Finally tried WoW

[ThreeBeastSmile]

If XIV wanted to crib some ideas there, they should look at EverQuest II instead. It does the system of responding to random events that they tried to do in Expert recipes much more effectively. Gathering is still boring, though. XIV does that much better.

Huh? The gathering in FFXIV is much better because you click some abilities in an even more rudimentary fashion than its crafting, then that's tied to the same tight, essentially unchanging circle for a few materials? I don't know... but simply not being bound to that dull routine makes EQ2 gathering better (to me). At least you wander about a bit. Some may like the way it's done in here, but imo it makes it unnatural and thus scuppers some immersion, and FFXIV already suffers from dustbowl levels of life in its zones.

You raise the crafting system too, that's the only crafting system in an MMO that made me not want to totally fall asleep, and what was it that made that different? As you said, one had to check for random events and respond appropriately (and on a mild timer). FFXIV's gathering system lacks sufficient randomness there (oh golly the occasional hidden slot, much excite!) even if that is simply finding a node to click on, for that essence that you're foraging for something. Oh yeah, and something else I've not seen since is a crafting station actually killing people, the forge was pretty notorious for that hue hue~

Had to cut in because I really don't see EQ2 being mentioned all that much. Really chronically underappreciated MMO for what novelties it did have, in amongst some issues - almost like anything else, go figure.

[TaleraRistain]

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(had to snip cause forums no likely how long both replies were)

You basically have the same gathering route type of system that you have in XIV. Only things really different in EQII are that you don't have Sneak so you have to slide around the mobs Eureka-style and you're in competition with others for nodes since they're not personal. But most of the other aspects about gathering were just annoying, like having to gather every node in the area to keep the ones you wanted spawning. I much prefer that you have multiple choices at a node in XIV and can choose the item you want to gather. Plus much better abilities and traits to help with increased yield. Not to mention the whole collectible system. I'm kind of half and half on the "legendary" types of items in both games. IIRC they would randomly come from nodes in EQII. And in XIV we have specific timed nodes for them. The timed nodes can be a bit annoying, but I like the guarantee of getting them on a set schedule, since so many are needed for crafted items.

The one thing they can crib from EQII for gathering is telling you on the items what tier of crafting they're used in, though that might be difficult in XIV since sometimes lower level items are used one or two expansions later in basic materials.

One thing I really enjoyed about EQII's crafting system is that the control of the craft was in your hands. You screw up and miss an event? In XIV you're basically done because of the rigid rotations. But in EQII if you lost one of the bars, you could get it back through good usage of your abilities and responding correctly to future events. If Expert recipes were more like that and less RNG, they would be much more enjoyable and would put the autonomy back into our hands by making us responsible for our success, not RNG. And yeah it was funny when the crafting station murdered you because you messed up that badly.

I think one of the most important things about gathering and crafting in XIV versus EQII is that it's still marketable to gather and craft in XIV because the game itself keeps crafted items valuable, and unfortunately EQII devalued crafted items so much that it lost that aspect.