Scout Archive
Thread: The harvesting reduction
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.
"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.
"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.
Based on your post, it appears this change was made for 1 reason:
"Stop problems caused by ninja-harvesters"
Read the FIRST section of what I said. It is clear that my motivation was that there was no incentive for Scouts to group, and that this needed to be changed.
"This entire situation could be fixed by putting things back the way they were, and making it so group members get a system message whenever someone harvests a corpse. In fact, GreenMarine said that he would prefer if we could police this ourselves. Give us the tools to police it ourselves, and we will!"
This is wrong, Psycho. I know its wrong because it STILL doesn't happen, and it's been more than 3 months since the game came out.
"Rolling back the changes, and putting in a system message when a group member harvests will provide us with GreenMarine's prefered solution, set the economy straight again, get rid of all the bugs, AND it won't have any potential exploits such as 20 scouts getting over 2500 hide from a single durni lair."
This was the Scout devs preferred solution two months ago. But it's not anymore, and it was never the communities. Saying "X" person harvested is nice - but it doesn't STOP "x" person from ninja harvesting. And unless you've got a strong group leader, you're going to have to live with it or not group. Most Scouts just stopped bothering because it was a waste of their time. That's not how its supposed to be.
"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:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=scout&message.id=1578
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=scout&message.id=2022
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=scout&message.id=1980
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=scout&message.id=2561
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=scout&message.id=3496
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=scout&message.id=1954&page=1
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=scout&message.id=4182&page=1
I would've found more, but I need to get to work.
Hell read my guides - they outline exactly why its better to solo.
"I'm not trying to make a personal attackhere. Certainly, I just started posting within the last day, and I have no seniority or reputation, while you've been around a long time, and have worked hard for scouts and rangers. I'm just calling it as I see it in this case. I hope I'm not offending you....."
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
B
Your 'job' here is to relay the scout consensus to the developers, not defend the developers mistakes to the scout community. The consensus seems to be this change was not good. The fact Green stated he would rather have us police ourselves means that this change was an imposed babysitting change because people basically do not know how to take turns harvesting. The effect is a total fubar of the entire harvesting system.
As it is now, its entirely messed up. Its for lazy people who dont want to take control of their gaming. Thats why this change was put in, quite poorly implemented at that, so lazy players who cant take control of their own gaming experience dont have to think or be social. What should have been done is allow, in the group menu, the option to set harvesters and even an order. And while they were doing that, make the group menu a LOT more user friendly, its sad right now as well. That would have been 2 birds killed with one stone.
Ahazi server -planet Talus
Harvesting torturs when grouped with your pet gives you only 1 hide and around 8 bones or so, getting hides/bones before this new rule that got bugged was hard enough.
Also if you are grouped with your pet you don't get any loot from NPCs.... in lastpatch notesI was reading it was fixed but it's not fixed bug is still there.
I've developed a ton of respect for Delta over this past week. He has proven himself to be a dedicated Correspondent and works almost too hard for the people he represents. But with regards to the recent changes, I have to agree that the 60% rule should have never went to press. At least not in it's current structure. I'm sorry, that's just the way I see it.
I'm hoping that when the normal levels are restored, that it won't be nearly as bad as it is now. My Bounty Hunter friend and I went hunting on Talus last night for awhile. When we compared bags I had 361 bones, she had 322. That's certainly not enough difference between a Master Scout and a Hunt Master. Also, SHE HATES TO HARVEST, and I have to hear it every night. hehe
I really honestly expected the levels to be restored today. I don't know what's taking them so long even without GreenMarine there.
Well, I can't say I am hear to defend anyone's actions (good or bad) only to say that right now, I know a lot of scouts/rangers aren't terribly happy with the new solution but there are folks who spend the majority of their time grouped, who don't see this as an issue.
Regardless of what side your on in this, I fail to see why we don't chalk it up to experience and move on to looking for more amicable solution. Spending all this time looking to blame someone for the change doesn't do anyone any good, let's fix the problem, not the blame.
Personally, what I'd like to see is a wider range of harvest amounts between novice scout with harvest I and master ranger with maxed harvest. In addition, the group harvest 'penalty' should likewise be based upon this. After all, 3 master rangers should know how to better skin and clean an animal for maximum results compared to 3 novice scouts. This would still allow scouts to group, but likewise still reward those that have pursued Ranger as an elite class rather then everyone merely getting harvesting 2 or 3 so they can field strip a kill.
For solo scouts, why not drop the harvest rate by say 15%-20%. This gives enough cause to group, but is not such an hit that soloing is no longer viable for what is predominantly a solo class. We are talking a pretty small percentage (instead of 50 hides you now get 40-45, instead of 10 hides you now get 8, etc.) that could more then be made up for.
I think for a lot of us, the issue is that SWG offers no real reason to group. Unlike every other MMORPG on the planet, there is really few reasons to group at all. It's a failure in the mechanics of the game that has been discussed since Beta 2, and rather then fixing the core reasons to this failure, changes like a 40% harvest reduction to force grouping is seen as a shortsighted patch rather then fixing the long-term problem.
"Your 'job' here is to relay the scout consensus to the developers, not defend the developers mistakes to the scout community."
That's what I'm doing. I agree with all of you - they made a mistake with the reduction across the board. A number of mistakes...they didn't tell us #1. It's bugged #2.
The multiple-scout-multiple-harvest is something that the community has wanted for months now.
But the way that it's been implemented is making itsreception negative - and its not because its not a well thought out or good thing, but because its bugged and that's making everyone's lives miserable.
All that I am asking guys is that you reserve the criticism for the 60% rule until everything is working and we can look at it the way it is supposed to be.
I would write more, but I've got to call the Governor of Mississippi and tell him that he's not getting any money from me.
B
Actually I consider Delta's role to be as go-between between us and devs. That works in both directions ... or at least that's how I see it.
I believe that Delta's first priority is to inform devs of our concerns about scout profession. His second priority is to keep us informed about what is happening with devs ... because devs don't have excessive amount of time to spend reading and posting into forums.
It's easy to start blaming someone or looking for scapecoat when things are going wrong ... that's human ... very human indeed. I hope Delta you can understand that ... it's nothing personal ... some people just can't help it ... it's as natural as babies crying when they think somethings wrong.
I believe Delta is doing as good job as anyone else could do. He is keeping list of ourconcerns and has relayed them forward to devs and if you look at the number of post Delta has done ... you can see that he has spent a lot of time following up scout and ranger forums. That alone tells me that he is well aware of our concerns about our profession.
I don't think that Delta has been as much as defending devs as that his been trying to keep things calm. That's part of Delta 'job' too ...he is our correspondent ... he is required to stay objective about things and to look at the holepicture. I would say that it would sound odd and wrong if Delta would be yelling bloody-murder at devs in here ... just as it would sound bit off if he would be totally dissing our concerns. He is doing what he can while trying to stay neutral about everything.
We all know there are problems with harvesting and we want it fixed ASAP ... and I believe that Delta shares that feeling. Flaming, blaming and pointing fingers isn't going to solve anything anytime soon. Devs have heard our cry, agreed that there is a problemand promised a fix.All we and Delta can do now is to wait.
There are lot of people that thinks that 60% group harvest is a good idea ... but that it was implemented poorly and not thought out to the end. I'm one of those people. I believe that ... that 60% group harvest rule should be ablied only when there are more than 1 novice scout in group ... and in that respect I'm still worried that devs haven't quite yet understood us perfectly.There have been some suggestions about group leader to be able to switch the rule on or off as he sees it fit ... I think that to be good idea too.
Oh boy ... this got to be a lot longer post that I intended it to be. This is now my first official defend Delta post. 
I hope it's last one I feel I need to post. I hope that everyone tries to understand that Delta is a player just like rest of us and that he is doing his best trying to balance between us and devs while trying to get our problems addressed by the devs.
Solo harvesting has definitely been reduced by at 50% (50% for my measly Lvl 2 Scout skills, maybe more even for Rangers 
).
I repeat: whereas pre-patch a large spider would give me around 14 meat, it now gives me 7, wheras pre-patch I got 12 hides, I now get 6, and so on and so forth.
Now when grouped ot takes another dive...
I'm not too good at math but to me that comes down to a reduction by 70% (when grouped).
This just isn't right and it is already very well noticeable. It's very hard to find meat, hides and bones these last days and prices have gone quite a bit.
In a group only the scouts/harvesters should be accounted for, so if I'm the only scout harvesting in the group I should get full resources.
Well actually the best thing would be to make it an option: *enable group-harvesting* - then resources would be reduced to 60% (of the old values, not the new ones) or *don't enable group-harvesting* = scout gets full resources.
That would be the best thing to do imho. Is it possible?
OMG *begs for an edit option*, so many typos in my post:
It should read: Solo harvesting has been reduced by at *least* 50% and maybe even more (and not more even) for Rangers.
*It* takes another dive when grouped (but maybe ot does too 
).
Prices have of course gone *up* - where else?
Thanks for the response Delta. And yes, I can see where you have agreed with everyone and haha it has sorta made a scouts life miserable.
I do know though, its going to be very hard to reserve judgement on the 60% rule. Me, I think the idea is flawed from the gate, but it was intended to help so I wont go into a tirade over the idea. I just hope its really looked over and tested thoroughly. I think I hop on my soapbox more because of the apparent lack of testing then over the actual issue itself sometimes 
myomer wrote:
Holo I thought the reduction was overall, even when you're solo? I will check this personally but I think this is what scouts/rangers were complaining about.
It is definitely reduced solo. I have an artisan player who has worked on scouting and fighting skills in order to get hides to make some kinds of clothing. Now my poor little soon-to-be tailor character is going out and killing groups of Bagarasets just for their measly 12 units of hide. Its hard to even buy hide on the bazaar right now because it is becoming rare.
Suenr wrote:
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.
It does effect me. I'm a novice ranger and I still have to hunt for XP like scouts do and I'm happy that I can group now and not have to fight for hide scraps. I get to join the party and still advance my character without having to be a ninja harvesting **EDIT**.
Chris