There's Not Enough Ways to Gain Scrip, and Too Much of It Is Used
The Scrip system is, in theory, a Tomestone equivalent for crafting and gathering. It's a slow and steady accumulation of a currency that has clear uses and clear ways to get it; and ways to make sure you don't get some of it faster than the game wants you to. It honestly probably doesn't sound bad to anyone who doesn't use it, because the idea of saving up tomestones is like the least offensive thing about getting gear in this game.
Here's the issue though: While fightmen get all sorts of roulettes where they get to do old dungeons again lacking skills they've gotten used to randomly, and random boss fights with a random assortment of people, and go out and do weird maps and even do PvP, as well as put their nose to the grindstone and run the same dungeon over and over again; craftsmen and gathermen don't get to do that. They do one thing: turn in high quality items for scrip.
Now as a gatherer it's not that bad. There's an inherent schedule for your runs, lots of downtime, you're playing with all new systems, and it doesn't cost you anything but a teleport. For a crafter? Oh man dudes. Oh man. It's often times making the same item over and over and over again, out of your own materials. Interdependence of crafting and gathering systems is coolio, I like it. But man, when you gotta gather hundreds of things to just turn into items it doesn't feel good.
There's really nothing I can compare it to for the combat classes. Any metaphor is just a huge reach. All I can tell you is that today I used 11 lumber, 22 sticks, 22 nuggets, and 11 cloth to cap my red scrip, and that's a shockingly small number because it was giving me far more than normal. I gathered many of those myself, but I paid for the rest; meaning that I spent money to get tomestones. I lost things getting tomestones, those fishing rods I made just went to the vendor and there goes all the stuff I saved up to make them.
I know, wah wah wah. But that's the critical difference here with tomestones and crafting scrip. It costs you to get scrip, while no matter what you do getting tomestones you end up ahead. Not only do you have one thing you can do, it requires videogame sacrifice to make it happen.
Whatever though, cause it's just for stuff you get once if it's like tomestones right? Sadly, no. See, crafters and gatherers both use them to get consumables. Imagine, Scholars, if you will, needing to use tomestones of law to cast Dissipation. That's the way our Heart of the X skills work, and it's a terrible insult to insult. Cooks need tomestones of law to get certain ingredients, including stuff for Hot Chocolate which is just a CRIME if you ask me. Crafters need to use esoterics to get the stuff to make certain high level ingredients, along with items gathered by gatherers who had to use esoterics to get an item to let them maybe spawn the node that has them. Yeah, gatherers get reamed here. It's not cool. Those are called Favors and if you wonder why people are all sorts of mad about them, it's cause they have to spend their esoteric equivalent on a chance to get a node spawn.
So crafting and gathering classes need near infinite amounts of these tomestone equivalents, yet only have one way of getting them. For crafters they use their own materials to make high quality items, for gatherers they chase a timer and use the collectable system. Basically it's really boring, it's expensive, and you need to do it all the time. The system is in its infancy, yet crafting and gathering are tied to it like we're getting poetics from roulettes.
SO: I want more ways to get these things. Gimmie a mentor daily where I randomly delevel to make something like I would've back in the day. Gimmie a speed competition where I have to make things quickly but try and make them as collectable as I can. Gimmie random pleas for help to head somewhere and make an item for someone. Gimmie competitions against other players where certain skills aren't allowed and we have to make the best item. Please don't make me use my own stuff to do these. I want treasure hunt style gathering quests, and fun "get as many as you can as fast as you can" leve style stuff for scrip. Honestly I'd take ANY leve style stuff for gathering scrip.
There's just no variety in the way you get Red and Blue scrip, and it's not a system you can ignore. Going forward, that's gotta be how you address the monotony of the system.
Also remove favors completely cause they're terrible.
