Ranger Archive

I posted this in another thread but wanted to start a new thread so people see this idea. Something definitely needs to be done with harvesting.

The Problem: People were complaining that they could not get resources and scouting XP in groups so the devs implemented the current system allowing everyone to harvest but get around one quarter of the previous amount each. This means that soloers are screwed and now even in order to get resources in a group a ranger has to bug every team member to harvest and what to get. I have two suggestions the first one is more of a general suggestion and doesnt really fix the problem but mitigates it a bit:

#1 The simple solution:

Make the Creature Harvesting skill mod have a greater effect on the amount harvested. Set it up so that someone with creature-harvesting +100 (master ranger) harvests the same amount that would have been harvested before this patch, creature-harvesting +50 gets half that amount, +10 gets one tenth… So a master scout will be able to harvest 50% what a master ranger can instead of 80% like it was before. So yes if you have two master rangers in a group they will be able to get twice as much as one master ranger was able to before. But if you have one master ranger and a bunch of scouts with hunting I and hunting II and so forth they wont be pulling that much more out. This will slightly reduce the effect of having too many resources coming into the world. But it is not perfect solution because if you had a group of 10 master rangers they could run around pulling ten times as many resources off things that they were able to pull off before this patch. This leads me to…

#2 The complete solution: (which basically integrates #1)

Each creature has a set amount of resources on it period! This amount should be based on its size and should be approximately double what a master ranger was able to pull off pre-patch. There should be a maximum number of harvests that can be attempted per creature. This should probably be set to either four or five attempts. Each person that attempts to harvest from it will use up one of these harvests and get an amount based on his or her creature-harvesting skill mod. This amount can be similar to what it is now but should follow the logic from ‘the simple solution’ (above) in that the ratios would be based on the skill mod, only a master would get one quarter or one fifth what they would have received pre-patch. But the difference is that after a short timer, around 5-10 seconds, you can try again. So if only one person is harvesting, that person can try 4 or 5 times and they will end up with about the same total amount, maybe a little more, then what they would have received prior to this patch. If four or five different people harvest they will each end up with approximately what they end up with now but the total will still be approximately equal to what it would have been pre-patch.

Example: If you have a medium sized creature that would have yielded 50 units of meat if harvested by a master ranger prior to this patch. First step is to bump the base resource amount basically doubling it. For this example I will assume it is bumped to 100. I will also assume that the amount of harvests is set to five. (rather then four)

If harvested by 5 Master scouts – since I said that the number of harvests is set to five each harvest is worth a maximum of 100/5=20 since each master scout has creature-harvesting +50 they would each get 20 x 50% = 10. Each master scout would get 10 units of meat, which would total up to 50, which is the amount of resources harvested by a master ranger pre-patch.

If harvested by a more typical scout heavy group – one master ranger, one novice ranger with harvesting +70, one master scout, and one novice scout with harvesting +30 they would get 20 x 100% = 20, 20 x 70% = 14, 20 x 50% = 10, 20 x 30% = 6 for a total of 50 which is what a single master ranger could have pulled off the creature prior to the patch. If the master ranger went back for seconds to clean off the fifth harvest he would get another 20.

If harvested by 5 master rangers – 100/5 = 20 and 20 x 100% = 20 so each would get 20 for a total of 100 units. This means that five master rangers could completely clean a corpse and get the full amount out of it.

If harvested solo by a master ranger – this would be the same result as 5 master rangers but it would take a little longer. The ranger would have to wait 5 seconds or so between harvests.

So if experience is the issue then up to five people in a group can harvest a creature and get XP and resources. But if resources are the issue then a solo master ranger can harvest everything multiple times to get the maximum amount off everything. I know people are going to whine about having to harvest everything five times but it is better then the current solution where we get one quarter what we were getting before. Also, it still allows for the primary motivation behind the current system which is allowing multiple scouts to get XP in groups, which was what everyone was begging and crying for pre-patch, without resulting in 5 times as many resources coming into the universe. With my solution one person can get the same amount of resources solo that a group can. Also it is more realistic. The amount of resources on a creature should not depend on the number of people in a group. It should be fixed but masters should be more efficient at getting every little bit of it. But one master should be able to get as much as five masters if he just works at it a little longer. Currently a group of twenty people that have only novice scout will be able to harvest a creature for more then a single master ranger. This doesn’t make any sense. People with only novice scout should only know the very basics about harvesting and twenty people should not each get to take a share. Much of the creature should go to waste.

Then there is the whole other idea of having harvesting be a resource-per-time skill and having various tools you can use to get resources faster or more efficiently. There is a post that covers some of these issues at:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=8166&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

The idea in that thread I am commenting on is that harvesting could be totally changed to be something that actually takes time and each person that is carving up a creature gets a certain amount of resources per time based on their skills and the tool they are using and once the creature has been depleted it is done. There could be bonuses for being inside a camp and so forth. Because it simply should take a lot of time (a few minutes at least maybe ten or more) to get all the meat off a Krayt. But you should get thousands of units when you are done.

Wow, that made my head hurt.

Seriously though, thats a pretty interesting idea. I've always been of the thought that all of our abilities should be based on the level of skill that we have. Why shouldn't Master Rangers be able to harvest more than Rangers and Master Scouts more than Scouts? Seems simple to me, but hey, I just play the game.

<still camping in Naboo>

I really like the idea of there being a set amount of bone/meat/hide per creature and whether there is oneperson or five peoplethe potential is there to get the same amount as long as the people are all the same harvesting skill level.

How wouldyouhandle thedifferent resources? Would there be a set amount of each type or just a total andeach person would choosewhatthing to get? Could you harvest something for meat five times and then bone five times?

It would be annoying if we had to wait 5 or 10 seconds between each harvest when solo. If i kill ten creatures and then have to spend fifty seconds harvesting each one that adds up. But I guess we would be no worse off then we are now because we could just harvest each thing once and we would be getting the same amount we are getting now. Then spend the extra time to harvest if we really want that resources. It would be nice to have the option.

Sspectre

I like it, a fixed amount of resources per critter makes much more sense to me. Even the delay to harvest five times to get it all makes sense to me.

I always felt kind of weird when I would autorun - kill a critter - hit the shift key to slow to a walk as I approach the corpse - hit my harvest key - release shift and continue running to the next kill. Doing that on some of the largest creatures seemed extremely weird, I didn't even have to stop running to harvest all those hides/bones/meat ?!?!? Just callme super ranger. Look there goes super-ranger! He can harvest hundreds of bones from a dinosaur sized critter in about 0.74 seconds!! Look at that knife fly... funny I don't even carry a knife... :-)

Sure you will slow my harvest and I don't like that... but it is far more realistic and I can accept it. I do not like the pay cut we took with the harvest nerf so if a solution such as yours was implemented then I would endorse it. I like to solo harvest, I don't want to be punished for it... I don't mind taking more time to do it. Good post, a little long maybe, but the idea is a good one...

from what i know, when in a group you get 60% harvesting rights... and so does everyone else.

Does anyone not remember how it was before this patch? In a group, people ninja harvested and everyone denied it. It was so hard to get scouting xp when you were cometing with every aspiring creature handler and bounty hunter that grouped with you.

Now the possible XP rewards are greater. Before i would harvest at 100% but i might get MAYBE 3 or 4 harvests from one lair if im in a big Dathomir hunting party. Now i get to have 60% of all creatures in the lair. Lower amounts of harvested items from kills now? Sure, per person. If i harvest 60%, and the other 8 people in my group do as well....is that not the same as harvesting 480% more goods per creature than if you did it solo? Its also 480% more xp when in groups as well.

No, im not blind. I know that harvesting in general has been nerfed so that there is now a decreased amount of harvesting even when solo. But all you half empty people are bumming me out. The glass is half full and its overflowing if you make an arrangement with the others in the group that dont need the hides, bones and meat. Have them give you what they harvest while theyre sitting in your High Tech Field Base healing up and calling creatures and probots.

Lets face another fact. Scouting XP in general was insanely easy to get when solo. Im a 4-4-3-4 Ranger and ill be master by tomorrow night. I decided to take novice scout one day (im TKA) and then wanted to hit it hard. I am almost all the way PvE, unless its a barfight or some streetfighting. I was killing animals all the time and running around out in the wild so scout/ranger made perfect sense. I maxed out scouting in less than a week and ive almost done the same to ranger. I was halfway through Ranger when the patch hit and the patch has actually HELPED me get more scouting xp. I can harvest from every kill now, not just a few.

Go to Dathomir and tell me that this new 60% harvesting rule is not a good idea. If you dont get insane xp and resources, you are doing something wrong. Good concept really but realism in this game doesnt concern me very much.

*sigh* its really late and im tired... so lol, sorry for the rant.

Need to clarify something-

I totally dig the Creature Knowledge Modifier changes. As a Soon-to-be Master Ranger i should be able to harvest alot more than a Master Scout. I dont care for the limited resources per creature because it puts us in the situation where some people might not get harvesting rights. And if you do put enough resources in one critter to compensate the entire group.... what is really the point?

that make any sense at all?

/salute

I like the set amount idea. I don't like the fact that the creature has magical hide numbers. I like logic in my games.

-- YP

Thank you guys for taking the time to read my rather lengthy post. You raised some good points:

Sspectre:

Good question. You pointed out the two main options as I see them as well. I personally think it would be better if there was a fixed amount of each resource. So if something has 100 of each bone/meat/hide, apply the five time harvest rule to each type for a total of fifteen harvests on each creature. If this was implemented there would most likely have to be an overall reduction in the amounts so instead of 100 of each it would only have maybe 50 of each. So you could spend one second and grab one chunk of meat or bone like we currently do or you could actually spend time (15 x 5sec = 75sec) so we are talking over a minute if the pause is 5sec and two and a half if the pause is 10sec but I do not see that as a problem. It is realistic to spend a couple minutes if you want bone meat and hide from a creature. It would probably work out to bring the same amount of resources into the world because of the delay. If you can get three times as many resources but it takes you three times as long to do it. You could have killed two more creatures and harvested them instead.

RobertD:

Thank you. I agree being able to run past five creatures full speed, select then hit F8 (my /harvest meat macro) then select the next one, F8, and so on is silly. So I just cut open and cleaned the meat off five fambas in stride without losing a step?? That just doesn’t make any sense.

mochloD:

Thank you for raising the opposite point. I agree that the problem was worse before when scouts and rangers everywhere were not wanting to group because they could not harvest anything. If you notice that is in my post at the beginning where I lay out “The problem.” However I believe that my solution fixes the current issue of not enough resources without resurrecting the old problem of not enough scout XP to go around and at the same time my solution throws in a bit of realism and game immersion. If there are five harvests on every creature and you have to wait 5-10 seconds before going back for seconds then when something dies the first five people to harvest get something. That would accommodate most groups. However if five is not enough then we could do as I suggested in my response to Sspectre and change it so that there are actually five harvests of each resources type for a total of fifteen harvests. That way fifteen people can get scouting XP on every creature. (provided it has all three types) Currently, technically, 20 people could get scouting XP per creature so you are not raising the overall scouting XP coming into the world and I don’t think it is very common that more then fifteen people would want to harvest. There are always a few pets or druids taking up slots or players that cannot harvest. But the resources are set so the solo player can get just as many as the group it just takes him much longer.I believe my solution is the best of both worlds.

Here's another solution. Limit the harvest to the types of resources on the animal.

If it's only got meat, then 1 harvest of meat.

Meat & Hide? 2 harvest's.

All 3? Hey a trifecta!!!

The 60% is greatlyincreasingthenumber of animalsI take solo to get enough resources to sell.

Iget 14 units of bone from anShallow Torton and 14 units of bone from an Ikopi. Seems to me the Torton is a hell of alot bigger and should yield more to a solo hunter with greater than novice scout skills.

Solution #2 is a great idea and would bring a lot more realism to the profession. I know that some people dont care much for realism, but having things work more realistically makes the game much more immersive and (IMO) enjoyable.

It also would help balance solo/group harvesting much better *and* reward those who spend the time/SP to advance higher into the ranger profession. Too many professions seem "front-loaded", where you get a lot of benefit just from being a Novice.

Nice post!

Great Ideas!!

/bump