botting.

[Mirh]

The problem isn't bots, it isn't Turbo controllers, it isn't the economy. No the problem is that the DoH and DoL is a (and I'm capatilizing this so people get the message clearly) FAILED VIDEO GAME CONCEPT. Blacksmiths don't fight dragons, the build/repair armor for the people who do... you shouldn't play this game to work a job. The mechanics are broke but even above that, the entire concept of crafting in an adventure game should be an after thought, not a job class.

You're entitled to your opinion, and we should all respect it. With that said, it's very rare for someone to come about and suggest the concept of crafting classes as jobs was an error. It's arguable what sets FFXIV apart from most MMOs on the market today is the thought and detail involved in crafting, and I'd like to think that I speak for many when I say changing this takes a big part of FFXIV's heart and rips it out. They don't have to redesign it entirely, they just have to rework recipes and the attributes so that you can't spam a button. it's easy, and I believe it's in the works.

This isn't necessary an adventure game, it's an MMORPG. SquareEnix's goal was to appeal to people of all shades, and some people don't feel that playing an MMO should involve strictly killing dragons. In fact, it wasn't until certain MMOs recently released to more casual players that an MMO could be summed up a strict mix of maxing levels and killing baddies.

Prior to World of Warcraft, and its dozens of clones, there were players in MMOs that did nothing but craft, and they got their money's worth from the game. An MMO wasn't defined as "casual-friendly and/or hardcore" but by what you could do in the world.

I think the real issue with DoH/DoL strictly lie in design that really required a developed community that worked together and communicated. The new era of MMOs ("Adventure games" as you'd perhaps say) bred an intense sense of wanting to single-handled to kill the gods, or single-handedly craft legendary weapons. This is why there are people who spent a year maxing all their crafting jobs.

Also, no one puts a gun to your head and tells you that you must level everything in the game. If you're compelled to do it and compelled to bot to do it, you have your priorities derped, and you can't really blame S-E's horrible skew of difficulty on that.

Clarification: The problem isn't that you have to level a craft as a job, it's that the minigame for it has lost its reward/penalty system and it's now marginal at best in difference between trying to succeed or just hammering a button, trying to HQ or not. It was actually fun and it felt like you could HQ when you tried to, before Yoshida took over.