Additional Tweaks to Foraging - Please Discuss

[haddo]

I see some posts here on how forcing groups to work together so that some can forage is a good thing. I disagree. Here as an example of how I see chat going.

looking for group to go to PR to help me forage stuff - need defenders.

I will. I will. I will. I will - just give me 5 more minutes.

5 minutes later - almost ready.

10 minutes later - ready.

afk bio.

afk baby is crying

afk phone.

afk door.

20 minutes later - tp to PR.

20 minutes fighting to a spot.

afk bio

sorry - i have to leave.

etc. etc. Trying to get a solid group together for any significant time periods is a challenge. It's even harder if members vary in levels a lot or all don't have access to the same places.

If you have a guild full of 10 hour a day players, this might work out better. A guild of more casual players, groups just isn't going to happen consistently. And what if your guild members are mostly focused on foraging so none of them want to go fight so that some can forage?

On PvP in some zones: It's very simple. I will not be killed twice by players. The first time means cancelling my account.

On foraging changes: You can keep adjusting (nerfing) things to try to get progression and access to higher level mats all you want. I'll either adapt or find something else to do. Reallistically - there will always be some that can find near optimal ways to accomplish what they want. The more time constrained and casual players are the ones that suffer and those make up a large part of the PAYING base for the game.

My suggestions: Focus on content, keep the game fun (challenging but not near impossible), keep PvP out of the game except as consentual - individual, guild vs. guild, battles over territory, events are all ok. Zone PvP is not ok.

You don't realize how many friends I have that I just can't recommend the game to yet since the game play changes so much and I just don't know how you will implement PvP. Everyone that quits is potentially several other players lost that might have joined the community.

Haddo

[zumwalt]

Someone please correct me if I am wrong, this is only from my point of view on harvesting.

Being a solo harvestor, if I can get my packer to the harvest location alive, I have to spend upwards to around 6 hours to fill the packer with mats, if I took all 3 packers, that is 18 hours of work, no matter how I spread it out.

How many groups want to stick around me for up to 18 hours so I can fill my packers?

If I were to solo in PR on harvesting, but have a group or two around me doing there normal guarding for 1 or 2 hours, I would scarecly get enough mats for a full suit of armor, if that, how many harvestors are willing to do this?

Harvesting for the majority of us is a solo event, we care plan / harvest for hours on end to try to supply the crafters with mats.

I am presuming our harvesting lives in the PR or other zones that is layed out with the new system will mean we are at the mercy of the mercinaries or people who are warrior / healers, to dictate our harvesting time.

Say you have 100 members in your guild, of which 50 require new armor.
This would mean if I can get enough mats for a choice set of armor in 2 hours with the failures, thats 100 hours of harvesting?
Like 30 minutes of crafting tops.

Does this or would this mean that I would need to have a few groups guard me / assist in harvesting for half that time (with more harvestors/care planners), so 50 hours of work?

My brain hurts.

[lariva]

100% in agreement with that.
my foraging is 143 forest and mere 54 in PR, my crafting is ~120s which implies that i craft not only for grid but for sale as well.

With coming changes, i seriously doubt i will be able to get the spots in PR without camping; for that - I simply do not have time, as there is family, work and a house.

making harvesting as difficult as it is up on the mainland - i'll agree to that, although greater reward for greater risk should be appreciated as well. If i have to fight PR mob that is 10x of the strength of forest mob, i expect to get something for it.

MP = Mat Points or Mat Life, meaning that a source with 100 MP has a total of 100 mats that can be obtained before it runs dry.

Although discussion of this, might lead to heated battles, the problem is that it is becoming increasingly harder to obtain the mats we desire, even for grinding out the levels in general.

Our community is mainly adult based, and most players are not going to care one way or another about fighting over sources.

All this will do is take us casual players and tell us that if we don't play hard core 24 / 7, we will most likely not see any resources, once a high level forager is able to reap all the mats, we get online while they don't have a job and spent 12 hours empting sources, to find the land dry.

So, we then log off the game, go fix dinner, take in a movie, read a good book, and try the next day.

Since we have lives outside of the game, and are casual harvestors, we get home to play our measly 2 or 3 hours in the evening, to find all the sources.. yet again.. dry..

So we rince and repeat what we did the night before.

Come the end of the week, we have forgotten that Ryzom is a fun game, cancel the account, and finish reading our books, or just having fun in real life in general, and took our $15 a month and bought a papa johns pizza and 2liter of soda.

There is really not much to discuss, it is already apparent that the harvesting of mats is becoming increasingly harder, sources are drying up, and our mektoubs can't hold all that we want them to, so our storages are slim, especially if we want to save mats for when the lands dry up and we are the only ones with mats to craft items.

We can't craft from within our 1million dapper appartments like we can our packers, so its wasted space and money.

I can agree on the difficulty of harvesting matching that of the lands the mats are found in, but limiting the amount of mats even farther than what they are right now, will reduce the number of casual gamers in Ryzom that do nothing but harvest and craft like myself.

The other night, I took my packer into Fleeting Gardens, parked him and harvested for 5 hours, at the end of the 5 hours I had around 400'ish mats on my packer at a level 88 forest harvestor (now level 90).

From those mats, I was able to make enough armor / equipment to gain a total of 3 crafting levels, 1 in 2h melee, 1 in heavy armor, and 1 in jewelry.

During the harvest, I had gained 2 harvesting levels to take me from 88 to 90.

The system as it stands based on this 5 hours of soloing, gave me equal to 1 level per hour, 2 in harvest, 3 in craft.

Now your telling me its going to get harder because the mats are going to be rarer and take longer to replenish.

This in turn tells me that my 1 level per hour is going to be 1 level per 2 or 3 hours.

That 5 hour on a week night run to get mats is a rare occasion, so moving forward I can look forward to maybe 1 level every few days?

I am just trying to understand what is coming.

[vguerin]

Here are a few things that the devs are working on in regards to foraging. Here's what to expect in the future:

1) Some MPs of high quality will be very hard to forage for a player who doesn't have the sufficiant skill level. This will happen in particular in the prime roots. But the prime roots remain interesting for foragers of lower levels, although they can't forage the best MPs.

2) The deposits will have a limited quantity of MP. Once the players have foraged everything in the deposit, it will remain empty for some time. This should have a big impact in the PvP zones, as players will be able to defend their deposits against other players.

Some of these things just make my head spin, is there a relationship between wanting to make certain areas in Atys not worth going into without a specific purpose and the fact the areas currently allocated for PvP are also the areas that are the most broke/incomplete ?

The Nexus and several sections of the Prime Roots have broken teleporters inside, outside and all around. Missing teleports that have the welcomer and others that you cannot effectively use because you cannot leave the safe zones with mob density.

Bosses with guardians so thick a complete server attack would be wiped within 180 seconds. The dragon is missing completely as well as his guardians. Kitin Larva all but gone except for self spawning sources in areas you could never defend to wait on their slow replenishment.

What happened to the game that David Cohen Corval talked so well about that made us all dream we had found our game finally ? It's being turned into every other game and still little more than a grindfest.

Full interview, Part 1 here : http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/370/370726p1.html - September 11, 2002

Jonric: What are you willing to reveal about full Saga, and in particular, about the setting for the initial segment that you're developing now?

David Cohen Corval: There will be several Movements in the Saga of Ryzom. And in the First Movement, there are clues, or symptoms, of what is to come in the following Movements. This is important, because it gives depth to the Saga - a solid background to support compelling perspectives. It is like building a house; there have to be serious foundations to build a robust house.

The First Movement of the saga takes place on Atys, an organic world where nature is not dominated (unlike it is on our Earth today). Quite the opposite, Nature runs wild and remains very arrogant. There is a sense of verticality too. Players will arrive in the game on the planet's surface or Bark, and soon, they will discover passages down through the Bark into the primordial roots of the planet; other paths will lead upward to the canopy, high above the Bark.

Arriving on the Bark of Atys, players will find reasonably familiar environments - deserts, jungle, forest and island-like environments. But rapidly, as players choose their roles and build up their characters, they will be carried away in the depths of the world, towards the more original and mysterious parts of the planet. But even the 'basic' environments have their secrets and cycles according to the seasons. The seasons of Atys are not exactly the same as Earth's. But each season brings important changes - changes in the behaviors of the creatures, changes in the available resources, and as a result, the needs and problems of the different civilizations change too.

Part 2 of the interview - http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/371/371329p1.html - September 17, 2002

Jonric: Since a number of the careers relate to combat, how much of a factor will it be? What type of combat system did you set out to create, and what are the main features you've built into it?

David Cohen Corval: [Edited for space]Combat is a key element of any RPG, and Ryzom is no exception. Combat is a key element in the game. And we paid a lot of attention to the combat system. We pushed it hard to make it better, and more interesting.

Guilds will be able to declare war to one another, and alliances are possible too. We will soon show the combat system via short movies shot in the game.

These interviews are THE REASON I saw SoR as the game I wanted to play... No mention of Open PvP to be found. No MP3 player or other fluff... a game that would be a discovery of sorts. All I am discovering is that Nevrax is listening to someone, and it isn't the majority of their playerbase.

Many of these changes don't effect me as I am one of the ugly power gamers with time to figure out the best way to play around/thru these changes. They do effect my guild and the community and thus my playing experience. We have already lost too much...

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[jivalax]

I think many good points have already been made, and I will try not to rehash them. I am currious about one thing, why make mats harder to find? Someone has suggested it will make higher level higher q items harder to find .... somewhere is someone seeing a glut of level 200 supreme weapons??? Everyone I know is using items lower than max, and scrounging for new. Oh wait, I have some supreme earrings, does that count? NO! I can craft everything a Matis character could need, harvest in all areas including PR and have a set of armor 20 levels too low for me because every scrap I get at a good level I give to guildies who are fighting more than I am and it is still too low for them. Don't tell me I just need to play more, I am one of the fortunate few, my wife and I put in over 100 hours a week between us. Yet, even the few who make high level stuff are not killing the market with tons of it. Try to find a level 200 set of heavy armor, there are a precious few out there.
I think things are difficult enough as it is. Making it more difficult at this point will take away from the roleplaying aspect. It will no longer be a fight against the kitins, a rush to save the world, or to learn what you can about Atys. It will become too centered around conflict with each other. I am not totally opposed to conflict between gamers, but it should not be the all emcompassing part of the game. It should not be what we all log in to worry about.

[wylkroe]

My primary concern is balance of available mats in atys not just prime roots. We already have areas totally camped by mobs. Now we are going to make availability of supreme materials camped by both mobs and hostile players.

#1 forage grind. Already as is, foraging is a grind for minimal XP you spend countless hours to even make it to a reasonable level. When you do make it to the higher levels you have to slash and hack your stanza's to even afford a full pull. Players cant even afford to use their highest level extractions with available focus. So make it even harder than it was before? Why? Are you trying to run off the remaining player base?

When it comes to supreme mats. They are not available all the time only based on time of day, season, weather patterns and the like. I for one do not have space to horde supreme mats of any kind.

Quite frankly I question where nevrax is going with this it seems like all they can do is nerf the game more as a replacement for content. Where is everything else they promised? Where are the outposts? Why do the Teleporters not work in some cases even missing? Why are we missing the promised guild hall upgrades? Instead we get tents next to vendors. Kites flying above tribe areas. Where are the guild missions? Why are you constantly nerfing everything and not focusing on the game you promised us? I have held faith in ryzom for a long time now but it is draining quickly. If we continue along these lines the next patch change the name to "The Saga of Grind and dull"

Things that sold me on the game were based on the first open beta. At that point progression speed made up for the lack of content. Everyone could participate in combat and obtain xp. It made for a fun environment that kept the game enjoyable and fun. Now there are multiple limitations on progression to the point you almost need to take notes to keep up with what you can do to progress without hurting everyone elses progression too many things to worry about not enough fun

[ichigono]

Ok, as for #1, I'm not sure I like this idea. In PR, once you've got a spot, you have to contend with weather changes and season changes to determine the grade of material you can harvest. How can you expect people to GET the higher level of skill if half the time, or maybe more, they can't even ACCESS the available materials because they're 'too low level'?

It's even worse aboveground, where the Excellent mats (haven't seen Supreme mats aboveground yet) are so tied in with conditions that there are some periods of time where you just can't get anything. This, in my mind, punishes the casual player who can't wait around for hours for the absolute perfect conditions to get their mats. Who, if this change goes into effect, doesn't have tons of time to put in to get sufficiently high level to even ACCESS these mats.

If this can be done in such a way as to not punish the casual harvester, then it might be a good idea, but as currently stated, I'm against it. As it is, you have to have certain levels of Harvest before you can even get prospecting for the higher grade materials.

As for #2, the specific change is not in and of itself a bad idea. Excellent and Supreme mats should be more rare, and harder to get. I'm sorry, but I don't think crafters should be grinding out levels using these mats.

My concern here is that the mats will become TOO rare; the devs at Nevrax have shown a propensity for going overboard with changes, and I fear they will do so here, as well. This, too, may punish the casual player, in that they won't have hours to wait for a supreme or excellent mat to replenish itself. If, on the other hand, the replenish time for these mats is changed to be, maybe 2-3 times the replenish time for 'ordinary' mats, this might be more acceptable.

Also, consider that the availability of Excellent and Supreme mats is already restricted to certain climate conditions, which already makes them hard to get. This game seems to headed towards becoming harder to play, without becoming worth playing. The devs have yet to deliver on a lot of the features that were promised back in beta, and yet they want to make fundamental changes in current gameplay; this doesn't seem right to me.

I won't go into why I don't think open pvp in PR is a good idea, because this thread is specifically about foraging changes, but basically, I feel that the changes under discussion are too much, too fast, and not necessary at this point in time. Maybe farther down the road, once the rest of the actual content has been delivered, but not now.

[usinuk]

I first want to thank Cerest for at least attempting to put out another fire by the devs before it becomes a 5-alarm one. I wish we had him on the European forums.

There have been a lot of good points made here. I won't rehash them.

First, I would actually agree with someone who I tend to radically disagree with, zz, on that there are probably too many supreme mats in the game today. Its too easy to get them. (Although in fairness, I find supreme mats often don't add all that much compared to all choice mats on larger crafted items...you can max out a couple of stats with good choice mats, where supreme can max out 4-5 stats. It just depends on if you're going to use one item or two that have different maxxed numbers.)

Second, though, I think the proposed changes are nuts. Instead, why don't you do something creative...and reward harvesters instead. Make supreme mats available using easily recognizable patterns - or stanzas that help you figure them out - since one of the worst parts of trying to get supreme mats in the PR is actually seeing if there is in fact a pattern. (I have yet to figure any of them out, and believe me, I've tried.) This clears up one of the biggest problems with supreme harvesting, which is having to camp for hours just to get 4-5 pulls. At least give us a clue when those 4-5 hours will be.

Then...make supreme mat harvesting depend on your skill - say you need to be 30 levels above, or require 100 focus points more to actually dig, since you only have to spend supreme points on prospecting and not extracting - or something like that. BUT...also allow lesser quality mats to be harvested from the node at the same time if you don't have the supreme stanza. That way you don't discriminate against lower level players trying to grind for exp.

The PVP and grind-harvest-to-craft issues are topics for another thread.

[deadly7]

"Back when I played AO, and prior to shadowlands... my guild was able to clear out mercs alone, and did so several times until we decided it better to just accept the bot system as something better for the entire server. I had a full set of purdy blue armor from them... and a full set of omniAF from smug... I had about 5-6 pair of shades from nugget in 20k... dalias +psymod(?) headgear thing from PM... the things from TK before he was put on the quick spawn... a handful of PvH vests... the superrare drop MP vest from whatshisname outside rome by the BB... the NCU pants and solja halo thing from the guy NE of BS... etc... etc... etc... that's just useless crap that I had.

In short... if it could be camped, we camped the hell out of it to the point of having timers set, bots that alerted us about spawn times coming up, so on and so forth. The Shadowcamp expansion was released, and things went full tilt into ubercamp . Servers going down soon? phonecalls went out so we could get folks into place to kill uniques on the respawn. I'm sure there are a few EQ folks who can tell similar stories."

...You were in Storm weren't you... evil evil guild

[lariva]

Ultima online, tamed "Nightmares" .... People would get up at 5am to get a spot to tame something, then camp the place.

"Back when I played AO, and prior to shadowlands... my guild was able to clear out mercs alone, and did so several times until we decided it better to just accept the bot system as something better for the entire server. I had a full set of purdy blue armor from them... and a full set of omniAF from smug... I had about 5-6 pair of shades from nugget in 20k... dalias +psymod(?) headgear thing from PM... the things from TK before he was put on the quick spawn... a handful of PvH vests... the superrare drop MP vest from whatshisname outside rome by the BB... the NCU pants and solja halo thing from the guy NE of BS... etc... etc... etc... that's just useless crap that I had.

In short... if it could be camped, we camped the hell out of it to the point of having timers set, bots that alerted us about spawn times coming up, so on and so forth. The Shadowcamp expansion was released, and things went full tilt into ubercamp . Servers going down soon? phonecalls went out so we could get folks into place to kill uniques on the respawn. I'm sure there are a few EQ folks who can tell similar stories."

...You were in Storm weren't you... evil evil guild