All the stupid little things

[Ryktes]

So, I've played the game for about 5 days now, and I really, really, want to have a good time playing.  The problem is that there are just so damn many stupid issues and design decisions that keep scratching at the back of my brain.

 

First of all is the in game economy.  Everything in the npc stores is priced to be IMPOSSIBLE to afford. Now this isn't that bad of a problem on its own, since the game just rains potions and dumplings and the like on you.  But then we have the issue that the npc shops also wont pay more than 3 copper for anything, and NONE of the enemies in the game seem to drop any money, making it absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to earn money from regular questing and hunting activities. 

 

Now, again, not of that makes a huge problem on its own, because it seems the way you are supposed to make money in the game is through crafting and the marketplace. But then there is the problem of the EXTREMELY limited availability of things like Viridian Quartz to be mined on the map due to the extremely long respawn times of the mining nodes, combined with what appears to be a large number of players who seem to just wait around those nodes to hoard the materials to sell on the market for stupid prices.  Combine this with only being able to make ONE object at a time from each of your crafts, and all of those on stupidly long timers of their own, and that starts to look like a pretty unappealing option as well.

 

And on the topic of the marketplace, why in the hell are we only allowed such a viciously limited number of postings per day?  This is the only viable way we have of making money, and we can barely use it because.... why, exactly?  I understand the reasoning behind limiting the number of postings at one time, but there is absolutely NO good reason to limit the number of things we can sell per day.  This makes it extremely troublesome for people who are just starting crafting and are trying to get 1 or 2 of a specific item, but they cant because people are only selling 20 or 30 at a time because its a waste of precious posts to do otherwise. Combined with the above issue of hoarders, this makes it nearly impossible for people to even try to get started in some crafts, which makes it impossible for them to make money.

 

Then there's the sprinting.  12 seconds.  Why?  What possible reason could there be for forcing us to move at the regular deathly slow walking pace?  Some of these fields are just huge expanses of empty space.  And pray that you don't upset some random enemy along the way while you are sprinting, because if anything takes a shot at you it puts you in combat mode and drops you out of sprint.  Which means now you either stop and kill the poor sod for getting in your way, or you try to outrun it long enough to fall out of combat mode and be able to sprint again, hoping they don't have any ranged attacks. Getting from A to B in some places is just painful.  Unless, of course, you use the windstride, which cost precious money, like most quick travel systems in games, but it also has its own cooldown timer to boot.  

 

My last issue isn't even anything to do with anything in game.  Its character creation.  Not any issue with the creation process itself, that's actually fantastic by most MMO standards.  The problem starts with what happens if you decide you don't want that character anymore and want to try out something different.  Deleting a character gives you a 5 minute wait timer, not too bad. Unless you are part of a clan, then you have to leave that clan before deleting the character.  Again, annoying, but not horrible. So you log back in, wait out the queue, drop out the clan, and head back to delete the character. And then you get told you have to cease all gathering, crafting, etc activities before you can delete that character.  What?  I'm deleting the character, why does it matter if he's currently got a request with the crafters?  So you log back in, queues again, and cancel all that crap, drop out and hit delete one more time, and now you get a 7 DAY WAIT TIMER!?!?  All this just because I wanted to try a new class!? What the actual hell!?

 

All in all, as I said, I REALLY want to like this game.  The combat is amazing by most action game standards, let alone MMO standards.  The story actually seems interesting and doesn't get buried under hours of side quests.  Co-op dungeons and PVP are both fun and interesting experiences.  But there are just so many little annoyances that poke at me along the way that I just cant ever seem to get comfortable with the game.  This could be an absolutely amazing game, but right now, it just seems like more trouble than it's worth.