Gathering Artisan utility PVE/P Skills

TheWolfofGar

I added this into the dev discussion chat as a throw away however been fleshing out the idea in my mind and I think it makes sense to keep the pvx game play lively.

many MMOs give characters an ability to prevent them from being targeted by hostile mobs eg. ffxiv Sneak
Others mobs can and will continue to spawn after you clear the cave while you gather resources eg. New World.

I think a variety of pvx skills should become available to the artisan gatherers as they progress in their field.
Primarily skills based around situational awareness
the example from the dev discussion I used was something akin to a booby-trap alert line/trip wire with bells on it. that get sprung by players coming within range and give you an audio que that players are nearby.
Depending on the time it takes to gather when you get an alert you can decide to take cover, or quickly try to finish up some nodes. or otherwise prep for a potential encounter.

Example there was the ganking question intrepid put out a while ago: https://twitter.com/AshesofCreation/status/1557410308557156353

Change the scenario, you and the ranger were actually gathering together the rogue unwittingly triggered your alert so your ranger buddy hides behind the rock while you act as bait for a potential attack since the rogue tried to gank you, you both jump the rogue instead.

an alternative could be a "Detect" skill along the lines of "Listen to the wind" you become immobile while using the skill but while using/channeling players and mobs are indicated on your mini map with the range depending on your respective skill.

I do think there should be the opportunity for stealthy characters to bypass these. A rogue or ranger actively using their stealth ability should be able to bypass these while still triggering if they are running or walking normally.

General aside/want, cancelling your gathering attempt mid duration should be responsive and temporarily save your progress for any user. If I interrupt you half way through cutting a tree, we consensually pvp, whoever wins should only need to cut down the other half of the tree.

I've been going back and forth on a "repel" to bypass certain mobs I lean towards No for general repellants, however I could accept a crafted consumable that instills fear into a single mob, eg a "Boom potion" that can break the aggro off you from a given mob or aoe effect and those hit flee from you and unable to reaggro for a min or two.

So repelling would be less skill more consumable allowing players to make a cost analysis of time lost dealing with mobs vs consumable prices.

Let me know your thoughts on any(if any) utility skills you think gathering should provide to lean into the idea that a woodsman/lumberjack should have high situational awareness when in their element.

tldr:
I'd like to see Utility skills like Alert-lines, or detect for gatherers to have a sense of those in their surroundings to ensure they are harder to sneak up on.
Potential for single use short term repellant consumables that act on one mob or those hit by it's aoe. ~1-2 min effective time

outside utility skills having nodes track progress to harvest so that if interrupted you only need to finish remaining progress (time to harvest dependent of course)

TheWolfofGar

the reason I classify the detection skills as pve/p is obviously these skills could perhaps be used offensively in alt content, having the ability to detect out of sight mobs could be useful in situations like dungeons when your crew wants to know what is up ahead. Since nodes wont be flagged with shiny bits it makes sense that perception will be a skill of value to gatherers throwing that skill back towards pve/p with some minor scout-like abilities seems fair to me

Azherae

I have considered this also but I massively prefer these skills to be on Combat Pets and not on the player, or tied to the player's Artisan level.

Last thing I want to see is a bunch of complaints from PvP players about how they 'have to level Gathering to get extra Alertness skills'.

Whereas activating a Combat Pet with these skills is a risk Tradeoff, 'leveling your Artisan skills' usually isn't.

I've got lots of other more specific opinions on this, but I prefer to get any response you have first.

TheWolfofGar

Azherae wrote: »

I have considered this also but I massively prefer these skills to be on Combat Pets and not on the player, or tied to the player's Artisan level.

Last thing I want to see is a bunch of complaints from PvP players about how they 'have to level Gathering to get extra Alertness skills'.

Whereas activating a Combat Pet with these skills is a risk Tradeoff, 'leveling your Artisan skills' usually isn't.

I've got lots of other more specific opinions on this, but I prefer to get any response you have first.

I do like the idea of having scout centric combat pets, eg falcons or bats, I think you could get away from a lot of the complaints from pvp players if you had multiple ways of achieving similar results situation 2+2 = 4 and 3+1 = 4 type deal. I do not think every scout skill needs to be tied to gathering, however I do think it could be a flavour of the available options, person a scouts manually using rogue stealth, person b uses their combat bat's sonar ability, person c uses the skill they got from mastering lumberjacking that "listening to the wind" idea. there should be pros and cons to each method, I think those that require the time investment in skills learned should be stronger then pets since that's more a gear skill. however perhaps the powerloss from activating a combat pet would be sufficient, especially if the best scouts were tuned away from combat potency.

Ludullu

Make this stuff into craftable items or, as Azherae suggested, into pet abilities and I'd be all for it. This kind of stuff would be super beneficial to pretty much any group of people in any kind of dungeon or narrow location. And that benefit would make this mechanic a requirement, which would only lead to "we have to have a specific class that has this ability with us" kind of thinking, which in turn would remove the individuality of people of that class.

This kind of thing happened in L2 with the "gatherer" class. Parties would be going out to lucrative farming spots and would require a gatherer to maximize their loot. The gatherer class gave nothing to the party itself outside of its ability to gather (gain additional loot from mobs), so it was a non-party member that just tagged along, didn't get xp from the mobs, didn't get loot or money and was just there to gather. They were called the "10th member" (L2 parties had 9 members) and was usually either a guildmate that did this for free or a random player that split the gathered loot with the party.

In most cases those players would never have their own party to farm with and would just live off of the money they got from selling their half of the loot. And quite often this would just be someone's alt, whose gameplay consisted of pressing 2 buttons. And because of that, in later updates NCsoft gave this class a huge boost by making it a semi-rogue, with several dagger abilities and a fairly big dps.

tl;dr give this mechanic to everyone in some way, instead of only having it on special classes/professions.

Veeshan

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