Idea for 4th DoL job

I know this isn't likely to ever happen but would like to talk about it anyway. My thought is a job called Gamekeeper (GMK). They would use a skinning knife and trapping rope as their tools. They would be something similar to a fisher, only for the land. Provide meat/skins/bones/feathers (could easily take the various feathers and small animals from botanist as well as some of the skins and such that we currently end up farming in the overworld, no one *wants* to spend forever in Coerthas killing sheep) At high levels they might even been able to breed or train some mounts or minions. They would obviously work well for providing materials for culinarian, leatherworker, alchemist, and weaver.

There was meant to be a fourth Disciple of the Land in the game, called Shepherd (SHP for short), which appears was not going to be too different from what you described, but SE never finished developing it in 1.0 and it was basically abandoned and never implemented.

Sadly from what I understand Yoshi was asked in an interview if there would ever be any more Disciples of the Hand or Land added, and he basically said "no", so I think the chances of SHP or any other new DotL/DotH class being added is pretty much now next to none I'm sorry to say. :(

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Originally Posted by Shandrith

I know this isn't likely to ever happen but would like to talk about it anyway. My thought is a job called Gamekeeper (GMK). They would use a skinning knife and trapping rope as their tools. They would be something similar to a fisher, only for the land. Provide meat/skins/bones/feathers (could easily take the various feathers and small animals from botanist as well as some of the skins and such that we currently end up farming in the overworld, no one *wants* to spend forever in Coerthas killing sheep) At high levels they might even been able to breed or train some mounts or minions. They would obviously work well for providing materials for culinarian, leatherworker, alchemist, and weaver.

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Fortunately, you don't have to spend forever farming any specific mobs for crafting materials. It doesn't take that long to get what you need for ordinary use. If you need larger amounts, there's the marketboard and retainers. and unless another crafter has just cleaned out the supply on the marketboard most creature drops are inexpensive. Your world sold out? World visit is your friend.

I know some players prefer to farm the materials themselves but parts of the game are designed around players buying and selling from each other to get what they need. This is one such situation. There are 20 different jobs in the game capable of farming creature drops and every player has at least one of them, Those who don't need those drops for crafting usually put them up for sale on the marketboard.

If you could be making more gil using the same time you gather than you save by doing your own gathering, you're doing yourself a disservice.

The biggest problem with the idea of a new gatherer is what do they actually bring to the table? You're basically just asking for an easier/lazier way to gather materials we already have access to. There's not really any great need to add more new materials to justify it, which would be working in the wrong direction besides. There's not really any room to justify uses for any hypothetical new materials; new crafts would need to be added to justify adding new materials to justify adding a new class, and it'd all just be arbitrary and meaningless.

And then you got things like where does it start? At level 1 like the others, tacked on somewhere in ARR city states? What about all the new leves they'd have to design for them? What happens when players start asking "Why doesn't this one have Supra/Lucis tools?" How do you integrate it into previous level cap gathering and crafting vis a vis timed node materials? How does it fit into Diadem and Ishgard Restoration?

In conclusion, that's an awful lot of additional consideration, and work, all because some players don't want to spend 20 minutes on DoW farming mats, they'd rather do it on DoL.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

The biggest problem with the idea of a new gatherer is what do they actually bring to the table? You're basically just asking for an easier/lazier way to gather materials we already have access to. There's not really any great need to add more new materials to justify it, which would be working in the wrong direction besides. There's not really any room to justify uses for any hypothetical new materials; new crafts would need to be added to justify adding new materials to justify adding a new class, and it'd all just be arbitrary and meaningless.

And then you got things like where does it start? At level 1 like the others, tacked on somewhere in ARR city states? What about all the new leves they'd have to design for them? What happens when players start asking "Why doesn't this one have Supra/Lucis tools?" How do you integrate it into previous level cap gathering and crafting vis a vis timed node materials? How does it fit into Diadem and Ishgard Restoration?

In conclusion, that's an awful lot of additional consideration, and work, all because some players don't want to spend 20 minutes on DoW farming mats, they'd rather do it on DoL.

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Not really looking for an *easier* way, more of a more consistent one. As for new materials, I hadn't thought they would need to add many. They already do occasionally add new materials, so a few wouldn't be a big stretch, but even if they chose not to I think there are plenty that could easily be assigned to a theoretical 4th gatherer without trouble. As for new crafts, why would that be a bad thing? New items are generally a draw for players, adding them would have new downsides that I can see

Where does it start? My personal thought would be level 1, probably in Gridanaia. Yes, it would require new leves and other such things, just as any new class requires quests and items. Why doesn't this one have Supra/Lucis tools? For the same reason that jobs added later don't have things like certain ex weapons, it was added later. Fitting it into level cap gathering and crafting would be part of class balance, a basic part of designing a new job be it DoL/DoH or DoM/DoW. If it were up to me this class wouldn't really have much to do with the Diadem compared to miners and botanists. About equivalent to fishers really. Restoration would be a bit more difficult, and I'm honestly not sure what the ideal way to handle that would be.

As for it being a lot of work because some players want to play differently than others, so is *any* job. Why have multiple different types tanks? They all do the same job, so why spend the time for them to do it with different flair? Because it is more enjoyable for some players to be a gunbreaker vs a paladin etc. I realize this concept isn't likely to be used, sadly, but the idea that those who enjoy DoL jobs shouldn't even want to have a bit more variety seems a bit unreasonable

Why not just ask SE to increase drop rates of hides and whatever creature drops you feel are scarce instead of going to the effort of creating a new job?

New jobs are only an attraction if they are genuinely bringing something new to the game. After a point, instead of bringing something new what they're usually doing is borrowing or taking away from other jobs. In the latter case, it ends up making the players who had enjoyed playing those other jobs angry.

The way creatures despawn just a couple of seconds after death would prevent a WoW style skinning class from being viable. Trying to design the class to make use of living creatures would be problematic. The creature would have to despawn after being "used" to prevent repeat harvesting but scarcity of mob spawns for most of the useful creatures means that this could be very disruptive to players who need the same creatures for quest completion. Or those players might kill the creature while the gamekeeper is trying to loot the creature drops, preventing the gamekeeper from getting anything at all.

Trying to create this new DoL class would go beyond just adding a new class. It would force SE to either reprogram open world content to accommodate it or create entirely new areas with new creatures intended utilized solely by this single class, which is less than efficient when it comes to use of development resources since it would come at the cost of new areas that might be used by multiple jobs. You say you wouldn't want this to be part of Diadem and yet it would actually be the perfect place to have it (already being a location designated for gathering activities) if it weren't for players not getting access until after the 3.3 MSQ was completed.

Let's not forget the redundancy that would come with retainers or a potential split with what the adventurer can hunt vs. what the other can ... hunt. See, that just sounds silly. Everything about it will just be redundant.

There is a 4th and 5th DoL job for this.

It's Ninja and Machinist. One increases drop rates with mug, the other is simply ranged - you are basically a hunter with a gun. Or a Drill gun. Or a Chainsaw gun. You get the point.

Shepard could have been BST.

Tame and raise animals for their goods, but you may have to buttheads with aggressive creatures on your way back to the farm with your newly tamed buddy.............for a penalty. Fighting decreases the well-being of creatures. It is discouraged, but sometimes necessary.......