Forums » Crafting and Gathering

Mining Nodes? Please no

    • 65 posts
    June 15, 2017 4:13 PM PDT

    I may have read this somewhere but did a search and could not find it,

     

    Are the Devs really going to have random mine/gem nodes spawn all over the world for players to mine?   I hated Wow for that, I much rather components be purchased, or rare ones be dropped from creatures, not from harvest nodes.  Was such a joke seeing players run around and mine respawning nodes all the time.  

    Anyone know if this is going to be how you find ore or gems?


    This post was edited by Demostorm at June 15, 2017 4:13 PM PDT
    • 2886 posts
    June 15, 2017 4:25 PM PDT

    "An Overview of Harvesting

    The goal of the Harvesting system is to provide the components through which players will craft a variety of items. These Harvesting materials will be provided in a variety of ways.

        One method of Harvesting is the aforementioned traditional "find a node, and interact with it to receive Harvested loot". This is done by finding an ore vein and mining it, finding a tree and cutting it down, and so forth. Rather than having materials for more advanced Crafting recipes be gated by level content in a zone as has been done in some other MMORPGs, we will have the nodes and the items they provide exist in sensible locations within their ecology.

    Another way Harvesting will come into play is through Salvaging, a method for players to break down existing items and receive components in return. Salvaging items can result in a mix of raw materials and/or crafting components. In our crafting example above with Gareon and his Silvered Longsword, say he’s outgrown the need for the item. He could choose to Salvage it, possibly resulting in silver chunks, a silvered blade, or a hilt.

    While the idea certainly isn't a new one, we will also have some crafting components sold only in specific cities. Many of these local materials will tie directly in with cultural based recipes. For example, special glass making materials might be found with the Dark Myr, so if players want to craft the Myr type of glass items they have to have the faction to buy the items there or find another player that has the faction that’s willing to sell them the materials from there.

    Similar to locale-based materials for purchase, harvesting nodes will exist by local ecologies, even if those areas lean towards the exotic or fantastical, such as colored mana-rich areas… Rather than providing harvesting opportunities by perceived difficulty of a zone or the content around it, we'll be placing them where they naturally make the most sense. You’ll also find harvesting opportunities within civilized areas, such as gardens, parks, and the like, as well in the wilds.

    Our line of thinking in terms of access to harvesting is that all players will be able utilize all of the available skills as they wish, provided they have an appropriate harvesting tool. All material types will already be coming from Salvaging and looting materials directly from NPCs, so limiting players’ access to individual skills felt arbitrary. Pantheon’s current harvesting skills are as follows: Fishing, Gathering, Logging, Mining, and Skinning."

    (Source: http://pantheonmmo.com/newsletter/crafting_and_harvesting/)

    A few highlights from above to answer your questions:

    - nodes will not be "random." They will be individually placed in appropriate and strategic locations.

    - We don't know if/how nodes will refresh, so it's best to not assume that you will be able to just farm nodes over and over again.

    - there will be several other ways of gathering mats. Nodes may not even be the most efficient.

    - all of this is subject to change

    You may also be interested in these threads:

    https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/1839/i-hate-whack-a-nodes

    https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2280/gathering-skills-and-nodes


    This post was edited by Bazgrim at June 15, 2017 4:34 PM PDT
    • 65 posts
    June 15, 2017 5:02 PM PDT

    Great thanks for sharing Baz

    • 578 posts
    June 15, 2017 9:36 PM PDT

    Bazgrim said:

        One method of Harvesting is the aforementioned traditional "find a node, and interact with it to receive Harvested loot". This is done by finding an ore vein and mining it, finding a tree and cutting it down, and so forth. Rather than having materials for more advanced Crafting recipes be gated by level content in a zone as has been done in some other MMORPGs, we will have the nodes and the items they provide exist in sensible locations within their ecology.

    This has me SUPER excited. Combine this with the announcement that, iIrc, there are starting racial cities AND that there will be no global auction house and I'm stoked to see how the economy plays out. Certain cities should lack certain specific resources such as a city located in a desert and a city located in a forest. You shouldn't be able to harvest the same amount of wood in a desert city that you can in a forest city yet this is how a lot of MMOs play out. This should give picking a race some added purpose/meaning. I feel like most MMOs don't have much of a reason for picking one race over the other besides class restricitons, an aesthetic appeal, and a few minor stats and minor abilities that usually end up being trivial and ultimately having little to no impact on the game. What's the point of gaining 30 more dexterity with your elf when you have 500 dex in tier 1 raid gear?

    But what will really give this idea weight is the fact that there is no global auction house. Because with a global AH a player in a desert city where wooded mats are lacking could just go to the AH and look for a few 100 stacks of wood from a player who is located in a wooded area half way across the world.

    What is also interesting to think of is how we will handle the transport of large shipments of materials and resources to these areas that lack said resources. Obviously we could charge more for mats that are not in abundance in a specific area but will our players have a weight limit we can carry similar to EQ1 or have no weight limit similar to VG? If there is no weight limit like VG then a single player could do very well with transporting their own materials. But if there IS a weight limit then this might have to be a group effort.

    • 112 posts
    June 16, 2017 5:42 AM PDT

    I for one enjoy harvesting from nodes.   It adds to that go out an explore mentality, especially with the introduction of the geographic relavence of spawn points.  Finding a forest of ash trees in one area or maple in another. Standstone in the dessert while copper is more common in foothills.  It will increase the diveristy of crafters and drive the regional markets that VR has envisioned.  

    Now, I do agree not all crafting components should come from nodes; fur from animals and arcane essence from magical creatures being examples that quickly come to mind.  The crafting community has asked for a more complex and varied system and hopefully VR will come out with a good one.

    • 294 posts
    June 16, 2017 12:19 PM PDT

    I enjoy almost all aspects of harvesting, especially the idea that nodes are not all common to all areas. If travel is substantial and not dumbed down to easy-peasy mode, some thought will have to go into harvesting. I may have to travel to a certain region to get tall-pine timber, and another to get knotted cedar planks. I may need to plan a harvesting group so as not to get squished by the local giant living in the redwood forest, or I may need to acclimatize beforehand to go deep into the desert looking for that rare quartzy-sand crystal that is all the rage with the gypsy wagon merchant.

    I can only hope that they do it up proper, making some harvesting a pleasant walk in the park and some a nightmare of hardship rewarded by a lengthy stay in the local tavern to tell tall tales after the success of a grueling harvest run.

    • 1468 posts
    June 16, 2017 4:20 PM PDT

    Klumpedge said:

    I enjoy almost all aspects of harvesting, especially the idea that nodes are not all common to all areas. If travel is substantial and not dumbed down to easy-peasy mode, some thought will have to go into harvesting. I may have to travel to a certain region to get tall-pine timber, and another to get knotted cedar planks. I may need to plan a harvesting group so as not to get squished by the local giant living in the redwood forest, or I may need to acclimatize beforehand to go deep into the desert looking for that rare quartzy-sand crystal that is all the rage with the gypsy wagon merchant.

    I can only hope that they do it up proper, making some harvesting a pleasant walk in the park and some a nightmare of hardship rewarded by a lengthy stay in the local tavern to tell tall tales after the success of a grueling harvest run.

    I'm more of a crafter than a harvester but if harvesting is a rewarding process chances are I'll likely get into it. I enjoy finding those hard to find resources and either using them in my own crafting stuff or selling it on to other crafters who need them for their work.

    I agree a nice mix of easy and hard content so that you can decide whether you want to relax and just do some casual harvesting or whether you want a hardcore session to get the rarest materials possible (probably with a group of people to help you out).

    • 77 posts
    June 17, 2017 6:36 PM PDT

    What is also interesting to think of is how we will handle the transport of large shipments of materials and resources to these areas that lack said resources. Obviously we could charge more for mats that are not in abundance in a specific area but will our players have a weight limit we can carry similar to EQ1 or have no weight limit similar to VG? If there is no weight limit like VG then a single player could do very well with transporting their own materials. But if there IS a weight limit then this might have to be a group effort.

    Craftable trade caravans that can hold much more weight would be cool. So as you're travelling places you come across the trade caravans, which perhaps you can escort to protect them or trade with them. Eitherway it would be cool just to see caravans travelling down the roads so that the world feels more immersive.

    • 9 posts
    November 16, 2017 9:12 AM PST

    i lost track of how many hundreds of hours i spent running around Giran in Lineage 2 checking ever sell and buy shop. also met a ton of alt toon sellers and made friends through alts.

    • 126 posts
    November 17, 2017 8:11 AM PST

    Mining nodes in WoW never bothered me as much as they did in EQ2 where gold farmer bots would essentially go from node to node to node on a programmed path. It was so obvious but still bugged me.

    • 3 posts
    November 17, 2017 10:38 AM PST

    I really like the idea of clustering nodes according to what makes sense ecologically... though hand-placing them reassures me, but also worries me a bit: on the bright side, it means less likelihood of nodes spawning inside rocks or under the world where they're inaccessible. However, there's only so much manpower available to the "harvesting" bucket, which most MMOs have historically treated as even more of an afterthought than their crafting system... so I'm anxious about there being very few nodes on long timers, which really makes for a less-fun experience. 

    Salvaging is a great way to slash the lucrative returns of harvester bots, but usually results in a massive, not-fun skill grind and epic inventory/bank space locust that doubles as a convenient item-sink... I'm not even sure I could come up with a way to make salvaging less of a pain and inventory-space waster, other than to remove the skill-grind component (not sure that makes sense, since some stuff should definitely be more "difficult" to salvage than others) and create various large specialty bags for the volume of varied crafting mats that result (and oversized specialty bags = more different inventory items per character, times multiple characters per account, times how-ever-many thousands of players can end up having an adverse database performance impact, even with significant streamlining).

    Everyone has done a great job reassuring that Pantheon isn't going to be "just another MMO" - so I do have confidence that Harvesting will be implemented intelligently, thoughtfully, and meaningfully... but the finer details will have far-reaching impacts on both the downstream crafting system, and on the larger player-driven economy.  I'm hoping more information might be shared without (obviously) giving too much away, but absent that I'll be impatiently waiting for alpha so that I can see for myself.  I look forward to being less anxious about it.  ;) 

    • 84 posts
    November 17, 2017 4:22 PM PST

    Not a huge fan of nodes as a way of introducting crafting materials into the world.  With that being said however, if they are going to use nodes, I would very much prefer for the nodes to not spawn in a predictable pattern.  Additionaly, the more complex the 'loot table' of the node, the better.  An example of a boring node mechanic would be Everquest 2.  The nodes had a very limited 'loot table' which crashed the economy for most anything they produced.  There were so many materials being taken from the nodes that the auction house had many of them for sale at 1 copper each.

    • 363 posts
    September 8, 2018 11:14 PM PDT

    Nodes are the only way I see for gathering resources. Crowfall's system is very interesting even though I'm not a fan of the game at all outside that. You can chop most any tree down and it will respawn in 5-10 minutes. The tree then drops wood and or apple. Limited drops as far as I could tell from playing, but its basically turning almost everything into a node.

    I'm not recommending this, but in the case of mining ore, woodwork, jewelcrafting, etc. Why reinvent the wheel when WoW nailed it pretty well. Please don't turn something like mat gathering into something more than it needs to be. If its not broke, don't fix it, keep it simple stupid,..blah blah blah


    This post was edited by Willeg at September 8, 2018 11:14 PM PDT
    • 168 posts
    September 9, 2018 5:08 PM PDT

    I can chime in on this. I have played games both ways. DAoC had no nodes and all resources came from melting drops, there may have been some resources from mob kills but I do not recall it. Newer games had mining nodes, harvestable trees, flowers to pick, etc. I will never get on the bandwagon that believes that there is only 1 way to do something. There should be 2 if not 3 ways to get a resource. There should never be a game mechanic that strictly limits a player to acquiring in game resources in only one way. This refers to not only raw mats for crafting but gear, xp, lateral progression such as as Perception, or any other thing that must be skilled or leveled up. Single path bad multiple path good. Let there be nodes, gear to be salvaged, and drops from mobs. I will never be the one that says that this was the way it was in Tier 1 MMO's therefor it is the only way.

     

     

    • 14 posts
    September 11, 2018 4:30 PM PDT

    Bazgrim said:

    "An Overview of Harvesting

    The goal of the Harvesting system is to provide the components through which players will craft a variety of items. These Harvesting materials will be provided in a variety of ways.

        One method of Harvesting is the aforementioned traditional "find a node, and interact with it to receive Harvested loot". This is done by finding an ore vein and mining it, finding a tree and cutting it down, and so forth. Rather than having materials for more advanced Crafting recipes be gated by level content in a zone as has been done in some other MMORPGs, we will have the nodes and the items they provide exist in sensible locations within their ecology.

    Another way Harvesting will come into play is through Salvaging, a method for players to break down existing items and receive components in return. Salvaging items can result in a mix of raw materials and/or crafting components. In our crafting example above with Gareon and his Silvered Longsword, say he’s outgrown the need for the item. He could choose to Salvage it, possibly resulting in silver chunks, a silvered blade, or a hilt.

    While the idea certainly isn't a new one, we will also have some crafting components sold only in specific cities. Many of these local materials will tie directly in with cultural based recipes. For example, special glass making materials might be found with the Dark Myr, so if players want to craft the Myr type of glass items they have to have the faction to buy the items there or find another player that has the faction that’s willing to sell them the materials from there.

    Similar to locale-based materials for purchase, harvesting nodes will exist by local ecologies, even if those areas lean towards the exotic or fantastical, such as colored mana-rich areas… Rather than providing harvesting opportunities by perceived difficulty of a zone or the content around it, we'll be placing them where they naturally make the most sense. You’ll also find harvesting opportunities within civilized areas, such as gardens, parks, and the like, as well in the wilds.

    Our line of thinking in terms of access to harvesting is that all players will be able utilize all of the available skills as they wish, provided they have an appropriate harvesting tool. All material types will already be coming from Salvaging and looting materials directly from NPCs, so limiting players’ access to individual skills felt arbitrary. Pantheon’s current harvesting skills are as follows: Fishing, Gathering, Logging, Mining, and Skinning."

    (Source: http://pantheonmmo.com/newsletter/crafting_and_harvesting/)

    A few highlights from above to answer your questions:

    - nodes will not be "random." They will be individually placed in appropriate and strategic locations.

    - We don't know if/how nodes will refresh, so it's best to not assume that you will be able to just farm nodes over and over again.

    - there will be several other ways of gathering mats. Nodes may not even be the most efficient.

    - all of this is subject to change

    You may also be interested in these threads:

    https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/1839/i-hate-whack-a-nodes

    https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2280/gathering-skills-and-nodes

     

    Good to know, makes it more interesting, I was thinking about this and was curious  .. is it somewhat similar to how GW2 does their gathering? the tools and that sound similar, and I love the thought of being able to salvage items for components, there was another game i played not too long ago that did that and I liked that a lot, can't rememebr the name of it off hand though, anyway this is very cool, I can't wait for it to come out so we can get started :) 


    This post was edited by Raiban at September 11, 2018 4:34 PM PDT
    • 363 posts
    September 11, 2018 4:47 PM PDT

    Dashed said:

    I can chime in on this. I have played games both ways. DAoC had no nodes and all resources came from melting drops, there may have been some resources from mob kills but I do not recall it. Newer games had mining nodes, harvestable trees, flowers to pick, etc. I will never get on the bandwagon that believes that there is only 1 way to do something. There should be 2 if not 3 ways to get a resource. There should never be a game mechanic that strictly limits a player to acquiring in game resources in only one way. This refers to not only raw mats for crafting but gear, xp, lateral progression such as as Perception, or any other thing that must be skilled or leveled up. Single path bad multiple path good. Let there be nodes, gear to be salvaged, and drops from mobs. I will never be the one that says that this was the way it was in Tier 1 MMO's therefor it is the only way.

     

    Absolutely. There should definitely be other ways to get mats in addition to world gathering as you mention.