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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
A solution to the gathering issue discussed on stream during QA
Profugus
Member, Alpha Two
in Artisanship
If the game design philosophy is centered around ideas of conflict, the gathering system needs a counter-action. A way to counter people farming "static" nodes that appear for a limited duration.
The problem as I see it: joeshmo mines a Tin node next to me as I mine a Ruby. I wanted that Tin too and currently I'll never know what joe got from that node. It could be common, it could be legendary! If I knew it was legendary, maybe I risk corruption to kill him? maybe I come back X minutes later trying to get the respawn?
Solution: Limited gathered tracking.
Allow for some period of time after a gatherable is gathered for "remnants" to remain left behind that an experienced gatherer can recognize.
Recognition could be purely visual - similar to how loot now glows different colors. It could be a short interaction with the spot to determine item and rarity. It could even be a bonus to using a pylon.. for the pylon to highlight recently mined nodes w/ their given rarity.
This "period of time" can then additionally be dynamic by character. A more experienced gatherer could leave behind less traces -> maybe a shorter window to recognize or a higher requirement to recognize at all.
It allows for an additional secondary stat that could possibly modify this interaction as well as artisanship skills (whenever the tree exists) could have nodes to modify as well.
This allows for lucrative node locations to no longer be held completely secret. This allows for the potential for anyone to contest a node, possibly even have guild/groups contesting for spawns of legendaries.
The problem as I see it: joeshmo mines a Tin node next to me as I mine a Ruby. I wanted that Tin too and currently I'll never know what joe got from that node. It could be common, it could be legendary! If I knew it was legendary, maybe I risk corruption to kill him? maybe I come back X minutes later trying to get the respawn?
Solution: Limited gathered tracking.
Allow for some period of time after a gatherable is gathered for "remnants" to remain left behind that an experienced gatherer can recognize.
Recognition could be purely visual - similar to how loot now glows different colors. It could be a short interaction with the spot to determine item and rarity. It could even be a bonus to using a pylon.. for the pylon to highlight recently mined nodes w/ their given rarity.
This "period of time" can then additionally be dynamic by character. A more experienced gatherer could leave behind less traces -> maybe a shorter window to recognize or a higher requirement to recognize at all.
It allows for an additional secondary stat that could possibly modify this interaction as well as artisanship skills (whenever the tree exists) could have nodes to modify as well.
This allows for lucrative node locations to no longer be held completely secret. This allows for the potential for anyone to contest a node, possibly even have guild/groups contesting for spawns of legendaries.
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Comments
I can see the logic in the intent/goal of the devs, once again it's just that a placeholder/first pass has an implementation that is very misleading and (for my group) makes the team look bad/incompetent.
Without Micro-POI gathering areas, the Pylon idea will 'do nothing' because you wouldn't 'waste' Pylons on it, and it's still very dependent on you happening to be in the right place during a specific period. If 'Micro-POI are properly implemented, the contesting will happen anyway.
This is just a common early-stage design problem that comes up when the tech/implementation doesn't keep up with the intent. The lack of clarity on the matter hasn't been great, especially on the heels of the 'Copper Nodes' thing and the gap between how Mining works and how Lumberjacking works, but this idea, however good as a core concept, is not even 'the main half of the battle'.
tl;dr - I speak for my group in being FOR Pylons having such a function if possible, but AGAINST this being viewed as a solution that would be sufficient to deal with semi-static single gatherable spawns.
"Just gotta be patient until their gridding/shards are integrated better with spawn dynamism" - group member that will probably quote this if they care enough to join any discussion.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
Something else thinking about as well - if mining nodes become largely just generic visuals without strictly knowing if its basalt or iron (for example) as it was noted in a 2022? live stream - I think my idea may further have more positive use since in that scenario.. but hopefully not removing too much of that "loot box" kind of feel spoken of.