Impressions of Chapter 1 from ATS: of special interest to those who forage.

[tleilaxu]

But let's try. My new post patch1 price for weapons is 10k per QL. Happy hunting.

Like Linda Evangelista huh? Won't get out of bed for 10K heh heh. I suggest even more than that past Q100, 15-20K.

[shrike]

@jvani:

I generally agree on most of your points. Just a few remarks:

"So some say we should look to the fighters for mats... In general the mats they bring in are trash."

That is certainly true, but around 70-90% of all things crafted *are* trash meant for exp and immedient sale to the NPC. There simply is no player market for only quality items (at least if you have normal decay rates).

And mobmats can supply a big amount of these mats. If the fubar'ed drops of non-kitin herbivores would be fixed they could actually supply all of them. Boosting the rather limitied way to get highqual mobmats would be nice, too, especially considering that the only way to get boni on parry, speed or spell power (to mention a few examples) is by using mobmats.

Said since the old beta-boards that mobmats need a boost, but get usually shouted down quickly by people like svayvti, who seemingly cannot stand anything which could endanger foraging.

Well let's see. The server populations are ridiculously low. I run around the whole world and see maybe 50-60 people. That is about the size of an Everquest raid. 30% of the people currently playing are just playing to bridge the time until WoW or EQ2 release. Another 20% are quitting when patch1 hits because it blows, ignores the players concerns and makes forgaing an even more dull and boring experience as it already is. You should take the rose colored fan-boy glasses off and open your eyes..these changes ruin the game.

That Ryzom desperatly needs new players is true without question. And it could very well be that this will be one of the shortest MMORPGs ever (I always get a amused smile on my face when I read this "they have the stroyline planned for 8 years" comment.)

But, still, the changes are necessary. They may be hard for someone used to the source mod changing game, but like the blind issue this aspect wasn't meant this way. The devs noticed quite late that they made huge oversights and are trying to fix them. If they won't the game would die in the long run.

And this HUGE source of mats , where is that coming from? Who the hell do you think is stupid enough to actually go forage and then sell their mats to the vendor after this patch?

Do you people never both to read everything what I am writing? *eyesroll*
Quality items will still depend mostly on foraging, but the vast maiority of items crafted is just for training porpuses. For which basic-fine mobmats will do just fine.

But let's try. My new post patch1 price for weapons is 10k per QL. Happy hunting.

[vguerin]

I have sent a 911 to our CSR team as well... This will be a major failure if implemented as is... We are about to lose many folks if concerns are not addressed.

Observations I posted on our site ! (Click Here)

I dont want an easy game, but it MUST be playable and enjoyable... this is neither on ATS.

DoubleTap
Click here to join Melinoe
Ultimate Harvesting Guide
Melinoe - Atys Harvesters
http://ryzom.twazz.net/

[ctusk]

Do you people never both to read everything what I am writing? *eyesroll*
Quality items will still depend mostly on foraging, but the vast maiority of items crafted is just for training porpuses. For which basic-fine mobmats will do just fine.

I certainly read what you write, the problem is you either don't really know what you are talking about, you like to simply ignore reality, or, you don't craft anything above q150.

Who is out there that will be able to kill those mobs that drop these great basic mobmats of QL170+ ? And will they be able to kill 10.000s of these mobs to actually get a crafter high enough to make them armor and weapons?

And most importantly - where is the fun in it.


PS: Kudos to DT for taking some active action about the matter.

[tleilaxu]

After a lengthy discussion with GM Takashi, I sent him this list of problems which I see with the patch and possible fixes.

Top 5 problems & possible solutions:
1. The increased use of focus due to a lack of intermediaries between a credit of -24 and -64. With the cost of stanzas this makes it very impractical to use anything except a -64 credit at level 100. This is simply untenable with the focus pool size & regen rate as it currently stands.

-add intermediary credits in between -24 and -64.
-reduce the cost of gentle extraction stanzas to 50% more instead of double the credit cost.
-decrease focus consumption for the credits themselves
-creation of new credits such as the "range", "hp" credits that spells & melee skills have to reduce focus consumption.

2. XP per pull still linked to predominantly Q level of the item and max Q level is significantly harder to obtain. This encourages XPing and discourages material quantity gathering. This also increases the clutter of already limited inventories which annoys players to no end especially considering stacking problems.

-increase ratio of XP for # of mats pulled to Q level so that they are more balanced. This way materials will still be coming into the system.
-increase the rate of quality increase
-increase the importance of material type in determining XP i.e. supreme mats should give more xp

3. Mode behaviour is totally random and a harvester can pull several times draining all of his focus very quickly without getting a single mat in the new forage system. This will drive many foragers away.

-have even the shortest lived modes behave in such a way as the forager can at least pull 1 mat
-have the longest lived source modes give double or even triple the mat numbers which you can pull per cycle.

4. Forced grouping of foragers under the proposed patch 1 changes in order to adequately stabilise a source mode does not yield any benefits and in fact has drawbacks. A team of two is quite unable to pull quantity at the same rate as a solo harvester can under the current system. In addition focus consumption is much too high and the careplanner does not get a fair share of the XP. These changes also make solo harvesting which is an enjoyable past time for many dedicated players absolutely untenable.

-instead of dragging everyone down, the patch 1 changes should allow for groups to pull much higher numbers than a solo harvester under the current system. The increase should not be additive but synergistic. Here's what I mean. As a solo harvester under the current system I can average about 6 mats per pull at forage level 150. In a team of two the increase in numbers pulled should not be 12 mats per pull but maybe 15 or some other number higher than a simple addition of two averages. With a team of 4, one puller, two careplanners & a healer the quantity should be truly awesome.
-changes suggest for problem #2 should then benefit grouped harvesters as they are able to pull many more mats on average than a solo harvester.
-XP division within the group should be given equally as long as the group member is engaged in an action during the pull. Prospection could be added as a bonus to XP. Each group member should also increase the XP by a small constant to encourage grouping.

5. The new timer bar is hard to judge as to how much time one has left on a pull. The old timer system was much better in terms of giving a forager accurate information as to how much time is left.

-a combination of the new colour warning time bar & old timer length displayed as a fraction of max.

6. Avoidance of gas clouds should be made more difficult than current but the patch requires you to be excessively close with no hope of moving away in time to save yourself from certain death should a gas cloud form.

[shrike]

Certainly aggree with 1-3 & 5.
Not with 4, but I don't think anyone of us can convince the other of his opinion here.

But 6? "certain death should a gas cloud form"? Isn't that a little melodramatic? Not saying that I haven't met some juicy 300 dps coulds before, where escape even with my current 1.5k hp is tricky if I don't react fast and don't have full or nearly full hp. But the vast maiority was 30-150 dps. NO problem at all to run out of those - you can cancel the extraction action and run out of their range in 3-5 secs. With the 30 dps I didn't really bothered to run away, I just continued harvesting at took the damage.

Everything on the ATS in primeroots with q150 agressive + mat spec + terrain spec and choice-supreme sources.

[korin77]

One of the things people are overlooking currently is that the vendor system will solve more than just a supply issue. People are complaining that with the new harvest system there won't be any mats going to the vendor. I say that you are wrong. Guild members often sell their mats instead of giving it to someone who needs because of two factors, instant cash and hassle of handing it to the other members. This will probably continue to happen so there will always be a supply of mats.

The other solution that vendor system offers is that of the decay rate and lack of armor. People grinding armor will often practice with basic and fine mats, but sometimes they will use up their choice mats in desperation and then sell it to the vendors. This will result in alot of practice armor being sold on the market and brought up by people who wear through armor too quickly and just needs something of their level to tie them through.

[jvani]

That is certainly true, but around 70-90% of all things crafted *are* trash meant for exp and immedient sale to the NPC.

Quality items will still depend mostly on foraging, but the vast maiority of items crafted is just for training porpuses. For which basic-fine mobmats will do just fine.

One thing you may not realize, is that our fighters are *already* wearing trash, grind crap that is meant to be sold to the npc's as you say, or going naked on a daily basis because I cant even pull enough choice/excellent (nevermind supreme) to keep them all armored. Unless, of course, no one is fighting that week. God forbid you actually wear a supreme set of armor and the group fights a torbak or two and destroys your armor within an hour. That other 10-30% of decent armor/mats is *already* insufficient in quantity.

Then we come to the other issue that many of our fighters now *could* be using q160+ weapons and armor, and only a handful of guild-supplied weaponsmiths have made it in ONE tree that far, and no armorsmiths that I know of yet. So the 70-90% of grind crap is *also* insufficient in quantity.

So letsee the math goes....

Insufficient quantity of choice+ mats to make real armor people want to fight in + insufficient quantity of grind mats coming from *both* foraging and fighting now to keep crafters on par with fighter/mage levels = nerf foraging and fighting to slow down mats coming from both of those sources.. ????

And somehow that will make things fun? I dont get it.


-Jv
aka Nvara, Light Armor crafter of Melinoe

[fellgrim]

I have a solution to the mats problem.

Set all players to drop excellent/supreme mats based on their highest level skill and turn off all the PvP filters on the server. However, your ability to reap mats will be determined by the amount of DP you currently have.

PROBLEM SOLVED!

[jvani]

Guild members often sell their mats instead of giving it to someone who needs because of two factors, instant cash and hassle of handing it to the other members. This will probably continue to happen so there will always be a supply of mats.
.

That actually might happen even *more* often now because of the itsy bitsy little stacks we get because we've had to abort harvesting early to avoid an explosion. So the new system is going to rely on storage being even more annoying and cumbersome than it was before! argh! Meanwhile making it even *more* difficult for guilds to work together to supply their already-behind-the-curve crafters.

Dont forget each person will have a limited number of items on the market and they dont HAVE to put those mats up for public sale. I doubt I'll be using my market slots for little stacks of mats, but maybe those who still get stacks of the same q off critters will.

- Jv
aka Nvara, Light Armor crafter of Melinoe