The basis behind this post is that flagging up should have a Reward > Risk feel to it. As the current system stands the only bonus flagging up gives you is a 10% gathering luck bonus. (Oh and pvp xp if you HAPPEN to come across someone else that is flagged gathering too…). This is pretty useless in my opinion and here is why;
There are [6] types of harvesting nodes, [16] of cooking nodes, [9] types of mining nodes, [17] types of beasts to skin, [21] elemental nodes, [12] pigments, and [4] types of woodcutting nodes. Out of these 85 or so different types of nodes, cooldown materials and gems are arguably the only “Rare” items wanted from gathering. With that being said its only a handful of these nodes that have the ability to drop these coveted “rare” resources. Less than 10.
Odds are when I go to gather, I’m going to be picking up lower tier stuff more often as there are far more of those nodes then there are the rarer higher tier ones. Far too often I go to farm resources and see the same people afk camping nodes unflagged.
I don’t see how flagging up and being forced to race node to node with people who are unflagged is considered good pvp content. I’m not getting any more from that node by flagging up and making it there quicker. Unless its one of the 10 or so nodes that have rare materials worth anything, I don’t care about the “rare” resources I’m probably not going to get from it.
If this game wants to have pvp’ers and pve’ers pulling from the same exact resource pool then they should give you a true benefit to flagging up and gathering. I suggest they reduce the amount of resources gained by 20-30%, if not more, for unflagged players and provide a yield bonus to people who flag up. There has to be some type of compromise to balance it out, because of as of right now I barely come across anybody gathering flagged. Any other suggestions to fix this?