Make harvesting more interesting

[onek]

Currently harvesting is walking up to a node and standing perfectly still swinging your harvest tool until the node is exhausted. The boredom is one factor that's quickly convinces people that they should macro to do their harvesting. While I've not yet resorted to macroing, I've about fallen asleep harvesting, more than once!

My suggestion would be to make harvest nodes "fragmentable", so that they "decay" as you harvest them. Each time you (successfully) swing your axe, or scythe, a portion of the node would be harvested and disappear, causing you to have to move around to harvest the remaining node. Once the node is harvested, it would no longer appear (until it respawns), indicating that the node is now exhausted. This also prevents players from having to run up to every node and attempt to harvest it, only to find it exhausted.

I don't think this would be too hard to implement - it could be done as a "new type" of node. Obviously somebody would have to update the world for these new types of nodes, but this could be done over time, with existing nodes functioning as they do now.

Imagine harvesting a rock, where each swing of the axe breaks off a piece of the rock. Or, harvesting a patch of herbs, where each swing of the scythe actually mows down a clump of herbs. I think this approach is not only adds more interest to harvesting, it's informative by letting players know when a node is exhausted (or partially consumed), and is consistent with the "realism" aspect of the game.

[Jamboreen]

Currently harvesting is walking up to a node and standing perfectly still swinging your harvest tool until the node is exhausted. The boredom is one factor that's quickly convinces people that they should macro to do their harvesting. While I've not yet resorted to macroing, I've about fallen asleep harvesting, more than once!

My suggestion would be to make harvest nodes "fragmentable", so that they "decay" as you harvest them. Each time you (successfully) swing your axe, or scythe, a portion of the node would be harvested and disappear, causing you to have to move around to harvest the remaining node. Once the node is harvested, it would no longer appear (until it respawns), indicating that the node is now exhausted. This also prevents players from having to run up to every node and attempt to harvest it, only to find it exhausted.

I don't think this would be too hard to implement - it could be done as a "new type" of node. Obviously somebody would have to update the world for these new types of nodes, but this could be done over time, with existing nodes functioning as they do now.

Imagine harvesting a rock, where each swing of the axe breaks off a piece of the rock. Or, harvesting a patch of herbs, where each swing of the scythe actually mows down a clump of herbs. I think this approach is not only adds more interest to harvesting, it's informative by letting players know when a node is exhausted (or partially consumed), and is consistent with the "realism" aspect of the game.

An Excellent Suggestion!

/signed!

[Squirry]

It's fluff, not much more. Whatever variation would come from those changes would mean nothing 2 months down that line when people would start complaining about having to work way too hard to do something as simple as gathering.

It's a good enough idea, but in the grand perspective it won't change anything. Unless you turn gathering into a really REALLY good minigame it will always be tedious and repetetive. That's why it's like that in every game that features it.

Personally i think they went a long way towards making it more interesting lately though. With global, instead of instanced, nodes you now have to go so far away from the safety of the towers that you can not be certain to get within reach before you die. That creates the need to either hire guards or carry arms and be prepared to fight. Or to be on constant guard and ready to run at the slightest hint of trouble.

I had a run tonight where i, after 3 minutes of chasing, escaped two mahirim, that would've torn me to shreds had they caught me, by jumping into a tiny river instead of running past it. I could actually see them run by as i prayed my breath bar would last long enough for them to be gone before i surfaced.

THAT is exciting, and more so than any fluff mechanic you can implement to make it seem liike gathering is intense and action-packed.

[onek]

Your perspective seems to be that if it's not an entertaining mini-game of its own, that it's "fluff" and not worth doing. I don't agree. I'm just looking for some amount more of mental activity required to do the harvesting, other than falling asleep on my keyboard clicking the mouse button 50-100 times in a row. I also don't agree that global nodes causing harvesters to go out of the city makes it any less boring (I was doing that anyway - although it's got to be more fun if you're hunting harvesters!) The fact is that ANYWHERE you're harvesting after sitting perfectly still for 50-100 harvest attempts about 30 seconds apart - well, I think ANYBODY is bored to tears. Right now, if an enemy came along and killed me while harvesting, I'd thank him for putting me out of my misery!

Other games have harvesting, but the ones I've tried have "small" nodes which make you move around from node to node after 2 or 3 harvests (also like Skinning in Darkfall). Although none of those games felt very realistic, I've never had the "fall asleep" problem that Darkfall has. I think my suggestion of "fragmentable" nodes gives at least some variation while not requiring 50 separate rocks spread around the map - I do like Darkfall's method of going to one general area to gather - again, it's realistic like finding an ore vein, or a patch of herbs, but currently soooo boring!

[Theocid]

Sounds like fluff to me, it wouldn't make it more fun. It would just add lagg and take away from the scenery, you would be walking through forests without trees.

[onek]

I don't see how anyone could dispute that harvesting needs to be more interesting (unless you're botting your harvesting, and don't want the change to muck it up). It's a game and it's supposed to be interesting. I doubt anybody would be calling it fluff if I suggested ANY improvement to PvP. Just because the suggestion doesn't apply to clan battles doesn't mean it's not valid - the game is supposed to be more than just a FPS deathmatch!

I don't understand where you think this would introduce lag, and I never suggested that trees would disappear, but I can see how you might come to that conclusion. My thoughts on trees would be to have an area of the tree that could be harvested, and have that disappear - not the tree itself (like current rocks on a hillside - you harvest the rock, not the entire hill). Also, some games have logs on the ground that are harvested, and not the trees themselves. To keep consistent with the "realism" aspect, you only need to be able to harvest enough wood that could be transported - certainly far less than some of these huge trees that you can currently harvest.

My suggestion for "more interesting" doesn't require that harvesting act like it's own adrenaline-pumping mini-game - it sounds like some folk are only interested in any change to harvesting if clicking a harvest node launches into an arena match between you and the harvest node! What I've proposed is a relatively minor change that's not hard to implement, and doesn't require spreading out harvest nodes all over the place, like other games.

[fr0g]

It would be a cool idea, but I think they need to focus on making the nodes have different drops first. Having strawberries and blueberries on the same plant... wtf?