Gathering / lifeskill system overhaul and rework suggestion
shadowreign
Member
Hello All,
I would like to suggest something related to gathering, don't know how you guys are planning to implement this since i haven't heard you talk about it yet, but I think my following suggestion is a pretty decent change of pace from the current system of ( go around looking for RNG spots of gathering and then figuring out a rotation and just keep circling it. ) and if done right, it can be an amazing new experience risen from the ashes (pun intended) of the boring, monotonous and tedious lifeskill experience that lifeskillers have in MMOs.
Let me get started then :
Suggestion:
let's take gathering ores for example, rather than having random nodes spread out across the map and tediously walking around the map hoping to find one, how about having a mine system implemented ( like how in real life there are mines )
say we have X number of copper mines spread out across an entire map. In order for a gatherer to get copper ores, he has to go to 1 of those mines, so I go to the mine to look whether it has copper ores, i try first one nothing, so i take a trip to the other one ( this is similar to rotating, but rather than rotating the same circle over and over again, you hop and go from mine to mine, changing scenery and pace and enjoying the trip along the way) so i get to the 2nd mine and there are many ore nodes and i start gathering all of them ( similar to how BDO has that one haven spot in the desert that has a LOT of rocks you can gather all stacked in 1 place)
Of course not all mines have ores in them, only about half do, and these states are 'active' and 'inactive' mines, as in mines that you can see ores in, and mines that you can't see ores in. and these states vary from one person to the other, so most likely no 2 people will have the exact same mines active and inactive, and around half of the mines on the map are active to each individual person, now which ones are active and which are not, is random.
so in each mine there is 1 or X rich ore nodes that has definite rare materials, the others only has a chance of dropping these rare materials.
Now during gathering, random events can happen that add a little fun and exciting element to it, like a mine robber appearing, that if you kill it you get definite rare materials with some ores or extremely rare materials etc, or like you found an NPC miner half dead from an avalanche of rocks inside, so he asks you to help him out or something and rewards you with rare materials, or an avalanche of rocks event that opens up an extra layer to the mine where you can enter and get more ores etc. These events happen randomly or certain times whatever you want, but they're really intriguing and cool to encounter whilst spending couple of hours hopping from mine to mine to gather ores ( some people spend most of their gameplay per day focusing on 1 task, i know people in BDO that spend 6-8 hours gathering, now imagine how fun and cool it would be with this system, compared to the other current systems )
Also this opens up the possibility of group content for gatherers.
Forming groups with other people/friends will allow you to sync the active/inactive mines with each other, allowing you to partake in the events together, and allow for new events to spawn such as deeper levels of the mines, scale-able deep level monsters that drop better loot etc, all these things can encourage group content and is somewhat similar to having a mini dungeon with few people in group, ofc it's not like a 8-party dungeon that takes 20 minutes, but like a group of 2-3 people together can have a change on the events allowing better rewards even if it's just a fair amount enough to motivate people to group up and socialize, and for those who do not want to, no problem. those who love solo will solo, those who love groups will be motivated to do so even in gathering content.
I think this idea brings the "social" aspect of gathering into MMOs and make lifeskillers have more friendships and more interaction with their fellow lifeskillers and enjoy the content many times more than they would normally do if they do it like it is today in current systems.
Technical Problems:
now to address some arising issues with this system, such as:
"what if a lot of gatherer are cleaning out the mine, and you cant mine because everyone else did it"
"what if you go from mine to mine and you pass 50 mines before you find one that is active to you, that's not nice or productive"
- Well first point, ore nodes are personal so everyone can mine the same ore, and once u mine it, it disappears for u only, kinda like GW2 and WoW and many games.
- Second point, We can implement a system that allows the player to get guaranteed ores in the location of the second or third empty mine he encounters ( these changes depends on how far the mines are from each other etc ) so one implementation is to have someone guide us from one mine to the other, let's say there is an NPC at the entrance of every mine, that helps direct us for the next mine, regardless if the first is active or not.
so the scenario is as follows:
I went to mine X in some place and it's empty (=inactive=i can't see any ores inside), I can ask the NPC about it for example and they will tell me that this mine is empty, but there is a mine active north of here ( me having unlocked all the mines, i can see which mine is north and i can head straight to it) but wait there are multiple mines in the north which one is active ? well I'll try any, if the mine is active, good i'll check the other, if not, I'll ask the NPC and the NPC will direct me again ( now the directions get better and better the more times the mine is 'inactive' for you, so if you visit 1-2 mines inactive, the 3rd one should be active, so the algorithm will detect that and direct you to an active mine for you on your 2nd 'empty' mine, now how does the algorithm know that ? well empty mine should be related to the NPC, so NPC at the door of an empty mine will know when you speak to them, if you speak to 2x NPCs at the entrance of 2 empty mines, the 2nd one will tell u the location of an active mine next.
If you speak to an NPC at the active mine, it may direct u to an active mine next or inactive, if it directs you to an active mine, then the chances of your 3rd mine being active will be lower but not impossible ( so we keep the chances of people running into 3-4 active mines in a row, and avoid having people run into 3++ empty mines in a row, which is more lucrative and productive and appealing to the gatherer, that way on average we can calculate that per each 10 mines visited (let's say it takes 2 hours to visit all 10 including mining and events)
an average of 5 inactive mines and 5 actives mines, the return in these 2 hours should be a lot better than the return of mindlessly rotating around a certain circle in the map waiting for nodes to spawn so u can click a button and then keep rotating, because:
1- you got better loot,
2- you enjoyed the events,
3- you enjoyed the different scenery and designs of the mines,
4- you got to do it with your friends.
( this whole NPC thing is a suggestion on how to manage the inactive / active mines experience that players should have, but you can definitely come up with another system, as long as the core idea of "mines" exist and that mining isnt as stupid as visiting 5 empty mines that wasted an hour of our real time you know )
Benefits of this system:
- Experiencing new and fun mechanics of lifeskill and breaking the boring monotonous rotation and circle searching.
- Experience cool looking mines.
- Having better return from gathering which makes gathering / professions and just all lifeskilling more reliable and lucrative to do, for all those lifeskills lovers out there ( me included)
- Experience different zones and different beautiful scenery, not just 1 fixed rotation wasting the entire beauty of the map.
- Enjoy the content provided by the game developers.
- Experiencing the social aspect of having multiple people and/or friends in the mines with you, forging friendships, having conversations and just interacting with others.
- Doing group content lifeskilling for those who wish to partake in it.
CONCLUSION:
I think the experience of "mines" can be very beautiful, specially if there are multiple ( not enough to cause a lag tho ) people mining in the same mine or going from route to route and you meeting them, forging friendships and groups going together.
or even if you do them solo, they're interactive, fun whilst most importantly lucrative and profitable.
I am not sure how in terms of implementation this will be, but this can be projected to most if not all gathering professions ( herbing will have gardens, lumbering will have forests, fishing will have ponds and lakes or rivers ( along side the sea i assume ofc ) which also means that each tier of material has a different theme, so copper mines have a similar theme that's different than iron mines, different than gold mines for example the interior layout could be colored with gold etc many amazing opportunities for designs and the art team to work on, and there are a lot of nuances that can be discussed and managed to make this a really breath of fresh air in terms of gathering professions and in terms of adding spice to these activities.
Note: also maybe in the future a system of carts will be introduced to allow maybe transfer of ores, or like travel between mines, or like to go from 1 layer to another layer of the mine etc, many more future implementations can be added to this sort of system design.
Thank you,
ShadowReign.
I would like to suggest something related to gathering, don't know how you guys are planning to implement this since i haven't heard you talk about it yet, but I think my following suggestion is a pretty decent change of pace from the current system of ( go around looking for RNG spots of gathering and then figuring out a rotation and just keep circling it. ) and if done right, it can be an amazing new experience risen from the ashes (pun intended) of the boring, monotonous and tedious lifeskill experience that lifeskillers have in MMOs.
Let me get started then :
Suggestion:
let's take gathering ores for example, rather than having random nodes spread out across the map and tediously walking around the map hoping to find one, how about having a mine system implemented ( like how in real life there are mines )
say we have X number of copper mines spread out across an entire map. In order for a gatherer to get copper ores, he has to go to 1 of those mines, so I go to the mine to look whether it has copper ores, i try first one nothing, so i take a trip to the other one ( this is similar to rotating, but rather than rotating the same circle over and over again, you hop and go from mine to mine, changing scenery and pace and enjoying the trip along the way) so i get to the 2nd mine and there are many ore nodes and i start gathering all of them ( similar to how BDO has that one haven spot in the desert that has a LOT of rocks you can gather all stacked in 1 place)
Of course not all mines have ores in them, only about half do, and these states are 'active' and 'inactive' mines, as in mines that you can see ores in, and mines that you can't see ores in. and these states vary from one person to the other, so most likely no 2 people will have the exact same mines active and inactive, and around half of the mines on the map are active to each individual person, now which ones are active and which are not, is random.
so in each mine there is 1 or X rich ore nodes that has definite rare materials, the others only has a chance of dropping these rare materials.
Now during gathering, random events can happen that add a little fun and exciting element to it, like a mine robber appearing, that if you kill it you get definite rare materials with some ores or extremely rare materials etc, or like you found an NPC miner half dead from an avalanche of rocks inside, so he asks you to help him out or something and rewards you with rare materials, or an avalanche of rocks event that opens up an extra layer to the mine where you can enter and get more ores etc. These events happen randomly or certain times whatever you want, but they're really intriguing and cool to encounter whilst spending couple of hours hopping from mine to mine to gather ores ( some people spend most of their gameplay per day focusing on 1 task, i know people in BDO that spend 6-8 hours gathering, now imagine how fun and cool it would be with this system, compared to the other current systems )
Also this opens up the possibility of group content for gatherers.
Forming groups with other people/friends will allow you to sync the active/inactive mines with each other, allowing you to partake in the events together, and allow for new events to spawn such as deeper levels of the mines, scale-able deep level monsters that drop better loot etc, all these things can encourage group content and is somewhat similar to having a mini dungeon with few people in group, ofc it's not like a 8-party dungeon that takes 20 minutes, but like a group of 2-3 people together can have a change on the events allowing better rewards even if it's just a fair amount enough to motivate people to group up and socialize, and for those who do not want to, no problem. those who love solo will solo, those who love groups will be motivated to do so even in gathering content.
I think this idea brings the "social" aspect of gathering into MMOs and make lifeskillers have more friendships and more interaction with their fellow lifeskillers and enjoy the content many times more than they would normally do if they do it like it is today in current systems.
Technical Problems:
now to address some arising issues with this system, such as:
"what if a lot of gatherer are cleaning out the mine, and you cant mine because everyone else did it"
"what if you go from mine to mine and you pass 50 mines before you find one that is active to you, that's not nice or productive"
- Well first point, ore nodes are personal so everyone can mine the same ore, and once u mine it, it disappears for u only, kinda like GW2 and WoW and many games.
- Second point, We can implement a system that allows the player to get guaranteed ores in the location of the second or third empty mine he encounters ( these changes depends on how far the mines are from each other etc ) so one implementation is to have someone guide us from one mine to the other, let's say there is an NPC at the entrance of every mine, that helps direct us for the next mine, regardless if the first is active or not.
so the scenario is as follows:
I went to mine X in some place and it's empty (=inactive=i can't see any ores inside), I can ask the NPC about it for example and they will tell me that this mine is empty, but there is a mine active north of here ( me having unlocked all the mines, i can see which mine is north and i can head straight to it) but wait there are multiple mines in the north which one is active ? well I'll try any, if the mine is active, good i'll check the other, if not, I'll ask the NPC and the NPC will direct me again ( now the directions get better and better the more times the mine is 'inactive' for you, so if you visit 1-2 mines inactive, the 3rd one should be active, so the algorithm will detect that and direct you to an active mine for you on your 2nd 'empty' mine, now how does the algorithm know that ? well empty mine should be related to the NPC, so NPC at the door of an empty mine will know when you speak to them, if you speak to 2x NPCs at the entrance of 2 empty mines, the 2nd one will tell u the location of an active mine next.
If you speak to an NPC at the active mine, it may direct u to an active mine next or inactive, if it directs you to an active mine, then the chances of your 3rd mine being active will be lower but not impossible ( so we keep the chances of people running into 3-4 active mines in a row, and avoid having people run into 3++ empty mines in a row, which is more lucrative and productive and appealing to the gatherer, that way on average we can calculate that per each 10 mines visited (let's say it takes 2 hours to visit all 10 including mining and events)
an average of 5 inactive mines and 5 actives mines, the return in these 2 hours should be a lot better than the return of mindlessly rotating around a certain circle in the map waiting for nodes to spawn so u can click a button and then keep rotating, because:
1- you got better loot,
2- you enjoyed the events,
3- you enjoyed the different scenery and designs of the mines,
4- you got to do it with your friends.
( this whole NPC thing is a suggestion on how to manage the inactive / active mines experience that players should have, but you can definitely come up with another system, as long as the core idea of "mines" exist and that mining isnt as stupid as visiting 5 empty mines that wasted an hour of our real time you know )
Benefits of this system:
- Experiencing new and fun mechanics of lifeskill and breaking the boring monotonous rotation and circle searching.
- Experience cool looking mines.
- Having better return from gathering which makes gathering / professions and just all lifeskilling more reliable and lucrative to do, for all those lifeskills lovers out there ( me included)
- Experience different zones and different beautiful scenery, not just 1 fixed rotation wasting the entire beauty of the map.
- Enjoy the content provided by the game developers.
- Experiencing the social aspect of having multiple people and/or friends in the mines with you, forging friendships, having conversations and just interacting with others.
- Doing group content lifeskilling for those who wish to partake in it.
CONCLUSION:
I think the experience of "mines" can be very beautiful, specially if there are multiple ( not enough to cause a lag tho ) people mining in the same mine or going from route to route and you meeting them, forging friendships and groups going together.
or even if you do them solo, they're interactive, fun whilst most importantly lucrative and profitable.
I am not sure how in terms of implementation this will be, but this can be projected to most if not all gathering professions ( herbing will have gardens, lumbering will have forests, fishing will have ponds and lakes or rivers ( along side the sea i assume ofc ) which also means that each tier of material has a different theme, so copper mines have a similar theme that's different than iron mines, different than gold mines for example the interior layout could be colored with gold etc many amazing opportunities for designs and the art team to work on, and there are a lot of nuances that can be discussed and managed to make this a really breath of fresh air in terms of gathering professions and in terms of adding spice to these activities.
Note: also maybe in the future a system of carts will be introduced to allow maybe transfer of ores, or like travel between mines, or like to go from 1 layer to another layer of the mine etc, many more future implementations can be added to this sort of system design.
Thank you,
ShadowReign.
3
Comments
Resources will spawn (presumably in clumps) in a way that is not completely dissimilar to how you describe in your suggestion. The main differences are they are not necessarily in pre-determined mine areas, though they are in areas that make sense (ores will spawn in mountains, wood will spawn in forrests etc).
When these are all harvested, which may take several days or weeks (though that is speculation), the resource them disapears and respawns somewhere else on the map.
The idea with this is that resource spawns will all be dynamic, meaning players have to be continually on the lookout for them.
When your spwn of copper is depleated, rather than simply going on to the next mine to see if there are some there, you have to actualyl search through any and all mountain terrain trying to find it.
It is also worth mentioning that players will not be able to hold a whole lot of raw materials on them, meaning you won't be able to be out mining for hours on end - you will have to make trips back to storage fairly often.
umm do they spawn in multiple clumps ? or just 1 clump that keeps moving ?
I'm not sure I understand this question.
A clump is a group of multiple smaller entities in a confined space, so even if there is only one clump, there are still multiple spawns. On the other hand, if multiple clumps spawn together in the same area, they would be a single clump, that is multiple spawns of the same thing in a small area.
yeh maybe i worded my question wrong, but either ways you answered my question thank you.
it was kind of a stupid question anyways, but still wanted to make sure. what i meant is multiple spawns of this clump at different locations, which is obviously a given but still wanted to confirm. thanks.