Earlier today, I noticed that the wood spawn in Solace Bridge Outskirts has been adjusted. Before R103, more than 90% of the available tree spots spawned, while now it is only 50%. Also, I believe the spawn cycle time has been lengthened. Now, I can somewhat understand why this was done; it was unnatural that so many higher level players went to a newbie zone to chop wood and possibly were hindering new players. However, I doubt if this was the right solution. Having now so few choppable trees in the area is not going to help new players who want to finish a quest or want to train forestry. Lets rather consider why higher level players went to Solace Bridge Outskirts for wood. Foremost: because a lot of wood is being used in game, so a lot has to be gathered. The most efficient way to gather lots of wood is to have an area with lots of trees and (very) high Meticulous Collection skill. With high Meticulous Collection comes the need to be able to spend time chopping at tree while not being disturbed by mobs. There is at the moment not really a zone that can facilitate those needs. Compare this with Elysium mines: lots of nodes and low spawn: after clearing mobs from part of the area one is almost guaranteed peace to finish those 10x-20x meticulous collections. There are nice zones with lots of trees: for instance Ulfheim, but the spawn of mobs is so frequent and unpredictable there that I seldom get anything better than x5 off a tree. Twins Foothills is another nice area, but again, the spots there that have the best wood also have the most frequent mob spawns. Now I haven't visited all zones in the world yet since R103 so it might be possible that there is an alternative for good wood gathering somewhere, so please let us know if that is the case. Otherwise: please give us an area for heavy wood chopping and give the new players their wood back! Ysold.
I've never had an issue with interruptions on big meticulous when farming trees in the scenes you mentioned. Just pull out a summon and pay attention to when the mobs spawn. The spawns aren't fast enough to be a problem in my opinion.
there are now other ways for new players in solace bridge outskirts to get wood, that are not available to veteran players.
There was a suggestion that level-capping the meticulous forestry skill in Solace Bridge Outskirts would discourage high level farmers while leaving wood for players to complete their quest, which seems like a rather good solution if it can be easily implemented. I saw someone mention in /u last night that they were unable to get enough wood for the quest but I didn't know then that there was a new alternate method, I'm interested to learn more about that.
There’s also chopping trees as well as killing Reapers. There’s also the Verdantis Shardfall, which if I recall correctly, has the most amount of available tree nodes. As was the intended design for Shardfalls (they are the scenes with the most available resource nodes). Last time I did a resource report, 17.02% of Maple Wood came from Ulfheim (33.4% from Solace Bridge). And Pine Wood 17.89% from the Snowy Mountain Road encounter. Note, these numbers are just where people go and get resources.
Today: 1 hour Twins Foothills, 7 disruptions; 1 my own fault for not spotting a tiger; the other 6 were respawns of bears, thugs, wolf, rogue. Summons don't take aggro off me. How can you say that spawns aren't an issue?
I don't think 7 in one hour is bad at all. I'm sure you could cut it down once you know the spawns better. How many successful attempts did you have during that hour when you didn't get interrupted?
I'll assume this is the process you approach: You approach tree node, you then assess to see if there's anything around you that could interrupt your gathering. Kill anything around you that could interrupt your gathering attempt. Proceed to gather wood by chopping the tree. A. You successfully gather wood from tree node. You then move to the next tree node. B. *Suddenly* a creature respawns, interrupting you, and prevents you from gathering a tree resource node effectively. B seems to be "that thing" that can happen from time to time, that is well basically, very annoying. No idea if that is supposed to be happening, or is intended. I can only speak for myself, but in general, and running through various scenes that have tree nodes, after clearing any threats near a tree node, having my Level 120 Earth Elemental, can usually keep anything that *suddenly* respawns near by interrupting me.
Lets face it - when you would be interrupted in Elysium mines 7 times in an hour you would be seriously annoyed. But that's not likely to happen in Elysium, because you more or less control the spawn there because you're the only who is killing stuff. That's different in the wooded regions: there mobs kill each other, so they can respawn at random moments. And that's the point I was trying to make: Wood is used almost as much as silver, but there is no zone for heavy duty wood chopping now that Solace Bridge Outskirts is ruined, but there is for silver.
So what's the point of high level players to visit with new players? There is no incentive if that's the case. I used to do this quite a bit along with other high level players. It encouraged interaction especially when new players asked for help or had a question. Other MMORPG games I play I see new and experienced players running around. At first I wax surprised. Couldn't imagine why people would mix in an area. That's when I realized what the game design was. Many places have activities that encourage experienced players to return. there are benefits. In Sota it's something I think needs to be implemented. A 120+ level player has no interest in a tier 1 zone. No challenge. But that could be better. As far as wood goes, it's already difficult at best to gather in forests. We need some rethinking around wood.
Solace Bridge Outskirts launched with a lot of maple trees. It's a big scene so we made sure to add in extra trees. Over the first few months, it became obvious that newer players were having trouble finding wood or even identifying wood-producing sources. We added a ton more trees in the area of the bivouac camp which seemed to solve the problem. Cut to a couple of years later, and we have been seeing far too many higher-level avatars in Solace Bridge Outskirts exploiting the convenience of easy gathering, and even monopolizing the trees. Some were even harassing new players for harvesting "their" trees. The reduction of the spawning of the "bonus" trees near the bivouac is intentional. we reduced the spawning of the extra maple trees in the general vicinity of the bivouac camp for this release. (The rest of the trees throughout the scene remain unchanged.) The wood and trees are meant for new players and those experiencing Solace Bridge Outskirts for the first time. In place of the extra trees, the bivouac camp now has numerous "wood pile" objects that offer most of the same rewards as the maple trees but with restrictions for who can collect their loot which favors new players. The locations of the wood piles are randomized. A screenshot showing what the "wood pile" object looks like is below. Note that this change wasn't announced prior to the release because we don't announce changes due to exploits until after the changes are implemented.
Thanks for the information. I am personally just fine with these changes. I don’t believe Solace Bridge Outskirts wasn’t ever supposed to be the top place for wood collecting and should not be, due to the negative impacts it could have with new players. Players *always* try to find the “path of least resistance” for the items they seek. And Solace Bridge Outskirts was king of that, for wood. Players now need to go explore and find for themselves, an area that provides a satisfactory amount of wood for themselves. When chopping wood, make sure you have equipped 1 Necklace and 2 Rings that have the Imbued Jewel of the Meticulous Forester on them (That will help raise your Forestry Meticulous Collection Chance by 18%). Also do remember (if this is something you can do), Reapers and the Lumberjack Siege Engineer, these also can provide wood as well.