Gathering - What Happened, How Can It Be Fixed?

Allow me to preface this by saying; I love Gathering and I love would it /could/ be.

Let's begin by thinking all the way back to 1.0 and 1.X and how gathering was influenced. One idea that I enjoyed very much, was the idea that Gathering (and crafting for that matter) were both held in the same regard as battle classes. Of course, I mean, why shouldn't they be? They are the backbone of the game, they deserve to be treated as such; and they had been. The mini-games, while tedious, were more challenging than they happen to be now. On-top of that, the game itself catered to a more gathering-orientated play style, ala Hamlet Defense.

What happened? I believe it has been said they the Devs wished for the battle classes to take the spot light, and turn the crafting and gathering classes into something more akin to 'hobbies', and to simply make them more accessible to everyone. So what happened? They simply made the classes much more simpler to understand. However, simple does not have to mean easy, which is where I believe the Devs went wrong.

So what needs to happen? Gathering especially, needs some varying game play. As it stands right now, the only thing we can really do is gather normally, do leve quests, or collect random bits and bobs for the Grand Companies. What happened to our Hamlet Defense game play? Why not make Gatherers more dynamic? I mean, we are out in the field with the battle classes, yet we simply are thrust into the background, unable to lend immediate aid to them.

What I would like to see is an improvement on the FATE system, namely creating Gathering FATEs or even gathering AND battle class FATEs! Perhaps, rather than showing a purple or blue mark on the map, make the mark for the gathering FATEs green! Frankly, the limit of possibilities is only bound by that of the imagination of the Devs.

Simply, as it stands right now, Gathering classes offer the absolute least amount of game play as compared to battle classes and even crafters.

GATHERERS UNITE!

yeah the incorporation of DoL and DoH in hamlet defense was fun, hope they implement this in the future

I think they could only fit so much in to get the launch going. In the original roadmap PDFs they had things such as being able to obtain treasure maps and stuff from gathering, and you could go fight an NM with it or something. Crafters will also be relied upon for housing and furniture in a future patch.

I imagine there will eventually be more content for gatherers and crafters, it's just a matter of when. 2.1 is sounding like it's going to be a pretty big patch, so hopefully crafters and gatherers will have more involvement in different things then.