Quote Originally Posted by TaleraRistain View Post
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.