Catch-up Mechanic: Natural Quality Trend

[Popo13]

Consider having the quality of some* natural items grow as the world ages. This would allow players that aren't around at the start of the world, or players that have lost everything, a chance to get back in the game. My suggestion would be to have the items quality scale just slower than the average player can raise them casually.

*Not all items would have to be affected by this. Certainly items that are meant to be early game foragers with lousy late game value could stay at q10, or possibly scale at a slower rate. The resources to target with this change would be things like trees, which have a downstream impact on many other item qualities, and also take a long time for a fresh-starter to grow.


Another consideration would be to have quality nodes (soil, clay, water, etc.) continue to spawn as the world ages, with slightly higher potential base qualities. This would also give older players a potential new carrot.

[Jacobian123]

Would certainly defeat the purpose of the early game, players would just sit around without playing for a few months to allow for qualities to rise on various things, then get on once qualities hit about 30-50 or so and just use those because they'd be much more effective than q10 things.

Just my thought, decent idea for extending world life but I'm sure there are other ways of accomplishing it.

EDIT: Not saying the "hardcore" players wouldn't be on during those months. I'm pretty sure they'd do what they normally do and just rack up the qualities on various things extremely quickly, defeating the purpose of the system entirely.

[Ysh]

Would certainly defeat the purpose of the early game, players would just sit around without playing for a few months to allow for qualities to rise on various things, then get on once qualities hit about 30-50 or so and just use those because they'd be much more effective than q10 things.

Just my thought, decent idea for extending world life but I'm sure there are other ways of accomplishing it.

This is still not better than play game for this months.

[Popo13]

Would certainly defeat the purpose of the early game, players would just sit around without playing for a few months to allow for qualities to rise on various things, then get on once qualities hit about 30-50 or so and just use those because they'd be much more effective than q10 things.

I strongly doubt that anyone would opt out of playing on a fresh world because of this. Players and play-times are at their peak during a fresh start. It's the months that follow that suffer, and that is exactly what this aims to improve.

[Granger]

Slow increase of natural resources quality over time to bootstrap latecomers sounds like a good plan.

Question is how to determine the speed and level at which the quality should increase.

[jorb]

I have considered similar mechanics, but it's a big topic.

[Popo13]

Reviving suggestion topic from 3 years past as an alternative solution for the viability of foraging and encouraging players to leave their walls on occasion.

I will add a comment that foraging is exciting when the high quality nodes are still unknown at the start of the world. It might be more interesting if there was a reason to keep searching for nodes as they grow and change over time in the world. For instance, the current quality nodes could be expanded to have polynomial quality growth (or even decline), such that a node that is trending up or down in quality at a given pace (which players will inevitably determine after a few data points), may shift as time^3 or time^4 factors become more significant.

This way not only would players be encouraged to explore throughout the age of the world, but also late-comers might be able to leverage a high-quality node that was previously dormant. This might further encourage trade as well, or possibly even make moving or expanding one's kingdom more relevant.

Thematically, moving quality nodes would apply well to animals, as well. It's a shame that spotting a mammoth that you know is Q80 before you even kill it is so depressing.

[pppp]

There is already such mechanics in place, quest rewards precisely.

[Popo13]

There is already such mechanics in place, quest rewards precisely.

The main difference being player-controlled, versus "natural". In other words, players don't have to explore and discover new nodes when they are the ones driving up the quality. It is quite a different mechanic, in my opinion.

[MagicManICT]

There is already such mechanics in place, quest rewards precisely.

That only raises over time. If I'm reading the post from Popo13 right, this is how nodes worked in legacy, so it's not completely foreign to Haven. There was also a lot of greifing of quality nodes, too, and a lot of complaints about it, which might have been why it went away. I don't think it applied for foraging quality, but clay, soil, and fishing nodes could be depleted down to q10, at which point the node would quit producing, and it'd take time for the qualities to come back up (1 point per 8 hours IIRC).