I am not enjoying this game

gathering is horrendous, you get so little for so much work
recipes are horrendous - you need a warehouse of materials to make one little thing
crafting is horrendous - really? repetitively hitting buttons? lame!

I was really, really hoping that agriculture would be even more fun than it was in ultima online... hahaha - agriculture is horrendous as well - - i.e. NOT FUN AT ALL! I am seriously considering moving back to ultima online for all my gardening needs.

Playing this game, I am quickly developing carpel tunnel syndrome!

Everything in this game is currently a grind that is not fun or rewarding in any way.
I just really hope that this is not the ultimate aim of the devs, to make the game an exercise in self-flagelation that it currently is -- 'cause sorry - I play games to have fun.

 

It's even worse if you already have CTS

 

Hi Sophi,

Sorry to hear that! However, personally, I'm enjoying the hell out of it and plan to continue for many years. If I can help you with anything, please don't hesitate to ask.

Cheers,
Cornfellow

 

I enjoy it all immensely as well but I also have CTS and nerve damage in both hands/wrists. There are some unnecessary steps baked into the process.

One big thing I'd like to change with salvaging is not being able to do an all at once salvage. Please allow us to put all items we want to salvage in one window and the required fuel, be it 10, 12 or 50 one time and click salvage.

I would even be ok with them salvaging consecutively with a 2-3 second processing duration between each item.

Fewer clicks is the goal there.

What's more, I should be able to put only the items I want to salvage in and as long as my smithing hammer is in my bag, it should pull it over automatically.

This may sound like a minor thing but sure would save some of us some aches at bedtime.

 

Her feedback is valid. There are still a lot of rooms for improvement on crafting and agriculture for sure.

 

Agreed, there's nothing wrong with a little efficiency in an interface that has so much RSI-causing tasks in it.
The mere idea that you have to right click and hold for pretty much the entire time you're playing (to move the camera/player direction) is, frankly, mind-boggling.
Maybe the UI devs are really gorillas?

 

Sad coming from someone who I know wants to love the game.

 

I agree that the current iteration of crafting is monotonous, tedious, and NOT FUN. But I like how complex it is becoming with the variations of what can be made now.

I feel like the Devs have spent a lot of time figuring out recipes and material stat bonuses, finished product art, etc. and not a whole lot of time on the actual UI or crafting process yet. I believe they put in a basic shell system to add components to be combined into something else... and I would hope they plan to improve that part soon. I doubt this is the final crafting system process.

There is going to be a UI overhaul coming before final wipe so hopefully that will involve some improvements to the unnecessary clicks at crafting stations.

I know they listen to our feedback and have confidence that they will try to make it better!

 

Agriculture definitely needs A LOT of work. I think there has been so much focus on making it balanced for the economy (so it does not take away from gathering in high level areas, doesn't give an unfair advantage to land owners, etc.) that there has not been enough focus on making it FUN! Coupled with the lower reagent cost from NPC vendors, there is barely any reason to farm. So, it would be easy to say "well, not many people are interested in farming" and just disregard it as an unimportant feature. But people aren't doing it (even if they love farming in a game, like me!!) because there is no INCENTIVE to do it. If it isn't fun AND there's no gold in it.. why would anyone take the time to do it? And farming is REALLY a HUGE reason to have a bigger piece of property in the game.. to strive for a village or town lot. To make room for a greenhouse. But, it just isn't there yet. I don't want to get rich from farming, but I do want it to have meaning.. to be enjoyable.. not just a chore.

Please, please, please, devs, take this feedback seriously.

 

I think the biggest problem with CTS/RSI is how mouse-dependent the game is right now. It requires accurate clicking on small UI targets which may be across the screen, and the cursor can become hard to see if it is over low-contrast terrain or off the edge of the screen. (I highly recommend turning on mouse trails if you're using Windows!)

Right-click-drag is a particularly un-ergonomic way to change your view. You can do the left/right with Q and E, but I'm not aware of any keys which will raise/lower your view, and I usually have too steep a view when entering the overworld. Also, it's too easy to change your vertical view position to something unusable if you're not careful. The worst part is that there are plenty of UI targets on the screen that respond to right-clicks, so you have to make a conscious effort to keep your mouse cursor away from them.

Pop-up menus have really small text, and require you to slow down to hit the right thing. There aren't blank lines separating things like "Equip item" from "Destroy item". Too many alert boxes won't respond to the ENTER key to dismiss them. They have fixed some, but the one from when you double-click crafting recipes too fast requires you to hit a tiny OK button. You can close all windows at once with the ESC key, but closing just one requires hitting a tiny X in the window. Etcetera.

I miss the ease of use (and lack of RSI problems) of using a joypad controller with FFXI. It was designed for PS2 first, so they made it work very well with just a controller, plus a keyboard for chat. (On the other hand, using a mouse with FFXI can be a UI nightmare for various reasons! So I use a trackball because it doesn't move when the wire gets bumped.)

 

Yes click crafting is pretty disappointing. I keep hoping they will add some fun to creating an item. Even at 99 tailoring i'm yet to crit anything so the rewards are lacking for sure.

I mentioned in another thread that 7 clicks per plant was a bit crazy...Now if we could at least bind our crafted recipe to the bar, I could use the keyboard...the mouse is quite laggy for me so that would be a welcome change...Still won't help that we have click done crafting haha...

 

What!! My dreams are broken.

 

I think a great way to make agriculture "fun" and worthwhile would be to add "rare" crafting resources/ingredients to their loot tables. Even if the chance to get them was very slim (<1% to maybe 3%) it would make it worth trying if you could grow the standard reagents/crops and possibly also get a rare mat that is required for the best weapons and armors in game.

As it is now, Selene is correct. There really isn't any incentive to do it because it's just as easy to buy them from merchants if you need them, and there really isn't a market to sell them for profit. It's pretty much just a way to waste your land on your lot with planting beds and a way to degrade your mouse and your joints with all the unnecessary clicks.

But if they implemented a rare resource that was only obtained from each of the planting seeds thru agriculture... then you got something worth doing!

I still think the agriculture process itself needs work to reduce clicks... but it also needs incentives added too!

 

Seems like agriculture should focus more on being useful for cooking instead of overlapping into armor/weapon crafting.

 

Well, that is a good point Kvow. Perhaps a couple crops could drop a rare weapon/armor ingredient... but those couple items should go through a cooking table first and then used at say a tanning station or alchemy stations etc.

And I would be happy to see lots of rare cooking ingredients dropped from crops that could be used to make better meals/drinks. Like adding them could make them last 2x as long as a normal ingredient, or 2x as strong of the buff, etc.

I think we're onto something here!

 

+1

After the Big ol cotton farm reaction the Devs had in R25, the answer was to make it more RSI intensive. This is a backwards step to me.

Perhaps there will be recipes for planting to reduce drag the hoe around for every single crop planting.

Can we have some direction on this stage of testing? @DarkStarr

 

Also, (like UO) agriculture could be used to make decorative plants for housing... branch out to include apiculture (bees for honey) for mead making, other brewing supplies, cut flowers that "expire".

 

That's very concerning.

 

I forget which armor pieces you can crit on? Hat? Chest? Legs? Gloves? Boots?