Harvesting Environments

In another thread elsewhere, I posted my opinion about not liking a proposed change to remove harvesting respawn in single player mode. Since that time, I've done some revisiting of other places where I've spent many years happily harvesting to try to give more detailed, constructive feedback than just not liking it, since for me the issue isn't that I wouldn't like harvesting in a multiplayer zone at all but that if it becomes the only choice, that I'd rather do it other places than here.

Going back to other places I've liked, I realized the common denominator was that they were wide open, bright, colorful spaces, in complete contrast to a lot of zones here which tend to be small, dark, and claustrophobic. In single player mode, you can kind of reach a zen state where you can tune out the environment to some extent, but that's not as achievable in multiplayer node or if you have to rezone frequently to find new spawn.

Realizing this about myself, I can deal with it for the time being by forgoing the instance harvesting for a while and growing cotton to refine for producer xp instead, but that's not an option for everyone since it requires owning land. Maybe fishing is also a viable alternative, but I haven't tried it yet to know for sure.

I still think it would be a loss for single player harvesting to be restricted or removed since I think it provides a unique experience that other games don't have and it's an enjoyable activity to pursue while waiting for crafting to develop more. But I wanted to voice these thoughts in case some consideration of environmental details might make gameplay changes easier to live with if they're really needed.

After all, harvesting by its nature is usually going to be a time-intensive activity, but at the same time activities that cost time need to offer a satisfying amount of productive gain or pleasant experience to be worth someone spending their recreational time with it. Productive gain might be harder to deliver at this time while the economy is being worked on, but the environmental experience might be able to be improved. There is a dividing line that players can have between being willing to spend lots of time and effort on a desired goal and being unwilling to spend lots of time and effort in undesirable places. Finding the tipping point could yield big changes in satisfaction and behavior one way or another.

You're doing great work with the cities! - I want to acknowledge that and make clear I'm not complaining about all environments as a whole. But we don't spend most of our time there for it to make as big of an impact on our overall playing enjoyment as some field work might.

 

As a single-player harvester type of player, I don't think the lack of a respawn bothers me as it feeds more into the (expected) realism of the game. This goes for both resource nodes and for mobs/NPCs.

From a balance standpoint, a single-player player should not have an advantage over a multi-player player simply because they are the only ones in the particular scene to do the harvesting. By the same token, an MMO setting that does not respawn resources will fall into a balance problem where the quickest players get to the nodes first and leave everyone else with nothing so in multi-player settings there's a bit of break-from-reality allowed so that resources respawn in various intervals.

In regards to mobs/NPCs, in single player, it makes less than zero logical sense for a specifically named NPC to respawn after they are killed (example: Nestor in Owl's Nest), however "Red Sash Brigand", being a generic mob, you could see reappearing upon later visits as it could be just another one of the various members of the group.

Yes, that means that the single player has to do a bit more work and adventuring around from scene to scene to build up their resource supply, but that is balanced by not having the competition of other players in the same scene.

Also, if SotA is going to push beyond "yet another MMO",it should have the feel as though we the players have had some sort of impact on the world. The removal of resources is one of those impacts.

That's just how I see it anyway, even if it would benefit me as well to simply farm an area (like Owl's Nest until not too long ago)... it also has the unwanted "bonus" of allowing the scriptors and botters to do the same thing.