I might make more topic on this overall problem with the developers, but the main issue I see is a lack of "progression" with any systems they setup. Consider Stamina, it could work if it wasn't for the fact that stamina never improves from physical level 1 to 50, unless I missed something it's always the same stamina limit, however you would think that as you grow stronger you would gain more stamina allowing you to perform more actions in combat before resting. Or even regain stamina at a faster rate.

How this relates to the above is this, a soft cap is ok however there should be some form of progression as you rank up. Think of it as when you first start out as a botanist you'll probably tire out quickly aka soft cap 2500. When you reach Rank 10 you obtain a 500 increase to the soft cap.This is what they could do.

Every 10 ranks your soft cap increases, 500, 750, 1000, 1250, 1500 for a Total of 5000. Now the system could work like this.

Overall Cap: 2500
Botanist 30 :+2250
Miner 9 :+0
Fisher 15:+500

Now for the next issue would be "overall soft cap". Since one may be unaware of how much they are actually farming up they should allow users to set a limit for each gather profession in this essence, with using the same ranks as above.

Class----Limit-Personal-Total
Botanist-1000-2250----3250
Miner----750--0-------750
Fisher---750--500-----1250

With the above you are left with a limit of Botanist>Fisher>Miner if you choose to work on all gathering professions, which personally I enjoyed doing, it's a pity they put such a limit on it because they are to lazy to actually expand on the system which does relate to the above paragraph with how they just make systems that are stagnant without actually expanding on them.

The better fix to gathering would have been to make it so that it wouldn't be an easy thing to do, now I"m not sure what the actual RMT issue was, was it that they would just spam the crap out of it or were they able to make bots to perform the actions for them. If it's the latter then they should've focused harder on expanding the system so that you aren't literally doing the same thing from 1-50 with no change to the system. Like any good rpg when you first start it's suppose to be simple, but as you grow stronger and wiser you should learn of new concepts to expand to the system. The thing that gatherers really fell flat on was the overall lack of any active abilities to use while gathering.

While this is completely off topic but not exactly since it does relate to how they could've expanded on gathering without putting a limit on it, they could have added the stamina and TP system to gathering.

Quikc example (I"m just going to use random stamina cost and TP to explain the system)

Botanist 15 (since this is the gathering profession I focused on the most)
Active Abilities: (Lv-Ability-TP-Stamina-Info)
5--Eyes of Nature--500--100--Strike the tree with more care reducing damage done to it
10-Caring Hands---750--50---Soothe the tree restoring life force to it
15-It's log!--------1000-250--Pinpoint location which will yield logs
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So basically the above is a quick example of how active abilities could be added to gathering. Basically let's say when you "gather" your TP remains until you change class which includes changing between gathering classes. Your stamina determines how long you can stay at a gathering node for as well as the personal limit for the node. The personal node being "you can gather from here x amount of times". With each swing made you obtain 50 TP, for a successful swing you obtain 150 TP and for a successful cut you obtain 300 TP. With each swing made you lose 50 stamina, sometimes if you are way off on a cut you'll lost more stamina.

So basically in a quick run down of progression through a node it could go as
Player stamina 3000/3000
Cut:Result-Stamina-TP
1-Success------------50--150
2-Fail-----------------60--050
3-Success Obtain-----50--300
4-Success------------50--150
5-Crit fail-------------75--050
6-Crit Success Obtain-50--300
7-Success------------50--150
8-Success Obtain-----50--300

In 8 cuts you use up 435 Stamina and obtain 1450 TP. And as you progress you can use that TP to restore, enhance, amplify your overall results.

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But yea, overall the main issue I have with this game is how stagnant everything feels when you step back and look at it as a whole. If I may give another example the whole Action Cost system was handled poorly. When you look at it Blizzard I II III and IV should not all cost 3 AC To use, especially when you consider that your Action points actually increase as you level. The idea behind setting abilities is the ability to be able to customize yourself and make yourself stand out from other players. Though when it comes to Conjurer, while you think perhaps they would have to choose what element they focus on when they create their ability list, they have the potential to hook themselves up with all of the elemental damage spells so that they can easily exploit an enemies weakness.

A simple thing with this is they could've done 2 things. They could just easily increase the AC to use those abilities such as I=3 II=7 III=12 and IV=15. Or they could've created "Overlapping" where a higher tier ability must go over the lower tier in order to be used such as you set Blizzard I on top of Blizzard II for a total of 6 AC used. But the only way you can sue Blizzard II is by overlapping it with Blizzard.

With the latter in mind though it could lead to interesting abilities added to further amplify the potential for customization through abilities. Basically combining abilities to create new ones or slightly augment other abilities with new mods or status effects added to them.

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Anyways I'll lay off all the tangents but if you just look at their answer to RMT with gathering and all their systems in the game, you'll realize there are a lot of shortcomings to them. I had really wished that SE would've released an MMO that allowed more customization then just gear and had an expansive gathering system that was engaging rather then the same monotonous task continuously done til rank 50 with no clear sign of anything changing.

I really want to like this game, but every time I log on I can't help but feel myself unable to try anything because I just realize how dull everything feel. And while this opinion may cause me to get flamed and I may be going off topic I will commend them for the changes they have been making, For the times I have logged on I did look around real quick, the quest system is alright, though it is hard to get into the story when it feels like exposition from the NPC then performing the task at hand lol. The gather/hand material quest are interesting but feel a tad stagnant where the rewards don't really feel worth it overall. With gather/hand it would be cool if the quest given by the NPCs at the shop would improve your rank potentially leading to secret objectives and new skills to learn from the guild masters.

But ya even as I state everything above when I just look at everything I feel a tad overwhelmed cause it feels like they are trying to add a lot but at the same time it feels to bare bone to actually enjoy it. I think it feels bare bone because they haven't really done much to expand on the Guild Marks. While the bare bone system was setup as a way to buy abilities to enhance your class there is such a small amount of abilities to choose from that in no time you'll obtain all of them. Guild Marks would've worked if they actually focused on adding a wide range of abilities and traits that you could use to augment your characters skill set rather then leaving it stagnant. While if they hadn't flopped as bad as they did at the start we might be seeing more story progression, ship-building and more abilities for each class I can't help but think that certain aspects that should be focused on aren't really getting the proper attention.

While I guess that could be because of the auto-attack they are adding to the game because they don't want to try and expand on stamina to make it more progressive rather then stagnant improvement as you rank up. Like personally I don't see what would've been hard to have auto-attack in the sense that you set your "main attack" for auto-attack and set a stamina limit to how much stamina you want spent using that move leaving the rest of your stamina avaiable for using TP moves.

Basically setup a ration for your stamina Manual/Auto 60/40 ratio in which 40% of your stamina would be used for auto attack and when you are under 60% you would not use auto-attack anymore but you could input it manually if you wanted to, but at that point of time you may just want to use TP moves to deal more damage.

I will hold my breath on auto-attack though, if done right it could work but I can't help but think that stamina was an interesting system that if they had just tweaked it to allow a person to obtain more stamina as they improve their physical rank, that it would've worked.

Anyways that's all from me for now, there are other things that I'd like to mention but I've said to much already, I am interested in seeing the dungeon system that I hoe is introduced soon, with all the patches I can say that's the only one that really grabs my interested. But ya all this junk as just been on my mind for a while I just really hope that when things stabilize they will actually follow through with the one thing that was suppose to make this game unique and that was the promise that hand/land would be able to have a richful experience as a fighter. While to an extent this could be true for hand, I can't help but see land getting a bit shafted by the overall concept they are aiming for now.