Please reward us who like to play as gatherers.

My preferred playstyle in mmos is to play a gatherer but I've yet to see a single mmo who rewards or encourages that playstyle.
I would love to see a special pvp flagging that allows for more gathering and gathering luck but everything you pick up gets put in a special gathering bag, if you get killed in pvp you drop the bag containing everything you have gathered.

Another way would be to have special gathering clothes, each piece gives you a 50% bonus to gathering but that's it. So wearing it give you a huge bonus to gathering but you are VERY easy to kill so you would need an escort or be sneaky when gathering. It could reduce your inventory space by 50% so you can gather it quickly but not excessive amounts on your own.

It could start with a 50% bonus to gathering and every 15 minutes the bonus would increase with 5-10% and gathering luck (chance of finding rare resources like gems and such) could increase by 1-2%. So the longer you are out gathering the faster you are able to gather resources.

Personally a dream would be to be able to create a gathering expedition, either solo or people could join you. You would drag a cart and it would provide a huge gathering bonus to everyone linked to it if wearing special gathering gear. So the expedition creator would drive the cart to the area to be gathered from. They would park it and people would run around and gather resources, they would then dump their resources into the cart.

The gatherers would wear the special gathering gear that makes them really easy to kill, limited inventory space makes it so they have to dump the resources in the cart. Your expedition would need protection so you could have friends, guildmembers or hire protection.
Once you had gathered a large amount or a certain time period had passed then your cart could pop up in the map for everyone in the area to see.
This would create a scenario for high risk high reward. Perhaps you could flag yourself as a bandit with the aim of stealing the cart. Flagging as a bandit would make it so if you were killed you would drop one of your equipped items.

For people to want to raid the cart the reward for doing so has to be high enough that they would be willing to risk losing an equipped piece of gear.

TLDR:
Special gathering gear that gives a huge bonus to gathering and gathering luck (chance of finding rare resources) but provides nothing else making you very easy to kill, everything gathered is put in a gathering bag that's dropped if killed.
or
Special PVP flag that increases gathering luck but everything gathered is put in a gathering bag that's dropped if killed.

Gathering expeditions, could be limited to 1 per day/week and gatherers could sign up to join it and others could sign up to protect it.
Could be several carts driven by different drivers, when you sign up you could either create a cart and people can select the cart they want to join as gatherers or guards.
You could pay different sums to the town you embark from to get bigger carts that allow for more gatherers. You could have solo carts the gatherer pulls himself, bigger ones pulled by an animal that allows for the driver and 2-4 gatherers or really big ones pulled by 4 animals with driver plus 8-12 gatherers.

The carts wouldn't have a set weight they can carry but rather a certain amount of gathering bags. Each bag could hold like 50kg (no idea if this is a lot or not in AoC) weight worth of resources. The number of bags a cart can carry could be 10x bags per gatherer allowed. So a cart that can have 4 gatherers but only has 2 gatherers can carry the same as if it had 4 gatherers, it would just take longer to gather.
Movement speed could be affected by number of bags in the cart, up to a 50% penalty to movement speed when full.

So a really big guild would have many carts that needed to be protected, the gatherers themselves can't provide much help at all if caravan is raided.
People who sign up to protect the caravan could receive a monetary reward for signing up, 2-10x that money if the caravan is successful and everyone assigned to a cart could share 10-25% of the resources gathered.
People who want to raid the caravan can run up to the cart and try to run/drive away with it or loot the cart directly. They wouldn't see what's in the cart, just gathering bags. So they could grab a bag full of rocks or one full of rare resources.
Every bag would be tied with a knot and it could take like 5 seconds to untie it to see the contents of the bag. This way you could see what's in the bag but it would take 5 sec to open it to see, do you have 5 seconds to waste in during a pvp fight or do you just grab a bag and run?

TLDR 2.0:
Expedition:
Players can create expedition caravans that rewards gold and/or resources to players who join as gatherers or guards.
Creator can select what resources can be gathered or take priority. Priority resources take up less volume in bags.
Each cart can set their own rewards, a set gold reward for joining, a bonus of expedition success and/or a resource award for success.
Caravan:
Gold fee for joining the caravan.
0-25% resource tax given to caravan creator from gatherers.
Carts:
1 player cart pulled by player that can carry 10 bags - always gives 10% of resources to guards of all caravans leaving at the same time, if they didn't guards would simply not guard them if raided.
5 player cart pulled by 1 animal that can carry 50 bags
10 player cart pulled by 4 animals that can carry 100 bags
Bag limit can NOT be increased during gathering, so if a cart can carry 50 bags and 20 are stolen they CAN NOT add another 30. This to prevent people from having friends flag as bandits and loot the carts.
Cart creator can decided that each gatherer has 10bags or it's first come first serve so that faster gatherers can get more bags compared to slow gatherers. A bag can only be put on the cart if it is 90% full based on volume and not weight.

Gatherers:
Gatherers pay gold to join the expedition, this gold is used to pay the guards. They also pay a resource quota set by the caravan creator, these resources are paid to the caravan creator.
Special clothes that increase gathering by 200-500%, can't defend themselves very good. Can get killed or knocked over and their gathering bag stolen.
The gathering bag reduces movement speed by 10%, only people flagged as raiders can open them.

Guards:
Gold reward for joining expedition, 2-10x gold reward if expedition successful and all guards for their cart gets a share of 10-25% of gathered resources if a resource reward is offered by cart creator. So if there are 4 guards and cart is set at 10% then each player would get 2.5% of gathered resources.

Bandits:
If killed drop 1 equipped item.
Can kill gatherers and steal their bags, can loot the cart to steal bags from it or try to steal the cart and drive it to a safe place to loot it.

Success or Failure:
If you are successful it gets added to your profile, something you could show to prove you can gather/guard/raid caravans. It could give you a bonus to future endeavors. This could be bonus gold or resources bonuses given to gatherers and guards and bandits could carry more loot. So if you have a 80% success rate as a bandit the weight of gatherer bags could be reduced by 80% for you so you can steal more bags.

A system like this could create some really fun circumstances for pvp. You could have people who specialize in gathering and people who specialize in raiding gatherers. There could be people who pull the attention of the guards whilst other sneak up to the cart and steal bags from it and try to run away with them.
There could be 10% reduction to speed whilst running away with a bag. It could take 10 seconds to open the bag to add the resources to your inventory to remove the speed penalty.
You could end up with traitor guards or gatherers who tell their guildmembers where a caravan is so their members can raid it.

Success could be based on bags returned, bandits killed and bags stolen vs deaths.
Gatherer that collects 10 bags but 2 are stolen would have a 80% success rate.
Guards whos caravan returns 80% of gathering bags would have a 80% success rate.
Bandits would have a success rate based on bags stolen vs deaths. Each bag stolen would give a 10% bonus to a maximum of 100%, each death would reduce this bonus by 10% to a minimum of 0%

Might take a long time to implement but a 5 minute fix would be to simply add a new PVP flag for gatherers that increases their gathering by 100-500% but reduces their damage done by 50%. Could change color of name to gold so people can see them as loot goblins.
One step above would be gatherer specific clothes so gatherers are easy to identify.
Final step would be expeditions that allow for really high gathering rewards.

Since people can run solo caravans this system wouldn't be unfair, they would just have to stick close to other caravans to get guarded by them. They would always have to pay a resource reward as guards would ignore them if they didn't. There might be rude gatherers but the guards could simply allow their carts to be raided.

I could write a lot more but this is already too long...

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Comments

ButtercupClover

Some of these things are already planned and I linked the wiki page for it. I'm probably a little critical of the ideas but the concept seems pretty good as a whole. It sounds like it could be something they use in the caravan system for gatherers to be able to go out and gather for a long time instead of heading back every 20 minutes because their bag is full.

MadCowCrazy wrote: »

Another way would be to have special gathering clothes, each piece gives you a 50% bonus to gathering but that's it. So wearing it give you a huge bonus to gathering but you are VERY easy to kill so you would need an escort or be sneaky when gathering. It could reduce your inventory space by 50% so you can gather it quickly but not excessive amounts on your own.

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Artisan_gear

MadCowCrazy wrote: »

Personally a dream would be to be able to create a gathering expedition, either solo or people could join you. You would drag a cart and it would provide a huge gathering bonus to everyone linked to it if wearing special gathering gear. So the expedition creator would drive the cart to the area to be gathered from. They would park it and people would run around and gather resources, they would then dump their resources into the cart.

The gatherers would wear the special gathering gear that makes them really easy to kill, limited inventory space makes it so they have to dump the resources in the cart. Your expedition would need protection so you could have friends, guildmembers or hire protection.
Once you had gathered a large amount or a certain time period had passed then your cart could pop up in the map for everyone in the area to see.
This would create a scenario for high risk high reward. Perhaps you could flag yourself as a bandit with the aim of stealing the cart. Flagging as a bandit would make it so if you were killed you would drop one of your equipped items.

For people to want to raid the cart the reward for doing so has to be high enough that they would be willing to risk losing an equipped piece of gear.

This sounds a lot like the caravan system, although they haven't said anything about loading up caravans in the field as you gather things. I believe they have mentioned something about being able to harvest or gather items that are too heavy for your character to carry so maybe they will have caravans for items like that. The only problem with this idea is flagging and losing gear. Gear loss should be limited exclusively to the corruption system. Also, gatherers will be targeted even without debuffing them so there's no need to make the easy to kill.

MadCowCrazy wrote: »

Gatherers:
Gatherers pay gold to join the expedition, this gold is used to pay the guards. They also pay a resource quota set by the caravan creator, these resources are paid to the caravan creator.
Special clothes that increase gathering by 200-500%, can't defend themselves very good. Can get killed or knocked over and their gathering bag stolen.
The gathering bag reduces movement speed by 10%, only people flagged as raiders can open them.

There's a lot of things in this post that is very anti-gatherer such as having to pay people to gather a lot at once. Not sure why you want it to be harder for yourself or less profitable. Gathering should be one of the minimal cost professions to get into as you only pay for the tools to get started and maybe go out of your way to pay someone to guard you if you think you're in trouble.

Sigtyr

I… actually like a lot of this. Not all, but a lot. Obviously a lot of tuning to the specific numbers and mechanics would be needed for balance and to prevent abuse, but overall I think a lot of good ideas here and I’m not even a big time gatherer. The main problem here is feature creep as I’m sure others would suggest.

The expeditions, carts, etc. you’re proposing here could almost be a game in and of itself. However, I think something like this could be implemented down the road after launch, possibly even as part of an expansion. They could also integrate some of these ideas into their seasonal systems as this could be a good Springtime event.

akabear

Gatherers make money, is that not the reward?

Solmyr

First time I've seen a TL;DR that's longer than the original post

Jokes aside, I really like the idea of using a cart to carry more resources for longer gathering expeditions, at the cost of becoming visible on the map. Feels kind of like a mix of carts from Valheim and the emissary system in Sea of Thieves.

MadCowCrazy

ButtercupClover wrote: »

There's a lot of things in this post that is very anti-gatherer such as having to pay people to gather a lot at once. Not sure why you want it to be harder for yourself or less profitable. Gathering should be one of the minimal cost professions to get into as you only pay for the tools to get started and maybe go out of your way to pay someone to guard you if you think you're in trouble.

I wouldn't say it's anti-gatherer as it's a risk reward thing. You can go out and gather by yourself with very little risk or you can create/join a caravan which will allow you to gather a whole lot in a short amount of time but there is a risk of everything being stolen.

A person who might only have 2-3 hours to play per day would want to maximize their efforts. They could spend 3 hours gathering say 1000 resources or perhaps do a cart run and gather twice that but risk getting robbed.

It can be tricky to balance though, the reward for doing a caravan has to be high enough to want to take the risk but the rewards can't be so big that people feel that that's the only way to progress.

Sigtyr wrote: »

The expeditions, carts, etc. you’re proposing here could almost be a game in and of itself. However, I think something like this could be implemented down the road after launch, possibly even as part of an expansion. They could also integrate some of these ideas into their seasonal systems as this could be a good Springtime event.

I realize this which is why you can do the 5min fix to implement it instantly and later expand it:

Might take a long time to implement but a 5 minute fix would be to simply add a new PVP flag for gatherers that increases their gathering by 100-500% but reduces their damage done by 50%. Could change color of name to gold so people can see them as loot goblins.
One step above would be gatherer specific clothes so gatherers are easy to identify.
Final step would be expeditions that allow for really high gathering rewards.

ClintHardwood

"My preferred playstyle in mmos is to play a gatherer but I've yet to see a single mmo who rewards or encourages that playstyle."

Albion online.

Dygz

MadCowCrazy wrote: »

My preferred playstyle in mmos is to play a gatherer but I've yet to see a single mmo who rewards or encourages that playstyle.
I would love to see a special pvp flagging that allows for more gathering and gathering luck but everything you pick up gets put in a special gathering bag, if you get killed in pvp you drop the bag containing everything you have gathered.

I fail to see how dropping everything in the gathering bag rewards Gatherers.
Ashes is already better than that:
If you die from PvP as a Non-Combatant, you drop a portion of your gatherables.
If you die from PvP as a Combatant, you drop half the normal portion of gatherables.

People who played EQ and WoW on PvE-Only servers did not have to worry about what they dropped from PvP, so... seems to me they both rewarded and ecouraged that playstyle.
I think neither had gear that would increase gathering, sure.

Warth

Gathering Gear exists.
A deep progression path similar to adventuring classes in the profession exists.

Going with Stevens Quote, i wouldnt worry too much. Seems like he is very much on board with rewarding Main Artisans for their efforts.

Becoming a master Crafter or a master Processor or a master Gatherer should be a significant time investment and resource investment; and because of that it should also be something that when you achieve that status it's like people on the server know who you are.[12] – Steven Sharif

Also, in regard to your suggestion:
You dont reward dedicated gatherers by creating a mechanic where every chump gatherer can receive significantly more value for their time.
You reward dedicated gatherers by creating mechanics, that require you to be dedicated in order to get most of the benefits, most of the rewards and most of the (high value) gatherables.

By suggesting mass gathering, as you mention above, you directly decrease the value of everything gathered. Which means that more people spend more time, with more risk to get less in the end.

If you want to reward active gatherers, you need to separate them from those that do it occassionally. Through

Skills that allow only gatherers that have put in a lot of time/effort to collect the high value materials.
High Cost - High Reward gathering gear, that is hard to maintain, but will pay off big time for those that spend a lot of time gathering.
A deep progression path that unlocks benefits, but requires lots of effort to progress in.

Warth

@MadCowCrazy
sorry, forgot to tag you in my previous post

Dygz

https://youtu.be/4sUTuUAgavE?t=4682
mark 1:18:02
"The gear for Artisans will live alongside the gear for Adventurers. Currently the approach is, you'll have Artisan-oriented gear. This might be beneficial for your Gathering, it might be beneficial for your Processing, or Your Crafting or whatever it is, right? Your Profession, essentially.
You will Craft that gear, you will equip that gear... almost as an 'undergarment slot', so to speak, and then, you can activate that and it will show the appearance if you wish, during the activation, when you gain the benefit from the gear itself, and then can disappear afterwards, and you go back to your Adventuring gear."
---Steven

insomnia

maybe look on the wiki before you post:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Artisan_classes
Artisan classes allow a player to specialize in one or more of the following skill trees.[2]

Gathering
Processing
Crafting
Within each of these three artisan classes lies different professions.[3]

Characters within a single account (Alts) may have different professions.[4]
There are profession-specific quests.[5]
Professions will be balanced based on testing.[1]
A character may only master one of the three parent artisan classes.[3]

It is possible to master up to two or three professions within this mastered artisan class per character (subject to testing).[1][6][3][7]
A character will be able to achieve up to tier 3 or tier 4 proficiency in professions that are not mastered.[1]
Artisan classes and their professions are not affected by a character's race, religion, or class.[8]

Progression within artisan classes does not relate to a player's progression in their adventuring class.[9]
Choice of profession does not affect a player's stats.[10]
Crafting and gathering is a very important component of the economy that players will have direct control over. Whether you wish to build a sprawling plantation around your house, or wish to travel the vast wilderness in search of treasure and resources.[11]
The crafting systems and artisanship in general is pretty complex.[12] – Steven Sharif

Scarbeus

MadCowCrazy wrote: »

a special gathering bag, if you get killed in pvp you drop the bag containing everything you have gathered.

What I would much rather see is a professional gathering bag, one for each different type of profession that can only carry the resources of that profession (lumber, or fish only etc) and when you die nothing from that bag gets dropped, only the resources you had from outside that bag.

These would be expensive to craft, but due to their restrictive nature of what you can put in them would mean you would still be dropping items from your other bags in PvP so you would still be losing something.

hapy

I feel like gatherers will do most of the work for least reward.
Processors will buy what gatherers sell, process it and then resell it for more.
So if gatherer wants to buy a processed goods, they have to gather more than the cost of those goods they need.
And I feel that crafters just need initial investment for material needed to craft and then resell it for more.

Basically gatherers need to constantly work and other artisan professions just passively make money off of them after initial investment.

I guess this is quite simplistic view and I hope it will be much more complex but currently from the information available this is how I see it.

Warth

Gatherers has always been the most time intensive profession type and that will never change.

In many games, there main problem came from the fact, that every chump with a 5 hour investment could start gathering high tier stuff and peak efficiency. Which resulted in every clown being able to harvest the rare materials, that he stumbled upon while questing, leaving less reward to the actually dedicated gatherers.

This shouldnt be the case in Ashes and by what Steven said, it wont be. Gathering high tier materials should require tons of effort and a certain degree of upkeep, so dedicated gatherers will be the ones profiting from those materials, rather than the clowns and chumps walking by randomly.
Thats also how you ensure, that gatherers who want to it seriously get a proper reward, rather than the pocket change sense in those games you think about @hapy

hapy

@Warth
Yea but even then, the processor will buy the rare gatherable and process it to something more valuable just by putting it to "processing machine" hence making more money for quite a little work. I guess the processing stations will be quite expensive and you need freehold but that is the initial investment.
After that it feels its just quite passive. Just buy stuff and make more valuable stuff.

I wonder how they solve if it even needs solving...

I personally want to be gatherer on my main. And it seems that it will be possible to process stuff on my alt. So one can directly sell processed goods without the middleman.

ButtercupClover

Gatherers also get the added bonus of not being bound to a node or freehold to do their profession. The gatherers who make the most money will most likely be the ones traveling to far away regions and returning with the unique regional materials that aren't available to the node.

It's also something that can be done while farming enemies. It also has the added bonus of not being a gold sink, sure you have to repair tools but that cost is minimal to buying material to process. If it becomes more profitable than processing then why would anyone be a processor? It would just be an eternal money pit with no reward.

hapy

Farming is tied to freehold.
But yea I do agree it doesn't make sense for processed goods to be cheaper than gathered ones. I am just curious if there is maybe more to gathering than it seems at first glance.

Can't wait for new info about the artisan systems...

Judeth

Dygz wrote: »

https://youtu.be/4sUTuUAgavE?t=4682
mark 1:18:02
"The gear for Artisans will live alongside the gear for Adventurers. Currently the approach is, you'll have Artisan-oriented gear. This might be beneficial for your Gathering, it might be beneficial for your Processing, or Your Crafting or whatever it is, right? Your Profession, essentially.
You will Craft that gear, you will equip that gear... almost as an 'undergarment slot', so to speak, and then, you can activate that and it will show the appearance if you wish, during the activation, when you gain the benefit from the gear itself, and then can disappear afterwards, and you go back to your Adventuring gear."
---Steven

I greatly prefer this over what OP had mentioned. Only being able to wear profession oriented gear would just encourage players more to stay green when flagged. Which I can already see happening if someone just wants to gather and not be bothered.

OldManHash

I love gathering, I just hope it FEELS good. Like trees react and wobble when you chop them, plants and herbs wiggle or leaves fall off when you pick them, rocks and bits crumble and fly off of ore when you mine them, etc. Little details like this are essential to immersion IMO. Gathering can already be really fun and addicting, but if you add these rewarding visual flares for that dopamine hit, then you have the potential to make the most fun and addicting gathering meta game in MMOs to date.

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