Ranger Archive
Thread: Iseult's brilliant (and simple) idea to solve our harvesting woes
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Iseult
Wed Mar 31, 2004 11:32 pm
#1
The idea: Fix the natural spawns.
That's right -- make natural (ie., non-mission) mobs spawn at the same (if not greater) frequency and in the same density as they did justa fewmonths ago.
How will this help? We as rangers have two skills that give us a critical edge when it comes to harvesting resources; the first, and the most debated is our harvesting skill, and the second is areatrack, which allows us to locate creatures in the wild. Now, if wild lairs and spawns contained the same amount of creatures as missions lairs do, then areatrack wouldn't really play a key role in our harvesting ability, but wild lairs and spawns contain far more creatures than do mission lairs. So, areatrack is a key aspect of our harvesting ability because it allows us to locate high-yield natural lairs and spawns much more efficiently. No, we can't out harvestall of thel337defense stackers with their uber combat skills if we are just out running missions head to head, but we have a decent chance of out-harvesting themif we can use our areatrack skill to help us locate higher-yield natural spawns.
Areatrack is our equivalent of a master artisan's survey skills. Yes, it is buggy and it doesn't work as well as we want it to work, but in combination with our harvesting skill mods really can give us an edge when it comes to locating and harvesting hide, meat, and bone.
The only problem with this, though, is that natural lairs and spawns are becoming increasingly difficult to find, and as that happens, any advantages afforded us by areatrack are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Let's face it - we can't track what's not there, and if we can't track it, we have to run missions for it, but if we can't get missions for it, and we can't track it, then we can't harvest it. We all now about the dearth of creatures on Lok and Dantooine, but it seems to me that this affliction has spread to some of the starterand medium-level planets as well.
For example, a month or so ago, uber avian spawned on Corellia. Now, we all know how difficult Corellian avian is to find. Back in the day, we used to be able to get devil gulginaw missions, but those went away with the speeder patch, and even low-level carrion spat missions were bugged (they are not anymore). But I was pulling in at least five-thousand units of Corellian avian a night, if not more, and I was doing this because areatrack was helping me locate wild spat, rasp, and even greater gulginaw spawns. In fact, right before this Corellian avian despawned, I found this great region where greater gulginaw nests(well, rocky shelters) would spawn in succession. I would finish off one lair, areatrack, find the next lair, etc.... And to me this seemed to be exactly what master ranger was about -- no, I wasn't the ultimate creature killer, but I was better at finding creatures than most of the other hunters out there, and that meant substantialy higheryields for me.
OK, so now fast-forward to this latest spawn of uber Corellian avian. I've been out hunting for three days in a row and I have a grand total of 8k or avian meat. Why? Because I can't find anything. The uber avian spot that it took me so long to find during the previous spawn has now completely dried up, and here I don't just mean that the greater gulginaws have gone south for the winter -- here, I mean that it is completely desolate. I can't even find the ubiquitous diseased vrelt. And yes, I was walking and I was using areatrack,and I tried all of the old ranger tricks to force some sort of spawn, but there was nothing.
Now, I'm not one to give up easily (esp. when docs are paying up to 125 cpu), so I have spent a log of time roaming the Corellian countryside trying to find a half-way decent spot for carrion spats, etc, and it seems to me that there are vast expanses of Corellia that are now completely desolate -- no durnies, no butterflies, no vrelts, no wrixes, and, sorry JB, not even a rasp. The fields around the old imperial battlefield used to be a great place to hunt, but now they too are desolate; the mountains surrounding the rebel outpost used to be a great place to hunt,but now they are markedly less creature-dense (I'll admit that I did have a wrix or two come up on my tracking screen) than they were before.
And tonight I sunk to a new low -- I grouped myself witha R2 combat droid and equipped aCDEF carbine just so I could get myself to level 10 andpick upsome carrion spat missions -- yep, six-spats-per-lair, 120-units-of-meat-total missions.
OK - I know that JustG's state of the game letter said that publish 8 will "Increase the amount and frequency of MOB Spawns," and I really hope thatit will, but at the same time, I remember that back when we first noticed this problem on Lok, and the devs said that they would fix the issue, but the only creatures that are to be found on Lok these days arestill those that have wandered off from someone's mission. And let's not evenmention Dantooine.
It seems to me that we ought to really hit this issue hard. Don't get me wrong -- I think it is a very good thing that we are organizing to get our harvesting skills where they ought to be, but it seems to me that we ought to be organizing for a major fixfor the spawn system at the same time. And by fix, I don't mean a nerf that will make the most-sought after creatures easier to find, I mean simply a return to the old spawning levels. I don't mind if creatures are hard to find -- that makes my skillset all the more valuable; I do mind, however, that creatures are impossible to find because spawning is broken, and that some of the most engaging dynamic content of this game has gone the way of the dodo, or should I say the Corellian spat.
OK - it's late and I'm going to sleep - tell me what you guys think
Iseult
Master Ranger / Mediocre Pistoleer
Bloodfin
Master Ranger / Mediocre Pistoleer
Bloodfin
Nemo0
Thu Apr 01, 2004 4:32 am
#2
This is something that we would all love to have fixed but it is largely a hardware problem rather than a software one. The player cities and vendors use up a lot of resources on the servers. Because of this, the servers can't handle loadingas many creatures and lairs as they used to. You might also occasionally run across the disappearing mob bugs (either when you track something and it's gone before you get there or you are fighting something and it disappears before you can kill it). That is a symptom of the same problem. While it would be nice if the devs could provide some magic fix for it I think we will have to wait for a few server upgrades before we get back to the old level of spawns
. It is especially annoying when you go out big game hunting. I used to find krayts all over Tatooine. Now I have trouble finding kreetles if I go into uninhabited areas. And Lok and Dantooine are much worse.
. It is especially annoying when you go out big game hunting. I used to find krayts all over Tatooine. Now I have trouble finding kreetles if I go into uninhabited areas. And Lok and Dantooine are much worse.Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/Master Rifleman
Eclipse Server
Master Ranger/Master Rifleman
Eclipse Server
TeddyRuxpin
Thu Apr 01, 2004 7:58 am
#3
From my point of view they went crazy with how many player cities they allowed anyway. It would have been much better to have half, or even a third of the cities - so there's less server load, more people in the cities that are there (some are empty), and more open wilderness for us to set up camps in!
theshagnasty
Thu Apr 01, 2004 8:01 am
#4
Most of the cities are like ghost towns as are over half of the games own cities. Indeed the only thing with less in it than a player city is a player city vendor.
My days of running or biking thousands of K's to a vendor are over, too many dissapointments to bear. I deal only with people face to face now.
Calculus_Entropy
Thu Apr 01, 2004 8:02 am
#5
Perhaps I have a new idea for the /track ability. Instead of/in addition to forcing a spawn of a certain type, why couldn't /track force a set of spawns in the same radius that you can track? This could be dependant on the area you are in;if you are in the graveyard, you could potentially for a spawn of dragonets, bantha, and/or even a krayt (rarely, of course), or if you are by the torton cave, you could force spawns of the various tortons. Just a thought, but I can ask about server loads and increasing the spawn rate.
Iseult
Thu Apr 01, 2004 10:09 am
#6
Calculus_Entropy wrote:
Perhaps I have a new idea for the /track ability. Instead of/in addition to forcing a spawn of a certain type, why couldn't /track force a set of spawns in the same radius that you can track? This could be dependant on the area you are in;if you are in the graveyard, you could potentially for a spawn of dragonets, bantha, and/or even a krayt (rarely, of course), or if you are by the torton cave, you could force spawns of the various tortons. Just a thought, but I can ask about server loads and increasing the spawn rate.
Something like this would certainly work -- a ranger issueing several areatrack commands within, say, a 1000m radius could effectively wake the server up and tell it to start spawning things. This might get complicated though, butI can't imagine that adding new hardware would be a simple fix either.
I don't know - I saw that you posted something about spawns to the correspondant's forum, and maybe that is enough -- that is, just to keep the issue on the radar screen so that it isn't so easily swamped by such things as mandalorian armor, which seem to take a lot of resources to develop and will only benefit a handful of l337 d00ds.
Yep - I figured it had something to do with server power and player cities, so maybe there is nothing to do but wait -- right now my feeling is that if you asked most playersif they would rather have player cities and static caves / POIs with tons of uber loot or planets teeming with wildlife (some of which would interfere with the above), they would definitely choose the former, so maybe this is a loosing battle. But it also seems to me that if the devs' vision involves dynamic content, then fixing the spawn system would be a definite step in the right direction.
But anyway, thanks for your responses
Iseult
Master Ranger / Mediocre Pistoleer
Bloodfin
GoldMemberBria
Thu Apr 01, 2004 11:58 am
#7
/chuckle
I don't think the devs sat back and said "ya know, I think this game needs less spawns, lets hose everybody that cares about hunting and cut back on wild lairs". No, I believe this is much more of a technical server load issue than anything else. I too would love to see this fixed, but...
AgonThalia
Fri Apr 02, 2004 11:33 am
#8
I have had the same issue, strangely enough on lowca, corellian avian meat was amazing for a bit, I harvested 10k after 3 days of hunting...it was really sad
I found spats, giant spats and gulginaws after 20 minutes of hunting for each lair.
the /spawn or /track or /areatrack directly affecting the spawn rate in the ranger's area woul, i think work well for us.
I found spats, giant spats and gulginaws after 20 minutes of hunting for each lair.
the /spawn or /track or /areatrack directly affecting the spawn rate in the ranger's area woul, i think work well for us.
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