Now, this is a specific personal opinion, so I figure lots of people will probably disagree with me, but a full year in I still find the gathering (and thus the crafting) to be more like a tedious slog than an enjoyable mechanic, and it’s largely because of two factors, I think, with an additional third factor that isn’t such an issue. It’s not fun to go out to do some gathering and to find that all the nodes have already been collected by someone else–someone who may be afk farming that zone. Is afk play really what you want in your game? The uncertainty whether you’ll be able to collect the specific resource(s) you want within the time that you have really makes this painful rather than fun. And it’s already not fun in the exciting or interesting sense, it’s more of a meditative/relaxing activity at best. So the two issues here are:
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Shared nodes
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Nodes that respawn frequently on highly predictable timers
This system allows the person who puts the node on timer to pretty much monopolize that node for as long as they like, because they know when to expect it to respawn.
My suggestion (and I know this would require an IMMENSE amount of data to be stored on each character, so maybe it’s not workable) would be to have resource nodes be instanced and have a long re-use timer for each character. So I can be sure of every, say, ironwood tree being up FOR ME, but I can’t chop any individual tree more than once every 18 hours.
This would require people who want to go gathering to actually go on an expedition to hit as many individual nodes as they can, as opposed to just farming a specific subset of nodes over and over. It’d be more interesting and they’d see more territory. Plus, you’d be able to plan on the nodes actually being available when you went out for them, which would be a boon to people who can’t just AFK at their computer all day but actually have a limited playtime. In addition, you could actually go out gathering with your friends because everyone could get the nodes together instead of only one person. Gathering is a hopelessly single-player experience right now because you CAN’T share even if you wanted to!
The final issue I have is the incredible annoyance of getting some of the trophy mats. The crafting gear isn’t so bad because at least you know where it’ll drop, but trophy mats are SO random that getting three of a specific kind can be a real nightmare. And armoring trophies parts in particular are lagging so far behind demand that the price is astronomical. I’ve had 200 armoring forever and I can’t actually DO anything with it because I can’t afford to get trophies.