This red scrip system doesn't seem very casual-friendly..

[scarebearz]

The problem is and was the favor gathering and caps, from my pov this patch has been almost no help at all to the real problems.

[RiceisNice]

The changes to crafting help. The amount of scrips you'd get for some of hte material requirements was utterly skewed (10 for morel salad which is much more abundant and available, versus 15 for something like a full weapon or equip that uses dissolvents, leather and fleece).

And well...the lack of favor adjustments.

[Joronas]

So ... the utter boredom of 11.25 hours of grinding favors ... is unchanged. The 10ish hours (for me at least) of grinding out red scrips is now down to 6-7ish. I'm so overwhelmed with awe at this I don't know how to express it. Are they TRYING to make crafting and gathering irrelevant?

[Fenral]

People keep going on about how they're being forced to grind out 12 hours of favors in a week, but... Considering Red Scrips are also used for gear which will in all likelihood be required for the next available tiers of nodes...

Isn't that like saying Square is forcing you to grind out 100 guildleves just because the allowances are there? It's really not their fault you don't know how to pace yourself.

[RiceisNice]

People keep going on about how they're being forced to grind out 12 hours of favors in a week, but... Considering Red Scrips are also used for gear which will in all likelihood be required for the next available tiers of nodes...

Isn't that like saying Square is forcing you to grind out 100 guildleves just because the allowances are there? It's really not their fault you don't know how to pace yourself.

When you are crafting, then yes. You need on average six favors for one material craft, and most crafts require 3 or 4 of those materials.

Nor do you "need" the current AF pieces to gather things arm because nothing currently ingame requires it

[Joronas]

I want to craft the new gear. There are no favor mats available. So yes, I am forced to grind out 11.25 hours a week of favor mats if I want to craft. Worse, because I need to get a guild member to do it as well, because 9 red gatherer tokens do not produce enough mats for 9 crafter tokens.

[Fenral]

Nor do you "need" the current AF pieces to gather things arm because nothing currently ingame requires it

But when they patch in new nodes that require those stats, and there is still no crafted gear that comes close, where will you be?

I want to craft the new gear. There are no favor mats available. So yes, I am forced to grind out 11.25 hours a week of favor mats if I want to craft. Worse, because I need to get a guild member to do it as well, because 9 red gatherer tokens do not produce enough mats for 9 crafter tokens.

Hold up. That sounds almost like you're cooperating with other players to craft. In an MMO.

My condolences on the loss of your vertical-integration scheme, but considering exactly how valuable the new gear is to crafters, and how long it takes to get the scrip versions, I understand the devs not wanting players to be able to produce these pieces in any real quantity right at launch.

[scarebearz]

Hold up. That sounds almost like you're cooperating with other players to craft. In an MMO.

In 2.x I used to cooperate with many crafters and gatherers.

In 3.05 I don't, as the people that I used to cooperate say the system sucks and is not worth their time and effort for next to no reward. As such I can barely gets mats to craft anything, if I resort to the MB for mats, again no good as almost nobody selling them.

[RiceisNice]

..

If we're following patching patterns, we won't see new nodes until 3.2. And even then, you still need the offhand to be crafter, and all crafting gear needs to be crafted (you could do scrips, but there's a huge stat deficiency and probably won't be enough by the time new recipes roll out).

Even with cooperation, the timesink is utterly absurd to make one piece of crafting equipment. The materials themselves are already gated through crafting scrips so it's not like people are going to be bursting out of the gates on release week anyway. We had already decided to pool the materials obtained from red crafting tokens to one person so they can pump out offhands for the FC, but what we're hitting with now is that the materials also require favors that have a 15-minute gathering timer attached to them, for an incredibly varied yield due to RNG.

[Joronas]

You really should have asked if the cooperation changed any. I'm in a group of people who work together on almost everything. We have for years.

The only thing this did? Make my game less fun. It didn't "improve cooperation". That was already there. Now it's just frustrating and miserable. None of us are enjoying it. It used to be that the few of us who were primary crafters would go out and grab some of the mats as required. Now we dread it, because it means 15 minutes to an hour of pointless grind for minimal payout. It made the game worse.

So ... if you put in something because you want to "improve cooperation among crafters" and groups of crafters that were already cooperating, find it less fun because of it ... If it was my work, I'd have just hit the delete button, cleaned the whiteboard, and started over.