run interest for Salem.
The problem is crafter characters not having a need of their own. Once the game world is old enough, all the warriors will have the skills to bake and there's absolutely no need for a baking specialist character. Anyone can bake as well as anyone else, and this means the crafter goes from important chef to grunt slave doing the work other people just don't want to do. The simplification of humours and reduced importance of proficiencies compared to Haven has caused this effect on a fairly wide basis. Once you've got the skills, you're good enough. Warriors however still have that long term grind that makes a better warrior in the long run.
The Problem Summed Up:
-Simplified humours have cut out the need for crafters to grind humours higher than 20-40, effectively making that entire part of the game "inaccessible" to them in the long run. This problem is intensified if they are living in a village with active grinding fighters who will want every bit of food they can get.
-Weak Proficiency impacts may further render it unrewarding to grind crafting characters in the long run.
We know that with the way Salem works, crafters form an important backbone for any village, including any village willing and able to pvp. That isn't to say PvPers won't do their own crafting, but we're not talking about them in this particular case. And this is especially true since the game is being advertised as a "crafting" MMO, many potential players/customers of this game will be of crafting oriented mindsets.
What the solution needs:
-Meaningful long term grind for crafting characters.
Purity of crops/metal isn't good enough because it doesn't require the actual crafter for that. If a crafter grinds up say 3.00p wheat, anyone can just boot that crafter to the curb and take over farming with fairly minimal influence on the farms ability to function purity wise. This is true for metalworking, gardening, pretty much everything that traditional crafters can do.
We have a couple of options as how to address this. More skills giving meaningful longterm gain for crafting is an obvious one, but with the current systems it's difficult to pick out benefits. A second option is to complicate the current gluttonies by giving the current humours additional effects related to crafting. Finally, a new set of skills or humours could somehow be created to meet this need.
Ultimately, I don't like the idea of giving humours more roles in crafting. Anything where warriors and crafters have the same needs you'll see warriors edging out the crafters because the need is more "pressing" than the crafter's.
A couple skill bonuses I could think of are Pots and Pans giving healing bonus on cooked foods, and sugar and spice giving additional gluttony points on cooked food. This would make very clear and beneficial uses for crafter characters that would give them something to grind for. I'd think the bonus should be a % bonus of the base value that isn't multiplied by purity. For example, a crispy cricket cooked by someone with 1000 Pots and Pans would heal 5.5 Black bile, instead of 5.0 at purity 1. If the cricket were 2.0p, the healed amount would be 10.5 instead of 10. This is of course assuming that the bonus is +10% base healing value per 10 levels of Pots and Pans. This means that at 100 pots and pans skill, not an easy feat, any food cooked would heal as if +1 level of purity. The bonus value of course can be scaled as desired. Theoretically sugar and spice would do the same thing, simply add a flat bonus to gluttony values, but I'm assuming that +10% would be a touch overpowered. Whatever the bonus for pots and pans would be, sugar/spice should naturally give less.
As for the concept of "another system", I have a proposal to consider and this could be instead of giving skills overt bonuses. Currently the combat grind is very monotonous. After the skills are unlocked, all there is to do is bake food and eat it repeatedly. This isn't as much as an issue to crafters because that's how crafting typically works. However, I think it's worth considering adding a third layer of depth to the skill/humour system by introducing a use base increase system called "Professions". Professions would be unlocked with certain skills, and it could be possible to require profession levels in order to unlock higher tier skills as well. Skill increases would come from use of related activity. For a combat profession called "Brawler", dealing damage would accumulate experience in the brawler profession which would increase the damage dealt from any non-weapon based attacks. For cooking, the bonus previously suggested for pots and pans could be a rewarded to a "Cook" profession given when cooking foods over a fire. The sugar and spice bonus given to a "Chef" profession awarded for creating unbaked food items that require baking or smoking to be finished.
Edit: Feel free to discuss. Am I worrying about nothing? Have a better idea? Lets hear it.