resources veins ala UO, or Protruding nodes?

Agree Dermott, dynamic to a sense that yes you will find more ores in mountain regions than in the middle of the plains.

 

I liked how Star Wars Galaxies had a dynamic resource system. Every 30 days, the resource distribution shifted, so nothing remained in the same place, and the properties of the resources changed as well. Sometimes, you could find resources of astounding quality which meant you could greatly improve the quality of the finished product you wanted to craft. Other times, you could go without finding good resources for months unless you were willing to travel all over the galaxy looking, and there was no guarantee that would work either...

What I hated about SWG's system was that there was nothing representative of the material you were harvesting. I wish there were nodes in that game... It would have been better than kneeling in an open field and farting out hardwood or copper resources... I always get the feeling that the resource harvesting aspect of SWG was never finished, and in the 8+ years post launch, SOE never could bother to do anything about it...

I like the idea of resource nodes. However, the different types of nodes need to be placed in logical places, rather than always out in the middle of a field. Caves should be the best place for mineral-based nodes. And those nodes need to be placed in the cave walls, in the ceiling, in the floor, not just standing proudly in the open or maybe tucked in a corner here or there. Like in Guild Wars 2, they should be minable by everyone. No more beating someone else to them and snatching them out from under them. GW2 got that part right...

And there needs to be 10x as many nodes as are normally in MMOs, but similar to SWG, the resources need to shift, encouraging prospecting and exploration on an on-going basis. Knowing where everything can be found at all times breeds boring gameplay and is yet another disconnect from the world in which we play.

Of course, this game is not being designed like most MMOs. The world is not open and seamless. Going into a forest zone to find trees to chop down means loading into a random forest instance, finding the tree, cutting it down, and I assume rinse and repeat until you have enough. It could be made more interesting if the forest zone is big enough, and there are 100 tree spawn points, but only a certain percentage of them are active at any given time, so you have to explore the zone if you want to find them all. Availability of resources could shift from time to time, going from 0 to 100% on a daily basis... At 100%, 50 of the nodes would be active.

Some would say that having access to so much wood would mean it would be too easy to make everything that needs it... Well, I would like to see a need for wood that goes beyond just making things. One thing about making towns compartmentalized into their own zones is that there could be all sorts of varriables running in the background SIMULATING a lot of things in the background... The lord of the town or whatever would live in a mansion with a lot of staff... Those fireplaces would need wood to keep the place warm in winter. The kitchens would need wood for the stoves... Supplying the town with wood, among other things, would contribute to keeping everything running efficiently.

In winter time, if one does not keep warm, they could run the risk of getting sick, resulting in debuffs that could affect performance in a lot of different areas, including combat. Being able to come into one's house and sit by a roaring fire could remove a cumulative "bitter cold" counter that would lead to those potential debuffs. So wood as a raw material becomes a consumable as well as a crafting resource.

Okay... enough rambling...