Mijost wrote:
I never liked the idea of "Forced Grouping" either, and that is basically what you are talking about when you say hire someone to guard you while you gather.
I'm not that worried about "forced grouping" but the main issue with hiring guards is it's no fun for anyone. Sure they get a paycheck, but it means they stand around watching
someone else gather for hours on end.
In what universe is that remotely interesting?
For the guard - Even grinding mobs that present no challenge to you is marginally more interesting than literally just standing around. Not to mention, your presence makes it highly unlikely that anything interesting will actually happen.
For the crafter - You have to go through the tedium of actually finding someone willing to act as guard for however long you plan to gather. Hope you're not looking to gather at an odd time zone, or your tribemates actually have something more fun to do - like watching the grass grow. You get nothing for this, in fact, it's going to cost you.
If "just bring guards" is the answer, then the devs need to have an NPC guard mechanism on the basis of fun-factor alone. Speaking as someone on the gatherer side of things, I have no problem paying for security (so long as security doesn't cost like 50% of the take), but I do have a problem asking other RL people to spend their precious gametime looking at my avatar's butt -- unless it's
massively profitable for them. Guard for 2 hours, live on the take for 2 weeks type profit. Of course, that means the gatherer needs to be able to gather that sort of value in 2 hours, and that sounds economy-breaking to me.