Training Gathering Skills does not feel rewarding.

Some gathering skills take a rather steep amount of time to train and do not provide a drastic increase in reward. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Let me explain my reasoning.

So, more difficult scenes feature higher level versions of basic resource nodes. Now, as a new/rookie player, you'll see something like a Copper Ore node on a wall and have successfully harvested this same node in lower-level scenes, so you will probably think you'd have no problem getting the copper here. Then, you realize the progress bar is moving insanely slow and you have something along the lines of a 16% chance to successfully harvest the node. Most new players to the game are not going to understand this - when it is eventually explained that higher level nodes have a chance at having rare bonus resources they might understand, but players new to the game or new to harvesting/gathering will most likely be confused.

On top of that, the more difficult to harvest node, does not have anything but a chance at a rare bonus resource. The difficulty increase isn't rewarded with the ability to gather more of the basic material and is instead only rewarded with the chance at getting rare goodies. This makes the reward for gathering high level nodes vs. the reward for gathering low level nodes more difficult to notice at a glance. Considering (especially for mining in the lower level areas) the time invested in advancing the skill, this does not create a reward system that feels justifiable considering the grind.

I always thought that having identical nodes with different "harvesting levels" was strange, but especially with the use-based progression system slowing down the overall speed that you can attain higher harvesting skills, I don't think this system makes sense anymore. Just for the sake of offering constructive criticism as opposed to just complaining, I'll propose a couple of possible solutions.

First idea: No more of having different harvest levels for the same nodes. A copper node shouldn't be more difficult to mine based off of the difficulty of enemies in a given area. Cotton shouldn't be harder to pick because 50 feet off the bears are scarier than they are in the East Perennial Trail - unless the cotton bush is visually different (and more rewarding) to harvest than a lower level version, and distributed in higher level scenes accordingly. I'll provide examples for each profession, but I want to pre-empt this by saying these ideas are merely half-baked suggestions instead of finished and detailed systems, so take it as you will. I'd also like to point out that a lot of this is labor-intense and would involve a lot of grunt work level design, editing existing scenes and replacing existing nodes with new (higher level) ones.

Foraging - Change the size and visuals of a node to reflect how much resource you might get per harvest. A small Nightshade flower will probably only give one nightshade per harvest, but a cluster of them found growing at the base of an obsidian shard will give multiple, for example. This same concept could be applied to all of the other current foraging nodes.

Forestry - Trees that could yield rare materials should look different from basic trees. If a tree might yield sooty bark it should be blackened and harder to cut down - fire tends to harden the core wood of a tree if the tree is left standing after the fire, so it would require more skill in forestry to cut it down. In addition to this, trees of different size might provide more wood per harvest but be more difficult to cut down. A small Maple tree is obviously easier to bring down than a huge, magically-enhanced one that might be growing in the Verdantis Shardfall's magical miracle-gro effect.

Mining - This one's easy. Make an ore node for each of the more rare types of metal. Introducing different size ore nodes isn't really important. Make Copper and Iron the easiest to harvest and keep a chance at bonus materials like gems, and give nickel, etc. their own harvest nodes. Increase the chance of gems and such based off of the difficulty of whatever node you are attempting to harvest.

Field Dressing - Field Dressing an animal should give you various amounts of resource based off of the relative size/difficulty of the animal, as well as a butcherable carcass for that animal. A bear has more hide on it than a wolf, and is definitely harder to bring down. And... take spider carapace out of the drop table for cotton and put it on the drop table for spiders. The bigger the spider, the more chance at usable carapace pieces. Suet is specifically beef or mutton fat found around the kidneys so that shouldn't be a product of field dressing so much as it is from butchering, which requires a field dressed carcass to work with. There should be more uses for animal parts but that's a different subject for a different post.

Agriculture and Fishing are unfinished so I don't really have much to say on those as of yet. I'm sure I'll have feedback when they are more fleshed out.

 

+1 for sure.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I hope they're planning on making these changes already because they make a lot of sense but it's good to know I'm not alone in this thinking.

 

The use-based changes have shifted the balance and made it much more of a grinding game than it was before.

Also, I would suggest some better ways to make gold off of this from the vendors. The monetary rewards for selling raw and refined materials is mediocre at best.

 

The monetary rewards from selling finished goods to vendors is also not worthy of note, really. At the moment as far as I can tell, most of the gold in the economy right now comes from turning in ectoplasm. It's the most lucrative farming method I've discovered so far.