I will go in a little rant to give some context and then by the end explain the gatherers implementatiom that I hink would be a useful addition for player experience
It is a pain to gather, its just not fun, and I am not talking about wood/iron etc. I am talking about gathering for consumables like food / oils / potions etc.
When gathering for town improvements / level up gear / crafting gear I feel gathering is actually good, why? Town improvements are permanent, lvl up gear is permanent / crafting gear is permanent since I can repair it, unless i sell, so going to gather materials feels fun because I know that I have a long term reward that will last.
But this is not true for consumables (especially higher tier consumables), for example I am a type of player that does not like fishing in this game, which means that interesting foods, oils and potions are now a part of the game that I miss and impact my player experience.
Yes for lower tier I can buy them of npc (very limited amount) and I might be lucky to find one on the merchant, but the scarcity is so much that puts me off trying to use those as part of my way of playing style (oils / potions), it is ok to try them occasionaly and thinking, oh this is nice, but beeing so scarce and hard to get by that I will not include them as part of gameplay style, even if I have to farm them, the long term reward is just not there.
Introduce / re-use npc that will gather materials for you (materials for consumables such as fish/certains plants/meat etc.)
Ways of implementing:
-
Pay a fixed priced and he will return the next day with an amount of materials gathered example: (5 fish/2 meat and 6 potatoes)
-
Earn through quest: I want 5 fish - ok clear this 2 fishing spots from enemy and I will give you 5 fish
-
exchange? You need fish? I need planks for my house give me 2 planks for 3 fish or other materials
You can also limit 2) and 3) for doing this 2 times/day etc.
The key point of this feedback is that for 1 time use consumables the amount of effort to obtain the consumable totally offsets the use of it, which makes players ignore that mechanic.
The gatherer is just an attempt to increase a guaranteed way of obtaining materials to craft consumables that requires to pay an appropriate price for 1-time use consumables.
Note: To be honest I dont know why we are limited like this because if I really wanted to, I could just create more realms. Yes I could create 20 realms and buy all the consumables I want but if this is the argument I believe its not good game design
What do you guys think?