Catch-up Mechanic: Natural Quality Trend

[pppp]

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That was node depleting by picking resource out of it. It worked in a quite short time scale, as you wrote 1 pt/8h, but the spot could never exceed its max value. So people skimmed some of top q resource (IIRC clay, soil, water) and waited a day to skim a bit more.
As I perceive the current interest in the mechanics, the desire is to make natural qualities go up to at least partially follow rising industry qualities. Quest rewards fulfil that expectation, though I have been told quest rewards do not exactly work as they were described, player control over it is highly doubtful, but that is second-hand info - I do not know the whole picture.

[MagicManICT]

For quest rewards, my understanding is that each spirit has a few targets they'll give bonuses for, and only a few. Most of the trees are pretty much worthless for this, and I don't know of any in my area that bump up anything truly meaningful in the long term. Even at q1000, squirrels will still be more or less useless (maybe those curios might have some value for trading to newer players?)

But yeah, my take from popo13 was a "flexible system" of ups and downs, not just the down like we used to have. It seemed like the past couple of posts had either forgotten about that system, or maybe didn't know about it.

Overall, I think there could be more done like this general suggestion. I'm not sure it's the right answer, but it's a good effort towards the problem.

[sabinati]

For quest rewards, my understanding is that each spirit has a few targets they'll give bonuses for, and only a few. Most of the trees are pretty much worthless for this, and I don't know of any in my area that bump up anything truly meaningful in the long term. Even at q1000, squirrels will still be more or less useless (maybe those curios might have some value for trading to newer players?)

But yeah, my take from popo13 was a "flexible system" of ups and downs, not just the down like we used to have. It seemed like the past couple of posts had either forgotten about that system, or maybe didn't know about it.

Overall, I think there could be more done like this general suggestion. I'm not sure it's the right answer, but it's a good effort towards the problem.

a q1000 squirrel tail would be 20k, you can get 2 good string from the hide, and you'd have a q1000 bone

throw the meat on the ground, though, yeah

[MagicManICT]

I did forget about the good bones you'd get. Still, that'd be a damn lot of quests everyone in the area of that tree would need to do. Best squirrel I've caught this world was about q50.

[Popo13]

But yeah, my take from popo13 was a "flexible system" of ups and downs, not just the down like we used to have. It seemed like the past couple of posts had either forgotten about that system, or maybe didn't know about it.

I recall now the mechanic of node quality depleting; I am surprised I had forgotten it.

My suggestion was intended to be non-specific, but was more along the lines of the quality of resource nodes changing over time, but not simply trending upward at a set rate. If players are able to identify the trend of a node, the best nodes will again be determined in a matter of time that is quite short compared to the age of the world, and would defeat the intended motivation for wanderlust and exploration.

With the current large nodes, player's being able to negatively affect quality would indeed cause griefing. I was thinking along the longs of something simple, like a hidden equation:

Qaulity =34-1*(t-5)+0.1*[(t-12)^2]

where t is a variable related to the age of the world.
In this example, at the birth of the world (t=1) the quality of said resource would be 50.
After 3 months or so (say, t=15), the quality would have slowly decayed to 25.
3 months later (t=30), it unexpectedly has risen back to 41.
This given formula obviously spirals out of control after that, because the highest polynomial is a positive factor. Ridiculous qualities could be controlled or capped in many ways, please don't get carried away with this simple example.

Of course, the actual equation would need more thought, and likely be logarithmic or perhaps sinusoidal to prevent excessive natural quality growth at some point in the world, or simply with a min(10,x), max(x,100) wrapped around the formula.

My apologies for the lengthy clarification.

[pppp]

In another thread I suggested adding another random q field that would change over time. Perhaps that can achieve what you wanted. Note this is randomness with no fixed trend. Increasing quality over time is independent from that.

[Melkior13]

I'm really curious to hear more opinions on this, particularly from the two extremes: 1) the big faction active players, and 2) casual hermits.

For me, if I had the option today logging in to try and find new higher quality acre clay, for instance, that would be more exciting than my usual chores. But I certainly do not fit into either of the extremes.

[Granger]

I have to revise my statement made in this topic nearly three years ago, I reached the conclusion that endlessly growing numbers are bad for the game.

Simply because they result in nature becoming meaningless. Like that at some point of the character/gear development it's possible to kill any (normal) mob without much effort/risk, but mobs can't be scaled with world age to combat that or they would get too hard for the latecomers that this suggestion aims to help. So in the end this speeding up quality/character improvement to 'catch up' would only result in the fun part of haven (where nature still has a meaning and is dangerous) getting even shorter than it already is.