A 4th gather?

[MicahZerrshia]

As for shards and crystals, I doubt creature drops were intended as a primary source for shards and crystals with the 2.0 revamp. I have no clue what things were like in 1.0 but that they still drop from the creatures seems like it might be a holdover from the old system.

Shards and crystals did indeed drop from monsters in v1 and it was beautiful. So much better than grinding out shards and crystals via gathering. It made crafting so much less tedious when you could get crystals and shards from doing everyday things instead of having to grind out the shards and then grind out the actual components. Now if it were 1 crystal/shard a synth, sure that wouldn't be too bad, but when its 4 > 5 > 6 or even more, it becomes a lesson in tedium. There is a reason rmt make bank off of these items. It is simply nothing more than another road block for new players trying to make a little gil or who want to try their hand at crafting.

The true holdover from an old system is having to use shards and crystals in the first place, which came from ffxi. It's not a system you normally see in mmos or single player games because it simply makes 0 sense to have your players gather 7 items that are completely unrelated to the craft on top of the items you need for the actual synthesis to take place. It did make more sense in v1 because you advanced the craft by keeping the elements of the crystals in balance, but when they got rid of that, admittedly horrific, crafting mini game there was no reason to actually keep the crystal requirement outside of just being what was always done.

Having alternate ways to gather worthless or meaningless materials is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if they could make it fun and interesting. And when it comes to enemy drops, like skins, fleece, wings, etc. having an alternate system would be nothing but a boon. You know when you go to gather ore, that you are going to get a minimum of 4 ore per node. But when you go farm skins you can kill 10 beasts before you even see 1. And since it takes 2+ skins to make 1 leather, just like it takes 2+ ores to make one ingot, this disparity becomes even more obvious.

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.

[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]

You cannot base the content of your entire game around the fear of what a bot may or may not do.

To add to this, if the new job was locked behind having a relevant doh level, or expansion area(kugane, eulmore etc) You would automatically lock it out of what most botters are willing to go to to even bother with it as far as i can see, the ARR seem more rampant, less so in expansion areas

[Jojoya]

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.

But the system already exists and every player already has access to it without needing to learn a new job.

What's the point?