I’m glad you brought up time! I was going to do the same, and it’s why I argue that the economy should be centralized if the only real way to progress is through it (I think this is a much bigger issue, personally, but let’s pretend the only problems with the game are currently in the economy).
So, you want to get coils, and you decide that the the best way for you to do it is be selling fibrous leaves, sap, bark, etc. So first step is to go grind up that stuff. We can argue about the rate of the gathering, but we can both agree that those things aren’t the hardest to get. So you go out and spend a whole night gathering your materials (for me, that’s like 2-3 hours of play. If you have more time, good on you, but the game shouldn’t only cater to people that can play this 40+ hours per week). So now, what do I do with them? Currently, I stumble around 10000 stores looking for the one that has the best price for leaves/sap/bark while also having basket money. This activity also takes time, and actively decreases the amount of money you are actually making because, as we started with, the time is also valuable. My 2-3 hours is a fairly soft cap, the only problem is maybe I’m tired for work the next day. But suppose that was a hard cap because I had to go pick up my kids, or had to go to my job right after, or whatever. Now my farming time is cut into with selling time with no guarantee that I’ll even be able to sell my entire haul. This feels terrible. With an auction house, or menu selling, you just put what you have up for what you think it’s worth and forget about it until it’s time to collect your money/relist your item.
This goes back to @pofs comment, too. I would love there to be different strokes for different folks in the game, but currently there seems to be a “right” way to play that requires a ton of outside guides and min/maxing. If the right way is by selling all my stuff, then make it easier to do that. If there are supposed to be other ways, then give me a way to progress in mining so I can do it myself, and/or give power coils like a .01% drop rate from Elemental Mobs from meteors, and/or re-balance what takes power so people can progress through the forge, etc., you get my point. I’m sure you are calling people like me “bads,” and that’s fine, though I’d prefer “casuals.” The game just does a bad job of laying out how to progress, and the intuitive ways are (or at least feel) really, really sub-optimal. Whether you want to admit it or not, you need casual players to prop up your game, and they will stop playing if it feels like nothing they do matters/they have to treat the game like a job in order to get to the game.
