🌼👋 Dev Discussion: Gatherable Spawning System

Ok, to cover my group as a whole, one more!

What aspects of the current gathering system do you like and dislike?
With the current form, the feeling of 'I want [__] so I go [__] or buy from someone who goes because I don't want to go' is weak and does not incentivize engagement, immersion, or even the will to log in to exist.

What makes a gatherable system fun for you?
It all comes down to the above, whether it be gatherables or mobs. It can't be directly progression though, because that runs out/gets warped/messes with incentives. It has to be 'progression within one's chosen path'. A good enough economy covers this though. Minigames that fit the mental model of the player who likes the craft often help, but aren't vital.

What kind of scenarios would you like to see encouraged through the system?
Paying attention to dynamic weather, and dungeon/POI delving to use special crafting stations. Open World.

Are there gatherable systems in other games that you enjoy?
Speaking primarily in MMORPG terms, this is the spot where the answer is personal (my group members will be poked to expand on their stuff for this only, now that I've written enough essays on the rest...

Personally I like almost all gathering systems because I think so abstractly, but if we're talking about Itemization as an integral part of gathering, then MineCraft is fine, BDO is usually at least okay but suffers when I want an actual incentive, FF11 is fine, except Chocobo Digging which is the best thing ever (but I do not need nor particularly want replicated anywhere). Throne and Liberty is getting there, I definitely have a few 'spots' in that game, especially because they are at the 'mildly dynamic weather' stage.

What about those mechanics do you find fun?
I want, therefore I go. If I want enough different things, the dynamism determines where I go, who I meet, the relationships I have with people who have similar interests.

In FF11 I knew the other high level chocobo diggers by name because we were always competing for the good zones, and whoever was most prepared for the weather and moonphase combination on that day would win out using various strategies.

Similarly, you could 'leave a zone to someone else' out of 'respect' knowing that while you COULD compete for the big ticket items, you didn't share the Artisanship skill that goes with the bulk of what you get for that zone, so you 'leave it to them' rather than both of you spending the same time for 'half the profit'. Or if you didn't like them you could do it anyway for 'spite' ofc.

It's hard for me personally to say what I find fun, but for the group feedback in case they don't touch this one, the first line is the important one.

Which of the upcoming gathering-related changes excites or intrigues you the most, and why?
It's hard to be excited about the installation of boilerplate experience, I think. No group members have expressed any meaningful interest beyond 'oh you mean they might stop doing it the utterly stupid way? Well, that's good'. The changes are moreso removing a pain point, but they don't, as of now, even raise the gathering to 'getting a passing grade'.

That's relative to the 'final exam' though, and it seems like y'all are still in 'week 2 of the semester', so for now, keep doing your best, we (mostly) believe in you!

Given most of the responses it took me awhile to remember that I was in fact reading a dev discussion not some rando threat given all the 'not answering the brief' I've been seeing.

Anyway, as noted Azherae is noting most of our groups feedback. Here is my separate additional feedback:

Are there gatherable systems in other games that you enjoy?

I genuinely enjoy BDO gathering/lifeskilling and really thought this was the direction AoC was intending to go with their system before the clarified that it was not. What makes BDO's gathering enjoyable? Well, it does a good job of the 'pattern of search' that gathering typically rewards. BDO has very realistic environments if you ignore the mob placements. So finding an actually gatherable node is a skill as is finding profitable clusters of them. Because the world of BDO is so vast you are rewarded with knowledge when you explore the map with these possible clusters. I will also add that BDO has systems that make hunting mobs an actual part of gathering through their blood siphoning and tanning. I'm not an alchemist or a leatherworker but I am a farmer and a costume maker in BDO and having the option in an immersive way to participate in those in a cross discipline way without necessarily making me 'need to be involved in those trades entirely' is something I find appealing. Hunting mobs needs to be involved in any good crafting system imo.

I will say that TL is starting to get to the same place as BDO when it comes to the 'pattern of search' and 'reward for exploration' with their recent expansion. However the map is too small and crafting is too simplified for it to stand on it's own. It can get there and I've been noting they even added hunting style mob drops to certain lists which has expanded how relevant hunting mobs is to cooking. If we could just get farming, alchemy, and a little more complex in the recipies....

FFXI has a pretty good gathering system, but I found it personally less enjoyable because of how sparse and uncomplex environments are. This is something that is really effected by the age of the game, not really the core design. If there was a graphics update to make environments keep their vibe but have more complex foliage and pallet to make identifying a node more meaningful as gameplay and not just 'hey there is the shiny thing' it would be a lot higher up in my list. I will say that crafting as a system is so well developed that as a farmer I don't really 'need' gathering to be more than it is in FFXI to enjoy the game as a crafter.

Lastly since there isn't a good place to put it, I'll say mechanically I really value event based alterations to loot tables for gathering nodes like weather, seasons, or dynamic events (big boss in the area). I need to care as a crafter that it is raining right now in TL so I can go pick up my necessary crab claws for making my seafood! This isn't to say I want certain options locked off. In TL you can still farm hermit crab meat when it's dry, but the rain gives a very meaningful boost because crab claws give you slightly more output when cooking which is reason enough to get them, although yes there are exclusive recipes for it as well. This is something I expect is super important to AoC gathering. IF not well.......

Azherae covered most of it but I have two main things to note here .


Are there gatherable systems in other games that you enjoy?

So far I've been really enjoying TL since their fishing update. The other gatherables still need work, but the idea of "needing to know the lay of the land, the weather conditions and the timing in order to find the specific thing you want" makes the world feel much more alive and locations feel more real even in a game with fast travel. I wish that they extended this onto other gatherables beyond just herbs and startrees reacting to rain, but even that is still a big plus in my book (if I want apples, go to Purelight Hill when it rains). I think that their gathering of ground resources would go from "good" to "great" with more diversity in materials similar to the fish, encouraging you to really learn every zone and understand what they have to offer.

What about those mechanics do you find fun?

Most of my fun in an MMO during the "downtime" (i.e. when the guild isn't raiding) is wandering the world tripping over cool stuff and telling the guild about it. Having gatherables be reliably predictable based on geological, meteorological and biological patterns makes you want to understand the world, and makes it feel more alive. If I know that a certain kind of tree only grows on a certain mountain range elevation, it will make locations that fit that ideal more memorable. Once you add weather and day/night cycle, it also makes gathering its own impetus - the feeling of "it's raining, I better go get some apples" is itself a drive to engage with the system.

Focus on making gathering POIs distinct and relevant to the biome they're in, and you will naturally create a gameplay space with them. I don't want to run into rubies in the middle of a meadow and find that mountains don't have much different spawns for the sake of "fairness". Make all the miners have to find obscure rocky spots or fight over the common ones - that's gameplay right there.

@Azherae and @GrilledCheeseMojito have both covered a lot of my opinions on gathering systems already. To expand on this a bit:

Are there gatherable systems in other games that you enjoy?

1. Throne and Liberty - TL gathering is a bit basic, but I like that different materials are more common in certain biomes, and that what drops you get can depend on the weather.
2. Subnautica - Maybe 80% of Subnautica's gameplay loop is focused around exploring to find where the resource you need for a specific crafting recipe spawns, and figuring out how to survive the dive to get to it.
3. Modded Minecraft - I play a Minecraft mod that, among other things, causes certain types of stone to only show up in specific biomes. For instance, you might only be able to find marble in plains.

What about those mechanics do you find fun?

The common theme for me is gathering systems which reward exploration and an understanding of the geology and ecology of a location. For instance, knowing that specific type of ore spawns most often in a particular mountain valley, or that you have to go into the forest just after it rains to get a rare mushroom.

However, I specifically dislike systems in which resources always spawn at a fixed location, because this makes gathering about rote memorization and optimization for static parameters, rather than open-ended exploration.

I also like gathering systems where acquisition of resources is tied directly to the player's goals. In Subnautica, as an example, I might be motivated to try and find uranium ore to power a deep sea base more efficiently. Or, in TL, I could try and find a specific type of mushroom to craft food I need for a co-op dungeon I'm running with my guild later in the day.

I think mostly gathering systems work best when they're tightly integrated into the core gameplay loop, reactive to environmental conditions like rain and time of day, and open-ended enough that there isn't a single optimal approach to resource gathering a player should take.

Are there gatherable systems in other games that you enjoy?

FFXI's fishing is perfect. No notes.
TL's does just fine too. It's fundamentally similar, although I think they're still working on getting the depth of environmental factors involved.

BDO's gathering systems are honestly okay. I feel like it was a bit much sometimes to be able to cut every tree. I don't think that it feels right, even if it's technically very realistic to be able to cut every tree in the forest. This is something that TL actually does well, in my opinion. On this very specific point, I love that TL has us chop stumps rather than whole trees. It feels much more natural to have those vanish after chopping than the "whole tree falls over" thing.

TL does a good job of making the basic 'running about the world hunting for things' work.

What about those mechanics do you find fun?

I have to echo the things that Azherae has said about the importance of things changing due to environmental variables, and also what my teammates have mentioned about the hard requirement that zone ecologies and resource positions make sense . There is no faster way to make a gathering system suck than to have gatherables in nonsensical locations for what they are.

Even TL's simple "rain or no rain" type system is a good step that makes gathering (and gathering specific things ) something that you have more or less incentive to do at different times. It creates a good window and trigger for gathering things. In Ashes it could be even better due to seasonality.

Nonetheless, all of these games generally try to keep their gathering points in sensible locations for the type of resource they contain. There is no possible way to make something feel empty and gamey faster than making resource spawns either always the same, or putting them in locations that don't make any sense. Doing so immediately reminds the player that the game world is static or arbitrary, and they're just out there making numbers go up. Good ecology and dynamism push the player to think about the world they are in as a world, and both nudge and allow them to reason about it as one.

The other thing that is important is economic. TL does a reasonable but not perfect job of handling this aspect. I am an opportunistic gatherer, and also the type to go gather non-specific herbs, as well as wood or the occasional rock. It must be reasonable on an inventory-management level to be able to go about collecting things. "Filling up your inventory on 1.5 types of trees, because you happen to collect 4-5 rarities of Oak Log, and then not having space for Ash and Birch" is not fun. I can see how certain types of people (the more focused, targeted gatherers who are seeking an exact specific material) can have fun with this, but my gatherer type (closer to 'wanderer' if you want to give it a label) gets rather limited. As a niche, it's probably along the lines of 'collect a bunch of random lower level things for the guild bank'. TL has slightly too many types of Plants/Herbs for my inventory, if I am doing anything other than just gathering.

Even FFXI had gathering tools with "durability". I won't complain about this. I assume it's a necessary economic lever.