Something that should be clarified here, is that this topic doesn't really stem from some issue of people not bringing dead weight, or people questing with optimal parties.

The underlying issue this topic discussed was that people don't bring their enemies on quests. That people who take their characters in an antagonistic direction gets less and less scripted quest time for xps and gps.

This topic seems to have descended into some powerquesters flamewar, and that's dumb because there really isn't an issue with it. The only two reasons I've seen people get kicked off of quests when playing, are either someones character is enemies with someone elses character, or that player really doesn't like the other player. Both of those are, in by book, entirely acceptable reasons not to bring someone on a quest.

Some quick thoughts on the initial questions posed

Do you think it's not against OOC courtesy to be exclusive in DM/Scripted quest parties of todays CoA?
A poorly worded leading question. I won't adress it. The question I will adress is: "Do you think there is a problem with OOC exclusion in DM/Scripted quests?"
The answer is No, I don't. Obviously there will be some conflict between, for example, lawful peace officials and notorious criminals, and it's perfectly fine and to be honest expected that these two won't get along well enough to go whomping dire rats together. OOC courtesy is an excelent concept to observe, but it is second to Roleplay, wich is what this server is all about. OOC courtesy is a way to let us get along as players inspiet of character conflict, it is not a carte blance excuse to break character for quests and xps and loot. Furthermore, OOC Courtesy goes both ways, if you choose to make a divisive character (like giant barbarian wereboars who literally eat peoples fingers off their hands) OOC courtesty demands you not judge someone for telling you to go away.

Should we be more inclusive in our playstyle than we currently are? Or is it just fine as it is?
CoA has an exceptionally inclusive playstyle. Top of the line as far as what my server hopping days have taught me.

Is ignoring or avoiding interaction with other characters part of a healthy PvP, and therefore good for the server?
Poorly worded and leading question. Yes, if this was a thing that actually happened it would be bad. Luckilly for us all, this is at most very rare. Some notes on this is primarilly, not all players are interested in a conflict heavy playstyle, and for these people avoiding conflict interaction is actually the Recommended Approach.

And if your character doesn't want interaction with the character, should you be OOCly exclusive as well?
I don't understand this question. If a character tells your character to sod off, that's that character telling your character to sod off. There's nothing OOC about it. No one has any obligation to include someone their characters wouldn't include. In fact, there is an expectation that you don't. You may be confusing this with OOC Courtesy, OOC Courtesy talks about how to not be a dick to people inspite of your character trying to pick a fight with theirs. It's about Respectful in Conflict, not about breaking character so people can quest and get loots easier.

@Zool:

The whetstones are meant to be pretty easy to make.

Did the store with all the required gems not work out?

You are meant to be able to buy everything but the ore.

The gemstones are avaliable, they're not what limits you. It's the verdicite for bronze and two alloys for steel whose rarity limits your ability to make them at a steady pace. The only "spamable" items I've come across are everything iron aswell as the spike/stud items and the cauldron.

Cauldron is a one time purchase, soikes/studs see very little rotation and the iron stuff are just not being bought because of drop loot levels, unless they're the top end items like fullplate that requires a ton of work for just +1 skill.

I don't think it would be a good idea to make steel/bronze whetstones easier to make because they're incredibly powerful in the right handside but making bolts/bullets without rare components at various skill levels or considering making component heavy items such as twohanded weapons and heavy armor give more that +1 skillpoint per succes would mitigate the lack of early to mid level profitable skill training.

@Zyla:

For blacksmith the cost would still not be worth it, because the actual items made with blacksmith cost more in resources then people will actually pay for said item.

This is mostly wrong. This is not the challange we face with blacksmithing at all.
Yes, it will be worth it, even if it's not in profit. People will pay more for any blacksmithing item than it cost to make, assuming they haven't already looted something better.

The issue is one character will only ever need to buy one item per rank and there aren't enough characters around to make up for the amount of skill you need to raise. Lack of reasonably made spam items at different tiers are what the problem is. Boneworking and Alchemy has this, Woodworking to some extent with all the myriad of arrows, blacksmithing has the whetstones that, because of their components, cannot fill that role.

This is, however, tangent to the topic.

@Zool:

As long as it's not for BASE resources, yeah, it's doable.

This is actually a very interesting concept, having a tanner pay you to bring him tanned hides or iron bars to give low skill crafters a bit of start.

For example, with the maximum effort put into lowering cost (getting stuff from other PCS, gathering base components etc) the cost of one Iron Bar is about 30-35 gold to craft assuming nothing was spent gathering stuff (iron is unlikely to come with a consumable spend) so having the blacksmith offer 30 gold per Iron Bar would give Blacksmiths an easy and low cost way of getting a decent repertoire.

There's a bit of a false positive here, where the logic is Potion Brewers are rich, therefore Brewing makes you rich. Its not quite that simple, the real reason why potion brewers are rich is because they're wizards. Wizards very often sit on the back end, buff the frontline and doesn't spend the comparable 6-800 gold in consumables a fighter needs to on a high level spell, but from a combination of their spells being vital to the success and a whole lot of OOC stink about unfairness they get even shares. So in effect, wizards get paid several hundred gold more per quest than any other class, except possibly Rogues (who, conicindentally also tend to roll in cash)

That being said, potions could quite possibly benefit from a craft cost increase. They are at present sold around half the price of NPC stores and that's abit of a stretch. Upping the craft cost so that the price point ends around 75-80% of NPC costs would probably be a good idea.

The first step, probably obvious to most people but worth mentioning, would be to publish a ruling on this. Since this is a practise that has been commonplace for the duration of CoA and always been okay in the past I would imagine deciding on what the actual crafting-alt policy is and posting it would clear a lot up.

Interested in this aswell.