Homercles said:I think it would be interesting if they were able to work the Perception system into locating harvestable resources.
I don't know how....but hey, if theyre building the system, why not use it elsewhere.
Could be as simple as "a glint of metal catches your eye" as you're running along. You move toward the source. *you kick at the dirt* "you uncover a rusty dagger" or "you expose an outcropping of what appears to be iron ore".
It could definitely work for ore....if they put ore just under the surface and there's no visual cues as to its existence, Perception system could work really well.
When your Perception skill is low, your perception area would be very small, and you can only detect lesser (common) ores.
As your perception improves, you detect ever rarer ores, and your range grows.
And when you master the Orefinding Perception, you can determine which ores are buried without having to dig.
Would this work with trees and plants? With these being visible materials, I don't know if percetion would serve a purpose. Could perception help you determine which trees and plants are ripe for harvest? Or help you identify a valued herb in an otherwise overgrown vegatative mess?
On an aside: it could be cool if they implemented a "risk" during plant/tree harvesting. Perhaps Poison Ivy. If you run thru a poison ivy patch, you get inflicted with a debuff. Maybe it lowers your Concentration, causing casters to fizzle more, and causing mele to miss dodge/parry checks. It could be like Rabies from EQ. It never faded on its own. It had to be cured. A hieghtened perception would help you avoid these poison ivy patches.
Homercles said:It could definitely work for ore....if they put ore just under the surface and there's no visual cues as to its existence, Perception system could work really well.
When your Perception skill is low, your perception area would be very small, and you can only detect lesser (common) ores.
As your perception improves, you detect ever rarer ores, and your range grows.
And when you master the Orefinding Perception, you can determine which ores are buried without having to dig.
Would this work with trees and plants? With these being visible materials, I don't know if percetion would serve a purpose. Could perception help you determine which trees and plants are ripe for harvest? Or help you identify a valued herb in an otherwise overgrown vegatative mess?
On an aside: it could be cool if they implemented a "risk" during plant/tree harvesting. Perhaps Poison Ivy. If you run thru a poison ivy patch, you get inflicted with a debuff. Maybe it lowers your Concentration, causing casters to fizzle more, and causing mele to miss dodge/parry checks. It could be like Rabies from EQ. It never faded on its own. It had to be cured. A hieghtened perception would help you avoid these poison ivy patches.
I love it! :) One of the most innovative ideas over-all that I've seen in quite some time. I would love to see something like this instated.
This idea was brought up in 2013 for another game in development (which they did not use) but it goes like this: (this is very long, skip to the next post if you don't like walls of text)
Keep in mind the system described was intended to be used with a sort of... You perform a harvest action in this general area, and resources gathered are time limited per person per immediate area, rather than click on this harvest node ala EQ2/GW2.
For example, in a given zone, there would be:
Geography
-water (ocean, river, lake, cavern, estuary)
-soil (loam, peat, sand, clay, rock)
-elevation (submerged, lowland, hills, highlands, mountains)
__combinations of geographical features produces biomes like swamp, farmland, grassland, desert, mountain
Climate
-weather (rain, snow, sun, fog, wind)
-temperature (freezing, cold, warm, hot, scorching)
-latitude (polar, temperate, tropical, equatorial)
__Storms such as: tornado, lightning, earthquakes, forest fire, blizzard, sandstorm, floods, wind/hurricane)
Flora
-plants (flowers, grass, moss, lichen, algae, ferns)
-crops (grains, vegetables, fruits, fungus)
-forest (coniferous, deciduous, softwood, hardwood, old, young, shrubs, trees)
Fauna
-animals (domestic, wild, prey, predators, mammals, reptiles, insects, vermin)
-monsters (tameable, untamable, predators, prey, hostile, aggressive)
-humanoids (humans, non humans, tiny, giant, verbal, non-verbal)
Points to keep in mind regarding these systems:
- Can be added at any time, in various ways, either in whole or in part, to an existing game
- Fits within the existing framework of player controls, UI, and existing server/network/engine technology
- Can be used to encourage or discourage a wide range of player behavior, and provides several sinks
- As described, presumes resource gathering would be dynamic, as a design goal. Not pre-set static spawn locations.
- Works with Perception, Faction, Acclimation, Environments, and more.
-As an example, climate, flora and fauna should vary by seasons and astronomical time progresses. A particular zone, even with static geography would have different animals and plants fade in and out. Reindeer during winter and deer during summer. Animals that hibernate would not appear when they are hibernating. Monsters that have certain biome requirements would only appear when those matched. Plants would normally bloom in their season. However, whether a zone has daffodils (contains the alkaloid poison lycorine) or the common daisy (not poisonous) could be random. Both can be grown on fallow farmland, grassland, and in cold/warm/hot temperatures, in all weather except snow. Players, however, could determine which would appear, dynamically. In practice, this would simply change the appearance of the flowers in the world, and alter the values returned when harvested.
-Those familiar with RIFTs projected textures feature for RIFT incursions will understand the visual overlay technique used there. A variation of this could be used, at the minimum, for all non geographic ground adjustments such as flora, snow, fog, and even floods. Fauna is simply dynamic spawn generators. Think of SWG nests, but player triggered, and sustained/respawned over time. Currently, in RIFT, collision objects, sky changes, fog, lighting, and weather effects are all dynamic and part of player spawned triggers, in some cases. This is merely an extension of that same technology that is now 4 years+ old. That same existing graphical engine technology is all that's required for everything except the geography described at the outset.
-It also adds more flavor if the players have the choice of impact versus duration. Using the flower field as an example, a player could obtain their widget that makes daffodils (they need the poison), but they have some choices. They can have a version that lasts a full in-game day, or a full in-game week. They can choose to have a single field be affected, or the primary plus 3 or 6 adjacent fields. Each of these has additional cost in time/resources. A quick example might be if someone had a community plot in a village, and was able to harvest daffodil seeds, then put those seeds through whatever process to have them imbued and transformed into the server side feature adjustment trigger. Perhaps the process involves other players, or other collected resources, or money, faction, NPC's, the right phase of the moon, etc. In any case, they have their magic seeds, they move out to a particular region, and they use them. They're offered a target interface of some kind, click, and voila, they now have a field of daffodils to harvest. Potentially, so does everyone else. It isn't necessary to replicate these changes to everyone, but it would provide a whole range of incentives if it did.
-Getting back to impact versus duration, in the above example, say the default duration was 1 and the size was 1. A player might be able to harvest 10 seeds, and have them all imbued, and be able to increase the size to 2, while the duration is still at 1. This would have a larger harvest area (allowing them to harvest more materials) but they would have still only a single in-game day to do the harvesting. Adding other resources to the widget creation might increase the duration to one in-game week (perhaps 1 RL day). These features are optional, but add considerably more depth and variety to the system. Each type of harvestable, regardless of the type (ore, gems, wood, flora, fauna, water, stone) would have a process to imbue and an ability to change the feature in the zone.
-Transient features such as weather and fauna would be performed in a similar fashion, basically triggering a server side event for a localized lightning storm, or spawning ibexes instead of gazelles for a period of time in a particular area. The mechanic that makes all these adjustments desirable is the requirement for certain resources to be harvested only during certain events. As an example, if fireflies only appear for 1 in-game day after a lightning storm, and firefly wings are used as a consumable for the Energy Bolt spell, players have a very good reason for causing lightning storms. It may also be a mechanic that only rare items can be harvested during adjustment alignments, while common resources can be harvested at all times, but only in the proper locations.
-Now, if a player or guild doesn't want to bother with the time sink of gathering the resources and processing them for a zone-adjustment widget, it seems reasonable to allow them to purchase these items outright from an NPC vendor for 20-50 times the cost, or have these items require another form of currency if purchased from an NPC. However, the cheapest, fastest, and best way to obtain the items should always be from other players or to involve other players, if social interaction and community building are design goals. Another option to the NPC purchasing mechanic may be that default duration & size items may be purchased from NPCs, but customized versions of the zone-adjustment widgets may only be craftable.
-optional feature: fauna creatures that produce resources of flora types (mobile plants drop flowers, rock monsters drop ore, water elementals drop water). So, if you can't find an adjustable zone nearby, you can place a creature generator/nest location that does the same, at the same location, while "on top" of the previously adjusted landscape, offering another layer of choice for the players. This does require, however, a full bestiary of creatures that provide all types of resources.
-optional feature: Overwriting other players zone-adjustments is possible, but creates chaos. In fact, each time an adjustment is made that is out of theme with the zone, chaos is created. If sufficient chaos is generated, it can manifest itself in chaotic incursions, spawns of chaos creatures, ancillary storms, and the like. However, it may be desirable to have these as a sort of "end-game" for zone adjustments, with resource gathering. Things like, you can only obtain these resources in the shadow of a chaos storm, or when a chaos storm is active during two full moons, that sort of thing. It may be a good mechanic to only permit overwriting a zone adjustment with a larger one, to encourage a time/resource sink. It may also be a good mechanic that a single/guild/alliance zone adjustments can only be overwritten by like widgets. Or not, or both, depending on your design goals and behavior encouragement. Many of these decisions will be governed by the number of adjustment locations within a zone. If there are hundreds or thousands, many of these restrictions won't be an issue. If there are only a few, it could create serious competition.
-optional feature: adjustment breeds more adjustment. Once a zone has been adjusted in a particular location, say, a wheat farm was placed, then the adjacent areas are now open for adjustment. This could permit adjacent fields of more wheat, other grains, vegetables, or vineyards and orchards. Think of it as adjustment zone expansion by use. This "adjustment zone" or envelope could expand with use and shrink over time if not used. Also, it could be a static setting on some zonees, for guild/alliance activities, and dynamic in public zones closer to civilization. It may also be necessary for players to adjust certain features in certain patterns. An example would be that for every 3 agricultural adjustments adjacent, the next adjustment must be a water feature to show a stream, pond, or similar feature to support the crops. This could also be required for sluice mining, or panning, or creation of a water course exiting a cavern to create a gem resource. Players could also compete to prevent the placement of these adjustments, so they can have their desired resource available. Those closer to civilization (if travel is important) could become serious hotbeds of contention for layout of certain crops, plants and forests. If a particular merchant really wants mahogany, they either have to find a free tile in the right biome on the right zone (scouting now has value) or they can buy the proper adjustment widgets so a mahogany forest can be planted nearby.
-optional feature: zone adjustments that are in-theme last longer than those that break the theme. Placing a desert adjustment adjacent to a swamp, or glacier would last less than an in-game day, but grassland adjacent to a desert could last longer than an in-game day, with a 'default' duration for both. All adjustments could still create chaos, but potentially you could use players healing the landscape as a means to reduce chaos, that is, players using an adjustment widget to remove that offending desert might prevent a chaos storm. Other players, however, may want the chaos storm and continue to radically adjust the adjacent regions.
-optional feature: adjustments out of theme may incur a faction penalty, either global or regional, temporary or permanent. The animals, humanoids, and rulers of a given zone may not take kindly to you creating blizzards in their deserts, or flooding their cropland, even for a day. Sandstorms in a desert, though, you may be able to get away with without penalty.
---
-if such a system were implemented, the ability for players to literally alter the climate, flora, and fauna (and potentially geography) of any zone is an incredible attraction. It would gather a wide range of players and be, as far as I know, unique in the genre of persistent multiplayer games.
-such a system could be fine tuned down to the point where a single player could spawn NPCs of any kind almost anywhere, provided the frequency, limits, cost and consequences were appropriate. Want a party? Spawn a roaming band of musicians, jugglers, or acrobats. Bored? Spawn a hive of mongbats out in the wild. Have too much money? well, now you can spend it. It would be appropriate that spawning creatures just to fight, or spawning creatures outside their proper location either reduces or eliminates their resources and/or loot. However, if the cost was sufficiently high to cover the cost of the loot generated, then they could be normal creatures. Keep in mind that if more than one person may derive loot from a creature, this would need to be considered in such a feature to prevent abuse. Experience granted would also need to be considered, or removed entirely.
-insect colonies. A single player could obtain a widget to spawn an insect colony for termites, bees, ants, and similar of varying sizes from tiny to gigantic, to provide a range of resources, potencies, and quantities. This simple idea may be easier for some readers to grasp, but it scales from something simple like this to more complex ideas presented above. These insect colonies may require particular biomes or adjacent resource to spawn, and may attract large predators (bears for honey, giant anteaters for ants) that you must deal with to defend the colony.
-Finally, the ability to obtain whatever resources you want or need places the choice and path entirely in the hands of players, guilds and alliances. If they want to, for example, outfit taverns for a really good brawl, and they need a particular crop, plant, ore, gem, or tree, they can spend the money and get it or spend the time and effort and get it. The depth of knowledge of the in-game world required could be considerable. This type of system would go a long way in providing an online entertainment experience where knowledge and patience can have value in addition to reaction time. Given the possibly dynamic nature of zones, having accurate and up to date information could potentially save you immense amounts of time and money, in-game. Leadership would be meaningful, as would long term strategy and planning.
More potential harvesting perception clues-> "the leaf of a (named harvestable tree) flutters past, carried on the breeze"; "while galloping along you notice your mounts attention diverted toward some shrubbery" harvestable plants i.e. wild oats?; "you hear the splash of a fish coming from a nearby body of water"; " off to your left, in the distance, you hear the howl of (name your fur bearing creature)" * you move in that direction* "a second howl, this time closer, confirms your suspicion that you have heard a (?)" as well as you're headed in the right direction; " you catch an unmistakeable whiff of Khagan spice" a useful culinary ingredient!
I'm sure there aare many ways to give hints to harvestables, and in such a way that accounts for ability. Using the howl as an example: a novice would hear a howl in the distance; an advanced beginner would hear a familiar howl, you take notice for some reason; someone competent would hear the howl of a wolf; someone learned would hear the howl of a dire wolf; an expert would hear a dire wolf off to the left; a master would hear the subtle distinction in the howl of the rare albino dire wolf (and almost certainly set out to hunt down this most rare pelt)...
Just throwing out ideas here. Feel free to join in...
jpedrote said:I like the competition for resources, sometimes it's frustrating if the server is crowded, but besides that it creates healthy competition.
That said, I like the idea of group harverst, so there's no competition inside the group. But group harvest should yield the same amount of resources as solo harvesting, that way you have the option to solo or group.
Harvesting resources is about gathering the things you need, not competition. Theres nothing challenging or exciting about someone working the same area you are, that doesn't create a challenge, but rather creates a time sink and frustration as you said.
I would much prefer the challenge for harvesters be in the harvesting itself by means of skill training needed to gather more intricate types of resources within a node ect…, possibly mini games with chances to fail to include the possibility of death. The resource hopping that has permeated so many MMO’s is boring, tedious, and antiquated.
The next time your in the EZ Mart filling up on gas on a hot summer day, and you reach for the last thirst quenching bottle of pop in the iced cooler, just to have some young whippersnapper swoop in snatching it inches from your fingers. Remember, healthy competition. :)
HemlockReaper said: ...I would much prefer the challenge for harvesters be in the harvesting itself by means of skill training needed to gather more intricate types of resources within a node ect…, possibly mini games with chances to fail to include the possibility of death. The resource hopping that has permeated so many MMO’s is boring, tedious, and antiquated.
...
This does bring up the question of guarded nodes or not. In zone adjustment, or grooming, or spawning, it's possible to make it so you have to fight to get your resources, 100%. However, with "click and get" type harvesting, naked and/or level 1 harvesters are sometimes possible (because who cares how many times you die at level 1?).
It would be interesting to know Visionary Realms design goals for Harvesting in this one respect: Is it currently a design goal that harvesting will require combat? Or put another way, Is it currently a design goal that ALL harvest nodes will be guarded?
That would allow players to make an informed decision, ahead of time.
Even if nodes are unguarded, you should still not be able to harvest until you receive training in it, at say level 5 or something...something that stops armies of level 1 harvest bots. I certainly dont want to have to fight for every single node (some guarded are fine) but I dont want a system that allows or encourages bots.
I really liked some of what Wildstar had for harvesting, even if they fell short on it (as they did with almost all the things at release, sadly). The risk involved with harvesting wasn't so much in guarded nodes but in the fact that some nodes were not what they seemed. So you could go to harvest some ore and it turns out what you thought was an ore node is a rock creature that would attack you. That was the only one I remember making it into the game come release, but you could greatly expand upon that idea.
In addition to mineral/ore nodes being rock/earth type creatures you could have:
You could really do all kinds of things with such a system. The levels I'd imagine would be based on the tier of material being harvested/skill required.
antonius said:Even if nodes are unguarded, you should still not be able to harvest until you receive training in it, at say level 5 or something...something that stops armies of level 1 harvest bots. I certainly dont want to have to fight for every single node (some guarded are fine) but I dont want a system that allows or encourages bots.
Absolutely, I would love to see them take harvesting to the level of crafting and adventuring by treating it like a profession with its own skills to train for advancement.
For a good crafting system see conan exiles. Need wood? cut a tree. Need stone? go mine a rock. Too slow? make a better tool eventually. Durability Requires resources to fix items and encumbrance over bag slots anyday. Even if bag slots are limited encumbrance should be a factor. I dont want to be able to carry 20 200 stacks of ore around in my pocket because i have the 20 slots to do it. Should help with any botting. Also requiring food and drink to stay alive (within reason ) adds another complication to limit botting capabilities.
Ive heard so many good things about SWG as well i will put a +1 in here for that even though i havent experienced it.
Negative on instanced nodes thats just silly to even suggest in a game thats supposed to be challenging and emphisize group play and players impacting each others.
Also group farming sounds awesome but negative on the "press harvest on 3" style described. Thats not a very encouraging way to choose groups over individual farming to me.
HemlockReaper said:jpedrote said:I like the competition for resources, sometimes it's frustrating if the server is crowded, but besides that it creates healthy competition.
That said, I like the idea of group harverst, so there's no competition inside the group. But group harvest should yield the same amount of resources as solo harvesting, that way you have the option to solo or group.
Harvesting resources is about gathering the things you need, not competition. Theres nothing challenging or exciting about someone working the same area you are, that doesn't create a challenge, but rather creates a time sink and frustration as you said.
I would much prefer the challenge for harvesters be in the harvesting itself by means of skill training needed to gather more intricate types of resources within a node ect…, possibly mini games with chances to fail to include the possibility of death. The resource hopping that has permeated so many MMO’s is boring, tedious, and antiquated.
The next time your in the EZ Mart filling up on gas on a hot summer day, and you reach for the last thirst quenching bottle of pop in the iced cooler, just to have some young whippersnapper swoop in snatching it inches from your fingers. Remember, healthy competition. :)
I totally disagree that harvesting should not be competitive. If we truly want crafted goods, gear, etc. to matter and have value, then they need to be balanced with looted goods/gear in terms of quality and availability. If everyone is able to harvest what they want when they want without competing for limited resources, it cheapens the product. The last thing I want to happen is for crafted gear to be so common that everyone has it and there is minimal benefit of being a crafter because your goods have no value due to market saturation.
I do agree though that resource hopping and racing other people to nodes on the minimap is irritating, boring, etc. I like the idea that others have made involving the perception system for finding harvestable resources. All resources should be available for anyone to find though, provided they have the skill to find/sense it and then the skill to harvest it. It would be nice for locations to be completely random within a certain terrain type though (mountains for gold, mithril, etc. for example) to prevent the monotony of running the same routes over and over.
Obviously with this system people could still "beat" you to a resource, but the same is true for tagging mobs, I don't think it should be any different. We won't have our own personal mobs to fight, it seems silly to expect to have our own personal nodes to mine. However, since we won't have a minimap with dots to tell us where nodes are, we would have to scour an area in hopes of finding a resource to harvest (assuming we will use the perception system) instead of racing someone else to the dot. Therefore, I think it will be easier to come to an understanding with others looking for resources on dividing up "plots" in which to search, like how most people agree to respect "camps" for grouping.
Teglayen said:I totally disagree that harvesting should not be competitive. If we truly want crafted goods, gear, etc. to matter and have value, then they need to be balanced with looted goods/gear in terms of quality and availability. If everyone is able to harvest what they want when they want without competing for limited resources, it cheapens the product. The last thing I want to happen is for crafted gear to be so common that everyone has it and there is minimal benefit of being a crafter because your goods have no value due to market saturation.
This is true when everyone can just harvest on a whim, and this is usually the case in MMO’s with weak drag n drop crafting systems. This is not the case in MMO’s with professions that require skills to harvest the item needed, these games tend to have deeper crafting and harvesting systems that don't leave room for abuse or congestion.
>that don't leave room for abuse or congestion<
You need to have more faith in your fellow players. There is *always* room for abuse.
There are a variety of common barriers to crafting high level items. And I assume this is your concern not an oversupply of crafted gear for level fives. I may be overlooking some, of course but I will run through some that do come quickly to mind.
(1) Need to get recipes. Typically recipes that are rare drops or require killing raid bosses to have a chance to get. This is a limited barrier since once you have the recipe you have it, subject to the next barrier.
(2) Single-use recipes. Use it and it is gone and you need to get another. I remember this most commonly applied in LOTRO but every year my memort gets worse. Um what was the topic?
(3) Difficulty of raising crafting skill to maximum level to make the items. Not simply amount of time to grind skill up or difficulty of getting materials needed for grinding, but prerequisites required. Need to specialize for example, with only one specialization allowed per character. Need for bonus skill or bonus attributes that can ONLY be gotten from rare and expensive items. Need for racial bonus - forgive the stereotype but maybe only a dwarf can make the best-in-slot Girdle of the Bearded Smallfolk. Adventuring prerequisites - maybe only the elite tank class can make the Mithril Hauburk of Sturdiness. And maybe she needs to be maximum level and/or have accomplished certain feats.
(4) Need for rare items. I truly hate this system and hope to never see it again, but maybe items from very rare drops or bosses - as with recipes, above.
(5) Need for REALLY rare items from harvesting. let us be original and call them super rares (yes I played Vanguard extensively - IMO they were too easy to get there despite the name).
(6) So obvious I almost forgot. A quota system - an account can only make one per week for example.
Note that many of these have no implication for whether competitive harvesting is a plus or a minus to the game. Or whether group harvesting should be encouraged by offering bonus yield or bonus chance for rarer harvests (have I said I played Vanguard?).
Personally I am generally a strong believer in avoiding cutthroat competition among players for anything - raws, collectibles, spawn etc. ecept on pvp servers. When I tried Final Fantasy XIV I should have appreciated the harvesting system where nodes were generated for the character that was harvesting and no one else could use them. I didn't - in fact I hated it. Felt far too artificial to have instanced harvesting nodes. So put me down as a reluctant believer in having open world nodes that anyone with the skill/perception/etc can use. Also put me down as liking the idea of grouping to harvest. Where I draw the line is requiring groups to harvest.
One perennial dichomy is between the strong desire to make grouping highly desirable - even mandatory for many things, and the understanding that many of us won't be happy if we only have 30 minutes or expect too many interruptions to group and can't play because that leaves us nothing to do. Solo harvesting is one thing we *should* be able to do even if we need to run around dodging mobs we can't fight solo in top level areas.
Kilsin said:
Harvesting and Crafting are close to my heart and after spending the last 7 years in VG from Beta to Sunset, I would really like to see a harvesting system similar to VGs where the nodes/trees were visible for everyone and you could group harvest for extra yield.
dorotea said:
You need to have more faith in your fellow players. There is *always* room for abuse.
I used the term “abuse” in referce to botting during the harvesting process, not crafting or my fellow players.
dorotea said:
There are a variety of common barriers to crafting high level items. And I assume this is your concern not an oversupply of crafted gear for level fives. I may be overlooking some, of course but I will run through some that do come quickly to mind.
Actually no, This is about harvesting. Mining, Wood gathering, skinning animals ect.. What I said was, games that have easy crafting usually have no limits to harvesting, meaning anyone can do it without limitations, thus causing congestion from to many players doing it or abuse from a free reign of bots.
I’d prefer players need to train in a profession to harvest. It’s the first step to limited supplies.
dorotea said:
(1) Need to get recipes. Typically recipes that are rare drops or require killing raid bosses to have a chance to get. This is a limited barrier since once you have the recipe you have it, subject to the next barrier.
(2) Single-use recipes. Use it and it is gone and you need to get another. I remember this most commonly applied in LOTRO but every year my memort gets worse. Um what was the topic?
(3) Difficulty of raising crafting skill to maximum level to make the items. Not simply amount of time to grind skill up or difficulty of getting materials needed for grinding, but prerequisites required. Need to specialize for example, with only one specialization allowed per character. Need for bonus skill or bonus attributes that can ONLY be gotten from rare and expensive items. Need for racial bonus - forgive the stereotype but maybe only a dwarf can make the best-in-slot Girdle of the Bearded Smallfolk. Adventuring prerequisites - maybe only the elite tank class can make the Mithril Hauburk of Sturdiness. And maybe she needs to be maximum level and/or have accomplished certain feats.
(4) Need for rare items. I truly hate this system and hope to never see it again, but maybe items from very rare drops or bosses - as with recipes, above.
(5) Need for REALLY rare items from harvesting. let us be original and call them super rares (yes I played Vanguard extensively - IMO they were too easy to get there despite the name).
(6) So obvious I almost forgot. A quota system - an account can only make one per week for example.
This stuff mostly relates to the crafting process, and in my opinion if a game needs to incorporate some of these as a means to limit items, 2,3 and especially number 6, then the gathering system isn't properly balanced.
The only real limitations I can remember seeing on harvesting are the need to have a high level adventurer, perhaps raid-geared, to get at certain nodes that only appear in high level dungeons or get to certain rare materials that only drop from bosses. Not a design I like - I don't think you should need to kill thousands of orcs to become a top tier harvester, The skillsets are a bit different, after all.
I may still be missing your point though in which case I apologize. If you are disagreeing with the more recent approach of letting anyone harvest high level materials without bothering to build up a harvesting skill, I absolutely, totally agree. I don't really think of needing maxed out skill to harvest high level materials as a barrier I think of it as the only right way to do things < so that may have been my problem. I also don't think of it as at all difficult to accomplish even in games like Vanguard that had good systems. It just takes a bit of time and effort.
High level materials may or may not require high level adventurers to get to. I remember a certain cave in Vanguard that allowed top level harvesting with no fighting - you just needed to know where it was and how to get to it. Probably not an intentional feature - in fact after a while I think that cave attracted mobs which ended its usefulness for low levels. But there were other spots low levels could harvest if they were careful.
Other than the mobs being a potential barrier to harvesting ...simply can't think of where this was done but I haven't played every MMO just a pretty good percentage. You correctly point out that most of what I said focused on crafting but it need not have.
Races can affect harvesting - not trivially as in some games but in important respects. Suppose the normal maximum skill for mining was 100, and you needed a skill of 105 to get a rare item. Suppose gnomes were born with +5. Suppose there was no other way to get a plus. You just forced me to have a gnome to mine which isn't necessarily good. You also just cut back the number of potential miners which isn't necessarily BAD. Same assumptions but races give no plus - specialized VERY expensive or hard to get gear gives the plus. Again you don't have every Tom, Dick and Sally mining top tier ores.
Attributes - suppose a game uses a system akin to the original Dungeons and Dragons where attributes are really important and very hard to raise. Suppose that game used an odd one like ...perception. Suppose high perception was essential to harvesting at maximum level. Suppose perception was far less important in combat so that a top tier adventurer would be severely weakened by putting limited attribute points in perception rather than in strength/might or dexterity/agility or intelligence/wisdom. Voila a trade-off - you can't use your adventuring character to harvest unless you severely weaken him or her (I am obviously referring to permanent attribute gains or losses not gear you can put on or off at will).
Continuing to look at pure harvesting barriers to entry. Let's look at the much criticized but also much defended epic weapon series of quests in EQ2. In fact there are now both epic 1 and epic 2 series. Long, complicated, difficult (at-level) and requiring groups or even raids for various parts. Suppose you had something comparable for harvesting. Hopefully not requiring a raid - possibly requiring harvesting groups. But something a lot more difficult than the EQ2 gathering obsession series of harvesting quests. Another potential barrier to entry for top level harvesting. You might need epic gathering equipment (uncraftable) to get the best materials.
I have always disliked the way almos all games have handled harvesting. You basically get spawn modes around a certain area, item level matching zone level, you run around doing the minor animations and loot the item.
I am completely open to making harvesting unique and fun, glad to see ideas being discussed.
I would like to see a system that had less modes, discovery ties into perception for that skill (radius larger as you advance), then as you harvest, it becomes a skill game utilizing tools you have for that skill (i.e. Mining). The net value is larger than most games because it is not as comon to find the nodes. The mini game can be anything fun and addicting. Ideas can be enormous here.
Anyway, something more than just rinning to node to node to node, like a robot (and hopefully we won't see those).
noobiedoo said:
I really enjoyed VG's style of harvesting as well. But what if Pantheon built upon that? I'd like to see the group aspect of harvesting evolve. A player could still solo harvest in the same manner as they did in VG. But instead of a group counting down to 1 or whatever and then all trying to click on the node at the same time, what if they all had their own role to do sort of like a mini game?I really enjoyed VG's style of harvesting as well. But what if Pantheon built upon that? I'd like to see the group aspect of harvesting evolve. A player could still solo harvest in the same manner as they did in VG. But instead of a group counting down to 1 or whatever and then all trying to click on the node at the same time, what if they all had their own role to do sort of like a mini game?
I like this too. Mining for gold or other precious metals. One person could dig material and pan for gold, while a group might actually set up a washplant, a feeder system, a watersupply and cleanup station while some are digging for ore.
Personally I dislike node gathering altogether. If there is node gathering, I personally believe that most if not all nodes should be located in dangerous areas in which they cannot be harvested without tackling mobs in the area as well.
For crafting to have any usefulness, it needs to be competitive with adventuring gear; if it's competitive with adventuring gear, and the resources to get it take no risk to obtain, then crafting gear will outweigh adventuring gear, and people will be mad.
The risk to obtain all combined materials associated to a piece of gear, must match or slightly exceed the risk required to obtain an equal grade adventuring piece of gear. That means if it takes an hour to gather the resources, it must take an hour to reliably get the NPC to spawn and harvest the gear from it. If it requires a group to kill the NPC, it must require a group to gather the resources.
Rallyd said:The risk to obtain all combined materials associated to a piece of gear, must match or slightly exceed the risk required to obtain an equal grade adventuring piece of gear. That means if it takes an hour to gather the resources, it must take an hour to reliably get the NPC to spawn and harvest the gear from it. If it requires a group to kill the NPC, it must require a group to gather the resources.
Maybe for the original harvester, but there will be plenty of crafters that will be just crafters. People will use alts to gather the materials or just buy them from the open market.
Of course, they mentioned that some items will need special crafting areas, such as the volcano forge from the last stream. But, simply following a team in or having friends fight the way in for you solves that problem.
Beefcake said:Rallyd said:The risk to obtain all combined materials associated to a piece of gear, must match or slightly exceed the risk required to obtain an equal grade adventuring piece of gear. That means if it takes an hour to gather the resources, it must take an hour to reliably get the NPC to spawn and harvest the gear from it. If it requires a group to kill the NPC, it must require a group to gather the resources.
Maybe for the original harvester, but there will be plenty of crafters that will be just crafters. People will use alts to gather the materials or just buy them from the open market.
Of course, they mentioned that some items will need special crafting areas, such as the volcano forge from the last stream. But, simply following a team in or having friends fight the way in for you solves that problem.
Yeah sure, just as long as there needs to be people there to fight the npcs for you to harvest, then im ok with it, even if there is a group already there and you just run in and take resources, whatever, as long as its contested, and the group didn't take it in the first place.
As Rallyd eluded to, harvesting in games past has often been fatally flawed. One of two things ends up happening. Developers realize crafting materials are too easy to obtain with the node system, so they don't yield many valuable items. As a result, crafting ends up being unimportant. The other problem is when those materials provide players with some of the better items, and it allows players to gear up too easily. The risk must match the reward, or it undermines dropped items from PvE progression. Even if harvesting has rare materials, it still breaks the system if they can be acquired alone with no associated risk.
For crafting to yield items of the highest quality, material nodes must exist exclusively in dangerous areas, or those materials must make up only part of the components needed to craft items.
I think the latter is the better system. If recipes for the crafted products call for items dropped off mobs as well as materials harvested, then the system can be controlled and balanced, and offer things that are not only on par with dropped items, but better.
They could also do both. Maybe a crafted sword made only harvested items is mediocre, but when those same materials are combined with certain dropped items, it creates a much more valuable weapon.
Harvesting could also yield multiple qualities for the same item. You go out and harvest 100 iron ore, go back to town, appraise them and end up with 70 low quality 25 average quality and 5 high quality iron ore. Then have the quality affect the outcome of whatever item you make, so if you want to make a high quality rare Concussion Hammer you'd end up needing 30 HQ iron ore, 5 HQ bear leather, and two HQ Runes/Sigils of Impact from the enchanting/runecraft tradeskill (if such a trade exists, otherwise insert an item from any other trade).
Add having higher level "nodes" in dangerous areas/dungeons and you have a difficult crafting time. On top of which if you have to go to some legendary or hidden away forge to combine it.
That said I am not a fan of making crafting extremely difficult to do in general, just making rare/HQ items being more on the hard side.