Scout Archive
Thread: The harvesting reduction
<<First, I don't think the whole grouping thing has caught on yet, but when it does, expect even more people to pick up novice scout, and expect people to actually make large harvesting parties to go slaughter mobs at a high rate of speed and rake in the resources.>>
I just don't see this happening very often. It would have to be a PA group for one who are gathering resources for a crafter for grinding. How often are you going to hear someone /shout Forming a harvest group to get me tons of resources.. send me a /tell.
Most people in a throw together group are going to keep the harvests for themselves.
<<Second, I do believe an across the board cut will be needed if the group harvesting is left as is (from the old levels), but it may not need to be as severe as it was. Either way, the solo scout is going to lose out and some people will exploit the system.>>
Well actually Holo stated in his original announcement that if there is a noticable increase or influx of harvested resources, that they would have to raise the requirements of schematics.. nothing about reducing the harvests. As it was they raised the requirements in scout/ranger items anyway PLUS made a decision to make an across the board cut on harvests, be it 5% or 50%. And worse weknew nothing of it until minutes after it happened. In an ever changing game where the rules change, we need to know the rule changes.
This was a bad idea.. there should have been another way to get scouts xp without the resources.
DeltaXi65 wrote:
Psycho,
You did offend me. You're telling me that I'm not doing my job.
"So, it appears that the developers put a lot of thought into it, and realized that they didn't know the answer. But your response was not well thought out, even though due to your position the developers considered it to be the definitive answer from someone who knows about the reality of the economy."
My response was well thought out - based on the problems that the Scout Ranger communities had as of July 30, 2003 when the bulk of these posts were made. You weren't here then (or at least not reading the boards), so I don't expect you to know any better.
I'm not trying to say you're not doing your job. I just wanted to say something about this one specific, limited case. I was not trying to make a grand generalization about you, or your extensive work as a scout correspondant.
I am aware of those concerns. I have been reading the groups for longer than I've been posting to them. But my point was that the specific proposed FIX was not discussed with the group, NOT that the problem was not discussed with the group.
DeltaXi65 also wrote:
"There was no discussion of potential exploits. (Large "scout-only" groups can easily flood the market if they want.)"
Are you kidding? This is the exact reason why I suggested upping the cost of crafted consumables. This is the exact reason why I said to monitor the level of hide/meat/bone in game carefully and look for spikes.
You proposed a solution, but you never discussed the problem. As several people (including myself) have pointed out, a large group of scouts can get an insane amount of resources from a single corpse. Because the amount of resources varies depending on the number of scouts, there is no fixed percentage reduction, or incresase in consumables which will address the issue, because large groups of scouts will always harvest massively more resources than smaller groups. This has the feeling of an exploit, rather than a feature.
DeltaXi65 continued:
"GreenMarine DID make a comment that he wasn't sure that tons of extra resources would be bad, as long as there were new things for scouts to spend them on. There was no discussion about changing harvest rates for solo harvesting. There was no discussion of increasing the resources needed to make things."
Read is again. There is no discussion of changed the harvest rates for solo harvesting, Psycho, because I never suggested it, GreenMarine never suggested it, and that's why I've been telling everyone who listens that THIS IS A BUG. Holo's post even makes it clear that this is a bug, because he says that amounts were reduced a bit but not by 50% - which we KNOW happened. And there was a discussion of increasing the resources needed to make things. The fact that you didn't see this makes me think you were reading looking to be offended.
The reduction is solo rates is not a bug. The MAGNITUDE of the reduction in solo rates is a bug. As you say, the rates were reduced a bit, but not by 50%. As I said, there was no discussion about changing harvest rates for solo harvesting.
I wasn't reading the post looking to be offended. I was reading the post looking to see how well thought out the changes were. And on re-reading, I realize that I did totally screw up regarding the increase in the amount of resources. I apologize for that serious error. I was not intentionally trying to misrepresent the character of the discussion you posted.
Much of the rest of our interchange had to do with notifying the group when someone harvests. I've never seen a notification message when someone harvests in a group, even though autonotify is on by default. On the other hand, I've read through the old threads which show that it was fixed at one point. Is it possible that this was broken again? If so, then that is an aspect of this problem which some people might not have been aware of.
DeltaXi65 wrote:
"It seems that the Devs thought things through, but rather than consider potential changes with the scout/ranger communities, you spoke on behalf of everyone without getting any feedback."
This is the one thing in this post that pisses me off more than ANYTHING else. How can you say this?
Read these threads:
I read every post in every one of those threads. None of them mentioned anything even remotely similar to the fix which was implemented. The point I was trying to make isn't that you didn't discuss the problem with the community. It was that you didn't discuss the potential fix with the community. The two main points I got out of the threads you asked me to read are that XP rather than resources is the major concern, and people were more interested in getting the promised system fixed, rather than making extensive changes. (The promised system being; notification of someone in the group harvesting, and multiple scouts being able to harvest DIFFERENT resources off the same corpse as is mentioned in the loading screens.) I couldn't find a single post in all of those threads which suggested a change that would allow multiple scouts to harvest more hide off a corpse than a single scout can.
DeltaXi65 wrote:
You did offend me, but I'll get over it. Do yourself a favor- if you don't know what you're talking about, check out the older posts on the forum and learn first. This was one of the top 5 issues of the Scouting community, #3 in my original list of the most important things to fix. I was speaking on behalf of all Scouts because THAT'S MY JOB. And if you think I'm not doing it well, read this post:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=scout&message.id=6317&page=1
I never meant to imply that you are doing a bad job. Even the best people make mistakes. I certainly made a mistake in my previous post, because I did not intend for it to be inflammatory, yet it appears that I started a flame war by mistake. And I am very sorry about that. Even so, there are some legitimate problems with the 60% solution, and I feel that those problems need to be separated from all the personal and emotional stuff and discussed on their merits. So far, all I've heard is "the 60% thing will be OK once all the bugs are fixed." But, it appears that there are a lot of people who are seriously concerned that the 60% thing WON'T be OK even after all the bugs are fixed. That is my primary concern.
(BTW, I sure dropped from "I love ya man" to "Do yourself a favor" in record time.......)
-Ariror
-Tempest
DeltaXi65 wrote:
Japhy,
C'mon - it's obvious from Holos post that they're working on it and they haven't had the same experiences as we've had.
W T F kind of crap is that? They can't log onto the "Live" servers and check it out themselves? They devs "think" there wasn't any reduction while solo? How long would it have taken to actually *gasp* log into the game,kill something and then harvest it?
Sorry for the venom but I honestly thought each 'generation' of MMORPG was supposed to get better--in both gameplay and testing.. /sigh I guess not
MMORPG people are (for the most part) a very dedicated (almost rabid) crowd and they just simply do NOT miss changes, however subtle. I have yet to see in any MMORPG a change (especially one this size) go unnoticed by the masses. What's even more astonishing is when the divs simply brush it off as 'Oh, they must be wrong.' Yeah, THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of the players are all suffering from the same hallucination..
That is why devs always get flamed for not knowing their own game: Players (not just a few, but MANY) report some change to the game and the devs simply say 'uh, no..' and don't bother to check.
'...haven't had the same experiences aswe've had'?! Seriously, please explain why they've never killed a creature on a live server and tried to harvest it.
Cali,
You're being unrealistic.
There is ONE Holo. There is ONE Q. There is ONE GreenMarine.
Holo has more games than just SWG that he's working on now. Q is responsible for working with the Developers and the players. He cannot be playing the game all day and knowing exactly what goes on in game. It's just not possible.
Even GreenMarine, the Scout dev, cannot be playing the game all of the time. He does play - he plays on my server and we talk everytime he is online. But he doesn't play for 4-6 hours per night that I've been playing (less now, since work and school have picked up). And he's not just responsible for Scouts, he's got 7 other professions that he handles too.
Not only this, but you are assuming that all they do is fix bugs. There's a lot of new content that's going in that needs to be programmed. They can't be playing and figuring out "ooh this doesn't look like how we programmed it". That's something that only we can do.
And you have to factor in the fact that playing the game isn't fun for them - it's their job! Who wants to go home and do what they do for a living in their spare time? They've all got families, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, etc. Does making an MMORPG take away their right to a life?
Face the facts: we are the experts on the game and on our professions.
The Devs know how its "supposed" to work, but we know how it actually works.
It's akin to the difference between a lawyer and a cop - lawyers know how the law is supposed to work, cops know how it actually works, because they're the ones out there doing it.
Holos recent post about him being like the Mayor of a major metropolitan area is dead on - would you expect Mayor Bloomberg to know exactly what its like to be a fireman and what the ins and outs of his job are? And if something in the law changed to make a fireman's job tougher for him to instantly know it and correct it? Of course not.
The Devs rely on you and me (both as a player and a Correspondent) to give them up-to-date info on what it is that we're experiencing in game. As long as we do our best to be constructive and to make sure they know of our biggest, most immediate concerns, they'll get addressed.
I sent the email that I sent to Holo and the other devs at 6:24 eastern time. I received a response from Holo on 7:01 eastern time. That's pretty good turn around.
Try emailing your mayor or governor and waiting around for a response.
So lets cut the Devs from slack. They aren't perfect, they do make a lot of mistakes, but they try hard to do right by us.
B
I am a bio-engineer by trade, and all I have in the scout line is explore 4 and hunting 4 needed to get BE and CH. Scout issues generally don't concern me, because it was simply a means to get me where I wanted to go.
However, this latest nerf has made me stop bio-engineering all together for the time being. Why? Because EVERY SINGLE ITEM I CRAFT TAKES CREATURE RESOURCES!!! I hired a scout to get me some meat the other day, I wanted 2k, 2-3 hours work tops I thought. 2 days later I have an "I'm sorry, I only got 150". Why? This nerf had slashed all harvest gains. Seriously, how can I afford to pay someone for 6 hours work just to get 2k meat? I'd have to pay them 40k cr to do that! That is the cost of a medium house! And all my items use about 60 for the smallest, and upwards of 200 on some of the larger, and I am not even that far into BE yet. Who would pay 1200 for a single +4% duration micro-nutrient suppliment (for chef foods)? Nobody with half a brain thats who, this is killing my profession.
When I only get 25 meat off a friggin Fambaa something is very wrong. I used to get that off the little langlatches on lok, now they are like 12 max.
My profession went from difficult to market to absolutely impossible.
You know what they say, hindsight is always 20/20, so test first and get some hindsight dangit!! And now that you have some from our live beta please fix it quick! I can't survive like this, it is rediculous! I don't care what you do just fix it!
Oh and delta, rasing demand is EXACTLY the same as lowering supply, no pointdoing that instead, it changes nothing.
Also good perspective on the devs, but that just means they need to hire more devs. 1 for 7 professions OBVIOUSLY doesn't cut it. They are making pleanty of cash to do this, they just need to find good people and hire them, they'd prolly make more money too cause as we speak I garuntee they are losing customers. I have considered quitting many times, but I'm just not that way 
.
Big,
We know you guys are hurting. We want to sell to you just as much as you want to buy from us. We're broke, too now.
"You know what they say, hindsight is always 20/20, so test first and get some hindsight dangit!! And now that you have some from our live beta please fix it quick! I can't survive like this, it is rediculous! I don't care what you do just fix it!"
Read my "email to the devs" thread. It's on the radar and it'll get looked at.
"Oh and delta, rasing demand is EXACTLY the same as lowering supply, no pointdoing that instead, it changes nothing."
Not exactly. The main concern with the Devs was in getting the excess hide and bone out of the economy. By upping EVERY crafting profession by 5-10%, you spread the increased demand across the professions. This is a much gentler means of removing the hide and bone from the economy than by slashing the supply. That's why the government raises taxes instead of regulating wages.
"Also good perspective on the devs, but that just means they need to hire more devs. 1 for 7 professions OBVIOUSLY doesn't cut it. They are making pleanty of cash to do this, they just need to find good people and hire them, they'd prolly make more money too cause as we speak I garuntee they are losing customers."
Hiring people takes time. And they know this and they are doing it. We all make a lot of assumptions about where the money goes, but none of us work for SOE, so we really don't know. I'm sure they make an okay profit, but software developers aren't the cheapest commodity on the block. I mean, you have to feed them and everything.
The devs know where they need to do better, and I'm confident that as the game matures the updates won't be as buggy.
This issue is on their plate and they'll get to it soon. Hopefully it will be soon enough to keep the economy from going in the tank.
B
All due respect Delta, I believe it's time for you and N'Raas to send follow up emails to light a fire under their butts. I'm sorry but it's been long enough waiting and to think that they are just ignoring the issue now because one dev is not in the office is really sad.
Japhy
Japhy,
Hey - when you've got one guy who does everything, it's tough when he's gone.
I'll try and find out when he's due back.
B
And I understand that and I certainly don't blame Green at this point. The problem I'm having is why he doesn't have any sort of back up to help him or cover when he's gone. God forbid anything should happen to him where he'd have to miss work for a longer period of time, what would they do?
But as always, thank you Delta. You're a good man.
how stupid are the DEVs ?
When you have a bug in the new "feature" then take this feature DOWN. NO one of us need that but we all need Scout Exp so DEVs DO ANYTHING or much more people will leave that beautiful buggame.
I send so much bugreports and Ingame Tickets, Emails to CSR but nobody read it and NOthink are better. WE are NOT in alpha Version of a Game.
Reb,
There's no such thing as a perfect fix - every time you make a change in a game of this size, invariably something is going to get bugged.
The best thing we have going for us a design team that constantly works to make these fixes.
The bug reports, the in-game tickets - all of that does get read and does get heard.
If the Devs didn't listen, none of the changes that caused the problems we're having would have gotten implemented.
The game gets better every day - it's already ten times better than on launch day. So I'm optimistic. I'm not saying that you should be too, but it may make your time more enjoyable to not dwell on the bad.
B
Perhaps this was adressed somewhere else, and I missed it, if so, pardon the re-asking.
My question is this:
Why was a single class of resources (IE creature harvestable organics) reduced to "remove excess" when there is a veritable glut of most other resource types that can be aquired via extractors?
Even with the 60% rule for multiple harvesting, it would take planned groups to "abuse" the system to flood the market with "excess". As it stands, the demand FAR exceeds the supply in most cases.