Gathering Failures. Why & how do they work?

I've asked this before and my recollection is either of ambivalence or a slight majority who think that gathering failures add to the game. As this continues to baffle and irritate me and I fail to share the enjoyment of gathering failures or appreciate the gaming challenge factor and hence am unconvinced as to how they add value to my game, I ask again. Why do we need gathering failures?

Logically if I attempt to field dress an animal I will get a pelt - of perhaps varying quality - or perhaps I may mess up skinning it and get nothing from that animal, ever.. If I hit ore with a pick, I will get ore - of varying amounts. If I am foraging I will either gather the forage item, at varying amounts, or I may damage the plant and get nothing of use. But a failure where I have to do it all again - it makes no sense to me. Furthermore...

I am GM in all Mining aspects..my mining chance is currently 93%. I fail fairly often - certainly way more than 7% - and as has often been cited previously - when I fail I often get 'a run' of failures; maybe 2 or 3 in a row. Why the run? This has never to my knowledge been seriously addressed by the Devs or indeed clearly stated to be a myth.. (I've also noticed something similar with meticulous collection; you either don't achieve it or occasionally get a second gather, but most often you seem to get 3 or 4 - why? Is this how it is supposed to work?)

In addition to Mining, I have GM in most gathering disciplines. As I have levelled each skill I have monitored failure rates (admittedly not very scientifically) and I have observed no significant difference in the number of failures between a highly levelled skill or a lower levelled skill. Indeed, to my eye, the failure rates do not seem to to heed the stated percentage chance to any degree that I can see at all. So I conclude:

Is the maths actually working or working as we believe it to be?
Is there any point in levelling a base gathering skill beyond 40 to reduce failures?
But mostly; what is the point of a gathering failure? How does this enrich game-play?

 

I think I asked once about failures resulting in a buff to the next attempt, that increases with each fail, but it got shot down. Or, the harvesting bar has 2-3 ticks on it. You always succeed when the bar makes it all the way to the end (or on a crit) but you get a roll at each tick, and if successful, the bar ends. You could even add a skill to increase the number of ticks you get.

Alternately, you get a roll at each tick, and a success gets you 1 base material, and a shot at any bonus materials, like beetles or tin. You still have to wait for the full bar, but you get multiple rolls. End of the bar is always a success. And then instead of meticulous getting you a whole extra bar, it just ups the number of ticks you get.

 

Agreed. Gathering failures, with retry possible, should happen only if you're interrupted or if your tool is damaged. Failure with destruction instead of another attempt should be possible, but only at the lowest lack-of-skill levels.

Otherwise, it's just another of those tedious unfun things that they keep creating unrealistic workarounds to for other issues, keep saying they don't want to make us go through. Except that in this case, it's the tedium -- not the workaround -- that's unrealistic.

I might feel differently if the failure rate was tied to the node level, and node level was intentionally designed to represent difficulty of reaching the resources rather than abundance of resources.

 

I have failed at 100% chance... something aint right.

 

because its a videogame

 

That 100% probably wasn't actually 100%. The game interface rounds stats when they are displayed to us, so your actual success chance could have been anywhere between 99.5% and 100%.

 

I know sometimes when I go to pick strawberries in real life, for some uncontrollable reason while gathering them I just grab a bunch on the shrub and crush them in my fist. You're right, the failures in gathering are just tedium. I guess they're there to try and flesh out the gathering skills unnecessarily and the maths on them is very definitely wrong, despite protestations to the contrary.

 

Over extremely large sample sizes its hard to dispute the 93%. But the failure-chains, almost as if the mechanism which is determining success gets "stuck" is evident not only in gathering but in crafting as well. Failing a 97% craft multiple times in a row is extremely unlikely yet can happen multiple times in a single play session.