Game Development: Pelican Pool

[Zampfeo]

I love the local pool change - bots on another continent no longer effect my ability to get foragables casually. Do the pools refill gradually or on a schedule? There were rumors previously that the global pool could be "timed" for when it refills. Is this still the case for local pools?

[shubla]

are you sure these pools work as intended? first person from our village sweeped the caves for 10 glimmers, following (in timely fashion) 4 people got zero.

Probably intended, as I said earlier seems like devs fucked up this even worse than the old system.

Rare curios are not supposed to be common.

Well yea, BUT, glimmer is so good in early game that if you want to get LP competitively you pretty much have to study them 24/7, which makes collecting tons of them via bots or just running in caves quite mandatory.

Unsurprisingly, I don't think this is going to have much of a noticeable change for the majority of players.

Why is that -- if true, which I doubt -- not surprising to you?

You don't have very good track record of fixing these things successfully, I think And one could foresee you fixing it to some similar system like this.
I still wonder why you can't just bring back legacy system. Even if people would forage 5 cupboards of glimmers and edels, would that really matter?
For noobs and casuals, the new system would be good, because they could collect reasonable amount of stuff by going foraging every other day or so.
Pro players would get to study them maybe 24/7, maybe even without botting.
Trade value does not matter, for the whole duration of pool system no one really bought glimmers etc. Maybe 1-3 pts each but to get cauldron you need 200 pts which is equal to one month of collecting glimmers daily or something stupid like that, so its not like they would have any value right now anyway.

Even with local pools, botters are winning, because now somebody who wants to study lot of glimmers can make 5 forager bots in different caves in some not so inhabited areas, and get in theory, 5 times as many glimmers as somebody foraging only his local Caves could!
Seriously, any way that you try to limit forager bots they just get somewhat around it. Even in your stream you said that you don't feel like botters really have impact on your gameplay, so why are you so against the thought of non-pooled forageables? What would be the harmful impact towards players if there were no pools, that I would like to hear.


(I'm mainly discussing glimmers now but this of course applies to all pooled stuff like pearls and edels too, glimmers are just a good example)

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Its hard to discuss the system when I don't even know how it works.
I think the problem is limiting it to fixed amount. Even if you only limit it locally, fixed amount still causes unwanted consequences. Areas are different, some have hermits playing in them,. some have single or multiple big villages. If the pool refills with for example like 5 glimmers a day, its not enough. With fixed rate it seems more of like a daily quest that you have in some mmorpg games, to collect curios from your local pool... Except you have no way of reliably knowing how many daily quests you should complete each day.
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Of course many people think the new system is good but don't make the mistake and think that you succeeded, of course people are happy to see more curios than they saw before ,that does not mean that the change was successful at all, because as I mentioned, villages with many people don't seem to have so good experience.

Also is this possible:
Lets imagine that local pools are quite small, and there is only one village full of Kazakh players, now they sleep and go to work for 16 hours, then play the game. Does the first one who forages the caves get all glimmer pool generated in 16 hrs for himself, and the others then nothing? If this is the case, isn't this a MAJOR problem?

[MagicManICT]

I know it's a dirty word jorb, but really, there is only one word for a fix to foraging: "Nerfs" If you don't like that curio X makes up 90% of the overall use in studies during the course of a world, nerf it.

[shubla]

I know it's a dirty word jorb, but really, there is only one word for a fix to foraging: "Nerfs" If you don't like that curio X makes up 90% of the overall use in studies during the course of a world, nerf it.

Solution for people wanting more glimmers is to make glimmers so shit that people do not want them? Im not sure if thats a very good idea.

[Kaios]

One thing I'd be interested in experimenting more with is how it might work in relation to mussels/oysters when trying for pearls. If the pools are localized by ThingWall province for example, does a mussel remember in which province/pool it was picked from? Or does it rather depend on where you do the boiling of mussels and opening of oysters at? Or maybe they are designated a pearl upon being foraged, based on whatever chance the current pool you're in offers.

[TheTylerLee]

"I shall not belabor the details of the new regime. Try it out!"

best part of the update =]

[Zampfeo]

Text

During the stream, they clarified that bots generally don't cause issues from their perspective as casual, non-competitive players. Their botting stance is still about developing mechanics to discourage botting since botting is a sign of bad game design. With the way respawns work, players are enticed to forage the same area every 20 minutes or so - a mechanic perfect for botting and this is what we saw in previous worlds. Global pools were a short-sighted fix, but it's still compatible with their personal stance on botting.

I don't think fighting over limited resourced with a nearby village that shares your same pool is an issue. This is already the case with localized resources and nodes. Of course, this depends entirely on how large these local pools are. We don't know if they're based on continents, provinces, or mini-maps. The more divided the better and I hope they've done it mini-map based. This way a village with bots and caverns under it doesn't hog the glimmers for an entire continent - which is basically the issue of global pools all over again.

As for factions simply making more forage bots and spreading them out: the further a bot from its home village, the harder it is to maintain it. Surely you are capable of defending the lands nearby your village from bots. As long as these pools don't reset on a schedule, the bots will have to constantly log in and out to allow the minimaps to refresh their resources. It should be obvious if you've got a bot in your cave.

I agree that local pools will bring their own problems, but I think it's an improvement over both the global pool and no pool at all. Really, the whole unloaded-map-tiles-respawn-their-resources thing should be changed instead because it causes many issues(mammoth botting, swamp settling, crap foraging in populated areas), but I think something so fundamental to the Haven architecture would be exceedingly difficult to alter in comparison.

[VDZ]

Even with local pools, botters are winning, because now somebody who wants to study lot of glimmers can make 5 forager bots in different caves in some not so inhabited areas, and get in theory, 5 times as many glimmers as somebody foraging only his local Caves could!

The difference is that in the previous situation, the botter would get a cupboard of glimmers and I would get zero, whereas in the new situation, the botter gets a cupboard of glimmers and I get a decent number as well. This change did not harm botters, but it greatly reduced the harm botters bring to non-botters. And personally, I don't mind that somebody else is more succesful at something than I am, as long as that does not prevent me from getting any degree of success at that same thing.

Of course many people think the new system is good but don't make the mistake and think that you succeeded, of course people are happy to see more curios than they saw before ,that does not mean that the change was successful at all, because as I mentioned, villages with many people don't seem to have so good experience.

So in other words, "you consider it a success if people are happy, but it's not actually a success unless I'm happy"?

[elidmw]

Pelican pouch would make a nice mask

[Trifle]

Does the first one who forages the caves get all glimmer pool generated in 16 hrs for himself, and the others then nothing? If this is the case, isn't this a MAJOR problem?

Sounds like a major problem that a village isn't sharing resources internally, yes, but that's their problem.