Should we be looking forward to changes?

[Squince670]

As the thread title says... should we be looking forward to any changes for botany/mining? Or is it working pretty much as intended?

I have two issues with it that does not seem to bother other players

1.) Percentages being false. 80% to gather an item and I fail four-five times in a row? That does not seem right.

2.) Rate at which exp is accumulated. It.... is.... so.... slow.... I hit trees 500 times and I did not get from level 27 to 28? In real life, I am now pro at hitting trees. (I don't mean that we should get from 1-50 after having hit 500 trees....)

[Arukai]

Changes I'd hope to see made;

1) Higher shards yield as level increases. Crafters are desperate for these now - my 46 Armorer attests to this, is ice shard starved. As such, prices are spiralling up quite considerably. With botters now in the world, time to change this before it's irretrievably broken.
2) Better distribution; it's not that they're off, it's that compared to crafting, some things are just far too high a level. Armorer - needs cobalt at 40-45. Mining requirement? 46.
3) Tuned Experience; Increase first-time discovery experience. Increase fieldcraft leve experience (compared to crafting it's pathetic! 120k+ armorer leve compared to 20k mining leve at this point?).

tbc

[KevinC]

You can't let gathering classes level too fast or the market will have too much mats, crafter will craft everything and prices will have to be very low.

I do agree they need to rework the way gathering shards work though, it become pointless to harvest them exp wise pretty quick.

[Arukai]

You can't let gathering classes level too fast or the market will have too much mats, crafter will craft everything and prices will have to be very low.

I don't mean triple it but think of it this way; I do a lvl 44 mining leve for a reward of 600 gil and 21,000 exp.
I do a lvl 25 Armorer leve (Steel Ingot) HQ and get 30,000 exp and 900 gil.

I think there's a distinct imbalance. There's two ways to cut this; increase the Exp yield of normal items a bit to ease off and make that the more attractive manner to level, or to dramatically increase leve experience rewards; sacrifice materials for exp, as it were.

Besides, the market already has too many materials. We're not using normal quality ones. The longer it takes to level, the more materials flood the market...

[KevinC]

I have to agree that mining leves are useless in term of xp

[Arukai]

Indeed.

As for market economics; the faster exp will actually provide less materials; this should in turn help to stabilise the collapsing market by adding some value to the products. But this cannot alone help to stabilise the market; the quality issue is rampant. I made three cobalt plates, one HQ and two normals. The likelihood I'll use the normals? Slim to non-existent. There's no tangible benefit, aside the one-time discovery reward, for using them. If I'm making anything right now it's for myself or someone I know; and my eye is on getting them that HQ version.

With normals at vendors, and plenty offered for rewards, there's even less incentive to make anything to sell. Square-Enix need to consider this issue very carefully. It's a big problem that affects all non-combat classes.

[Warlyx]

You can't let gathering classes level too fast or the market will have too much mats, crafter will craft everything and prices will have to be very low.

I do agree they need to rework the way gathering shards work though, it become pointless to harvest them exp wise pretty quick.

ehm have u seen how many mats we gather leveling? from 20-30 u mine like 20 stacks of everything....there are already a surplus of mats ,just because leveling is slow as hell.

[Arukai]

4) Materia; Miners can't socket into their own pickaxes?! I understand smiths need work, but come on... some benefits to mining would be nice!
5) Quality controls; I barely use Normal Quality, which is why many prices have crashed. Most of us crafters already know it's go HQ or go home. Without a market for NQ gear, the materials value is grossly affected. Which in turn hurts the HQ values as well. I think SE need to rethink the differences between NQ and HQ materials, and question the wisdom of having vendors sell NQ versions of the gear (thereby ensuring the NQ AH market is tiny). It's a big issue. It hurts everyone.
6) Stealth; For the love of all that is sacred and holy, ease off the speed restrictions the higher your level! I mean, jeez... there's only so many hours in a day guys!

[Squince670]

On a side note... I've been seeing a lot of invisible gathering going on... The node is being hit because I can hear/see it, but I cannot see the player gathering from said node?

[Rgbg]

Yeah, I've seen that back in Rift, people mining from inside rocks, I've seen it in FF 14 ARR, too, but only once. Today on Coeurl I saw a mining bot with a teleport hack or something like that, he (naked lv 28 with lv 10 hat and a lvl 19 pickaxe) was stealthed and teleported from mining node to mining node. Reported him, but... makes me feel uneasy thinking about the market with this apparent botting. Doesn't matter if it ends flooding the market or is used for gil buyers, it hurts the game...bad!