Harvesting Changes Coming

daray wrote:

YES!!

I was testing this some more this morning. As you may be aware, there is a hard halved casting time cap, so currently on live the hard cap is 2.5 seconds since it was the half of 5.
The way the stacking ends up working on these new tools, you actually gain benefit from each tool or racial ability. This means that at level 80 with the help of tools and racial abilities you can get down to a 1.5 second harvest time.
Also, something I didn't realize is that the casting speed stat affects harvesting time, because harvesting abilities are indeed abilities. So if you had 100% casting speed it would reduce the 3 second base down to 1.5 seconds without the need for tools.
I think this is ok. I tried it and showed it to a few people, it felt like I was an expert tree chopper able to cut off pieces of wood with only one or two chops. I think the difficulty in harvesting should be finding nodes, terrain navigation, and aggressive monster consideration, not the time you have to wait on a casting bar to fill up.
tl;dr New base harvest time is 3 seconds reducible by various means to 1.5 seconds.

Frizznik wrote:

In the past, the hard cap was 2.5, and the fastest that anyone could harvest was 2.5. If I'm understanding you correctly, the only way that you can harvest 1.5 is a combination of the tools and the racial abilities. Is that correct??
If so, then I don't like that too much. I don't think its fair that my Iksar main, at max level and max harvesting skills, would not have the ability to harvest as fast as someone else because of my tools only reduce my overall time by 0.5 and I have no racial abilities to use to reduce this further.
I would rather see the tools adjusted so that eventually we could all get to 1.5 if that is the fastest it can be done - regardless of how we got there. Racial abilities would just help some so that they go to the 1.5 speed faster than others, which I am okay with.

Frizznik wrote:

Awww! One of the most fun parts of the game is adventuring in your trade gear! It's good for the ego. ;-)

Frizznik wrote:

Assuming you're still keeping the tools at 0.5s max for the "best" that still leaves 0.5s worth of reduction that must come from either cast speed or a racial benefit.
I'm not sure how well that will go over (I'm not sure how much I like it, TBH). For adventurers with decent cast speed things should be fine (IIRC cast speed is calculated before fixed reductions, so 33% cast speed would give 0.5s off and bring it to the cap) and ditto for races that get the 0.5s reduction but that leaves the rest of the folks being ~0.5s slower to harvest.

My suggestion would be to bump up the tools a smidge so that at the current max tier they equal out to 0.75s each and thus reduce it by a total of 1.5s down to the cap for everyone. Another option and one I actually like better would be to put harvesting time reduction on something like the harvester cloak. Then that gives folks a few different ways to reach min cast time... either be the right race for a node type, get cast speed, or do the harvesting cloak. But the key is that there should be some crafter-friendly way of getting that last 0.5s of harvesting speed.

Frizznik wrote:

That's all the player skill. I agree, that should be the main definer for the difficulty in harvesting.
That's why I think all nodes should be opened up with mechanics skill and bonuses defining how many harvest items you have a chance to obtain.
In my ideal world, there would be 3 harvest outcome groups:

• "You harvested nothing" (different from fail) which would be teh most likely to get if your skill was below the mininum needed
• Current table 1 (1, 3, 5, material, rare, 10+rare, in order of rarity) which would be the most common for skill at or above minumum up to the maximum before trivial (i.e. current status) and a rare chance for below skill
• Current table 2 (except with no single harvests) which would be the common for skill above the trivial and rare for skill between minimum and trivial.

.. AND for the skill one has to influence the roll ON the table itself. The higher the skill, the better chance at a rare outcome on the table itself.

Frizznik wrote:

I'm going to flog the horse here. The speed and skill up changes seem to signal a desire to get more people through harvesting and faster. Yet without somehow dealing with issues such as current low yield, spawn rates and number of spawn points (sinking sands argh) along with the elephantine fact of contest over these by an increased number of people, the intention to get more players through this faster flounders. It's like having someone pass you to go slower, in the aggragate it risks merely slowing everyone down, adding more "downtime" and more frustration.

Frizznik wrote:

That is the only part I completely disagree with, roaming around 'looking for a node' to harvest is not fun, at all. It is NOT a challenge. I do not understand this thinking at all. Currently 2 people in one area makes it difficult to be worth any time spent. Discouraging people who have limited time is bad for this game.
Can you explain why that thinking is good for the game?

Aelfan wrote:

but very bad on the pocket book just did that in ascent on my main made it through all the way but boy was my repair bill high

I just had a couple of ideas for harvesting effects come to me.. Have a chance to not consume one of the 3 pulls from a node when harvesting. Could either be added later on as an AA or to an item (much like double harvesting is now) You could make some specialized tools for say trapping, where when you equip the specific tool it increases your chance of pulling just pelts (or just meat - could make 2 seperate tools), but only when you have it equipped (to have it not conflict with the clickie effect). Possibly would work for some of the other nodes, but trapping is usually the one where that is usually an issue. Also, I like the idea of increasing harvesting range as mentioned earlier. The +chance to double harvest seems a bit much and diluting what has so far been a unique ability to focused harvesters/crafters. I thought I had another idea, but work has managed to blow it from my mind. *sigh*

Being an Artisan in this game I’m giving this change a thumbs down. As stated, there are woodworker tools at levels 20, 30, 40, 50 and 70 that already slowly reduce the harvesting times. The same goes for the better tinkering tools at levels 30, 46 and 66. Now if the only difference is half a second between lowest level and highest level for a harvesting tool, then I’ve got to ask why would anyone buy a lower level tool if it only gives a fraction of a second difference to harvesting speed?
I don’t think players will really notice a difference between 3 seconds and 2.5 seconds to warrant them wasting coin on harvesting tools. You’re going to find no one really purchasing the lower level tools so you might as well eliminated them completely. You may find very few folks purchasing any of the maximum level harvesting tools except maybe the tinkered 66 one for the extra bonus.
Talk about throwing another nerf into the pocketbooks of us Artisans.

CoLD MeTaL wrote:

I completely agree, in fact this is more important to me than the time it takes to harvest the node. Woodlands should be FULL of timber, fields should be FULL of food, mines should be FULL of mining nodes, and the sea should be FULL of fish! What is t he time to harvest compared to the time running around looking for nodes? Really irritating. To be fighting your way past herds of owlbears, but not able to harvest enough owlbear meat? It's madness!!
How about we get meat and hides by killing the animals?

I'll tell ya Frizznik, one things for sure, ya've truly went an' opened Pandora's Harvesting Depot here hehe =)

Anaogi@Permafrost wrote:

YES! YES!! YES!!!! A THOUSAND TIMES, YES!!!!
GODS!! Many had been the times when my poor Armorers, Weaponsmiths, Carpenters (once Iron, etc. had become a crucial material), just about everyone but my Alchemists and Jewelers had despaired of EVER being able to skill up, what with the complete and utter LACK of real metals! I have a gnome Weaponsmith gal that I named from the beginning, Gneadedgnome (rhymes with "Leaded Loam"), with the last name at 20th of LoamySoils'Now...
Oh, and my Tinkerers? They'd pay good cash money to get Soils or something similar as a harvest node, that had only loams and rare loams ... and if people foo-farra'ed about cherry-picking, just whip up another quest like the one in Thundering Steppes for Bushes and Dens, that "nobody" ever needed (my Provisioners are still glaring about that one, but they love the li'l lazy bum on the docks! now, if only he liked Fish, too...).
Uwk

Aelfan wrote:

Ah, my friend, you've come here from the WoW Side of the Force, like myself ... I completely agree, at least with the node locations. We may have less nodes than in EQ2 (no Wood, for example; no Woodworkers and especially Carpenters, more's the pity), but they're more logically placed, show up more often, and are more plentiful, numbers-wise.
And you can only get meat (and hides? not sure about that one) here after level 70 or so by killing things?
Uwk

Rogue1 wrote:

"Specialized tools"! Yes!! As aggravating as Dens can be, Ores are infinitely more so ... give my real metal workers a chance to pull more real metal instead of Loams, and they'll be ecstatic! Heck, I'd run my Jewelers, Alchies, and Tinkerers right after 'em to get the Loams ... ;->
Uwk

Eileah wrote:

Extended range would actually be awesome.

Frizznik wrote:

So...t9 priests and mages are going to be the best harvesters in the game based on their equipment naturally having casting speed reduction? Scouts and Fighters need to fill up inventory slots just to compete? That seems very counter-intuitive. Or is t9 crafting gear going to start comming out with casting speed modifiers similar to what t9 priest gear has so that crafters are even across the playing field? Even stranger, will crusaders and bards who just want the casting speed mods equip crafting jewelery to get the speed mods if that happens?
Shouldn't harvesting not be affected by normal casting speed enhancments?

I will first admit I did not read all 8 pages so someone may have already mentioned this. Please, please,please,please we desperately need more dens and more pig meat ratio in those dens in Nek for the Gathering Obsession quest. I'm doing it for the 10th time ( at least ) and dread pig meat in Nek. Last time I needed to finish that I looked for 4 hours to find the last 2 pig meat I needed and even used the tinkered charm to locate what few dens there were. It takes forever to even find a den and then the chance of a pig meat is about as good as the chance for an ulteran diamond in SH.

Uwkete-of-Crushbone wrote:

I doubt my 39 adv/90 Provi would be amused by that in all tiers... but the meat is obtained that way in t9. Damn you Roper Sinew! Pony power ftw!