Greetings, glorious adventurers! If you're joining in our Alpha One spot testing, please follow the steps here to see all the latest test info on our forums and Discord!
Options
An idea to encourage exploration when gathering...
GrayingGamer
Member
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
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
0
Comments
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).
I heard a bird ♫
but can you Diggy dig
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.
I heard a bird ♫
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).