An idea to encourage exploration when gathering...

I often enjoy wandering the gameworld and gathering valuable stuff. It's fun and relaxing, and is especially rewarding in a game with a large and well-built world. I think it's one of the fundamental MMO activities and should be given special attention.

One area for improvement might be this: I think "gatherables" (I hesitate to call them nodes, now) should grow as they sit around, whether we're talking herbs, ores, trees, whatever. They could usually start as tier 1 gatherables, which give a perfectly modest amount of material, but then over time they grow into tier 2 (large), 3 (rich), maybe 4 (ultra-rich) and even 5 (huge, old-growth, mature, mutated, who knows?!, etc). Sometimes gatherables spawn as 2s and very rarely 3s, but never 4s and 5s.

The point of this is that it really rewards the person who ventures deep into the wilds, or just wanders off the typical gather-routes. Setting out on a long journey through dangerous, uncivilized territory, could really yield lucrative rewards. Instead of just wandering around finding mostly tier 1s and a few 2s and 3s, you could instead come to an area that is full of tier 2s, quite a few 3s, and even the incredible 4s and 5s. Maybe tier 4s and 5s could even have special drops that are exceedingly rare in any previous tiers, but are common or guaranteed on these. This could even create emergent gameplay: guilds might set up "no entry" areas to allow gatherables to mature, or parties might form just to venture into a dangerous area that is usually avoided (although I'd suggest having the respawn-rates of gatherables greatly exceed these growth rates, so that the default "most-efficient" strat is to always just harvest whatever you find - gatherable-growth would just be a bonus that occurs in otherwise untrafficked areas. The last thing we want is people sitting around some iron ore, yelling at anyone who touches it "before it levels up").

If done right, I think this could greatly enhance the "explorer/gatherer/wanderer" play-type

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Comments

Valento92

I love gathering too. Sometimes I spend hours with my bf just doing that, so I'm all for more involved gathering systems. The rogue utility that uncovers secret rooms looks specially interesting, but rangers could have nature-related things that help in that sense too, since they (would?) understand more about nature.

Gathering/exploring per se could have specific challenges tied to them, besides of course the world itself crowded with PvPers. Jumping puzzles could play a role too, they're very fun to do (as long as the movements are very fluid).

Brocknar

Gathering ore is one of my favourite things. Especially, while listening to a podcast in the background.

Varkun

Gathering is one thing I just love to do wander along killing mobs slowly exploring while gathering materials for hours on end. Though in AOC I will have to weigh up the risk of using a mule for extra capacity plus keep looking over my shoulder for any greedy eyes. Should be fun.

Nagash

Brocknar wrote: »

Gathering ore is one of my favourite things. Especially, while listening to a podcast in the background.

but can you Diggy dig

nibiru97

This is a really good idea to have gatherables that lvl up over time and when they are gone they respawn elsewhere at tier 1. However, they are against scope creep and already have an extremely ambitious game to complete. I can't see them adding something like this, unless they are still in the early design phases of the gatherable system.

Xrael

Valento92 wrote: »

I love gathering too. Sometimes I spend hours with my bf just doing that, so I'm all for more involved gathering systems. The rogue utility that uncovers secret rooms looks specially interesting, but rangers could have nature-related things that help in that sense too, since they (would?) understand more about nature.

Gathering/exploring per se could have specific challenges tied to them, besides of course the world itself crowded with PvPers. Jumping puzzles could play a role too, they're very fun to do (as long as the movements are very fluid).

Why would rangers be given nature based abilities? They are not druids.

Rangers will be able to track and stuff. Steven said that while answering the first question in the recent AMA.

Valento92

@CaptainChuck Well, I don't know, dude, that's just a loose thought. Nothing to be annoyed about.

Nelirya

Interesting idea OP! I love gathering in games, although usually the game economy is so broken that base gatherables are worth literally nothing. The way that Steven has often described that the economy will be well thought through and different professions will depend on one another gives me hope that Ashes will be very different. I can't wait to see how it plays out.

Although we do not really know how gathering will work exactly, it has been mentioned that activities such as gathering/taming/fishing will be interactive and fun, more so than a simple afk task (please don't ask me where I got this info from, it's in one of the livestreams, but goodness knows which one).

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