Ashes "Gathering" that will kill Alpha

Been testing since phase 1 and I must say in the current state the game is very enjoyable. There are numbers of bugs and systems not fully working properly, but as a tester I can understand and forgive all of the shortcomings and issues currently present in the game.

However, what myself and many guild mates and testers are extremely concerned about, is the "Gathering" system. I put it in quotes because its not actually a gathering system, its a camping system. The way the current system works is that when the mining veins or trees are seeded at server reset or on whatever timer they are set to seed, the rarity of that vein or tree remains the same until another server reset or reseed. With this, all one needs to know is the respawn timer of the vein or tree you just hit, and you can essentially camp that node all day and reap the rewards. Find a legendary TIN at 8:00 AM, you can farm upwards of 40 legendary TIN in 1 day, from 1 vein, camping it every 2 hours.

This current system makes a major part of the game illegitimate and un-fun. Gathering should be random, and rewarding for people who just want to run around and pick flowers, or mine rocks, or chop trees, at anytime, in any node. The rarity roll of a spawn should RNG roll (taking into account the users rarity rating) at the moment of picking, chopping, or mining. NOT when the resource is spawned on server reset or reseed.

Gathering is a staple point in most MMO RPGs and i feel like a pretty basic system to implement. If the current system is intended, that's extremely concerning. If its not intended, also concerning that Intrepid couldn't implement a better working system at this point in development given the massive amounts of examples there are with other games.

PLEASE, I and others I know are begging that you fix this immediately. I would wager about 25-35% of players know that this is how the system works, and the Riverlands are already fully camped out by large guilds. Once 75%+ of the player base knows how to camp gathering nodes, it will be impossible to find even a heroic material for the average tester. There will be 5-10 people sitting on spots camping spawn timers, which I would imagine is NOT the intention of the gathering system from Intrepid.

If this is not fixed soon I fear it is going to steer a TON of player base away from testing this game. A quick fix to keep the RNG in gathering could be to re-seed the gathering nodes every 4-6 hours or so or on some random timer, if the permanent fix is too hard to implement quickly. At least then players would only be able to camp 1 extra gatherable spawn before everything is re-seeded. Please please please fix this.

A concerned but loyal tester
- Bater

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Comments

nanfoodle

This is real and proven

Ballicus

This should be 100% a priority, this also makes it near impossible to test if systems such as rarity/quality on tools are even working right now.

kerrai

Yep, we’ve been raising the alarm on this for a few weeks now. It’s a huge problem and also very easy to fix.

Chicago

Bump, this should be way more urgent than a sound pass on buffs

Calibix

I get it's an Alpha and I can tolerate it for the time being, but without a change to how this works people will leave and not come back.

If one were to spend two hours gathering, they should absolutely come out of it with more value than someone who found a legendary node and then logged in two hours later. It's literally antithetical to the risk vs reward theme of the game. The person actually gathering is taking all of the risk and getting none of the reward and vice versa.

SmileGurney

Gathering in Ashes is one of the most unsatisfying experiences I ever had in MMOs. Static spawn locations, static respawn timers. The whole system is open to abuse and IS actively abused. Some resources are far more scarce than other resources of that tier which makes crafting of certain items of higher quality close to impossible. I initially though mining is a pain, now it turns out the whole crafting is bottlenecked due to lack of stuff like rare animal fats, wood, leathers and rare plant fibres (flowers etc).

Maybe those issues persist for the better, because the player power gap issue is still here and caravans are basically work as gold printers. Who needs gold sellers?

Managing gathered resources is a pain. You constantly play tetris with gathered resources, especially in the storage. Extra storage prices are extortionate. Resources don't stack high enough, and resource rarity just adds to the problems with storage and processing. The UI...oh man, we need multiple UX passes before this becomes smooth. It's very...functional.

On the top of that we still run into storage bugs, people complain on their whole storage disappearing.
Guild storage is nowhere to be found. I really hope the guild storage system will allow you to monitor/restrict who puts/takes out what from it...

Renouncing the citizenship prevents you from accessing the storage you PAID money for. You aren't informed about this restriction. Stuff like gathering and storage are pretty fundamental systems if you consider character persistence and progression.

We could talk about other issues, like node and crafting progression, which require a lot of cooperation from players. That also isn't working out that great. If Phase2 was supposed to be focused on testing the economy, then the results are in. It's FUBAR.

SzaboHarvester

I agree rng resource spawning is the optimal and fair system moving forward imo, I would also submit that the gathering system currently, since wipe, has easily netted my time and effort hundreds of gold, all inventory/storage spots filled with resources thus allowing for multiple toons to easily gear and level at their own pace. So while the current gathering system does provide a path for player growth and financial security it should be tuned for rng, seems fair to me.

Xoppers

Full agree with this..it is nigh impossible to gather some materials simply because the resources spawn in the same spot and on an almost exact timer. Camping for some spawns is expected but if you dont log on in the first hour of every reset, good luck getting any sort of valuable materials.

Shantarr

Agreed.

I believe that they also have a thread on the official Discord at times where they ask for the community's top issues. I would encourage people to post "Gathering Rework" as a listed item each time they ask. That list is very likely to have the proper eyes on it.

Genj

Completely agree.

Camping resources takes all the fun out of the gathering system. Seeing people afk in front of known "high-tier" spawns is just silly and removes life from the world. Really hoping to see the mentioned changes come into play soon.

Veeshan

the "god" node aka rare node that give the higher quality is an issue especialy since they respawn same spot everytime with a set timer so anyone who find it that tree will be camped on spawn which is why we have like 2-3 large guild monopolizing weeping willow above heroic quality, the pesants can only get the normal willow spots which have a chance to proc to green or rare from logging rarity but anything above that is super low chance to get

MindsEye

I dinged level 26 Journeman Lumberjacking (no axe yet) before finding my 1st legendary tree. I must say, my heroic axe only ads 85 rarity. The speed rating is high, but speed rating on axe is obviously not implemented in game properly as still takes same time as a crude axe.
The legendary was a Western larch.
Heroic Ash trees I have found clearly stood out as “this doesn’t belong here” but so far no epic ash trees yet at level 27. This is thousands and thousands of trees. With a datamined 0.001% chance at legendary, that being 1 in 1000, the rarity I find to be too low of a chance to occur. Never seen legendary oak in phase 2. Mathematically I should have seen more rares but per the brute force approach, shows, that this rarity chance is NOT OCCURRING during gathering, in regards to trees

FG_Dave

The current gathering mechanic is awful. The resources are controlled by those who find them first and know the rarity and respawn timer. Even if they cant overhaul the system right now the best thing they could do is randomise the respawn timer so it can no longer be farmed on guaranteed cooldown, this would at least break the clock watching and open up opportunities for someone else to find them.

The state of gathering is also impacting Crafting and NPC loot drops desirability also. The current system is making an abundance of epic/legendary resources meaning there is a hyper-focus on crafted gear, to the point that nearly all NPC loot drops are considered trash and getting anything above Rare quality to drop is an nearly an impossible feat.

If gathering was more like Hunting, where Epic and Legendary is actually difficult to come by, then NPC loot would be more meaningful and used. Running dungeons would have a purpose as the gear would be seen as valuable. Yes the crafted gear will still be better, and its something to strive for, but knowing that it will be difficult to gather all of the Epic/Legendary components means you would settle for NPC loot in the interim.

Pham

I would prefer a gathering node system that determines rarity at the time it is gathered (like the OP said) and not on server reset or any more semi-permanent basis.

kerrai

The bandaid fix is to just RNG the respawn timers to have a 30 or 60 minute maximum variance instead of making them static. After the bandaid there are a lot of reasonable options to fix it—rerolling rarity at the time the node spawns, rolling rarity at the time of gathering, fixing gathering rarity rating, etc.

methose1

This one thing has already driven away so many players, including my wife. I love testing but a lot of people are not testing but abusing. Look around now and see random players standing in random locations doing nothing? It's mainly because they are waiting for a specific gatherable to spawn that has been determined to give a specific rarity for that "Seed period". This is not farming for gatherable material; this is SPAWN CAMPING. Those who have enough manpower to log in first and hit the gatherable nodes first will know the Rarity type AND the spawn timer!! Make this system better, INTREPID you can do better!!

JSpenceGlass

I brought this up MULTIPLE times during developer livestreams, twitch discussions, and YouTube comments.
This gathering system is going to fail at it's current form

muthatuckaaa

Completely agree. The current system has to go asap. It's incredibly easy to abuse and I personally know players who primarily gather that have already quit over this.

This is one of the most critical systems in the game.

Please make this a priority, Intrepid.

Valduren

Yes - this needs to be reworked, and Im sure it will be, pretty obvious issue. Feels placeholder.

Elemenohpe

Mathematically I should have seen more rares but per the brute force approach, shows, that this rarity chance is NOT OCCURRING during gathering, in regards to trees

Yeah this has been noticed in my guild. Go check out just north of lionhold, like right behind the 3 quest givers around the fire, particularly for Ash. We noticed that they are all chopped down constantly, at least on Vyra, so my curiosity was peaked. So I started checking when I ran through the area and if I saw an ash in one of those spots it was usually heroic+. Had a lvl 25 guild leader from another guild sit and wait at those Ash spawn points and get all agitated when I got close...it was rather hilarious.

Anyways. I figured this out at the very end of the last test session and am gonna check it out again once servers are back up to see if it's still happening. Once I can confirm, I will be reporting it.

Given the current system design I am not sure if it's considered a bug/exploit, but if confirmed I will be reporting it. It almost seems like the higher rarity trees are spawning primarily in that area/node and not other nodes for some reason.

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