Guild Wars 2

My first impression of gathering mechanics was far from positive.

-Tools are temporary
-Tools have tiers
-Tools need to be equipped

So you get a pick, axe, sickle, 1, 2, 3, all fine so far.
Then you get 6 sublevels for those tools (copper, iron, steel, etc.)
for different types of materials, with a clvl req of 0, 20, 30, 45, 60.
Then you need to equip them seperately, because having them in your bag isn’t good enough for some reason.
And on top of that you need to keep track how many charges you have left before a tool stack goes empty. Wow, sounds like super fun! Sign me in! Not.

That’s a pretty useless filler imo, and more annoying than rewarding.
We already have unique slots for those three tools.
You could simply make the tools permanent, and upgradeable for a bigger cost.

Upgraded tools could have a shorter gathering time, and improve the amount and quality of materials found. This way we wouldn’t need to fiddle around with stupid “charges” of tools or carrying tons of low-mid-high type stacks around.

Same with salvage kits.
No need for charges on them. Just make it a permanent salvage kit.
We upgrade it with money, quests, or unlock new upgrade skills by using it enough (makes sense doesn’t it? The more you use it, the better you become at salvaging items efficiently, finding more valuable materials more often).

The salvage kit icon could be just next to the “options” cogwheel in the inventory.
Clicking this would highlight all items that can be salvaged with a bright frame and background. Then just pop all you want into mats. Would that be something or what?

These changes would save a lot of time, bag space, and add a ton of fun to the game by removing the current tool/salvage kit mess.
And I’m not sorry, I really mean it: It IS a mess.

Tools and salvage kits have variant tiers and limited charges specifically so that it costs money to acquire materials.

Because of the lack of scarcity built in to resources and crafting due to the personal node system, this cash-check, combined with the rarity of some nodes or salvagable rare components is what ensures they have value.

In short: The fact that harvesting/salvaging is a gold sink is precisely why mats have value in this game. Other games use the scarcity of the nodes themselves, but because both drops and nodes are cloned for every player, a system to promote value of resources has to be in place.This is why higher tier tools/kits cost more money, and why there are varying tiers.

PopeUrban.2578:

Tools and salvage kits have variant tiers and limited charges specifically so that it costs money to acquire materials.

Because of the lack of scarcity built in to resources and crafting due to the personal node system, this cash-check, combined with the rarity of some nodes or salvagable rare components is what ensures they have value.

In short: The fact that harvesting/salvaging is a gold sink is precisely why mats have value in this game. Other games use the scarcity of the nodes themselves, but because both drops and nodes are cloned for every player, a system to promote value of resources has to be in place.This is why higher tier tools/kits cost more money, and why there are varying tiers.

Make them just like gear and weapons durability, the more you use them they lose durability and need repair.

Daour.1437:

PopeUrban.2578:

Tools and salvage kits have variant tiers and limited charges specifically so that it costs money to acquire materials.

Because of the lack of scarcity built in to resources and crafting due to the personal node system, this cash-check, combined with the rarity of some nodes or salvagable rare components is what ensures they have value.

In short: The fact that harvesting/salvaging is a gold sink is precisely why mats have value in this game. Other games use the scarcity of the nodes themselves, but because both drops and nodes are cloned for every player, a system to promote value of resources has to be in place.This is why higher tier tools/kits cost more money, and why there are varying tiers.

Make them just like gear and weapons durability, the more you use them they lose durability and need repair.

+1
Add that to my suggestion, and you still have the cash-check in the game.

Daour.1437:

Make them just like gear and weapons durability, the more you use them they lose durability and need repair.

This makes perfect sense.

I could definitely go for repair rather than re-buy, sure. Then again, how would we determine the durability?

Currently you know that using an orichalum pickaxe to mine copper is a stupid idea because orichalum picks cost 4s, right?

Now, if we had a sort of universal perma-pick we’d be looking at the tier of the resource versus the level of the tool, meaning you’d lose some arbitrary .25 per copper rather than 1 durability the way it is now. Then you’ve got to determine repair costs by how beat up your thingy is.

Currently we have tools with durability, but in stead of repairing them we just replace them every so often, which solves the whole tier problem, but poses a messier problem if (and only if) you want to take a single tool to various different levels of materials and do it as efficiently as possible (i.e. using copper picks for copper, iron for iron, etc.) This is really only a problem in the handful of zones that have two different tiers of mats.

Personally I’m not finding myself awfully put out by the current system, considering every general merchant has appropriate level tools for the mats in his zone, so its never a very long walk to replace a used up tool. How about we just add a decent %chance not to use a durability point when harvesting a lower material with a higher tool, and leave the salvage kits alone?

tire one cost 1s to upgrade to t2, t2 to t3 10s and so on

when you repair t1 it cost 25c, t2 1s and so on

even if you mine copper with a t5 tool, you still going to repair it with t5 repair cost.

how many times your going to mine copper with t5 tools?

and why not make these tools crafted?

Daour.1437:

tire one cost 1s to upgrade to t2, t2 to t3 10s and so on

when you repair t1 it cost 25c, t2 1s and so on

even if you mine copper with a t5 tool, you still going to repair it with t5 repair cost.

how many times your going to mine copper with t5 tools?

Well if you’re still going to carry around multiple tiers of tools, then what is the point of repairing them at all? You’d be using the same amount of inventory space you use now if you carry one of each right now.

PopeUrban.2578:

Daour.1437:

tire one cost 1s to upgrade to t2, t2 to t3 10s and so on

when you repair t1 it cost 25c, t2 1s and so on

even if you mine copper with a t5 tool, you still going to repair it with t5 repair cost.

how many times your going to mine copper with t5 tools?

Well if you’re still going to carry around multiple tiers of tools, then what is the point of repairing them at all? You’d be using the same amount of inventory space you use now if you carry one of each right now.

we are talking about the same tool but you upgrade it from t1 to t2 and so on.

So you’re saying I would upgrade and then spend more money to mine lower quality resources? I’m not sure I like that very much.

Once you earned enough to upgrade a tool to the next tier you can farm any lower mats with a lower chance of losing durability, if any, to be fair here?

Just scale the mats value with the repair costs to hit the cash-check that the game needs, from a designer perspective.

Say there’s 7 tiers of mats (I’m new, just giving an example what I heard)
Copper, iron, silver, gold, platinum, mithril, orichalum?

Every tier of a tool has a 25% chance to lose durability when hitting a material of the same level.

The chance is reduced 3% for every tier of a lower level material.
So with the best T7 orichalum pick your chance of losing durability for the following materials would be:

-orichalum 25%
-mithril 22%
-platinum 19%
-gold 16%
-silver 13%
-iron 10%
-copper 7%

Ofc the devs could change the % values to whatever they think is the best way to keep prices high enough etc, since they probably have more data at hand than me.

And durability in addition to the tool tier would be upgraded seperately.
Default starts at 30, and every time you hit a clvl req to upgrade your tool tier,
you could also upgrade the max durability by +10, for sufficient extra costs or rare materials maybe, to a maximum of 100 durability@T7,
so you wouldn’t have to run to repair it that frequently.

Just some ideas.

ElemenZ.5486:

Once you earned enough to upgrade a tool to the next tier you can farm any lower mats with a lower chance of losing durability, if any, to be fair here?

Just scale the mats value with the repair costs to hit the cash-check that the game needs, from a designer perspective.

Say there’s 7 tiers of mats (I’m new, just giving an example what I heard)
Copper, iron, silver, gold, platinum, mithril, orichalum?

Every tier of a tool has a 25% chance to lose durability when hitting a material of the same level.

The chance is reduced 3% for every tier of a lower level material.
So with the best T7 orichalum pick your chance of losing durability for the following materials would be:

-orichalum 25%
-mithril 22%
-platinum 19%
-gold 16%
-silver 13%
-iron 10%
-copper 7%

Ofc the devs could change the % values to whatever they think is the best way to keep prices high enough etc, since they probably have more data at hand than me.

And durability in addition to the tool tier would be upgraded seperately.
Default starts at 30, and every time you hit a clvl req to upgrade your tool tier,
you could also upgrade the max durability by +10, for sufficient extra costs or rare materials maybe, to a maximum of 100 durability@T7,
so you wouldn’t have to run to repair it that frequently.

Just some ideas.

I could get behind that system. Honestly I’m fine with things the way they are now, but this would essentially streamline things while keeping the important mechanic of higher tier mats costing more money to gather.