I am enjoying the new perfect strike system for gathering resources. I find myself stopping at resource nodes to interact with the system and try for those Perfects even if I don’t necessarily need that resource. While I like that it makes gathering resources a little more exciting, it doesn’t always feel rewarding.
I feel the problem is we don’t know if our efforts are even doing anything to reward us. Sometimes multiple perfect strikes don’t seem to reward us with anything. I’m not sure if there’s a formula that determines when we receive bonus materials or if it’s all just RNG. It currently feels pretty random to me.
My suggestion is to have a little wheel pop up as we engage with a resource, similar to how the stamina and health wheels appear when we engage in combat. As we land hits on the resource, the wheel fills up based on the result of our hit.
For example, a Perfect hit fills 1/4th of the wheel, Great fills 1/6th, Good fills 1/8th, Early, Late, and no interaction doesn’t fill the wheel at all. When the wheel is filled, that is when the bonus resource is rewarded.
This can be further modified to account for the level of resource you are gathering and/or the quality of tool that you are using. For example, copper ore requires 4 perfect hits to fill the wheel, iron ore requires 5, silver ore requires 6. Copper tools can provide no bonus, iron tools provide a 25% bonus, silver tools provide a 50% bonus.
I think this would help the perfect strike system feel more rewarding. Some indication that our efforts are actually working towards a goal. Visually seeing and knowing when to expect that reward and not just be at the mercy of the RNG Gods.