Has anyone else been frustrated with the quickly-absurd time it takes to make, or especially just upgraded, a magic item?
For my example, I'll point to weapons.
Just to get a weapon from a +2 to a +3 total is...over a week. If it's the numerical enhancement you're increasing by a whopping 1, that's especially grating. 10 days for +1.
Why is it frustrating? Well, 3 areas stand out.
From a purely meta point of view, if your module or campaign is on a constant time crunch (I'm in a group playing Council of Thieves, so that's pretty typical for that AP in the last 3 books), you're forced to spend extra money to ever achieve upgrades, specifically because you're constantly selling old weapons and buying the next grade up. While I'm sure some DM's will give an evil laugh at that, it's annoying as a player to have to think "ok, I need to set aside X amount since I'll have to sell my old sword for the next step up".
I mean, I've played WoW, and having to constantly buy or loot weapons that are *incrementally* better is very much a big part of *that* game. Being basically forced to do the same in an RPG system that people flocked to because it "wasn't video game-y" (a whole other argument that's got no place here at this time) kinda shakes things up, doesn't it?
From a semi-meta, semi-IC sense, it's jarring because it basically requires having a Magic Mart with a Trade-In Program constantly available to buy and sell incrementally better weapons for *everyone* in the party in this non-hypothetical time crunch. I mean, otherwise one character's going to quickly lag behind and have more and more trouble in fights.
"You don't *have* to get better gear", you say? You pretty much do.
Pointing to Council of Thieves again, my group just finished the 5th book (forgot the title). The final boss, Sivanshin (spelling?) had a rather high Armor Class; if my memory from last night serves, it was something like 32-33. For my very much optimized/focused Archer Fighter, who had several pieces of gear aiding him as well as basically every feat he owns and all his class features, he still had an at least decent chance of missing. "Boo hoo munchkin!" you say? My point there is that if someone doesn't tailer-build themselves for a higher attack bonus, and/or didn't have time to buy several items that enhance stats, attack, and so on, they would have been in deep trouble, because he would have been very hard to hit. Like, rolling 18-20 territory, which is a very slim margin.
The larger point is that as the enemies ramp up, if your only increase to attack ends up coming from BAB, you're going to start running into severe trouble.
One way or another, Pathfinder RPG is still a game where you need to get better loot/gear to realistically face higher level foes.
Finally, in a fully thematic sense, the constant trade-in when facing any reasonable time crunch (because needing to wait 10 days, or 24 days, or more, is a bit much if there's any urgency at all) means that you don't get to actually have a weapon *grow with you*. You don't get a "legendary" bow or sword or spear or anything. Maybe once you're max level and just dump cash on a wizard or something, and end up with a "legendary" weapon that's called that solely due to its relative power...
But there's no *history* between you and that weapon. There's no way to make it an Excalibur, an Anduril, a Gae Bulg, a Mjlonir, or anything similar. Not with the same impact, anyways. Unless your game gives you days upon days of downtime every time you level, you may well never be able to say "This is the same sword I once slew a goblin warleader with. Then I slew an angry dragon. Oh, and the demon prince I fought, I used this thing too.". You can have one of those, but not all of them.
If I'm missing something, if *upgrading* a weapon takes much less time than *making*, help me out here.
Otherwise, I'd like to at least think I'm not the only one frustrated by this.