Is there a point to the current quality system?

[Grable]

Is there any point to the current quality system with Essence/Substance/Vitality as opposed to normal, one number quality system? What kind of value does such a system provide to gameplay other than complicating stuff for the sake of... nothing?

It just reminds me too much of Salem's quality system (blood,phlegm, etc) which was overly frustrating. Why not have a single number for quality? Simple but effective.

[TeckXKnight]

It averages things down and encourages specialization. It also means that different villages will have more unique products. Reducing simplicity of the system makes it difficult for a single group to have every possible high quality item. Still possible but much more difficult. I feel like there are more types of quality nodes now than before. I know animals are independent of soil, clay, stone, and water for example.

[Grable]

It averages things down and encourages specialization. It also means that different villages will have more unique products. Reducing simplicity of the system makes it difficult for a single group to have every possible high quality item. Still possible but much more difficult. I feel like there are more types of quality nodes now than before. I know animals are independent of soil, clay, stone, and water for example.

Hm I guess, never looked at it that way.

[Original]

It also makes soil, clay and water nodes more diverse. Some person might have some 90 10 10, or some 50 30 10 or some 30 30 30. But then I bet there is going to be some super rare spot that the quality map lined up so perfectly so its like 90 90 90.

3 different qualities also allow for 3 different modifiers for different values. One affects hunger, one affects energy level and one effects FEPs for food at least. Soil I bet has modifications for the quality, growth rate and something else, maybe yield.

[Sevenless]

There's also a fair bit of diversity in what each node does:

Ess: Armor deflect, energy use reduction in drinking water, satiation penalty reduction in food.

Sub: Armor absorb, Melee/Ranged damage, Tool mining Q, hunger reduction in food

Vit: Armor wear, food FEP bonus

Only a few items use the averaged quality. Curios and nettle gear being the only ones I know of.

[Phizuol]

One of the things I find interesting about the new system is making choices. With the old system higher quality was always better, but now you may have to choose between higher in one value but at the loss of another.

For example just pretend there are 3 quality nodes for resource that are close to each other:
100-10-10
10-100-10
10-10-100

Somewhere in the middle there is an equal mix of all 3 nodes, like 50-50-50 or 33-33-33, I don't really know how it works yet. Do you want to get the resource really high in one quality or an equal mix? Or do you want a little bit more of just one... or maybe ignore one all together and just get two as high as possible?

I can think of one reason to play with these qualities and that is armor. For hunting you may not mind taking a few hits but you want your armor to last a long time, so intentionally you may seek out resources to maximize deflection and hp, but have a really low value for the soak like 100/1 with 100hp. It may not protect as much as 75/75 with 75 hp but it will take many more hits before breaking.

My guess is that most people will just try to get all values as high as possible, but you could get creative and make something interesting and potentially unique to trade. Super durable armor for hunters, super low hunger food for miners, etc. Maybe it it will be more boring than that, but I can dream. XD