Is there anything wrong with having some realism in harvesting and implementing it like a mini sphere of it's own?
I actually really enjoyed the harvesting of nodes and mobs in VG and similar games, sometimes I would group harvest with friends and guildies for hours to help stock the guild chests for our crafters and new members or upgrades for longer serving and more loyal members or solo to gather enough for my crafters to make some nice gear to wear or sell.
To be able to take that break from just adventuring and killing things was nice and the more I harvested, the better I became at it and the more I would yield.
But actually going out to a rocky area to hit metal ore nodes was an emergent activity and same when you went reaping in the fields or lumberjacking around forested areas, some of these nodes or trees or mobs would be in very dangerous area's with mobs that were aggro to anyone so it could be challenging if you were not of high enough level to look after yourself.
The relaxation of harvesting was a very nice break from your everyday adventuring though and afterwards even if you did it solo, you could benefit from the resources and use them to practise your crafting until you became good enough to use better materials. I would much rather than than just go to an area and click a button to auto gather anything relevant to that area, hitting a metal ore with my pickaxe several times before receiving some metal ore of that type is more realistic and also drives the economy since players put effort into gathering it, it gives new players a way to earn some cheap coin to buy some much needed upgrades or repair their armour/weapons.
Angrykiz said:
Not one comment on my idea from the first post ...
What if instead of nodes you just clicked your skill key and depending on where you are you just get an appropriate item like in EQ1 foraging ?
In addition to prevent people from just maxing all the harvesting skills maybe only one could be raised to a Master skill level kind of like a specialization.
This cures all the stupid looking whack a nodes from the world.
Harvesting skills should also have a bit of a cooldown in addition to the global cooldowns so you don't just sit there and spam them.
Please comment,
Kiz~
Oh and also what Raidan said in the post above of course...
I commented on it. I personally would like to get away with interacting with the world through hotbars as much as possible, especially something so easily macroed like the EQ forage. In 2015, I think there's no excuse for us to be able to stand in 1 spot mashing a button with no visible interaction with the world.
I'd rather equip a prospecting tool and search for resources or pick at objects in the world.
Raidan said:
Angrykiz said:
What if instead of nodes you just clicked your skill key and depending on where you are you just get an appropriate item like in EQ1 foraging ?
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I like the idea of being able to harvest materials native to the area - in a cave there should be ore/metals for smithing and moss/herbs for poisons/alchemy. But, to me, it's really no different than nodes.
Instead of seeing the materials, you simply click a button to harvest invisible nodes with a x% chance of success. And, if your player still shows the harvesting action (like swinging a pick-axe), then I would even argue that its perhaps less realistic if someone was just swinging at the cave floor versus harvesting a visible node and obtained ore. And, if they didn't have a harvesting cast-timer and it was a simple button click with no timer and a global recast, then foraging for materials using that method is most definitely less realistic.
I like the idea in principle in that materials gathered should be native to that zone/zone specific, but, I wouldn't vote in favor for a simple EQesque forage button as the harvesting mechanism.
I agree, I like the environmental approach to crafting.
However This actually goes hand and hand with Darkfall Online. You needed resources and usually there was basic resources around your city. However eventually to grow the city you would need resources from outside your safe areas. If gathers went themselves, usually they would be killed instantly either from PvE or PvP players. So you would aquire help to patrol the areas and protect you.
Kilsin said:
Is there anything wrong with having some realism in harvesting and implementing it like a mini sphere of it's own?
I actually really enjoyed the harvesting of nodes and mobs in VG and similar games, sometimes I would group harvest with friends and guildies for hours to help stock the guild chests for our crafters and new members or upgrades for longer serving and more loyal members or solo to gather enough for my crafters to make some nice gear to wear or sell.
To be able to take that break from just adventuring and killing things was nice and the more I harvested, the better I became at it and the more I would yield.
But actually going out to a rocky area to hit metal ore nodes was an emergent activity and same when you went reaping in the fields or lumberjacking around forested areas, some of these nodes or trees or mobs would be in very dangerous area's with mobs that were aggro to anyone so it could be challenging if you were not of high enough level to look after yourself.
The relaxation of harvesting was a very nice break from your everyday adventuring though and afterwards even if you did it solo, you could benefit from the resources and use them to practise your crafting until you became good enough to use better materials. I would much rather than than just go to an area and click a button to auto gather anything relevant to that area, hitting a metal ore with my pickaxe several times before receiving some metal ore of that type is more realistic and also drives the economy since players put effort into gathering it, it gives new players a way to earn some cheap coin to buy some much needed upgrades or repair their armour/weapons.
There could be some gathering that is more easy, however if crafting as a whole is as easy going and solo friendly as it was in Vanguard, it shouldn't be a relevant source of armor and weapons, imo. As much as I like the idea of group gathering and the crafting mini game from VG, the abundant forms of solo progression really turned me off from the game down the line. If there is going to be easy gathering, I think it has to be offset by including other rare materials for every combine to balance the risk vs reward aspect and keep crafting relevant.
I enjoyed watching trees fall in Vanguard, and being the one to make them fall. Between getting materials from nodes, deconstructing weapons and armor, and gathering materials from mobs themselves, there should be plenty of ways of gathering materials for everybody. I don't find it non immersive to see a person chopping down an tree in the forest. I do find it non immersive to see someone swinging the axe one handed. I think the system developed will determine how enjoyable it is. I might be in the minority when it comes to these games, but I can't "hack and slash" constantly, I get burnt out. Crafting, gathering, fishing and whatever else the devs. come up with end up being equally enjoyable for me.
That being said environmental resources should be random, and regeneration based on what type of resource. Ore should regenerate slowly, trees a bit faster. Grasses should regrow quickly, they're grasses after all. Fish should re-spawn quickly, I'll leave it up to the developers if they want to put in mechanics for fish stock being over fished...
If you want to group for nodes, that was a nice option. If you want to adventure for resources they could put in content such as "a shady mining operation" requiring a group to go in a clear out a mine full of undesirables, with the bounty split among the group when finished. Your group comes across " an illegal clear cut" with the villainous mobs wielding axes, to be dispatched before claiming the downed timber.
Just some ideas, and certainly just my opinion. For what it's worth...
Thakorr said:
How, exactly, do nodes make the world look "stupid". It's certainly a lot more natural and organic than foraging for ore?
You see nodes everywhere in the open world.
In EQ1 there wasn't nodes scattered throughout all the zones...to me the nodes in Vanguard really stood out as being unnatural in the world itself.
I did really like how the trees in Vanguard fell over but all the harvestable trees looked exactly the same and they really stood out. What you would rather have a field of 50 mining nodes that you can hit 3 times each or just one vein with 150 hits worth of ore in it placed in a natural looking spot.
I know I'd like the vein myself. Especially if it was down in a dark cave somewhere dangerous.
Kiz~
Rallyd said:
I do not like node farming whatsoever, it's totally unrealistic and un-immersive for resources to just be readily taken from areas.
Node farming is unrealistic? Based on what "real" world example? To get wood I do not go and grab a cabinet and destroy it for a plank... because where did the first cabinet come from? Some one must have "realistically" gone out with an ax and chopped a tree down for the wood to make that cabinet.
Same for iron, I can melt down a sword for a bar of iron to make a new one, but again someone must have gone out and mined that ore, from somewhere, it just did not beam out of the butt of the warrior who I killed for it?
Mining ore for metals, Chopping tress for wood, picking plants for fabrics, skinning animals for hides to make leather, hammering a quarry for stone is about as realistic as it gets, I don't to understand your statement.
Non imersive, now that's a personal view and if you feel that way then you feel that way. I on the other hand find the harvesting of resources to be more immersing, as that's how they are gathered in the "real" world. I also believe that crafters have to be controlled, it takes time to adventure and loot items, thus a crafter must spend time harvesting to balance it out, I personally think its an important balancing of the two spheres.
The most non imersive system I know of today is the current EQ system where every rabbit, rat, or snake carries iron and stone crafting resources, because its so real to believe a snake can wield a pickax or quarrying hammer.
Angrykiz said:
Not one comment on my idea from the first post ...
What if instead of nodes you just clicked your skill key and depending on where you are you just get an appropriate item like in EQ1 foraging ?
In addition to prevent people from just maxing all the harvesting skills maybe only one could be raised to a Master skill level kind of like a specialization.
This cures all the stupid looking whack a nodes from the world.
Harvesting skills should also have a bit of a cooldown in addition to the global cooldowns so you don't just sit there and spam them.
Please comment,
Kiz~
Oh and also what Raidan said in the post above of course...
I have no real issue with a forage skill, to find general items, such as found in EQ. Maybe incorporate that into a 6th skill to augment Mining, quarrying, lumberjack etc. But seriously you just stand in a grassy knoll and mash a button and you find ore? stone? wood? hides? How is something like this imersive?
I love the post about not using the tool bar to interact with the world, make all nodes a click of the mouse to activate the tool. For foraging, you can click on the ground (make areas foragable like a normal harvest node) and your char leans over and scours the ground for a few seconds and come sup with the yield liek any harvest node.
Now I will agree with anyone who states nodes in many games, including my beloved Vanguard, look a little unnatural. But that's an art issue, not a mechanics issue. As it was mentioned, Skyrim nodes look great, Pantheon could take a cue from Skyrim and create much cleaner nicer more "real natural" nodes.
I really also not fond of one skill for all harvesters. Having family farms and been a hunter in my young years I can state with 100% accuracy that skinning an animal for its hide is nothing like picking crops, or harvesting plants in general. I have never mined or quarried, however I did dig a 171 foot sewer pipe trench at the lake, and I can tell you swinging a pickax for 10hrs a day for three days (it was in pit-run, worst material to dig in ever), and it was nothing like foraging around for wood, seeds, or anything else you find.
What exactly is so bad with a group of characters around a big tree chopping it down with axes? Few things are more real and imersive then an old fashion lumberjack. In case anyone was under the impression that Eric the Red visited his local Home Depot, and bought the wood to build his great Dragon Ship that first sighted North America so many centuries ago, he did not, a large group of men took to a forest with axes and chopped them tress down, and later those trees were refined into the planks used to build the boat.
Angrykiz said:Oh ya and I still think Whack a nodes make the world look stupid..
edit: hmm maybe if the whack a nodes weren't just individual little hits like in other games... instead they could be a bigger node.
Like what if in a cave there was just a big ore vein that had say 500 ore in it and just depleted as people mined it ... also while you mined it made noise that would anger the local cave dwellers...
Or if you chopped down a big tree and it was worth 200 logs that could be slowly chopped out of it but while you chopped bees would swarm out every once in a while.
At this point, I would still vote for Whack-a-nodes. I'm not against nodes as I don't think it's unrealistic for clusters of ore to be located in a cave or along a mountain side, and they are only node-like due to the graphical limitations, which I don't mind. As Keiiek said, Skyrim did such a good job of blending the ore nodes into the world that it was often easy to miss them if you weren't paying attention.
It's also not unrealistic for nodes to re-spawn; although, if it was truly realistic they would gather at different locations instead of the same spawn cycle locations because if the same spot was continually mined, the reserves would never recover. If you were really wanting realism though, it would take months/years in game time for ore veins to recover. But, for the sake of crafting, even if they spawned at random locations, they would have to spawn quick (less realistic) just to meet player/server demand. I suppose I just suspend disbelief at some potentially unrealistic mechanics to increase gameplay/fun.
And to your point... Mobs spawning out of nodes would be novel at first, but I'm sure that would quickly become annoying if someone was trying to harvest either solo (and died) or while grouping and trained the group. I don't dislike the idea, and I would look at it almost like a "trapped node" that certain classes could potentially sense like a rogue sensing traps - maybe a ranger for the bees?
If they are blended as some have suggested (which is obviously a no-brainer), and don't spawn in the exact same places every time, I don't see how they would ruin anyones immersion. Honestly the fact that you could stand in one spot "foraging" in EQ was far less realistic than running around hitting nodes.
The one thing I will say about this topic that I don't like seeing is what SOE put in Vanguard down the line.
BARBED PALM TREE
Those giant nameplates looked so hilariously bad and I much preferred actually having to look a little bit for resources.
I liked on runescape how resources were all clumped in certain areas and always respawned in the same spot. and sometimes the resources were in dangerous places or had a certain requirement to reach. People could hang out and chat while they gathered instead of it being a secondary thing you just grabbed while on the run. Depending on the rarity of the material the resources were in harder to get places and more scarce with a higher respawn rate. It would also take a massive amount of material to create an item and to level up.
Same reason i like camp xp where people could just hang out in a spot and explore for spots that they prefer.
also **** immersion. like it would take much longer for resources to replenish and billions of years for metals to form if it were realistic. You could comes up with some lore reason to justify something if you wanted anyways.
Angrykiz said:
In Vanguard there was a end game quest that required you to mine thousands of rock nodes... I think that forever tainted me on the Whack a Nodes.
Please don't do that again at least...
Kiz~
Lol, I can see how that would leave a bad taste in your mouth. I think that once again shows the need for resources to be rare and harder to obtain versus making them common or excessively grindy.
Angrykiz said:
In Vanguard there was a end game quest that required you to mine thousands of rock nodes... I think that forever tainted me on the Whack a Nodes.
Please don't do that again at least...
Kiz~
What end game quest was that?
Spawning harvest nodes are about as real as spawning mobs.
So in the interest of realism, mobs must be born, grow and then mate, bare their young and raise them before the new cycle of mobs can spawn.
There is our real MMO. Boy is it going to be fun a few days after launch.
Kilsin said:
Angrykiz said:
In Vanguard there was a end game quest that required you to mine thousands of rock nodes... I think that forever tainted me on the Whack a Nodes.
Please don't do that again at least...
Kiz~
What end game quest was that?
Must be referring to Guild Hall creation or galleon quest/building is all I can figure.
Exmortis said:
Kilsin said:
Angrykiz said:
In Vanguard there was a end game quest that required you to mine thousands of rock nodes... I think that forever tainted me on the Whack a Nodes.
Please don't do that again at least...
Kiz~
What end game quest was that?
Must be referring to Guild Hall creation or galleon quest/building is all I can figure.
Neither of those have end game requirements, you can make them at any level (with help for very low levels) I am thinking more PotA gear but again, it is not required and the mats can be bought if the player can't be bothered harvesting it themselves.
I would really like to hear from Kiz, which quest forced this on end game players?
I've played a lot of different MMO's with various harvesting mechanics. My personal preference was EQ1, where resources and crafting materials were dropped by mobs, and not based on running around node harvesting. With the exception of the foraging skill, which was also fine the way they used it in EQ1.
The issue I have with node harvesting is that it is QUITE boring. So boring that in just about every game that has it, players end up creating macros and scripts to automate the harvesting process, even though automatic bots are against the game's rules.
If Pantheon ends up going the node harvesting route that's fine. But personally, I hope for a system that is more engaging than mindlessly clicking a rock and waiting for a progress bar to complete.
Horizons, of all games had a pretty good harvesting system. It was simple in concept, but the implementation worked out to be pretty good. Resources were divided into 6 tiers, every time your skill level went up 20 you opened up a new tier. Resources were clustered in patches rather than spread out all over. Lower tier resource patches were generally near cities, while higher tier ones were spread out farther and farther in the world, became more rare, and became more risky to collect. Each type and tier of resource had several patches where it could spawn. One a node was harvested in one patch it could spawn in any patch for that type and tier. This meant that if you harvested in just one patch the nodes would become depleted and become harder and harder to find as they spawned and filled up the other patches.
Crafting required harvesting so it became like a mini game, knowing where all the patches were, knowing when to move on to the next patch, setting up routes to go hit up different patches. It was still wack-a-mole, but the way resources were located and how they spawned kept it interesting.
Kilsin said:
Exmortis said:
Kilsin said:
Angrykiz said:
In Vanguard there was a end game quest that required you to mine thousands of rock nodes... I think that forever tainted me on the Whack a Nodes.
Please don't do that again at least...
Kiz~
What end game quest was that?
Must be referring to Guild Hall creation or galleon quest/building is all I can figure.
Neither of those have end game requirements, you can make them at any level (with help for very low levels) I am thinking more PotA gear but again, it is not required and the mats can be bought if the player can't be bothered harvesting it themselves.
I would really like to hear from Kiz, which quest forced this on end game players?
Yes it was the epic questline in POTA that I remember hitting rocks for weeks on end to get the little parasites or whatever it was, this killed all the fun of working towards your epic.
Maybe at some point you could buy the little buggers but when people first started working on it you had to farm your own if you wanted your epic.
I burned myself out hard on whack a mole with like a month of rock farming when that content launched to get my Psi epic, now I have nightmares about it lol.
Thanks for all the great feedback on harvesting, its been a excellent conversation so far imo...
Kiz~
P.S. Also interesting that they picked Pantheon for a name and that was also the name of the endgame in Vanguard.. just thought of that ;)
Angrykiz said:
Kilsin said:
Exmortis said:
Kilsin said:
Angrykiz said:
In Vanguard there was a end game quest that required you to mine thousands of rock nodes... I think that forever tainted me on the Whack a Nodes.
Please don't do that again at least...
Kiz~
What end game quest was that?
Must be referring to Guild Hall creation or galleon quest/building is all I can figure.
Neither of those have end game requirements, you can make them at any level (with help for very low levels) I am thinking more PotA gear but again, it is not required and the mats can be bought if the player can't be bothered harvesting it themselves.
I would really like to hear from Kiz, which quest forced this on end game players?
Yes it was the epic questline in POTA that I remember hitting rocks for weeks on end to get the little parasites or whatever it was, this killed all the fun of working towards your epic.
Maybe at some point you could buy the little buggers but when people first started working on it you had to farm your own if you wanted your epic.
I burned myself out hard on whack a mole with like a month of rock farming when that content launched to get my Psi epic, now I have nightmares about it lol.
Thanks for all the great feedback on harvesting, its been a excellent conversation so far imo...
Kiz~
P.S. Also interesting that they picked Pantheon for a name and that was also the name of the endgame in Vanguard.. just thought of that ;)
Ahh yeah, Slivers, Shimmering and Shards for Epic weapons and T3 upgrades, they were all purchasable except Shimmering which were unique and needed to be collected yourself by harvesting (Mining, Skinning and not sure if any others gave it - or go afk in group and a nice person could /giveplayerlootitem them to you)
That wasn't for harvesting though, the actual harvesting system itself was ok, it was just poorly implemented end game gear that forced you to hit harvesting nodes if you choose to mine but you could of skinned etc. ( I agree it wasn't fun though but at that stage the Devs were trying to slow us down from burning through the limited content)
I know it's hard to hold something like that against the harvesting system, many players burnt out on the PotA grind but the Harvesting itself without that grind was actually well done and implemented well.
OK so far here is what I have taken away from this discussion...
Nodes are probably OK if the graphics blend in way more with the environment... Different shaped rocks nodes and species of trees/bushes. Please make trees fall over like Vanguard.
Sometimes it might be fun to have a mob guarding some prime resources so you can combine adventuring and harvesting.
Harvesting should never be mandatory for end game questing.
Alternative means of gathering large amounts of resources ... like raiding a mining or logging camp and cleaning them out would be fun.
Some people like to harvest when they are on for a short time or just feel like soloing around a bit. On the flipside of that some people liked the group harvesting mechanic that Vanguard had but I don't really have much to say about that.
Thanks for all the input so far,
Kiz~