It's Time to Change - Harvesting Nodes

DreamsUnderStars · February 2021

This event has highlighted how annoying and outdated this mechanic is. This is not EQ2, it's 2021, not 1999. Put a stop to material nodes disappearing once one person harvests them. IF for some arcane reason you must have them expire (for stability reasons or whatever) allow at least three people have a go at it. Nothing is more annoying that having numerous bots rampaging around a zone harvesting all the mats.

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Also ideally I would love to see the fishing nodes be turned into just fishing the entire lake or river, and make the fish nodes special pools where you catch more fish for a short time. Like WoW does it... their system is better and makes it more of a pass-time instead of just another harvesting node.

Mettaricana · February 2021

You basically want instanced harvest node where they're present for each player to loot. Sadly this would tank what little demand there is for someone to harvest it if there's no competition to get the node.

Only one i do agree changing is fishing like There's a whole damn. Ocean how did i run out of fish in this spot?

zaria · February 2021

Mettaricana wrote: »

You basically want instanced harvest node where they're present for each player to loot. Sadly this would tank what little demand there is for someone to harvest it if there's no competition to get the node.

Only one i do agree changing is fishing like There's a whole damn. Ocean how did i run out of fish in this spot?

Yes, its some places with an lack of spots even if lots of water, Cyrodil ocean is the best example.
Its a few on AD side close to the river between the eastern inner gate and the keep controlling it.

Also some on EP side, southern river who edges the map its some if you go a bit north along the coast.
Not many know about this, we found it by accident.

SickleCider · February 2021

That satchel quest was impossible to do last night. There were hundreds of people climbing over every hill and dale. I tried to go to the most obscure places in the map that I could think of and had no luck. I finally found one out in the wilderness, I was about ten paces away from it, and literally three people swooped on it before I could grab it. Ridiculous!

Starlock · February 2021

If this complaint is inspired by the Clockwork City dailies that require harvesting material nodes, it is more that the design of those quests is ill-suited for high zone population. Rather than solve that with a significant change to existing game mechanics as suggested, it can also be solved by adjusting these quests specifically or adjusting material drop rates for the zone during the event. I often do not bother with those quests during event because of the problems with them. I don't want to deal with "fighting" over nodes because that is not in good spirits.

Some other quests have similar issues during high-population times. Like some of the world boss quests in Morrowind where you kill boss then have to kill X other mobs. i try to light attack then block for a while so others get hits in, but not everyone does that and the respawn time on mobs can be frustrating. You might notice that since CWC, these dailies don't have these kinds of player competition elements in them anymore to avoid these issues. I wouldn't doubt that was deliberate change because of these observed issues.

Raltin · February 2021

Mettaricana wrote: »

You basically want instanced harvest node where they're present for each player to loot. Sadly this would tank what little demand there is for someone to harvest it if there's no competition to get the node.

Only one i do agree changing is fishing like There's a whole damn. Ocean how did i run out of fish in this spot?

Speaking as someone who is a sport fisherman... ooooooohhhhhhhhhh maaaaaaaaaaaaan... you'd be surprised. The ocean is infinitely bigger than the number of fish in it... you can go out there feeling like today is the best day ever to catch fish, then after 12 hours on the beach without a single bite: you're breaking your rod over your knee and giving the water middle fingers.

RedMuse · February 2021

Raltin wrote: »

Mettaricana wrote: »

You basically want instanced harvest node where they're present for each player to loot. Sadly this would tank what little demand there is for someone to harvest it if there's no competition to get the node.

Only one i do agree changing is fishing like There's a whole damn. Ocean how did i run out of fish in this spot?

Speaking as someone who is a sport fisherman... ooooooohhhhhhhhhh maaaaaaaaaaaaan... you'd be surprised. The ocean is infinitely bigger than the number of fish in it... you can go out there feeling like today is the best day ever to catch fish, then after 12 hours on the beach without a single bite: you're breaking your rod over your knee and giving the water middle fingers.

As the descendant of professional fishermen let me add that prior to the invention modern of stuff like echo location, locating enough fish regularly to make a living was an art and there were closely guarded tricks to doing it. Even today a lot of professional fishers use them in addition to their modern aids. And no, they won't tell just anyone about these secrets of the trade.

So yeah, you easily "run out" of fish and only people who have never tried fishing whether professionally or for sport would make such a ludicrous claim.

AlnilamE · February 2021

DreamsUnderStars wrote: »

This event has highlighted how annoying and outdated this mechanic is. This is not EQ2, it's 2021, not 1999. Put a stop to material nodes disappearing once one person harvests them. IF for some arcane reason you must have them expire (for stability reasons or whatever) allow at least three people have a go at it. Nothing is more annoying that having numerous bots rampaging around a zone harvesting all the mats.

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They'd have to cut the nodes by 10 and make each node only harvestable once a day like in GW2.

Which I'd rather not have. Outside of events, it's very easy to gather stuff as you go about your business. No need to set aside "time to gather" like in other games.

Zephiran23 · February 2021

For the Clockwork City portion of this event they could have decided to double the number of quest items/node. Instead they've left it to players to compete for every respawn. Not only that, because drop rates are doubled, everyone wants to loot all types not just those they need for the quest.

A horrible example of a timesink that inconveniences the players and adds nothing to their enjoyment of the game.

Belegnole · February 2021

Yes it was a bit frustrating last night. I actually saw two people dueling over a node. Well at least that is how I took it. Never saw someone challenged over a rune node before.

KalyanLazair · February 2021

I think nodes are fine as they are. Sure, it sucks when you've seen a node and someone rushes by and grabs it, but it's not like there aren't more of them around.

As for the daily quest nodes like the herbalist satchel, I totally feel everyone here because I was there last night too. I gave up, had work today and wasn't willing to spend what little time I had left before bed fighting over nodes in CWC. In my opinion, those nodes could have been instanced to each player because I don't see what good competition does concerning elements that are only worth for a repeatable quest. Spending an hour running around CWC looking for satchels is not what I'd consider an enjoyable experience.

Sarannah · February 2021

As much as I hate it when players run past me right before I try to click some node, the nodes should never be made instanced. And should stay as they are.

umagon · February 2021

ZOS needs to lower the max number of players in small zones like Clockwork City down to 30 and just open new instances. That tends to be the real issue with any of these events which is the population number per instance is too high.

Kwoung · February 2021

Instanced nodes would destroy the economy in the game. Harvest materials are by far the most traded item in game and the easiest way for a newbie to make their first few million gold.

Gatefan2004 · February 2021

As much as I would like instanced nodes so I don’t feel like I’m constantly racing to collect it first I think they should lower how many is required for the quest. If Zos is going to cause a zone to have a population explosion they should halve the number or resource nodes you need to collect to complete the fetch quest. It would still be annoying, possibly frustrating, but at least it would go faster.

fredthefrown · February 2021

I think a better solution is to increase the amount of nodes in zones, not all, but most. That way we can spread out the farmers and not have as many high level players and bots in starter zones. Everyone who wants to farm is going to the same handful of spots. A lot of zones don’t get any farmers because they already have their routes (which is the same route as many other farmers)

Also for everyone saying it would tank the market....well, it needs it, at least on PC NA. The inflation has gotten way out of control. Seriously, the market could tank massively and prices could STILL be higher than this time last year

Orion_89 · February 2021

I made 8 million gold while selling materials during the last two weeks and you're saying it is hard to harvest? If we get instanced nodes then it's price will decrease threefold!

katanagirl1 · February 2021

I think the problem is that Clockwork City dailies requires harvesting nodes. It is the only daily that I can think of that does this and it’s in the tiniest (no pun intended, lol!) zone and harvesting nodes are shared. It’s like the perfect storm.

On top of that, the “double harvesting nodes” compounds the problem in this zone with probably only a dozen or so nodes to begin with, so everyone who is doing the dailies plus the people just harvesting nodes for mats are competing for the same few nodes.

The dailies need to be reworked so they do not require harvesting shared nodes.

FrancisCrawford · February 2021

Kwoung wrote: »

Instanced nodes would destroy the economy in the game. Harvest materials are by far the most traded item in game and the easiest way for a newbie to make their first few million gold.

That never seriously occurred to me as a newbie. One of my top priorities for in-game wealth was to have sufficient mats to craft what I wanted to. To this day my fictional wealth is balanced between mats and gold.

noblecron · February 2021

Instanced harvest nodes would be great. Gw2 does it beautifully. I've seen mobs of folk harvesting the same node without issue. I would really love ZOS to implement this

Coatmagic · February 2021

Not bothered by the nodes being as they are BUT

ffs, CHANGE the CWC collection daily before next years event!

The amount of frustration and outright rage caused by this is palpable is zone, and downright off-putting.

Tandor · February 2021

What a lot of people don't appreciate is that you are not limited to the area shown on the map for harvest nodes during the Clockwork City event, you can go outside that area and harvest on your own. Similarly with the New Life event that sends you to Betnik, you don't need to be in the quest area on the map to get the meat and honeycomb. Once you appreciate that then you can ignore all the other players competing for a few spawns in a small area and just help yourself.

In my view the present system is fine as it is. If ZOS need to do anything during these events it's simply to enlarge the quest areas shown on the map.

AlnilamE · February 2021

noblecron wrote: »

Instanced harvest nodes would be great. Gw2 does it beautifully. I've seen mobs of folk harvesting the same node without issue. I would really love ZOS to implement this

Note that in GW2, you can only harvest each node once per day and the nodes are a lot sparser than in ESO.

Trying to actively farm materials there so you have enough to level crafting is a lot harder than here.

drunkendx · February 2021

noblecron wrote: »

Instanced harvest nodes would be great. Gw2 does it beautifully. I've seen mobs of folk harvesting the same node without issue. I would really love ZOS to implement this

As annoying as ESO system is it's still better than GW2 farming

brimstone74 · February 2021

drunkendx wrote: »

noblecron wrote: »

Instanced harvest nodes would be great. Gw2 does it beautifully. I've seen mobs of folk harvesting the same node without issue. I would really love ZOS to implement this

As annoying as ESO system is it's still better than GW2 farming

Hard disagree.

katanagirl1 · February 2021

Kwoung wrote: »

Instanced nodes would destroy the economy in the game. Harvest materials are by far the most traded item in game and the easiest way for a newbie to make their first few million gold.

What if the nodes were instanced but only a small fraction were filled for each player? I’m talking in zones other than CWC in this case since it’s so small.

Since nodes are now shared, each time a player farms one, every other player in the instance has to have their game updated to show it as empty. That is a lot of info to be updating constantly for all players.

It seems like it would be better in terms of performance to have them instanced. It updates when you enter the zone and then it’s done. No cross-communication to the server and out to other players, and then back again.

FlopsyPrince · February 2021

DreamsUnderStars wrote: »

This event has highlighted how annoying and outdated this mechanic is. This is not EQ2, it's 2021, not 1999. Put a stop to material nodes disappearing once one person harvests them. IF for some arcane reason you must have them expire (for stability reasons or whatever) allow at least three people have a go at it. Nothing is more annoying that having numerous bots rampaging around a zone harvesting all the mats.

--

Also ideally I would love to see the fishing nodes be turned into just fishing the entire lake or river, and make the fish nodes special pools where you catch more fish for a short time. Like WoW does it... their system is better and makes it more of a pass-time instead of just another harvesting node.

Though then you would have more bots around gathering most likely, since they seem to do nothing about them.

CSose · February 2021

DreamsUnderStars wrote: »

This event has highlighted how annoying and outdated this mechanic is. This is not EQ2, it's 2021, not 1999. Put a stop to material nodes disappearing once one person harvests them. IF for some arcane reason you must have them expire (for stability reasons or whatever) allow at least three people have a go at it. Nothing is more annoying that having numerous bots rampaging around a zone harvesting all the mats.

--

Also ideally I would love to see the fishing nodes be turned into just fishing the entire lake or river, and make the fish nodes special pools where you catch more fish for a short time. Like WoW does it... their system is better and makes it more of a pass-time instead of just another harvesting node.

If implemented this would make ESO bot farmer heaven. The bots wouldn't even have to run around, they could just run back and forth between two nodes. On the bright side, I guess some material costs would go way down.

Gunner19K · September 2022

Just harvest the node before the bot does. I do this all the time. Or put down the Battered Bear Trap that pulls the bot out if it's pattern.

TaSheen · September 2022

Uh. Major necro thread here.

FlopsyPrince · September 2022

TaSheen wrote: »

Uh. Major necro thread here.

Shows the problem has been around for a while!