Regarding the removal of HQ items from gathering...

[hynaku]

So whats next there going to remove or change to add more space. They really need to update the engine or add bigger data storage. They should just get rid of control for crafting and just add hq gear recipes that need more mats to craft.

[Ayche]

Well, 100 miles away I can see advantage to making quantity more relevant than quality. Quantity of materials is much more granular system than NG/HQ mats, you can better control the value of every gathering act instead of it being conditioned if you have enough perception to hit HQ reliably. Like anyone who has done the DoL job quests at-gear-level knows the pain of being forced to collect HQ mats when you cannot reliably do it. You can keep perception as a stat, you can still keep the idea of having "gathering crits" as a concept, it just has to drastically increase mats gathered.

[Smaimn]

Why ruin gathering and crafting like this? I spent alot of time hunting hq materials so I could craft quality hq items. SE is now taking that away and for what? Inventory management? Seriously???? This could easily have been solved by just creating material storage such as used in many other games ( guild wars 2 for example). By creating material storage you can actually reduce inventory clog since you dont need 7 retainers to store your materials, everything would be in one organized place, and its someting many crafters and gatherers have been begging for. Talk about taking the long way around a short pier. Seriously SE, please rethink this. Think of how much LESS coding it would be to create a material storage system as opposed to removing hq mateirals +changing how the gathering and crafting system works+changing achievements. You could avoid so much unnecessary coding AND make your crafters and gatherers happy by just making a material storage system.

It's not about coding or the difficulty of implementing anything, it's all server space. Adding a material storage would mean the server now needs to keep track of every single item for every single character. In GW2 there are something like 8 materials for each type, so maybe 50ish in total? Maybe a bit more? While this game has something like 240 mining items, 300+ botany items, even more fish, and multiply that by 2 for the HQ versions.


I think this HQ removal is dumb, it's a change to help bots and people that can't stand the feeling of just lowering the quality on items. The only place I can think of this helping is ocean fishing, since time is limited and you catch a lot of different fish, but even that has a shop you can quickly sell to. The people that are running out of inventory slots are fishers, hoarders, and bots. Removing the ability to gather HQ does not solve any problems and just creates bad gameplay, but this change is pretty major so I imagine they are not willing to reconsider this and the change is probably more aimed at reducing the number of materials they have to add each expansion more than anything. I get the feeling the game is starting to collapse under its own wait and they are desperately trying to keep it afloat while they try to find a more permanent solution.

[Jojoya]

Why ruin gathering and crafting like this? I spent alot of time hunting hq materials so I could craft quality hq items.

You don't need HQ materials to craft HQ items. Outside of Exarchic, you should be able to get HQ consistently from all NQ materials as long as you're using gear appropriate to the recipe level.

Separate material storage would still be inventory space but now instead of being able to use that inventory space as you like, you're limited on what you can use it for. I'd rather be able to use inventory as I want. Even the Armoury chest annoys me since there are only specific items that will go into each section, leaving much potential inventory space unused.

[Illmaeran]

The only place I can think of this helping is ocean fishing, since time is limited and you catch a lot of different fish, but even that has a shop you can quickly sell to. The people that are running out of inventory slots are fishers, hoarders, and bots.

I get the feeling the game is starting to collapse under its own wait and they are desperately trying to keep it afloat while they try to find a more permanent solution.

Heh, I'm on track to have all of my inventory and retainers' inventory empty barring some materia, blue items that won't go in the armory chest, XP scrolls, and materia I'm saving for EW...plus housing items on the off-chance I'm actually able to buy a house. My bags haven't been this empty since I rage-sold everything before a break in StB. It's a nice feeling to have all that space ready to hold the stuff from the upcoming gathering blitz when EW drops.

Honestly, I wouldn't doubt that the game's getting too heavy for its infrastructure at this point and in need of a back-end overhaul (not a euphemism).

[MsQi]

Well, no, because in previous non-1.x examples of them removing the content related to a reward they said explicitly that it was being removed (Diadem achievements, the quest to unlock chocobo flight) but in other cases they've always simply reworked them. The old achievements for participation in the Fold were combined into joint Fold/Feast achievements, and in the rework of Diadem to the second revised version they changed the Head/Hands/Feet in the clouds achievement lines from 'complete easy/medium/hard missions' to simply garnering certain levels of exploratory rating.

They DID later outright remove those, but there was a bulletin saying they were outright removing them- this time they did explicitly have a line on the gathering slides that they are going to be changing how the achievement works rather than just scrubbing it.

The thing is the recent live letter was not specifically addressing DoL and DoH and they said they would be addressing those in the next letter. So if they intend to remove those achievements it is very likely they are waiting to do so in the next letter. I'm half expecting a line like "One month is plenty of time right?" with an evil grin.

Should I try to do these in diadem to also get sky credit, or should I double dip with the "A botanist's life for me" and "a mine's life for me"

Bot and Min can't get HQ in diadem, other than at the nodes specifically for the tools. those items can't be appraised for scrips. Fishers can get HQ fish though.

[Payadopa]

Good ol' spaghetti code.

[MsQi]

Good ol' spaghetti code.

Every mmo has it's spaghetti code. Working around it rather than unraveling and fixing it just pushes the problem further into the future when you will have more problems. The servers needed upgrading years ago. Now we're in the middle of a player surge and a tech shortage and still all the other problems such as inventory still exist.

[XiXiQ]

I have so many questions regarding this. The first one being why?

obviously it cuts the amount of all gathered items in half, which is a good thing. It also removes RNG, which is also a good thing.

[MsQi]

obviously it cuts the amount of all gathered items in half, which is a good thing. It also removes RNG, which is also a good thing.

"RNG" or chance is a good and important part of RPG and most other game design. However it is misused to the point where is becomes abusive and so much like gambling it addicts people. This is not that sort of case. The player has a lot of control and the distribution is fair and reasonable. This is the type of RNG that adds a small dash of realism.