A 4th gather?

[Jojoya]

On top of that retainers can bring back 30 ores but only 10 skins, which makes 0 sense. So, again, having an alternate way to get some of these materials would be wonderful.

Actually, it did make sense in ARR. We only needed 1 skin per leather while we needed 3 ore per ingot. End result in both cases was 10 intermediate crafted materials.

It stopped making sense in HW when the number of skins needed was increased to 3 and the number of ore/sand (most of the time) needed increased to 5. That gave us 3 leather but 6 ingots/nuggets (sometimes 7 when only 4 were needed).

Why didn't SE adjust the numbers so we'd get the same net intermediate materials from ventures? I don't know. It could have been pure oversight or it could have been an attempt to adjust the market based on the volumes being obtained through direct gathering/creature kills and/or market prices.

Players are always happy to get more convenience. It doesn't mean that convenience is always a good thing.

Bot activity also throws a wrench into the mix. Anything that benefits players will benefit bots even more because they're far more efficient than players ever will be when it comes to gathering. Right now the prices on skins tends to remain higher because there aren't a lot of bots doing creature farming as far as I can tell. You've got creatures need for MSQ progression that sometime drop crafting materials that the bots leveling through MSQ can sell but I don't think I've ever seen bots farming those creatures independently.

Set up a skinning type gathering profession and the bots will move in, just as they have with mining, botany and fishing. Prices will sink rapidly, depressing the market prices for those items and the items made with them even further. If that the outcome you want?

[MicahZerrshia]

Set up a skinning type gathering profession and the bots will move in, just as they have with mining, botany and fishing. Prices will sink rapidly, depressing the market prices for those items and the items made with them even further. If that the outcome you want?

You cannot base the content of your entire game around the fear of what a bot may or may not do. If that would be the case then they could eliminate the gathering market completely and make all materials untradeable in the next ff mmo since its apparently such a game breaking problem in this one. But no matter what you add, the people who write the bot programs will try to monopolize on it.

This is a knee jerk (over)reaction to content that could genuinely be fun if done well. And very reminiscent of my mom when she disagreed with something I was interested in (You will end up homeless or in a ditch somewhere! Is that what you want!?) Change or just trying something new is not always a bad thing, sure bots will monopolize on it, because that is what they always do. So it falls on SE to make things fun for players and more of a pita for bots or get more strict with the botters. But that is a balance that can never truly be achieved. Right now the time vs cost of skins is not worth it for anyone to actively farm, which is why the bots don't do it en masse and also why the cost of items that use skins is so much higher. This also means that leatherworkers and weavers are at a much higher disadvantage and it drives the prices up all around for even their basic items which is a disadvantage to everyone.

If we went by the philosophy of cannot add new content because botters will overrun it and ruin it for everyone we wouldn't have treasure hunts or firmament. They may as well not added things like Eureka or Bozja either. It would be just straight msq and raids with untradeable drops. More fun and interesting content is what I want. Bots are a side effect of that, always have been always will be. But if SE isn't willing to crack down harder on the people who support that bots instead of just the bots themselves, it will forever be a growing problem. If you want to be rid of a weed, you need to dig up the root.

Adding a system that would be fun and have the benefit of allowing more people to make some gil is in no way a bad thing.

[ADVSS]

I actually wouldnt mind a trapper type class at all since gathering overworld mob drops, inst necessarilly that abundant, even if you think using mug is useful(highly inefficient btw due to cd time) way of getting them. Then again i havent messed with sending retainers out in forever, so maybe they added multipliers to what they bring back. But when i did, an hour wait for some mats you could get in less than half an hour just didnt make any sense to me.