Redo the beginning

[AlexiaKidd]

Did you realise that Gatherers and Crafters do 'Parley' in any circumstance that would involve Combat rather than fighting? I hope you did before you posted that - because otherwise you'd realise that the difficulty of Combat in the Story-Quests has no reflection on Crafters or Gatherers being involved at all. I haven't had to throw stones at anything, ever, nor have I had to bring in Combat classes to help - I played the Parley mini-game, won, and progressed.

Tough as it may be to realise, not all of us want to be involved in Combat. I've battled things in basically every game I played. What if, for once, I - Gods forbid - want to do something else, yet still get to enjoy the main Storyline of the game? As to new players getting confused, if the fact that picking a Class that is clearly non-combat confuses them, then I fear for their future.

I picked Botanist at the beginning (after looking forward to choosing it for *months* beforehand) and would never, ever want to have started as a Combat class. If it wasn't for the Gathering classes (particularly Botanist) I wouldn't even bother with the game, as I have more than enough games to get on with killing monsters.

Combat classes have the bulk of content as it is, I only have two GuildLeves per level Range per area to choose from, and a massively limited number of areas to gather from, but hey, if you want to kick those of us in the gut who enjoy playing something different, feel free. My highest Combat class is Lancer at 27 - I'm currently sitting at Botanist 40, which took a lot more time to Rank up each Rank, trust me.

*EDIT* As I see further folks echoing the 'dumbed down for gatherers and crafters' - we use Parley. No combat, no NPC fighting, nothing - just Parley. The fight could stretch miles into a dank cavern, but we would deal with it differently. Everything is instanced during Quests anyway isn't it.

When you started as a Botanist did you not have to stone throw the mobs to death at the beginning as I am positive I did not get the Parley option there when I started with Fishing in Ul'dah on an alt, I could be wrong though. I always thought the point of it was a battle tutorial which DoL/DoH have no use for currently.

Also as for DoL/DoH taking part in the main story while I don't have a huge problem with it, I really can't see how a Botanist will overthrow the Garlean Empire and put a halt to the 6th Umbral Era beginning with a round of Parley.

Maybe they could give DoL/DoH a different objective like crafting the secret trinket of Eorzea or gathering the holy branch of burnt wood that will save us all.