Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: DNA Sample and no harvesting skill?!
Physkoris wrote:I don't necessarily think that this is an exploit. A Bio Engineer is just as deadly as a TKM, why do we get penalized by not being able to harvest?
Well we're not a combat profession. As already stated it's easy fot a master be to kill anything. In return we don't get any damage or attract aggro (if done right that is).
Out of roleplaying perspective you could say that sampling dna has an effect on the creature, altering it's dna. So your meat wouldn't be that tasty and the hides won't be that strong. (that's probably why the creature dies in the proces)
Here's the history of it: It used to be that after you dna sampled a creature to death, although you didn't get themenu option to harvest, you could target it and use the /harvest command to get meat/bone/hide off of it. It was a well known "technique" and there was much discussion as to whether the bug was that you didn't get a menu option to harvest it, or whether the bug was that the /harvest command was working. Then they "fixed" this in a patch so that /harvest no longer worked. Ever since this gets suggested every couple of months, and people make philosophical arguments as to why we should/shouldn't be able to harvest corpses. Bottom line though, when it has come time to vote for top 5 or 10 or 20 issues, this issue has never made the cut to my knowledge.
Personally, I didn't find it all that useful when we had it. On a typical dna expedition you wind up with a backpack full of really tiny little stacks of various things, most of which you regret getting and end up destroying to free up space for other things. It's not like you are going to get enough meat to do a run of tissues, and the odds of the dna you want also being on a creature with high enough quality resources that shift is very remote. But this issue does keep coming up over and over so a lot of people seem to want it.
Physkoris wrote:
I'm just a brand new BE entering into the profession so forgive me for not knowing the history of BE. But, has there ever been a push to get BE's the ability to harvest after they perform a DNA sample? It's just ridiculous that you can't support your own business by harvesting meat from the creatures you sample. It's even worse for leveling up in BE, I'm doing all of this sampling and in return I'm not getting any meat, which is vital for the crafting branches. Well anyway, if this issue has been brought up and shot down in the past I apologize..
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 12-18-2004 08:13 PM
Physkoris wrote:
I'm just a brand new BE entering into the profession so forgive me for not knowing the history of BE. But, has there ever been a push to get BE's the ability to harvest after they perform a DNA sample? It's just ridiculous that you can't support your own business by harvesting meat from the creatures you sample. It's even worse for leveling up in BE, I'm doing all of this sampling and in return I'm not getting any meat, which is vital for the crafting branches. Well anyway, if this issue has been brought up and shot down in the past I apologize..
From the mouths of babes =)
j/k......It's been brought up a few times. It would be nice huh?
ArthurDentOnBria wrote:
Here's the history of it: It used to be that after you dna sampled a creature to death, although you didn't get themenu option to harvest, you could target it and use the /harvest command to get meat/bone/hide off of it. It was a well known "technique" and there was much discussion as to whether the bug was that you didn't get a menu option to harvest it, or whether the bug was that the /harvest command was working. Then they "fixed" this in a patch so that /harvest no longer worked. Ever since this gets suggested every couple of months, and people make philosophical arguments as to why we should/shouldn't be able to harvest corpses. Bottom line though, when it has come time to vote for top 5 or 10 or 20 issues, this issue has never made the cut to my knowledge.
Personally, I didn't find it all that useful when we had it. On a typical dna expedition you wind up with a backpack full of really tiny little stacks of various things, most of which you regret getting and end up destroying to free up space for other things. It's not like you are going to get enough meat to do a run of tissues, and the odds of the dna you want also being on a creature with high enough quality resources that shift is very remote. But this issue does keep coming up over and over so a lot of people seem to want it.
Physkoris wrote:
I'm just a brand new BE entering into the profession so forgive me for not knowing the history of BE. But, has there ever been a push to get BE's the ability to harvest after they perform a DNA sample? It's just ridiculous that you can't support your own business by harvesting meat from the creatures you sample. It's even worse for leveling up in BE, I'm doing all of this sampling and in return I'm not getting any meat, which is vital for the crafting branches. Well anyway, if this issue has been brought up and shot down in the past I apologize..
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 12-18-2004 08:13 PM
I agree that it would make little difference. It takes far longer to sample creatures than it does for even lower level combat professions to kill them. In the end, you might get a little bit of grinding-level meat, but not enough to make a huge difference, since it takes quite a while to kill even a single creature by sampling, and the highest creature we can sample is level 75 anyway, which yields only a moderate amount of junk meat. (Creatures we sample only coincidentally yield meat that is useful to us.) Except that it might be a small consolation for losing the creature you are trying to sample. The benefit would be a purely psychological one.
As for the exploit argument, I personally think it is fairly absurd. (The tone is for the "powers that be," not for you, Arthur. I appreciate you sharing the other side of the story.) I can't imagine any BE having the patience to use it as a means of obtaining large quantities of meat. BE is an unusual profession. We aren't a crafting profession, so we don't get vendors, the ability to use crafting or experimentation enhancements, or the opportunity to unlock crafting FS trees, but we spend a lot of time crafting, and our crafting xp converts to FS crafting xp. We aren't a combat profession, so our "kills" somehow don't count, but we spend more time in the cloning stations than any other profession, and the only FS trees we can unlock are the combat-related trees.
I think our risk should justify our ability to harvest meat. We are forced to take a greater risk than any combat profession in order to obtain the DNA. We don't want the meat. We want the DNA. The death of the creature is already a loss. It seems unnecessary to compound it by making the dead creature untouchable.