Scout Archive
Thread: The harvesting reduction
The reason was because allowing multiple scouts to loot from the same corpse is an overall increase in the number of resources that a single corpse will yield. So, the reduction was an attempt to prevent a sudden doubling or tripling the number of harvested resources flowing into the game.
I think worrying about an increase in resources is a valid concern. However the management to prevent it was not well thought out. Suggestions to improve it below.
Which prompted another designer to ask,
Question is. Is the reduction happening while solo, and does it happen while grouped with only a pet.
And the reply was,
The reduction happens if you are grouped. There's no check to see what you are grouped with.
1) There was a net reduction when solo from what it was pre-patch. There is a grouping reduction on top of it, such that we have a net reduction of 75% when grouped. Other people have mentioned this, but I don't think it is getting across to the dev team.
2) Additionally, the mechanism for checking is flawed. I hunt "solo" with my pets. By not grouping or ungrouping before the final hit lands, I get a full (post-reduction) harvest. With other players this is not practical, but I can abuse the system compared with other groups. Penalizing people for this behavior is not the answer though.
The system is set up such that when the corpse is made the resource loot is determined, I assume. Changing the group check at this level is probably not practical and I can understand that limitation.
3) The check is already made for the group existing. A very simple solution is to add a "/group splitharvest on/off" option. You give the option to the group, and if there is a single harvester, you do not penalize them for joining a group. (You like options, right? You like grouping, right? This is win-win.)
Futher, point (3) negates the abuse of (2) because there is no incentive for the player to behave this way.
4) If you are truly concerned about a sudden influx of harvests, after making the check in (3), figure out how many scouts are in the group. Make a straight conversion or a sliding scale for total resources then divide by the number of scouts. Weight it by skill if necessary.
5) I would like to point out that while I miss grouping with my pets, I have the added benefit of not needing to ungroup to loot NPCs. You have a bug in looting that further encourages this abuse of the system because it negatively impacts the player for playing the game as it is intended.
UttiniDaKilrJawa wrote:This needs to be changed along with the group experience bonus. You get group experience bonus if you are with a pet. This does give CHs an upper hand in PvM.
(Also, im getting full experience as opposed to the faction im supposed to be getting)
Yes, being grouped with a pet is like being group with any other player with all of the advantages and disavantages that the status entails. You get less in the harvest in exchange for an easier kill. END OF STORY. I don't see why this is such an issue for people. There are so many players running around with Novice Scout skills that being a Scout in a group meant that you either had to be REALLY fast to the corpse or apart of a REALLY well organized group. Let's face it, groups that are that orderly are rare. Most of the time hunting parties are a bunch of folks that got together in the cantina and decided to head out and whoop sumpin'. Now, you are assured that you'll get a taste. A smaller harvest is better than no harvest at all.
Chris
"Yes, being grouped with a pet is like being group with any other player with all of the advantages and disavantages that the status entails. You get less in the harvest in exchange for an easier kill. END OF STORY. I don't see why this is such an issue for people."
I think the issue for some people is the fact that CH's use pets to suppliment the fact that they are not master pistoleers, riflemen, etc. And now, though they are using the weapon their class has access to (large pets), they are penalized during hunting...all the while, the master pistoleer can spam his attacks all day, kill just as fast as a CH and get even more resources from the harvest.
All they have done is forced CH's to not group with their pets all the while, non-ch scouts are still raking in the material goods because they do not depend on creatures/droids at all.
DarthIguana wrote:
I'm still not seeing the problem. A pistoleer's weapon is his pistol. A creature handlers weapon is his creature (and probably a pistol or other armament too). Both can still solo and reap a full harvest, both can still group with other players and have an easier time in combat in exchange for a reduced harvest. As I understand it, a CH can choose to group or not group with his creature, but he / she can still attack with it. Is there a penalty for not grouping with your creature? The situation you describe above sounds, to me, like (possibly) one of the down sides of being a creature handler. The upside is YOU CAN GET A RANCOR. Or something else just as big and vicious. Using your creature resulting in a smaller corpse harvest is no different than a rifleman getting his ass kicked in melee against a decent brawler: it's just one of the inherant weaknesses of a class with many other strengths.
Frankly, I think that the only people who have a right to be ticked are actually, Scout is my primary class, Scouts. They group up and loose part of their harvest to CH's and Marksmen and Brawlers and Medics that are dabbling in scouting skills. But this is an improvement over True Scout treatment in groups before, so....
Chris
Think of it like this. People who use weapons get special moves. These moves aren't actually needed to kill something, but they make it easier and are a bonus for working up in that skill. Now, imagine that using those skills now decreased your harvests by 40%. Don't you think those people would be upset that they can no longer use that class bonus in order to kill or they lose money? Well, it is the same thing here. Teaching a pet to group is a bonus of the class. But now if that bonus is used, we lose money. And for those of us whose major source of income is hunting for hides, that makes just one more command that is totally worthless.
Now, what I don't understand is why you even care one way or the other when this has no effect on you whatsoever.
OK, I investigated a bit more, thanks to the fact that GreenMarine is a fool who came into the office during his vacation. 
He says that getting hit with the reduction when grouped with a pet is a bug, and that he'll fix it shortly.
He also says that the solo results were decreased a bit, but not by 50%,
to offset the fact that now you can now get resources in a group, which means there are a lot more resources in the world.
I'll point him to this thread so that he can comment further--just be aware that he IS on vacation, so he may take a while. 
CHANGE it BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I dont like it. I would rather it go BACK to the way it was before. I regularly group with 2 others and I'm the ONLY one in the group to Harvest. This is MAJOR nerf for my group.
CHANGE IT BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-JediAvenger_
Holo,
Thanks for the update.
Please have him check some of the threads here, as well as on the Ranger forums, because the drop in amounts was fairly significant. Some of them have more details than I have provided to all of you.
Thank him for coming in on his vacation, too!
B
Holo and Green,
One more thing before I get pelted by the Scouts.
Please, please, please - in the future, when making an across the board reduction of this type, make sure that it makes the Update notes.
It may not seem like a big deal, but its been a headache for me and the other Scout/Rangers trying to figure out if this was a bug, a nerf, or a mixture of the two. Not only that, we have some very, very astute players who will instantly notice a change like this, and not knowing about it ahead of time spawns all kinds of conspiracy anti-Dev type theories. I don't like those, and I know you don't either.
We value your communications with us, and hope that they continue.
B
It could be based on your skill level. Meaning that people with higher skill levels felt it more. I have Tracking IV. To try and show the numbers.
I was getting 80-100 off a Plains Hunter now I'm getting 40-50. I was gettingaround 40 for shallow tortons and now im getting around 20. I was getting around 30 for tusk cats and now im getting in the teens. I was getting 20-30 for gualamas and now im getting 10-20. This is a large decrease that I am seeing.
Yeah that was silly of him to come in on his vacation. Have him stopped at the door and kicked out of it happens again. But please pen a memo for him to take a look at this when he gets back.
Glad that the pet grouping is going to be fixed. I do feel that solo rangers/scouts should not be penalized for fixing the grouping dynamic. This is the primary income of a good number of Rangers and Scouts.
Thanks for getting back to us on this issue.
Thanks for an answer Holo.. Please give Green time and a half for the day and tell him I'll give him 1k of Avian meat if he'll give me a few days to gather that much Just teasing..
The reduction is as much as 50%. If you look at your original post you said that there may be an influx of resources due to the new group change but you would monitor and raise the amounts required on the schematic. Why wasn't it approached this way instead of putting the cart before the horse?
And thanks again to Delta who has busted his butt to get our concerns addressed.
Japhy
Holocron wrote:
He also says that the solo results were decreased a bit, but not by 50%,
I'll take that bet
I have hard-data that shows it was reduced by at least 50%
Holocron wrote:
He also says that the solo results were decreased a bit, but not by 50%,
Oh yeah ... might want to put something in the patch notes next time you do a change like this ... that is an extremely significant thing to leave out!