Did the 3.0 additions to gathering ruin the fun for you?

There seems to be a much more hardcore community here so I was curious how your opinion may differ from more casual players I've discussed this with.

I used to love gathering so friends and FC members often approach me regarding gathering in 3.0. The general consensus I get from like-minded players is that the collectibility and script system is overly complicated and time consuming and basically dissuaded them away from gathering any more in game. I assume this was SE's intentions though, to bottle neck progression so that only career gatherers were able to benefit from these supply lines. While that seems to have worked, it also had an extremely negative impact on morale for the game for a lot of my friends causing a few even to quit the game entirely.

I wonder how it has affected the larger audience, especially those very invested in gathering. Are you enjoying the new challenge? Did you feel like it gave you much more to do in game? Did it further or hinder your enjoyment of this corner of the game?

Thank you for taking your time to read.

The Collectable game was neatly designed. The rotations involving "appraisals" are flexible and fun. The scrip grind per week is a big chore and not enjoyable. But I can understand how S-E wants to delay our acquisition of the strongest gear, especially when there's nothing to be unlocked at the moment after the acquisition. So the scrip grind is OK. The RNG and rushed aspect of Favors is not fun at all. After all that hard work of leveling to 60, and after all that work of using our brains to develop cool collectable rotations, S-E gave us a complete RNG game that does not use any rotation, but needs to be RUSHED. The faster you hit nodes, the more chances you get rewarded. And especially when these items are the critical limiting reagents of the crafting game. Sorry, but this is very, very [swear words omitted].

It's definitely something that can be fixed. The new systems introduced in Heavensward (collectable gathering system, crafter specialist system) are not perfect, but they have a lot of potentials. All they need is a one big patch that addresses all our concerns (including the stagnant economy issue), and the game will suddenly enter new heights. As for now, it's quite a slump. Raiders are bored with esoretics grind. Crafters and gatherers are bored with red scrips grind and frustrated with the Favor game.

as a fisher i have more fun than ever before ^^

blue scrips farm for baits and potions, red scripts for gear, reduction, desynthesis... there is always something to do :O and the new HQ buffs are awesome. can't wait for new big fish ^^/

I really like the collectible system... gives me good EXP, and after I'm done leveling, gives me scrips which can be turned into good items.
I'm no crafter and I don't like to spend money, so I enjoy collecting the red scrips for gear.
Not to mention the new node spawn times, makes it easier to manage two nodes per Eorzean day than just the one.
I don't do favors because well one, gear, like I said, and two, I'm not a crafter so I don't need them.. I've done it once, and it was like "okay, but, I'm not getting much out of it". So I will see what they bring next for favors.

Don't forget the simple stuff! The 6-node setup with three nodes that have a random chance of having gathering buffs was a cool idea, and that alone was a big improvment over the dull predictability of the old 4-node arrays. Do I spend King's Yield here, or do I hold out and hope that a +2 attempts node spawns? Even just basic gathering is a big improvement over the way things used to work.

Favor gathering is a chore, it's true, though the shorter duration / higher spawn rate was a much-needed improvement I'm thankful for. It'd be nice, too, if concealed nodes could spawn at other nodes than just level 60 nodes; it'd be great if I could gather USEFUL materials (other than crystals) while depleting nodes to pop concealed nodes. If I need to gather Mythrite Sand, let me use a favor while doing so and get two things done at once!

Mixed feelings on the way Unspoiled nodes work. I like the fact that you can gather from them twice a day, but 55 game minutes is just so tight a time period. If you're not already at the spawn location when it pops, getting there in time can be hit or miss. It removes a lot of the "casual" aspect of unspoiled gathering. Like if you're farming Snurble Tufts and you suddnly realize it's 10:30 - plenty of time to swap to miner and gather some gold ore while you're in the neighborhood. Then Heavensward: farming Gryphon Hides when, oh crap, it's 12:30. Welp, that sucks, no Red Gravel for me!

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

The 6-node setup with three nodes that have a random chance of having gathering buffs was a cool idea, and that alone was a big improvement over the dull predictability of the old 4-node arrays. Do I spend King's Yield here, or do I hold out and hope that a +2 attempts node spawns? Even just basic gathering is a big improvement over the way things used to work.

Mixed feelings on the way Unspoiled nodes work. I like the fact that you can gather from them twice a day, but 55 game minutes is just so tight a time period.

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Both of these. But then again, the rush to get from one node to the other uses Cordials more. I never really used them before AND, I really have to time out my tele locations. Kind of like a mini game getting from one to the other if I really think about it. Maybe that was the idea. *shrug* :D

I really like this collectable system. It could use some tweaks to make it more interesting but it's a good concept.
Ephemeral Nodes and aetherial reduction I also really really like. Kills time and can score you some good stuff.
And I also like "unlocking" these Folklore Nodes. It's a sense of achievement.

I really enjoy the collectability system, gathering now is much more interesting. In 2.x it was just a mindless activity. What I do NOT like about the gathering system in general now is the endless grind to farm blue scrips to unlock folklore books ((99x50=4950 scrips)x9 books=44550 blue scrips...) and red scrips. Also, I don't like the fact that unspoiled nodes only last 55 eorzean minutes and are located in the most remote place of the map, you're always in a rush and what used to be a relaxing activity is now quite stressful.

I enjoy doing collectables. What I don't enjoy that there's a limit per week. I'm limited as to how much I can craft per week... Like I mentioned it before:

We are gathering for A week to craft for A day.....

What I don't like is the 99 tokens per legendary tome and the whole favor stuff. With the cost of the tomes the things that you get from favors should have been in those books and been done like a different set of ephemeral nodes instead of something that you have to spend limited scripts that are used for gear on.

No longer feel like I'm running in squares to farm 4 nodes to infinity and beyond - check.

The collectibles system is interesting and engaging for a gathering mechanic - check.

Aetherial Reduction allows me to quickly (comparatively) cap my inventory with 9999 of all elemental (except water) crystals - check.

My only complaint is of the blue and red scrips. Too many blue scrips are required for the books - there should have only been one book per DoL class, or they should have cost ~35 tokens per - and red scrips are very grindy for grinds sake, resulting only in a currency used to buy a buff that may or may not make you bank depending jointly on how good your internet connection is and your skill at mashing a single button to farm nodes as fast as possible.

Personally I love the ephemeral node farming dynamic. Its fun, requires some thought, and has a system that scales well as your gear improves. I wish they would have focused the high end gathering materials more into the ephemeral system rather than the favor system, but a different sort of compromise would be to add in some kind of scaling element to the favors (perhaps allowing perception to improve the odds a concealed node would spawn). ATM favors can be done by anyone and the gating and irritation keeps those mats super expensive. I don't mind the element of grinding...after all gathering in any MMO is always going to be some kind of a grind...but it seems like there should be some reward as you continue to gear yourself. Other then that, fishing is quite fun with the new abilities but I wish the fish themselves had some real value to them. I'm imagining a day when a high lvl, geared fisher can get some special and rare fish to craft into above average food and potions...but I don't know if that will ever come. All in all good things, they just didn't provide a balance between crafters/gatherers/adventurers that allowed for us to tolerate the less amusing elements.

Thanks everyone for your input it was a really interesting read!

It's miserable and only my completist nature and that I'm taking a break from raiding is keeping me doing it. Besides being a massive time-sink there's no real pay-off. No matter how much BSM red scrip gear I get, I only have one scrip option so it'll always be 10+ hours of Adamantite (barring Creasing Knife). Meanwhile, as a FSH, nothing really compares to Tiny Axolotl simply because you have a very high chance of direct catching them and that means you'll catch way more in one 9 minute window than you will in an (overlapping) 19.5 minute Thunderbolt window or trying to catch book fish which are much harder to catch and only give 2 more scrip in the best case.

Book collectibles in general are just not worth the time to buy the book. I've gotten one and I'm just going to wait for seal depreciation to try for any more.

Specialization was just a flop. DoH have been unbalanced since Day 1 and they didn't do nearly enough to address that with specialization.

I really hate the favor mats farming but kinda forced to do it because its so much faster to gear up with i170. That’s around 4.5hrs of mindlessly flying around nodes and thousands of clicks every week......not fun at all

i've just gotta say, gathering for weekly cap on red scrips is boring as hell and i dread each reset.

I think in Heavensward gathering has gained importance. Leveling the gatherers and one gatherer retainer is very important to save a lot of gil if you craft. Now that a lot of people have gathering retainers, material prices are lower but at the start mats were expensive, and you were forced to gather or hunt (until the disciple of war/magic and the gatherer retainer were leveled enough.)

I never thought gathering is a lot of fun, but compared to crafting there is much less risk. You obtain items you can sell without having to get mats nor the risk of losing the craft or getting normal quality. So in a way it's more relaxing and fun. But gathering hidden items you need for a craft is not fun, it's a chore. Other thing is gathering a non hidden item like Silver Ore for example, that can be relaxing.

The collectible system is fun, like a mini game, not too hard, but you need to be quick and focused. At least in my case, you can fail many times if you get distracted.

I like the collectible system compared, for example, to the grind of HQ items for the Supra weapons. It is more fun and when you go gearing up you can do new rotations to get more items. But it is a bit of a chore to cap the red scrips. As you gear up and find better rotations it gets easier to reach the 450 scrips. I also think 99 tomes for folklore book are a lot. I suppose we all try to get everything as soon as possible and then complain for the grind, instead of taking it easy.

I like the cap on scrips, with a higher cap people would feel forced to reach that higher cap and it would be less fun. You get gear slowly, but you don't really need that gear just now. If we obtained scrips at double rate as now, a cap of 900 would be OK, why not. But not a cap that needs more time investment.

About the favors, until now I have used the scrips for gathering gear. I would like to try and craft the ilvl170 gear, but favors need too many scrips and there's the risk of getting NQ. I think we are at the start of Heavensward, only 3.0, so things will be different in the future. Especially in crafting. I suppose people who get the top gear before the patch will have the opportunity to make a lot of gil, but gil is not so useful and it needs a huge effort. I remember people did huge grinds for the luminary tools, not too practical, but some people like the big grinds and the achievements. The favor system has also made gathering more important.

Up to now gatherers have had to choose between using red scrips for their gear or for favors (for themselves or for sale), but as time passes and they have gear, many gatherers will use them for favors, many will sell them instead of using them, and materials coming from favors will start to be available and not so expensive. Anyway they will remain a very nice income source for gatherers probaly for quite some time.

I was hoping they would of pulled away from unspoiled nodes. Honestly, hear me out here, but I wish "folklores" replaced unspoiled nodes, but instead of how folklore's currently work they could of done this.

Folklores, blue ones, Can obtain 5 a day, the "scrips" would be gained from nodes that had "hidden" mats in them. So you would first have to find the hidden node and then you would have to collect it. You turn it in, get the blue scrips and if you have enough you could purchase a folklore.

With that folklore it would reveal the items you could gain red scrips for Let's say that instead of 5 min timer and running with head cut off, you would instead "reveal" 4 nodes and be able to gather from two of them. The risk is that, when you touch the node, you either use it, or try another node, the other thing is if you leave node it's gone, and the node would have 3 variables to them.

-You can see the buff by just looking at it
-You can only see the buff by clicking on it
-The buff is applied to the item and you can only see it by revealing it

So pretty much 3 stages. The first being easy to see and decide, 2nd being if you see it it's prolly worth doing that one and then the 3rd would be a benefit for taking that risk. After you deplete even 1 part of 2 nodes, all 4 nodes would disappear, so you would want to deplete the 2 nodes you click and not try to move on cause you wont' be able to move on to the other if you claim 2/4 nodes.

With that in mind, things like Adamantite ore would turn into let's say 45 can be gathered in a normal node and a stack from rarer nodes.

Instead of a time based system, you could obtain 5 folklores a day, then with those 5 folklore you could obtain 45x5 to 99x5 of said item, but see the gimmick is that it's 5 folklores a day, that means either or, not both, so you could get 2 miner, 3 botanist, 3 miner 2 botanist, of fishing, etc etc but basically it would get rid of the tedious aspect of unspoiled nodes and instead replace it witha system i which blue scrips are tied to normal hidden items and the new rare items use the folklores, so there would be a reason to log on daily to purchase 5 folklores but you woudn't have to use them right away, you could gain 99 and then go ham with gathering if you wanted, or go ham with red scrip acquisition.

Personally, that's what gets me the most, I just wish they did away with time based nodes and implemented a system that let you do it at your own pace. And folklores were an excellent opportunity to pull that off but sadly they didn't do that and instead create sadly a rather even more tedious system by making them 12hr nodes and gaining half of what the old nodes gained. So now darksteel ore, only had to go once an hour but for adamantite you have to go twice an hour to get the same amount, and it is kinda lame in retrospect and it seems the only reason they did that was because of collectibles.

I enjoyed collectables but hate favors and basically everything they added with the red scrips patch. Favors are just as mind numbing as before when u had to gather the same 4 nodes, but now u have that slave-driving timer in the back. I'd much rather gather at my own pace again without timers or weekly caps.

The whole "get there within 5 real life minutes" ruins the fun completely.
I'm basically in lockdown when I need these mats, can't do dungeons or whatever I cannot abort at a glance at the clock.

I never liked the "timed node" approach, to be honest. It's just plain obviously designed to waste a players time.

I enjoy gathering in 3.0 a LOT. Much more than when I only had my ARR skills. The rotations are interesting and entertaining. And you have to select what you need carefully as you cant get them all. This is by far, what I love most - It's become a job that you can optimize, anywhere between 50 and 60, rather than just spam-click everything.