4 hour cooldown on GSH resource harvesting

[ViciousFett]

Is that really necessary? I realize they don't want people botting accounts and farming nodes 24/7, but come on.... 4 hours??????

[Muljo_Stpho]

The whole thing works differently than I had been expecting when I first heard that it was a thing (which was only a few days before strongholds went live).

 

What I had heard about it had me expecting nodes a little more similar to the regular resource nodes. They would still require the correct gathering skill to harvest. They would disappear when harvested (although I did not stop to consider if that would mean that the node is locked from being modified until it respawns or what). And I had read specifically that the respawn on each node was 2 hours.

 

(So my vision / goal was to eventually create a farm out of one of the strongholds and to occasionally send a character with all of the gathering skills through to harvest up every node I had. Do that to begin with, and if I'm still on 2 hours later step back over to that character for a bit and do it again.)

 

I was not expecting nodes to be skill-free. I was not expecting nodes to persist after harvesting. I was not expecting the random chance on each harvest of a 4 hour lockout buff. And I also was not expecting money nodes. I thought it was only going to be materials.

[Jeweledleah]

honestly, I don't mind a 4 hour lockout, but it does kinda suck that of all the nodes you have, you can only harvest one and only one. I thought we will be able to harvest all the nodes once and then be locked out for 4 hours.

 

to be honest, I would rather take a 24 hour lockout, but have ability to harvest every single node I have. heck, I don't even mind if said lockout is legacywide. I'm just not a fan of feeling like I have to log and relog on every single alt, when I need mats. I'd rather not have to relog and just be able to harvest on a single character.

 

personally.

 

oh well.

 

right now I basically have them as emergency measure/easy prestige gain. I don't have the patience to hop alts every 4 hours. meh.

[Darth_Wicked]

I keep forgetting these were introduced.

[XiamaraSimi]

I just use them as decorations for the most part, might harvest one every couple of days if I remember...

[Essence_of_Light]

I keep forgetting these were introduced.

 

Ditto.

 

I usually forget to even harvest them just once a day.

[Cernow]

There needs to be a lockout timer to prevent farming, but it kicks in way too quickly. I usually get the cooldown after just one successful harvest. Only about 25% of the time will I manage more than one harvest and the most I've managed so far is three.

 

It's nice that there's such a large array of different resources you can gain and place in your housing. But it's all rather pointless if you don't use 95% of them because of the cooldown (why bother harvesting a low level node and risk the debuff?).

 

End result is that majority of the utility decorations just become ornaments. It's not a very well thought out system. Nice idea on paper, but the reality is rather lame.

[TUXs]

They're rather useless as they currently are.

[LanceCorporalDan]

I just use them as decorations for the most part, might harvest one every couple of days if I remember...

 

Same. Much more useful that way I think.

[Calsetes]

They're rather useless as they currently are.

 

I disagree. I've done some testing with these, and here's my findings:

 

-The "resource Exhaustion" debuff doesn't always apply after your first gathering. It may have been lag, it may have been by design, but I have sometimes managed a second or third gathering from the same node in my house.

 

-Alts, even those without those skills, can gather from those nodes too. The debuff applies to that one character who got it, period. This helped me out a good bit when I needed Electrum and that "tier" of compound when making armoring mods for an alt.

 

-Each node has its own set number of gathering attempts before the node itself is exhausted. I haven't been able to nail down a hard number, but I'd say maybe 10 or so gatherings? I've been able to go through a few alts doing this, so it's quite a few gatherings on the same node before it needs some time to reset itself.

 

-Gathering that node gives you everything just like out in the field - Aluminum Scrap gives you Aluminum and Plastoid, Desh gives you Desh and Silica, etc.

 

Ideally, for the "ultimate gathering home," you'll want at least one of every node type in the game to make for easy material gathering on a whim. No more planet-hopping or scouring the field trying to find Chanlon debris - just go to your house and gather some on your main and a few alts, toss it in your Legacy bank, and presto - the material you need in enough quantities to whip up a handful of things.

 

 

Obviously, someone with more alts would be better-suited for this as they have more "attempts" to gather overall. With a lot of alts, two nodes might work better if you want to gather them en masse.

[Heezdedjim]

Is that really necessary?

No, it isn't.

 

A four-hour cooldown per node type would be more than enough. The things are so useless as it is that they might as well not even exist. One of each type of node per character, once every four hours, still isn't enough to even justify the time and effort of relogging. But at least then someone might find some point in wasting the hooks on planting the nodes.

Edited September 5, 2014 by Heezdedjim

[branmakmuffin]

Is that really necessary? I realize they don't want people botting accounts and farming nodes 24/7, but come on.... 4 hours??????

Seriously? This is your complaint? If it were 2 hours, you'd complain. If it were 90 minutes you'd complain. What exactly is the perfect length of time for this cool down, since, as we know, whatever length of time you deem best is by definition the best?

Edited September 5, 2014 by branmakmuffin

[Master-Nala]

They are just decorations to me. I have a group of crystal nodes surrounding my lightsaber forge and use the Bioanalysis nodes as house plants. Every once in awhile I'll pull some money out of my piggy bank slicing node but that's it.

[TUXs]

Seriously? This is your complaint? If it were 2 hours, you'd complain. If it were 90 minutes you'd complain. What exactly is the perfect length of time for this cool down, since, as we know, whatever length of time you deem best is by definition the best?

Why not just have a cooldown equivalent to the mission you would have had to run to get the resource?

[branmakmuffin]

Why not just have a cooldown equivalent to the mission you would have had to run to get the resource?

Who knows why they made it so long? I wouldn't care if it were 5 seconds or 5 days.

[Calsetes]

Why not just have a cooldown equivalent to the mission you would have had to run to get the resource?

 

Because you're not spending money for it, you're not required to have a crew skill of an appropriate level to get your materials, and you might get more than one shot at a node before that debuff kicks in.

[TUXs]

Who knows why they made it so long? I wouldn't care if it were 5 seconds or 5 days.

So...you have no feelings either way on this topic, but you felt the need to comment...why? If you don't care, what was the point of posting? Just to stir the pot?

[ikinai]

I'd say make it harvest-able once per day per resource type per character. Although I did enjoy my little run of 7 lockboxes in a row the other day on the mainframe money node. I think I made 5k off that one.

 

If it were once per type per day you could get at least one type of resource harvested, but not feel like you have to sit there and constantly harvest your nodes.

[TUXs]

Because you're not spending money for it, you're not required to have a crew skill of an appropriate level to get your materials, and you might get more than one shot at a node before that debuff kicks in.

Good point, but the respawn time in the "wild" is like 5minutes only...those don't cost me anything either. Do you not think these nodes should be a little more usable?

[Calsetes]

Good point, but the respawn time in the "wild" is like 5minutes only...those don't cost me anything either. Do you not think these nodes should be a little more usable?

 

But you need at least, say, a Bioanalysis skill of 290 to use a Quick-Growth Colony in the field, in addition to scrounging one up to begin with. The quick-growth colony in your house requires you to click it - period. Not have a Bioanalysis skill of 290, not even have Bioanalysis at all - you could have Treasure Hunting, Diplomacy, and Underworld Trading and still be able to use every single node in your stronghold equally.

 

So, the cooldown period is probably because of that. And mind you, it's character-locked. Yeah, you'll have to take a few minutes to swap guys each time you hit the debuff until the node is empty (which can take several attempts even past a single character's exhaustion rate) but it's still free materials with no restrictions on who can nab them. If the cooldown is too long or too short, I'm not touching that argument with a 30-foot Pole (yes, I'm making fun of my own heritage there,) but these nodes are actually handy if you have a legion of alts with different crafts and such, and you need specific materials.

[Heezdedjim]

Seriously? This is your complaint? If it were 2 hours, you'd complain. If it were 90 minutes you'd complain. What exactly is the perfect length of time for this cool down, since, as we know, whatever length of time you deem best is by definition the best?

The complaint is more that you get a four-hour per-character lockout that applies to ALL NODES. That's just stupid. Keep it four hours, or two hours, or whatever. Just change it to a per-resource-type lockout so you can at least pop in and click each of your nodes once every X hours per character.

Edited September 5, 2014 by Heezdedjim

[TUXs]

The complaint is more that you get a four-hour per-character lockout that applies to ALL NODES. That's just stupid. Keep it four hours, or two hours, or whatever. Just change it to a per-resource-type lockout so you can at least pop in and click each of your nodes once every X hours per character.

I'd be happy with this. I understand that if you have a legion of alts, it's no big deal...but I don't. To me, the 4-hour lockout makes these less than useful.

[Muljo_Stpho]

There needs to be a lockout timer to prevent farming, but it kicks in way too quickly. I usually get the cooldown after just one successful harvest. Only about 25% of the time will I manage more than one harvest and the most I've managed so far is three.

 

It's nice that there's such a large array of different resources you can gain and place in your housing. But it's all rather pointless if you don't use 95% of them because of the cooldown (why bother harvesting a low level node and risk the debuff?).

 

End result is that majority of the utility decorations just become ornaments. It's not a very well thought out system. Nice idea on paper, but the reality is rather lame.

 

I've seen a few lucky streaks of 5 or 6 or so harvests before getting buffed. (Buffed / debuffed. Logically "debuff" is more accurate but it pops up among your buffs so I'm saying buff until they fix that.) But yeah, the vast majority of the attempts seem to end after 1 or 2 harvests. The end result really is that they're more for decoration than for function.

 

-Each node has its own set number of gathering attempts before the node itself is exhausted. I haven't been able to nail down a hard number, but I'd say maybe 10 or so gatherings? I've been able to go through a few alts doing this, so it's quite a few gatherings on the same node before it needs some time to reset itself.

 

Oh, so it's intentional that....? I had taken it to be a bug when I occasionally saw nodes become unclickable. Picking the item up and placing it again resets it though, which is why the system would have been flawed if it had worked the way I had been expecting. I don't think they can do anything to lock a hook and prevent changes to it (and we wouldn't want them to), so in my vision of the materials farm someone probably could have taken some time to re-place everything after harvesting it all so that they could harvest it all again.

 

I suppose the best compromise would be to split the buff up into different classes of nodes? Scavenging Resource Exhaustion, Archaeology Resource Exhaustion, Bioanalysis Resource Exhaustion, Slicing Resource Exhaustion. That's a quick path to making a lot of cluttered icons on every character though. Someone goes through and collects a little bit of everything with a character and then they're stuck with 4 extra icons on their buffs / debuffs for 4 hours.

 

Perhaps another idea would be to change the mechanics to something like this:

1) Set the baseline rate to pick up the exhaustion debuff at 20%. (I'm assuming that this pretty standard for crafting related stuff number is much lower than the current rate for this buff.) Or perhaps even start it at 10%.

2) Create a stacking "recent harvest" debuff which is gained every time a node is harvested. This debuff adds 5% per stack to the chance to pick up the exhaustion debuff on the next harvest. The timer on this refreshes to 15 minutes (or however long seems balanced and reasonable) every time a stack is gained.

3) I'd be glad to see the 4 hour timer on exhaustion reduced, but I could see why they might not want to budge on that part.

 

The result will be that the more you push your luck within a short time frame, the more likely you are to lock yourself out of the nodes on that character for an extended period of time. If you want to keep farming nodes without getting locked out you'd need to exercise some serious patience

 

Let's see, how well do my arbitrary numbers in that idea play out? If someone limits themselves to harvesting a node once and then waiting out the 15 minutes timer before harvesting again, they could (at least so long as luck is on their side in those 20% rolls) theoretically harvest 16 times in 4 hours without picking up the 4 hour lockout. Now if someone is super amazingly lucky on those rolls that keep getting worse and worse odds each time, they could (from the 20% starting point) theoretically push their luck through 16 rolls and then the 17th will have 100% chance to apply exhaustion. That's... Well, the odds will be very very much against that second situation actually playing out that far, but the first won't play out that far either. It actually sounds kind of balanced. Theoretical potential for 16 harvests in a 4 hour span vs theoretical potential for 16 harvests before a 4 hour lockout. One could conceivably get away with making the patient harvests 2 or 3 at a time instead of just 1 at a time though, so maybe make the timer on the stacking debuff 20 or 30 minutes instead of 15 to maintain close to the same potential upper bound on the yield.

[Cernow]

I'd be happy with this. I understand that if you have a legion of alts, it's no big deal...but I don't. To me, the 4-hour lockout makes these less than useful.

 

I've got a legion of alts, but I still don't find it that useful because I don't enjoy spending so much of my gaming time staring at a loading screen.

 

I'll harvest stuff when I log in with a character that's parked in my stronghold, but it's not worth alt-hopping to harvest because of the loading screens. Not unless you have access to something which is in really short supply and valuable on the GTN (usually unlikely).

[Jeweledleah]

I just use them as decorations for the most part, might harvest one every couple of days if I remember...

 

the bio node you get in intro package makes for a very nice looking flower pot. I have them in hallways for that purpose in fact it looks, IMO better than executive bush or brown shrub.

 

I've got a legion of alts, but I still don't find it that useful because I don't enjoy spending so much of my gaming time staring at a loading screen.

 

I'll harvest stuff when I log in with a character that's parked in my stronghold, but it's not worth alt-hopping to harvest because of the loading screens. Not unless you have access to something which is in really short supply and valuable on the GTN (usually unlikely).

 

also. this. there was one time that I hopped through every alt and that's because I needed some perfect upari crystals to craft inhibitors for the guild, to kill nightmare pilgrim. that was literally the only time I remembered to harvest on every atl. otherwise, I forget more often than not. easier to get green mats by trading in green scrap you get as reward from personal conquest

 

The complaint is more that you get a four-hour per-character lockout that applies to ALL NODES. That's just stupid. Keep it four hours, or two hours, or whatever. Just change it to a per-resource-type lockout so you can at least pop in and click each of your nodes once every X hours per character.

and this exactly

Edited September 5, 2014 by Jeweledleah