As someone who was frothing at the mouth after it was announced that crafting would take much longer, I feel so bad now.
It must be really challenging to properly balance and incentivize everything.
You want your game to fun. And part of something being fun is it being challenging and rewarding. When a game is too easy, it feels boring.
Lots and lots of people complained that WoW was made way too “casual” and “easy.” Same with Star Wars Galaxies–becoming a jedi in the original game was impossible for most. And so people DEMANDED that if they paid money for the game, they should be able to play as a jedi too. And so SOE drastically changed the game. And people said they killed the soul of the game and that it became way too casual and whatnot.
I’m sure many of the current problems will be solved in the coming months via quest variety, and just more things to do. The current HWM grind feels punishing because there is seemingly only one effective way to increase it.
But with more content coming out, and more ways of increasing your HWM, I’m sure it won’t be so bad.
Making games is really hard. I think it’s probably for the best for unhappy folk to take a break and come back after a few months or patches.