It is too damn hard to gather anything contested after these server mergers. There is too few nodes for higher tier resources in the world. We need to have more resource nodes added to world such as starmetal, wyrdwood, Ori, and plenty more.
There should be an abundance of these if you’re going to have the system be limited nodes since 1 person can literally take all. Also the respawn timers should be lowered for each as well. if the higher tier resources spawned faster like every 3 mines for starmetal and 5 minutes for ori ore while having an abundance of these added to the world.
This would be a huge improvement to the game overall allowing people to actually level their tradeskills at a decent pace compared to the bs grind it is now.
Currently, this is a very frustrating system to attempt to gather nodes you need for crafting.
I agree there is a problem with resource nodes, but I respectfully disagree with creating more nodes or lowering the resource timers and here is my suggestions/thoughts on the matter.
I personally enjoy gathering, I also enjoy pvping for contested areas. I came from games like Albion where guilds camp resources that only spawn every six hours and the PVP is not only always on, but with full loot drops, so I understand high-stakes resource gathering. I’ve also played games with low stakes gathering like LOTRO where you click on a resource, and it autoruns/gathers and other games with personal loot like FFXIV where everyone has their own resource nodes.
The question comes down to two major concepts the purpose of resource gathering with the current state of game mechanics and impact of resource gathering on the economy.
If the purpose of resources is to generate PVP or competition while gathering rule that out immediately. The current state of the game allows BOTs, not even players, to gather nearly every node in-game without being flagged for PVP.
If the purpose of resources is to generate materials for the in-game economy, then the addition of aptitude crates has created a large flux of rare-refining materials making the base mats much more desirable. This appears to be a result of the fact that players are no longer farming these materials as often because they no longer need to mine 100 nodes to get their daily cooldown in rare mats.
As a result, BOTs have taken the place of traditional farming and prices are being set less by supply and demand and more by what people are willing to pay as I am sure some bots sit on materials and watch market values. It is my opinion that allowing gold selling companies and BOTs to influence the economy is somewhat inevitable but should be avoided whenever necessary. It is also my opinion that daily cooldowns and to a lesser extent rare resources limit the amount of high-end crafting available to a server. No one is spending hours gathering to try to roll the perfect 550 piece of gear. Nearly all crafting of matter occurs as a result of using cooldown materials, which are capped on the server by the number of accounts with the necessary professions.
As I see it BOTs and the ability to farm unflagged are simply preventing those of us who enjoy harvesting or others who still need to level professions. Who cares if I want to farm low level mats to level my professions and participate in crafting profession locked legendries? The people who rushed professions or bought gold to level them all faster than anyone else, are already able to afford the high price of base materials. Forcing newer players or those without capped professions to farm alongside BOTs and other same faction/non-flagged players is, in my opinion, destroying an enjoyable part of the game.
Solutions would be to eliminate bots, moving resource nodes (would only stop low level programmers or poorly/lazy written scripts). Always flagging PVP somehow regarding resources (would result in companies camping high resource area/zones). Personalized* nodes (would result in a more organic material price, most certainly lower, where people would simply be paying for other people’s time essentially).
After looking at the current state of harvesting and its impact on crafting high level pieces I don’t see why there is any completion for base resources. People spend hours in game planning and building their farming routes (reason not to add more nodes or speed up timers). Knowledge of the map and respawn timers make planning routes fun and people are always trying to find more efficient ways to farm. In its current state the game does not promote this style of play, nor does it promote PVP, it also does not impact the number of high-level crafts. Unless companies bought more and more copies of the game and leveled the professions to have access to more and more cooldowns. Judging by the number of players selling cooldown materials with no company and no faction selected…that’s already happening.
My recommendation is personal nodes, let players decide how they want to spend their time. There’s already almost no PVP around resources and if that was the goal, make resource gathering require you to flag and you drop materials upon death.
I hope this gets some attention, I really enjoy this game and miss being able to farm resources. I used to stay up to odd hours on the server just to be able to (not the healthiest habit) gather consistently.
This is a great analysis. I have a slightly different suggestion.
- T5 legendary mats should drop in far reduced amounts from aptitude boxes. This allows mining luck + flagging bonus to be far more profitable
- Add meteors that drop orichalcum, similar to how gleamite currently works. Perhaps allow the nodes in neutral areas to be mined only if you are PvP flagged.
I am hoping this will incentivize flagging up when gathering. As well, the gleamite meteor system cant exactly be camped by bots. I really havent thought this through though, more feedback would be appreciated.
The reagent converters are a good start but they cost more money to use than buying the materials on the trading post. The crafting cost charged at the stations needs to be intelligent enough to factor in the current prevailing value of the material being made and charge tax based on that not some hidden number.
Introduce recipes that work similar to converters but aren’t from material type to type but just converts materials from tiers to tiers. Similar to how Motes work. 4 iron ore can be crafted into 1 Star metal ore and 4 star metal ore can be crafted into 1 ori ore.
Then nodes can be left alone and it will distribute value across all the resources on the market. Now iron ore is worth 1/4th of starmetal and 1/16th of ori calcum and vice versa they all become normalized against one another.
I am all for personal nodes. Its very frustrating going out gathering only to find out all the nodes are hit by unflagged bots/ players
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