Meticulous Collection

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Scoffer, Oct 18, 2017.

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  1. Jezebel Caerndow

    Jezebel Caerndow Avatar

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    Most of the gatherers in this game are trying to get the most they can with the time they have, I hardly ever see otherwise.
     
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  2. Scoffer

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    Loop farming as you put is is a necessary evil simply because of how the crafting system works. I make high end gear to order and whenever I'm doing a commission on armour or weapons the first thing I look at is I need 2000 iron, 500 silver and 500 gold because of the RNG and quantity of ores needed when crafting when factoring in the breakage chance, exceptional chance and getting the right thing the customer ordered.

    Whether loop farming is intended or not its actually needed for crafters.
     
    Last edited: Oct 19, 2017
  3. Drocis the Devious

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    The game wasn't designed to encourage loop farming, it was designed to encourage players to trade with one another. Oh you have 100 ore? Great, I'm really good at tailoring so maybe we can trade ore for shoes?!

    I understand that the implementation of the game hasn't worked that way, but it wasn't designed with the goal of making everyone go out and run around mines as efficiently as they can. SOTA is a roleplaying game.
     
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  4. Drocis the Devious

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    I craft all the time and don't perform loop farming of ore.

    Loop farming is profitable, but it's not required. I know from experience.
     
  5. Scoffer

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    Loop farming is required. I know from experience.

    We seem to be at impasse sir.
     
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  6. Lazlo

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    You don't get the same condition in your other mining that you do during a meticulous collection. Of course if you could stand at a node getting endless first swings that could produce extra gold and silver ore or extra special metals, that would have a much higher collection rate than a meticulous collection. That's not an option though, so in order to know if meticulous is beneficial, you have to compare meticulous to overall collection rates. Given that the meticulous collection rate is easy to estimate and is typically much, much higher than overall collection rate, it's fairly clear that if the goal is to get as much of a base material as possible, meticulous is beneficial to that goal in most existing scenarios. That being said, given that you only intermittently get 5 second boosts of collection rate, it's often not a very significant bonus, which is also why it's easy to produce samples with even worse results than the average for mining without a bonus.
     
  7. Trihugger

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    Put your numbers up Baron. I'd love to see them.
     
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  8. kaeshiva

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    And I really really wished the economy worked this way. I think we'd all be in a better position. I really do.
    But that's not how it works.

    We just have to deal with what's in front of us, and if we aren't going to get that "intended" economic system then we need to work with what we've got.
    And in this "reality" - meticulous skill is not really helpful and could use a boost. That's I think the entire point of what's being said here.
     
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  9. Waxillium

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    What game are you playing? Both my skinning and mining are loops. It's hard to avoid it.
     
  10. Drocis the Devious

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    I don't question that the economy has problems. But the suggested fix is to encourage and reward more of those problems?

    What numbers?

    Required for what? It's not required for crafting, you can buy whatever you want from other players. Those players may choose to loop farm to be more efficient but that's a choice not a requirement.
     
  11. hammadowna

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    But the Baron is right. You don't HAVE TO loop farm for anything. Not sure why there is such a power gamer mentality when it comes to online games. It's rather disheartening.
     
  12. Drocis the Devious

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    Perhaps we're using different definitions of loop farming?

    I would call loop farming when a player is driving to be as close to 100% efficient (read: constantly gathering at MAX rates) and their soul purpose in life is to continuously LOOP through scenes so that the rate at which they were gathering never goes below MAX rates of gathering.

    I don't do that, it's not required. It's obviously more effective, but it's not something I consider part of the intended design of the game. I would be very surprised if the devs said "yes, we totally want you to loop farm the hell out of this game, we're thinking of changing the name of the game to Loop Farmville".
     
  13. kaeshiva

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    Again we're being pedantic

    You don't HAVE to wear armor either, you could run around naked or perhaps in a nice dress - but you'll find that most players do wear armor because its a sensible choice within the confines of the game mechanics in terms of benefit of doing so.
     
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  14. Waxillium

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    I think it's 100% in the design. 2 reasons. Mobs/nodes respawn in a scene. It takes 10 trees to make 1 bow.
     
  15. hammadowna

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    It's not at all being pedantic and it's offensive to my part to say so.
     
  16. Drocis the Devious

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    I think grinding is certainly by design. But loop farming is a different animal. That's the efficient min/maxing of grinding. I don't think the developers are really designing scenes where they're thinking "what's the most efficient way for players to loop through this scene?" Do you?

    I mean to your point the fact that mobs respawn is very grindy and encourages people to stand around and farm them. But what part of the scenes are encouraging people to run through them in the most efficient way possible? And to be more on topic, what part of the game suggests that obsidian potions are supposed to magnify that type of power gaming?

    If anything, I'd rather see the developers make loop farming a lot more difficult as it seems to be something people exploit and doesn't appear to add much to the fun factor of this game.
     
  17. kaeshiva

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    I think there are certainly degrees.

    For example, if I wanted to have "optimum efficiency" I could modify my behavior, plot the most efficient course through the mine, using the best pickaxe and the appropriate potion(s), sprint/dash/blink between nodes, and white-knuckle my mouse to not waste a single second. I could probably increase my hourly yield, sure. I could turn off chat to avoid all distractions, put in earplugs to block all external sound, etc. But I don't do this, I don't want to do this, doing this would burn me out pretty quickly. I've done this in short bursts purely for yield tests, but it is absolutely not my normal behavior. I completely agree with you Baron that playing in this manner is probably not what was intended.

    I do however, try to make the best use of my time in terms of what I "gain" while I'm in an adventure scene. I think most people do. I'll be chatting or tabbing out while I do it, or watching netflix, or whatever - but I'm still going around the same zone on more or less the same course, killing the same mobs, getting the same nodes, over and over until my inventory is full. That bit of "looping" is as was mentioned, pretty hard to avoid - the zones aren't that big, and the respawn of nodes is slow enough that staying in one area you'll just end up twiddling your thumbs. I know for example that by the time I mine the 2nd and 3rd floors of Elysium, the first floor will have respawned, so I go back up there. I know that if I dilly-dally in the bottom room meticiulousing or getting the gem nodes, then the earth eles will respawn and I'll have to kill them again, which uses time I could be spending mining. So I do adopt a reasonably efficient clear room, get stuff, move on methodology, but staying at a maximized rate? Absolutely not.

    What I am saying is that even at a rate far below the "max" I'm noticing that the meticulous is lowering my hourly xp/ore gain, and drinking the potion does nothing to improve my situation.
    I will allow meticiulous to happen, I do have the skill levelled up for mining, but if it happens too often, it reduces my overall yield, thus calling into question the merit of investing xp/money into improving it.
     
  18. Trihugger

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    There must be some imaginary mines that have unicorns and rainbows in which aren't fundamentally designed to be circular/punt me back to the entrance to repeat the process. I want the Kool-Aid!
     
  19. Drocis the Devious

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    Much like you, I've also been to different mines and found myself staying there until my inventory is full. But I haven't noticed that meticulous collection was making that go slower. I get the point you're making. If instead of meticulous collection you were still mining then you would have more nodes mined and thus have more ore than if you didn't have meticulous collection. But is that really how the mines work? Is that how they're supposed to work?

    I know you're not saying this, but the extreme argument is that mine nodes should never even respawn, they should just continuously give you ore. Then you compare that to meticulous collection rates and see what produces more. It just doesn't seem like a reasonable question to me. Ore is very valuable, yes. Ore takes time to mine, yes. The crafting system can use a lot of ore, correct. But there's noting that requires players to mine ore themselves, there's nothing that requires players to craft, and there's nothing that says you can't mine marginally slower than max rates and still be successful at any level.
     
  20. Waxillium

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    I don't think it's intentional. Quite the opposite. But after 47 releases it's a bit chicken/egg. It's not like they can feign ignorance.
     
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