Could there be more to DoL than find the next piñata?

Not to say that I mind the way gathering works in FFXIV, as I greatly prefer it and its mini-games over gathering in any other MMO I've tried, but if there could be more to Disciple of the Land than traveling to the next node to loot and guessing the position of the exact loot from it you actually want, what would you add?

I'm right there with you. Its a great discipline and actually pretty fun and rewarding. Its got so much potential, i just hope SE pumps more effort into it. id love to see DoL really beefed up:

-I think more involvement/interaction with the environment in general
-cataloging flora/fauna
-finding ancient pieces of lore-related items
-discovering lost items or other niffty things
-i really wish there was a more strategic way of dealing with mobs (see my Bombs thread). A way thats actually part of the job. which it is! and is cool!

Lets hope they give us DoLs some real depth, its definitely off to a good start!

I think collection-based cataloging is a great idea, especially if you get achievements and gathering-based rewards like accessories out of it.

There has been dev talk about gardening in player homes for DoL as well as having them find dungeons through treasure maps, and both of those sound great.

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Originally Posted by Akubikumo

I'm right there with you. Its a great discipline and actually pretty fun and rewarding. Its got so much potential, i just hope SE pumps more effort into it. id love to see DoL really beefed up:

-I think more involvement/interaction with the environment in general
-cataloging flora/fauna
-finding ancient pieces of lore-related items
-discovering lost items or other niffty things
-i really wish there was a more strategic way of dealing with mobs (see my Bombs thread). A way thats actually part of the job. which it is! and is cool!

Lets hope they give us DoLs some real depth, its definitely off to a good start!

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Would love to see all of those! Before the game was released, I was looking over the abilities listed for the classes and I remember having some pretty interesting thoughts on Prospect and Arbor Call... I can't remember them well enough to re-detail but they do put a smile on my face. Perhaps having a sort of elementally-aligned (and maybe Greenswrath-based in Gridania) reason as to why only certain trees can be harvested might also be interesting. Using actual geology or botany, in addition to the nodes already available, would also be interesting.

I always imagined FFXIV as having various catalogs in the hands of Disciples of Land and Hand. Especially if a Bestiary is put in place, I'd love to see it. I wonder though if there should be sort of class-type advantages for learning about them. Example: hmm... let's say a monster has physical and magical attacks, elemental type, elemental vulnerabilities (due to its own type or otherwise), attack patterns, behavioral patterns, and if additional information possible based on what type of animal, plant-thing, or earthen-thing it is. The last three have obvious connections -- basically Shepard/Skinner (if introduced), Botanist, Miner respectively. This information would be available before the fight. Physical attacks noted by DoWs before or quickly into the fight. Exact spells identifiable based on whether or not you know similar spells (DoM). Elemental type identifiable before battle by DoMs, and vulnerabilities before or quickly into fight. Attack patterns quickly learned by DoWs and DoMs, along with possibly Scholars and Shepards(?). Behavioral patterns - maybe Scholars. Think of it like a small passage out of a book - a bit riddle-ish but helpful, replaced by the actual attack pattern / behavioral notes after the attacks occur occurs.

^ All that was rushed together, but I hope it gets the point across. None of it that is intended to say that you can't quickly learn more about your enemy during a fight without the proper class levels, but that way you can learn more about the monster before you start even if you haven't faced it's type before, and perhaps more accurate on-the-fly information.

However... even then I'd probably only pair that with higher randomization (within the same pattern according to species(?) ) across mobs.

In the much further future, I'd also like to see more sort of collaboration between the different disciples. Let's say... a Mechanist in War, a Puppeteer in Magic, a Scavenger / Artificer in Land, and an Engineer in Hand. Archeologist --> Scholar. Etc, etc.

*A Scavenger could (A) scavenge resources not usually lootable from mobs, (B) adds to Armorer / Blacksmith ability to break down gear into materials, (C) allows the player to figure out (approximately, accuracy increasing the higher your SVG lvl is compared to the item) the recipe for an item by simply observing it in your inventory.

Checked out your Bombs thread. Good stuff.

^ My last post (rambling)'s main points synopsized: I'd like it if all classes were more interconnected, and DoL much more helpful. For example, Botanist should increase one's knowledge of plants, which means more knowledge of poisons as well in Alchemy, or how to make armor out of non-metals/leather. Inversely though, one should be able to pick up something they might not know, and perhaps identify it according to a borrowed manual from the Adventurer's Guild or their GC, perhaps through alchemic tests. Or simply find out if it's poisonous or not, along with other factors through those same tests. Miners (honestly I'd like to see these renamed to and acting like Geologists, similarly to the broadness of Botanists) should do likewise for metals. And both should give clues as to why your synths are reacting in certain ways to different materials collected by those classes.

Would also like to see areas be more varied in their levels or 'grades'. It should take time to learn the uses of all the plants in even a starting zone, let alone where or how to acquire them. Though I wouldn't like to be darting back to starter zones to get some rare ingredient that would be the only thing I can use from there, I'd like for foliage in general to be much more varied. The connection between deadlier monsters to avoid and higher rewards should remain, but monsters shouldn't be the only challenge gathers have.

Ahh... bump.

i would like to see a high risk high rewards system for DoL.

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Originally Posted by Valmonte

i would like to see a high risk high rewards system for DoL.

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What kind of high risks would you be looking for in DoL undertakings though? The most danger we come up against are the mobs near the nodes. Anything else seems like it would need some manner of costly resources, either through some sort of fatiguing, limited openings to get to higher loot per some set amount of time, or actual expensive consumables.

DoL's were probably the things I was looking forward to the most with XIV, I was kinda disappointed with the shallow mini game. I'd love a journal that you have to fill out, or just some cool things you could find.

Out of curiosity, how do you guys like the sort of gambling / chance aspect of gathering as compared to pre-knowledge (<Whichever> Ore tends to be between 18 and 24% out from center, so I'll hit here... *one-hit loot*)? Or a mixture of the two? If the latter, what are you looking for in that mixture?

Additionally, for gathering itself, how much do you like the piñata system as compared to... trees dropping only tree-related loot. How could other forms of gathering, less node-based, be implemented?

*How could something like a geographical survey be implemented? Should it be doable anywhere, or just at a far more numerous amount of nodes, perhaps with offset from the node? How would it help mining in terms of finding better loot? How complex should it get?