Damn my kawaii waifus joining the retainer civil rights movement!
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Despite my initial reservations I could live with having the retainer gathering shards. The lack of shards in the economy was a real problem towards the end on Ragnarok at least. Seeing as gathering shards will be much slower, albeit with less shards needed for crafting, then having the retainer slowly gathering shards for you when you are logged off is not a horrible idea.
Having to collect low level materials to make an item for an alt or a new craft is indeed a chore to me. Specially if it involves having to go to a specific place far away. It would be great to have your retainer handle that.
Maybe make it so they can gather stuff only 10 or so levels below your gathering level? And put a limit to the quantity you can get that way per day?
That way the only practical used would be to get a couple. items to craft something or to get the last few points of crafting exp in a level. But if you want stuff to make money or to really grind crafting, you have to do it yourself.
Thinking ahead, it would be cool to have smart phone apps to use them. Imagine sitting at work and thinking you wanna start an archer and would like a new bow, but your carpenter dies not have the wood. Use your phone to have your retainer gather it and when you get home, all you have to do is craft.
If retainer gathering turns up largely trash, it was a waste of development time.
If retainer gathering does have notable value, congratulations. You've now compromised DoL to a hilarious degree. Not only does your retainer "bot-gather" for you, but guess what? Now some people who were on the fence about whether they should use an actual bot will go for it -they'll ask, maybe even publicly, "what's the difference?"
There is no positive outcome with this.
If you want to expand what retainers can do, there are more helpful and sensible things to consider. I've seen at least a couple decent suggestions in this thread. A general tip: don't play the game for your players; give them the best atmosphere possible so they enjoy playing it.
Retainers will be in Beta 1... but I'm not sure how far we'll be able to level them. Mostly Beta 1 Markets will be testing the search engine. But there is of course the all encompassing "Other" listed at the end of Phase 1 topics.
It's still a bad idea but a good idea for others. Other who would have no problem because they would have many! Many, many, many slave retainers doing their bidding without effort. There wouldn't be any system of balance to control retainers ability to gather for RMT.
They're best left alone to sell stuff in bazaar or AH. BTW, why not add the feature of bazaaring for retainers... "like always, thinking out of the box!"