HELM Skill ups

My thoughts on subject were to introduce a skill up process much like Fishing has.

Most of my ideas were based off Mining because that's what I have the most experience with.

Basically this is what I have so far:

HELM would have a skill cap of 100.
It would not prevent people with lower skill from mining in areas, it would just give benefits to those with higher guild ranks.

Benefits could be the following:
Increased %s of rarer items
Decreased tool breaks
Less chances of your point disappearing after 1 or 2 interactions

HELM representatives could be placed in either current craft Guilds or have their own guild shops in cities.

My thoughts on this were:
(if based on city)
Bastok - Mining
San d'Oria - Logging
Windurst - Harvesting
Bastok and/or Windurst - Excavation

(if based on crafting guilds)
Mining - Smithing/Goldsmithing
Logging - Woodworking
Harvesting - Clothcraft,
Excavation - Bonecraft/Goldsmithing {pretty flimsy on the Goldsmithing addition}


What is some of the feelings towards this from the playerbase?

I like the idea, as this is a way to optimize our results in a non unbalanced way, good idea!

AN interesting Idea I have to say but, I have a slight issue with the increased %s for rare items. That would cause some instability in the Auction House in my opinion. but the lessened chance for tool breakage does seem like a decent Idea. and the longer the point stays up sounds good as well considering there is no visual indication for where the mining point is.

I love the idea! I might be nuts, but I like getting skillups. I would probably go harvesting/mining just for skillups and throw the stuff on AH lol.

Well, I might keep some of it... I'm sure crafters would benefit if it actually increases the supply of raw materials.

I love the idea. I'd like to see them leave the base system somewhat as is though, but add new materials that you can only get from higher skill lvls.

Hell, have some of the rare mats that come from higher skills be used to craft new picks/axes/sickles etc. Could be nice for crafters to make new consumables that are used by everyone doing HELM (if they upgraded it to be worthwhile anyways)

I love this idea, only thing I'd add to it is a request to increase the number/recognizability of HELM spots...in other games that have harvesting possibilities, the spots are instantly recognizable and there's a good number of 'em....here in FFXI, there's like four or five spots in a remote location that you have to tab around to a hundred times only to get like 3 attempts at, assuming the tool doesn't break.