Posted by Zlatto in Zlatto's Bazaar | 16 Comments
Zlatto’s Bazaar: You Want Me To Get This?
Zlatto’s Bazaar is the one-third Wall Street, one-third criminal empire and one-half gossip rag. You need to keep up on the Bazaar if for no other reason than to keep an eye on your competitors. Don’t be a Ho-tah and visit often. Your comments are encouraged, especially if they make me credits…
Ok, before I get into my bi-monthly rant, I feel the need to share something that is on my mind and quite possibly on the mind of 95% of the player base. Is it just me, or is the shot below the most frinking depressing image you can see on a daily basis?
Back To Bazaar Business!
Love it or hate it, Gathering is a necessary part of the crafting cycle in MMOs, be them sandbox or theme park games.There are many implementations of gathering. One of the most common – which we know TOR has as well – is node gathering. Now, the gang at BioWare has also gifted us with companions, and one of their functions is as crafting and gathering minions. In a few of the videos we’ve seen both the character and the trailing companion stop at either an exposed node or a dead creature/droid to harvest. That’s a nice twist where your companion can stop and do the dirty work, while you keep on truckin’.
From a non-combat point of view, what does walking around with a companion actually gain us besides one less crew member crafting or doing missions?
I know having a companion out impacts your combat, but is real-time gathering the only thing they are bringing to the party?
So what do you gain (or lose) by not picking it up yourself? Do you or your companion have different chances at different results? Do your companions all have the same skill level as your charactger? If skill level factors into the resources to be found then we could be missing out. Now, I have no idea on how the nodes resources will be generated. Is the value in the node determined when it generates in the game world, or does our gathering skill influence what you get out of a node?
Lets walk through my concerns using an imaginary Lava crystal node as we imagine adventuring across Mustafar (which is of course, not one of the launch planets!) It will have regular Lava Crystals of course, but on rare occasions maybe an “exquisite” Lava Crystal can be mined from the same node. If the gathering system generates all resources in the node outside of any player influence, then the value of the node is set when spawned and the skill level in gathering from the above node is moot, except to determine if it can be gathered. So having my character with skill Y gather the crystal node will have no impact on the resource gained versus having my companion with skill Y-20 gather it.
/speculation on
I know, I know. You’re wondering what kind of giggledust I’ve been snorting to even think about the concept of nodes relying on the skills of the gathering player. But there is some logic to my delusions. We were told there would be a chance of critical successes in Crafting (Crew Skill #1.) Daniel Erickson mentioned for Mission Skills (Crew Skill #2) that “kinda a roll would happen, maybe they get something small maybe something big.” So why not critical successes in the last of the Crew Skills triumvirate, Gathering (Crew Skills #3)? We know that Jedi Knight companion Lord Scourge (via the last update) has +10 Archaeology Efficiency, but does that just allow him just a head start in mining nodes or does it also allow an ongoing advantage to getting blue drops out of crystal formations as compared to Mako?
The speculation is that this bonus will enable him to complete his missions a wee bit quicker than others without it, but what if, as the +Critical helps his ability in crafting to generate a critical success, why should he not hope for some sort of critical benefits in Gathering? I know it seems far fetched, but if there is a chance to critically succeed in Crafting, and a chance for our companions to fail/crit succeed in Missions, then maybe we see something in Gathering too?
It’s not like they will be gathering from nodes in your absence, right?
There has been a lot of forum speculation about the concept of Missions and their impact on Gathering. How they are ‘perceived’ as a way to bring resources into the crafting cycle without nodes (great concept) and the concern that Missions will be money sinks (doh!). Now, the concept of off-line gathering has always intrigued me. Setting up a droid for some strip mining in Star Wars Galaxies always made me smile. I like the concept, but I really have no context. So before we all get too worked up we need to wait till the NDA drops or BioWare releases more official information. The challenge we all face is we have no idea of the credit to value/rarity/impact ratios of items gathered via Missions.
So a few weeks ago I asked about your Crew Skills configurations. The concept of how we gather with our companions impacts whether we will follow the standard Gather, Craft, Mission combo, or maybe we get greedy about raw resources. Since there is a cost associated with Gathering Mission skills, will it be more common to see players wait on these until they establish their credits pipeline? These are all questions I hope to pursue with you all once the NDA drops, the team at BioWare finalzies their in-game algorithms, and we can all sit down over a beer (craft-brewed, of course) and do some math.
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I don’t remember ever hearing any of the developers say anything about a crit on a gathering attempt. I would like that though because it is like a slot machine and I dig that. give me a chance to get a great reward from a task I repeat over and over and that would be awesome.
without being in the beta I am not sure about whether it is feasible to start your missions early as soon as you start to get some companions or if you have to wait a while to get the credits coming in first before you can afford to run missions.
I am kinda hoping the mission credit cost is on the higher side but that’s just me, because i can always find out of the box methods to make credits and if its steep then that would cut down on the amount of competition I would have in the AH when not as many people can afford to run the missions and get the critical drops from them. heh.
I just hope and pray that in the end this system (crew skills) ends up being fun when they are done dumbing it down.
Boy I just feel the Bioware team missed an opportunity this week. The constant leaks about the changes in crew skills has created a feeling a disorientation to the crafting community. We first hear that the format is earth shattering in it’s customization options. Then we hear it has been ‘simplified’ due to concerns about complexity. I know it’s too early to panic, but I can’t help feel like I did when people talked of NGE. Simplification does not always parralel fun, challenging and engaging choices.
Don’t get me wrong I a really looking forward to playing, I just am trapped with a bit of ‘I wonder what it was like before….’
I’m given to wonder if the companions will continue gathering/crafting if you’re not logged in? If they do, well and good, and BioWare will obviously have taken that into account. If they do not, then people who can be logged in 24/7 will potentially have a huge advantage over anyone who can not.
This all presumes that companions stay on autopilot and go about their business once they’re told to start, and there’s no level of micro-management involved. If they do need to be guided from step to step then simply being logged in will not achieve anything.
This would be something, but so far all I can find about offline efforts on your companions is that they can be queued to create or sent on missions. From what I can tell you can queue them up to create 10 Big Black Blaster of Uberness and if it takes them 22 hours to create they will chug along while you are offline. But I cannot find any reference to them gathering, except bu sent mission, on their own.
So, kinda like Fallen Earth.
You know, if companions could and did gather while you fought off any big nasties that might be on or near the node… Well, I’d be willing to pay for that!
Investing more time in anything should always reward you more ;) thats even more true for mmo’s and as far as I can remember, they do gather while you are not online.
ithink the most depressing part is when it says congratulation lol
I know … its like a virtual kick to the nards. Congratulations, we have no selected you at this time.
If I recall correctly, the Devs stated that Companion Bonuses to Crafting skills had been removed so that Players did not feel any pressure on which character to take with them vs leave behind. I would think that would also apply to Gathering skills – but perhaps I am wrong. If a particular Companion has a bonus to a certain Gathering skill…and I am specialized in a related Crafting skill, I may feel pressured into taking that Companion with me for the purposes of Crits and/or just leveling up their Gathering to gain the Crafting Materials needed for my Crafting Specialization.
I’m not in Beta, so I have no clue if this is actually how it works (and even if I was, I wouldn’t violate the NDA). But to do it any other way seems…counter to what they have stated as their intent.
I had thought I had heard that, but the last Crafting image shared (that was not a beta leak) still had a Skills related to the Companion listed.
But you point is spot on …. and it does trouble me.
If I play a Trooper, and would more easily get through some of the content with a ranged DPS companion am i going to have to decide between my crafting efficiency and who I take out for quests? Seems counter-intuitive to me.
It could easily have been an image from an earlier build of the game than the current (or internal) one. It is something that needs cleared up – hopefully soon.
What I vaguely remember them saying was that crits were removed, so you dont have an increased chance of getting something good, but that effiency was staying, because that is just a reduction in gathering time.
So either with you they gather faster, or send em on a mission and they get done faster, it is the same “benifit” to gathering.
(Again, not positive, just what I recall)
Well well well, back to your old habits of speculating on everything that is beyond your pay grade. With two months left until launch you would think things would be more settled and you would be right if it were a console game but as this is an mmo it will follow in the footsteps of all other mmo’s and will be pay to play beta for several months after launch as they tweak, fix, modify, reevaluate, and basically get the crafting system in line so that it doesn’t break the game or the economy. Anyone who remembers fishing up blue boots the first months of WoW will understand that the idea of finding rares with gathering skills seems great but can totally tank an economy.
We’re getting paid for this? Why wasn’t I told? And where do I pick up my paycheck?!
Wait a minute… I didn’t have to pick up the crafting skill for this, did I?
@Ventu now finding the one ring while fishing paid for my first end game mount. I am not saying gathering rares but just speculating that skills could matter in a result. I mean adding a small chance to process a rare resource from a node interests me…. But then again none of this brings in the risk of farmers.
If the mission skill style gathering and such bring in a higher chance of Rare resources maybe that is the way Bioware is trying to defend the economy a bit. Is the credit spent to resources gained enough of a risk to keep the farmers node harvesting only?