Guild Wars 2

Currently, the whole Gathering and Salvaging system is a mess…

• Gathering Tool icons look the same no matter the quality
  (Copper and Orichalcum Mining Pick look the same)
• Gathering Tools are soulbound account bound and can’t be sold to vendor nor salvaged.
• Gathering Tools are annoying to manage because you spend them in different quantities and end up with a surplus of Tools you don’t need.
• Gathering a node below your Tool quality is a waste.

My suggestions:

1. Make Gathering Tools salvageable
   Every now and then you get Tools from loot bags. Tools that are soulbound and you don’t need. You can’t do anything with them without wasting your time.
   a) Make Tools only yield 1 of the corresponding Ore/Wood
   - Orichalcum Tool yield 1 Orichalcum Ore OR 1 Ancient Wood Log.
   - The costs of the tools are high enough that there would NEVER be a point buying tools just to salvage them.
2. Introduce Whetstones/Repair Kits
   The goal is to make it so you just need to have 1 tool of each, and the inventory will be filled with Whetstones/Repair Kits
   a) Whetstone/Repair Kit is used to transfer durability from itself to the selected Gathering Tool
3. Adjust Tool Durability
   The goal is to make gathering lower nodes less penalizing
   a) Give Tools 100 durability per Tier
   600 for Orichalcum
   b) Gathering Ore or Lumber Node of the Tool’s quality takes 1 durability per Tier
   6 for Orichalcum
   c) Gathering a Harvest Node of the Tool’s quality takes 2 durability per Tier
   2×6=12 for Omnomberry
   d) Gathering a Node X tiers above the Tool’s quality takes X+1 times as much durability
   Gathering Orichalcum Ore with a Copper Tool would take (5+1)x6=36 durability
   e) Gathering a Node without sufficient Durability results in ruined material
4. GW1 Salvaging System
   GW1 salvaging and Upgrade system was alot better and encouraged experimenting.
   The current system encourages sticking to as few builds as possible because you always destroy the item you salvage.
   a) Crude Salvage Kits only extract raw materials
   like the Salvage Kit in GW1
   b) Basic Salvage Kits and above let you pick what to extract – raw materials or Upgrade – with 100% success
   like Expert, Superior and Perfect in GW1
   c) If you extract raw materials, item is always destroyed, and Upgrades are lost in the process
   d) If you extract an Upgrade, you have a X% chance to keep the rest of the item intact, but of the item is not bound, it becomes Soulbound (or at least Account Bound).
   - 20% for Basic Salvage Kit
   - 40% for Fine Salvage Kit / Disasembler 3BEK
   - 60% for Journeyman’s Salvage Kit
   - 80% for Master’s Salvage Kit / Mystic Salvage Kit
   - 100% for Black Lion Salvage Kit
   e) Chance to obtain a Rarer item remain the same
   - 10% for Basic Salvage Kit / Disasembler 3BEK
   - 15% for Fine Salvage Kit
   - 20% for Journeyman’s Salvage Kit
   - 25% for Master’s Salvage Kit / Mystic Salvage Kit
   - 50% for Black Lion Salvage Kit
5. (Optional) Introduce Fishing
   The goal is making the game more fun. There’s so much water, that it’s a shame you can’t fish.
   a) You’d have a 4th gathering Tool slot (Fishing Pole)
   b) Fishing Poles would have varying qualities and 2 Upgrade Slots: 1 for Fishing Line and 1 for Lure
   c) The Fishing Lines would have charges
   d) Lure would stack in your inventory but otherwise 1 unit consumed per Fish.
   e) There would be a minigame:
   - You have to tire the fish by managing the Fishing Line’s Tension against the fish’s Stamina.
   Breath of Fire IV has an awesome fishing mini-game, but it’s arguably too complex to be introduced in GW2, still, it’s an example worth following.
   - Outstanding success could result in keeping the Lure
   - Going above the max Tension results in breaking the Line
   - Going below the minimum Tension results in losing both the Lure and the Fish
   - If you use a T4 Pole with a T5 Line and try to catch a T5 fish, you damage the Pole
6. (Optional) Make Gathering more Interesting
   The goal is making gathering reward better those who try, and also make bots less efficient
   a) Make Mining similar to Minesweeper
   You’re trying to pick the stone away to get the Metal
   b) Make Logging about aligning Power & Accuracy
   You’re trying to chop the wood clean, not destroy it
   c) Make Harvesting about using 5 skills in the designated order
   Some plants are half-buried and you need to pull, cut, twist, etc, depending on the terrain and other variables
   d) Scoring higher:
   - yields more materials
   - has a better chance to obtain rare materials
   - (optional) has a chance to not use Durability

I think I included everything.
Let me know what you think.

Mystic Salvage Kit where?

Mystic Salvage Kit is the same as Master’s Salvage Kit, but has 250 charges instead of 25.
Disasembler 3BEK is the same as Fine Salvage Kit, but has 250 charges instead of 25.
Here are the differences between Salvage Kits atm:
Salvage Kit

I’ll include Mystic Salvage Kit and Disasembler 3BEK in the suggestion just in case |‘L’ |

Also, you did not address what would happen if you mined lower tier materials. For example, mining copper with an Orichalcum Pick. And please do not answer something like “Well, you would obviously get more materials per node”. Because that’s no different from abolishing the pick/axe/sickle quality altogether.

Also, I don’t really like the idea about extracting upgrade and keeping items. Mostly because of random Rares and Exotics that might have pretty good runes. And it would put a price for Karma, because you could buy the 42,000 Karma armor and extract the Superior Runes and sell them on the TP. And that’s exactly what ANet wanted to avoid.

While I can see that being able to keep the upgrades would make people more willing to use Major Runes/Sigils in their stuff, I can also see it making level 60-79 content too easy, as you would be able to put your Superior Runes and Superior Sigils and know that you won’t lose them or the armors. Would result in people using Runes/Sigils from their level 80 character to boost their level 60s, then swapping those Runes/Sigils back to their main once they’re done.

Actually I did.
Just do the math and it explains itself.

1. snip
2. snip
3. Adjust Tool Durability
   The goal is to make gathering lower nodes less penalizing
   a) Give Tools 100 durability per Tier
   600 for Orichalcum
   b) Gathering Ore or Lumber Node of the Tool’s quality takes 1 durability per Tier
   6 for Orichalcum
   c) Gathering a Harvest Node of the Tool’s quality takes 2 durability per Tier
   2×6=12 for Omnomberry

1. Gathering Orichalcum Ore (Tier 6) with Orichalcum Tool (Tier 6) takes 6 Durability out of 600.
2. Gathering Copper Ore (Tier 1) with Orichalcum Tool (Tier 6) takes 1 Durability out of 600.
3. Gathering Copper Ore (Tier 1) with Copper Tool (Tier 1) takes 1 Durability out of 100.

Minor/Major/Superior Upgrades extracted from Karma equipment could become Soulbound or Account Bound. That’s not really an issue.

Please note that with my suggestion, you spend 2 Charges to get both the Upgrade and the Materials, or 1 Charge to get just the Upgrade.

I think it’d be fair to make the item Account Bound when you extract an Upgrade without destroying it – I’ll add it to the suggestion.

Are you seriously saying boosting your lower characters with Superior Upgrades instead of Major would be gamebreaking, in a game where leveling is incredibly fast?
Come on…
—-

I complately agree with your idea and have to add: I allready add higher level runes to my lower level equipment… since the black lion salvage kit have 100% chance of retriving them. (and i have about 100 uses of those…) so game breaking? i dont think so… people does that anyway… but it would lower the income for black lion keys, if only a little bit.

I also have some additions to this, regarding textiles:

Textiles refinement really needs a look though, instead of the scrap, it would be propper to add fibers. You should be able to farm these crafting materials in the following manner:

• Jute, Cotton, linen: plant – These plant fibers could be farmed as any other plants, to drop fibers of the respective kind. (jute fibers, cotton fibers, linen fibers).

• Wool: Sheep – Wool could be farmed by adding farms here and there with sheep or wild sheep, or Sheppard’s herding sheep. Shearing sheeps should be considered farming and should be done using a shearing tool.

• Silk: Larva cocoon – There is a lot of larva around, since there is an ageing system for adding more exp to old mobs, why not make an evolve system for the many different larva? When a larva reaches a certain age, it’ll evolve into a cocoon. After a while it’ll evolve further into a new, now grown up mob, if it isn’t killed first, for its silk fibers. Killing a cocoon should be considered farming and should be done using a shearing tool.

• Gossamer: Spider silk – All Spiders could drop spider web fibers,

• Tool: Scissors – This shearing tool should be used for shering wool or silk fibers.

Numbers:
1 fiber = 10 spool of thread.
10 spool of thread = 1 bolt of cloth.

And then remove the spools of thread from the merchant. it should be enough that you have to by the Scissors…

After attaining the fibers, it should be possible to refine them into first threads, and then refine the threads into bolts.
I do not believe that “patchwork” was the thought of the games system, so refining spools of thread into bolts of cloth, would be appropriate. dont you agree?

Gathering higher level materials with lower level tools
It makes no senes to me why a low tire tool isnt able to gather a higher tire material…
And with these functions a 1st tire tool would still only be able to gather 16 6th tire materials…

Gathering restrictions based on crafting level
It might work better to have the restricotions on what you can gather, to be based on your crafting level.
If you can use it, you can mine it, if you cannot use it, you cannot mine it
Id belive that if you cannot mine a crafting material, its not that the material is lost and your tool lose durability, you simply get the message “You need a higher crafting level to mine this material”.

On the first part, I think there needs to be an advantage in having higher tier tools, otherwise you might as well just have 1 type of them.

I disagree with the second part, too.
It’s nice having stuff to aim for.
Getting Iron when you can only use Copper, makes you that much more motivated to get your crafting to Iron.

I still think that there would be a huge advantage to higher tire tools (they last longer). A possibility could be that higher quality tools could provide a higher chance of providing rare materials.

I’ll have to admit that i missed some of it up there. you already mentioned that it should be possible to gather higher tire materials with lower tire tools…
However i still think that a message telling you that your unable to gather the material, before you spend the durability on the tool would be nice.

And you are compleately right on the second part.

The small side ideas asside, what did you think of the textiels addition?

Orichalcum Tool costs more than twice Mithril Tool and has a higher Level requirement.
What’s so wrong about giving Orichalcum Tool some advantage?

The goal here is precicely making it so that when using top tier tools on lower tier nodes, you don’t waste so much money… or inventory space to carry lower tier tools.

I hadn’t read your textiles suggestion, but now that I did I must say I love the concept behind it.
It would surely take some work to make it balanced with other gathering activities, but otherwise would make the game alot cooler.

There might be some Veteran/Champion Spiders in high level places guarding “huge gossamer silk webs”, wich would be equivalent to a rich orichalcum node.

Coal, Tin and Primordium should also be gatherable rather than purchased, to accomodate the mentality behind your suggestion.

Anything that makes us go out into the world rather than just browsing through countless vendor pages.

About the tools: i was just thinking out loud ^^’ you are right about them

I agree. Coal, Tin and Primordium should indeed be mineable… Coal, wherever you mine Iron and Tin wherever you mine Copper i might add to that.

id say that as it is, the non gatherable minerals are rather unballanced to the normal materials… no?

In addition its a bit strange that there is some food materials, that you can only buy for karma, isnt it? oO

Yup.
I also think creatures should be skinnable – only those that make sense, ofcourse.
And there should be veteran versions of those that would be equivalent to rich nodes.

Hunting & Fishing
As suggested above, it would be natural to be able to skin animals. I DO NOT think that this should apply to intelligent creatures. Even so, i think that theres a lot of materials that would fit into hunting and fishing: Leather, Pelts (this one does not exist yet, read suggestion later in this text), Bone, Scales, Blood, Teeth, Claws, Venom sacks,

Hunting animals
• Leather: Leather could be farmed from a slain animal, with a fitting skin.
• Bone: Animals that can be killed for leather and then farmed for skin, could provide bone as a bi product.

• Tool: Hunting Knife

Predators
• Pelt: Pelts could either be a trophy, that can be farmed from predators, or later on a common crafting material for towns clothing or exotic armor.

• Teeth, Claws, Venom sacks, Blood: Predators that can be killed for their pelt, could provide these things as a bi product.

• Tool: Hunting Knife

Fish
• Teeth, Scales: Instead of providing skin, a fish could be farmed for its scales with teeth as a possible bi product.

• Tool: Fishing rod – As an alternative to diving, and using a knife underwater, a fishing rod could be used, with a chance to catch either nothing, or something dangerous. That dangerous thing, such as a shark or barracuda, could provide a mini game, that if the character lose, the rod is destroyed or the character is pulled under watter and have to fight the fish.
To farm something of the catch: use a knife.

Tapping
With the rest of the ideas we might as well throw tapping blood from animals into the fry. This could work quite simply by adding vials of blood to the gathering if the character have a any empty vials.
Tapping should be possible from both predators and hunting animals
• Tool: Bag of empty vials

Rich nodes in animals
All rare materials gather-able from animals, could have some veteran/champion creatures equivalent to rich nodes.

Dude, if ANet would hire you they could relegate 1/2 of their staff.

Anyway, amazing idea.

I’m available for hire, and would even present a full project if I thought they’d even consider hiring an outsider without great credentials.

Anyway if you notice, most of my suggestions kind of aim to stick to some of the great concepts in GW1.

Too bad ANet doesn’t read awesome forum posts like this one.

I think this might be a very good idea, please support it people.

Axesome.1025:

Too bad ANet doesn’t read awesome forum posts like this one.

With the help of constructive criticism, they just might!

It’s incredible that even after so much time ANet didn’t anwser to fine tunning the gathering system.

We can always hope.
I’m confident they take a peek at the forums every now and then.

All we can do is try to ensure that when they do, they have decent threads in the first few pages to look at, rather than a bunch of unconstructive complaints.

Olba.5376:

Also, I don’t really like the idea about extracting upgrade and keeping items. Mostly because of random Rares and Exotics that might have pretty good runes. And it would put a price for Karma, because you could buy the 42,000 Karma armor and extract the Superior Runes and sell them on the TP. And that’s exactly what ANet wanted to avoid.

While I can see that being able to keep the upgrades would make people more willing to use Major Runes/Sigils in their stuff, I can also see it making level 60-79 content too easy, as you would be able to put your Superior Runes and Superior Sigils and know that you won’t lose them or the armors. Would result in people using Runes/Sigils from their level 80 character to boost their level 60s, then swapping those Runes/Sigils back to their main once they’re done.

Well I suggested that when you extract upgrades, the item becomes account-bound (or even soulbound), so it’s not an issue.
The salvage kits could also change a little in value and drop rate to accomodate this change.