Retainer Level?

[Akira_Tenshi]

Oh... yay... SE really hates gathering don't they? From the videos they've shown, it's pretty clear the new gathering system wasn't designed for gatherers. Now gathering is "a chore" that you can get an NPC to do for you?

Way to keep telling us to do something else. Here's a shocker, some of us actually enjoy gathering. I'm really afraid of what you guys did to fishing...

Quit over reacting. This doesn't stop you from gathering does it? It will just provide you a bit of extra help and you could always you know just not ask your retainer to do it. I imagine retainers will be able to do other chores as well such as crafting and repairs maybe. This is not Square Enix saying gathering sucks go do something else.

[KiraHime]

I was sure I saw mentioned in Reinhart's thread something about retainer gathering and the inference that it was more shard related, as crafting was supposed to be more shard intensive in 2.0. I can't find the post now and it may have been rampant speculation anyway. However as someone who broke literally thousands of fish for shards, I can see this as an acceptable 'bot gathering activity' for a retainer as the impact on the economy is a minimal one and as shards are in themselves now an item that can be targeted via gathering.

I may be wrong and some people may have made their gil in 1.0 by breaking the level 1 fish in LL and reselling, but from my experience shards were passed from non crafting friends onto crafters more than ward selling. Regardless, there was already in place a method of obtaining shards at a very low cost per unit (as low as 1-2gil) so I don't see this as a massive impact on the economy. Like most people have posted on here, I wouldn't be supportive of a 'gather x number of y item' system for retainers even if it was limited to NQ only.

Gathering is only one possibility for a leveled skill however and I'm sure SE are thinking of multiple other options. Shopping for example was mentioned in Triary's post on this subject.

Again I'm sure SE has their own ideas on how to implement this but as an example you use a UI similar to the buy function used to be in the player bazaar. You chose an item, specify NQ or HQ, a volume required and a max unit price. The retainer then searches the wards at preprogrammed intervals, 1 hour 4 hours or whatever SE thinks reasonable and purchases items that match your criteria in the wards at that time.

Again this would be a basic thing and I'm sure your retainer wouldn't be able to search for materia melded items as the variability would be too annoying to program (I assume with my lack of knowledge), but this is another example of a basic task that could be entrusted to your retainer.

Another option would be at certain levels you could summon your retainer to you at aetheryte nodes to exchange gear items between your inventory and theirs, which I'm sure some people on gathering binges would find useful.

As was posted previously, for balance reasons if your retainer was assigned to any of these various tasks they would not be able to hold open a bazaar for you in the market wards as they would be moving elsewhere. This would also help the overcrowding issues people experienced in 1.0 where the Ul'dah wards were almost permanently full. Again this may be addressed in other ways already, but it would help create a faster turnover.

That is just my speculation on some of the possible features anyway. Perhaps people have other ideas on what features they might like to see? I haven't included the ability to summon them in combat like FFXI's Adventure Fellows as I personally believe that role will be fulfilled more by our chocobo's in 2.0 as they have tank, DD and healer options for being summoned in battle.

[HiirNoivl]

We have not received any details on what retainers will be gathering. The shard comment was made by a user.

I think bot seaching the wards is bad but if we could use our retainers to search the wards for prices while I am in the field that eould be nice.

[LlenCoram]

Quit over reacting. This doesn't stop you from gathering does it? It will just provide you a bit of extra help and you could always you know just not ask your retainer to do it. I imagine retainers will be able to do other chores as well such as crafting and repairs maybe. This is not Square Enix saying gathering sucks go do something else.

It's not just the retainers being able to perform this "chore" of ours, it's everything we know of the new gathering mechanics. It's not a question of just choosing whether or not to use my retainer, it's that the entire system seems like it's being dumbed down and turned into an afterthought, something you don't want to do but have to do sometimes.

Again, I really hope I'm wrong, and when the beta hits and I finally get my hands on fishing, if it turns out to be the best thing ever you can be sure I'll be the first screaming from the (NDA approved) rooftops abput how good it is. For now, it really feels like they're turning gathering into an afterthought. This recent retainer thing is just another little piece of evidence for it.