Now let's further examined each element,

My suggestion allow players to build knowledge of the the gathering profession. Providing a true sense of a profession.

Insect and herbs : The insects and herbs relationship should be dynamic. "If something in the world can change, whether through player interaction or naturally over time - it should”

1) Nocturnal Creatures. Let's say red beetles correlates to Moonleaf in daytime. but at night red beetles may go back to their nests. Instead, gatherer must look for another insect (gleaming moth) when they are searching for Moonleaves at night. This ensures gatherer has to know when and where to find the desired herbs.

2) Seasonal relationship: We can further expand the scale by making these relationship dependent on seasons. Maybe in winter, all beetles and moths becomes inactive. However, a special breed of flower (pinkish violets) may grow only in winter. Thus, gatherer must change from looking for beetles to pinkish violets in winter.

3) Evolving relationship overtime : Throughout the 10 year storyline, major events like disasters, or species extinction may occur. The relationship between herbs and insects / flowers should be changed whenever such huge events takes place.

4) Scaling with higher difficulties : Further down the road, the game will surely introduce rarer herbs and it would be best if the difficulty of detecting these rare herbs rise together. We can introduce colour changing flowers or herbs eating insects. E.g. flower A is Red in the morning, Pink at noon, and white at night. Gatherer can only find the rare herbs when the flower is red. Another example would be a swarm of “herbs – eating insects”. The desired herbs would be gone if a swarm flew close by. The swarm would leave traces on their path, and gatherers must take the path of the swarm into consideration to determine if certain herbs could be found. They must able to predict where the swarm is heading, or else the swarm may consume his herbs while he is playing the “Spot the difference” skill challenge.

5) Complex relationships: It is not necessary to have 1 insect correlates to a single type of herbs. We can have herbs that can only be found at locations where 2 or 3 types of insects inhabit. On the contrary, the relationship can also be biome dependent. Red beetles may indicate existence of Moonleaf on plain field. However ,if you are in a tundra, red beetles may indicate existence of another herbs (say Hydromiel ). The more species and herbs available, the richer the world will feel, and the deeper the profession is. This means the devs can keep adding depth to the profession over the 10 year story-line.

Book record (encyclopedia):

The bible that every herbs gatherer authors. It would include all the insects, plants and herbs known to that gatherer. It should be “Sortable”, “Searchable” and allow changes anywhere in the field. I believe players who love herbs gathering would prefer building up their knowledge in the field instead of spending more time traveling and come back to the spot later on to find the insect they just discovered is gone.

The pictures of plants and insects, may become more and more accurate if the gatherer comes into contact with said insects / plants more often. However, the relationship between the 2 is never stated to the players. Instead, the player must draw their own conclusions from their observation in the field. And of course, they are allowed to change the description of such relationship anytime they want.

Gatherers would be able to share their knowledge with other gatherers in game, especially within a guild. With the ever changing environment, and constant increasing number of herbs, the goal is to make mapping out all the relationships a near impossible task. It maybe even better if contradicting relationships can be proved in different locations to promote academic arguments over the truth.

Radar mechanism : In essence, the radar is type of a sensory map. It centers at the gatherer, and represents the act of searching. The radius of the radar should be dependent on the “Gathering” skill of the player. The higher the skill is, the bigger the bigger the sensory range is.

Let's say we have a gatherer with very high gathering skill, so that the radius of his radar rose to 10 meter long. This huge search area is great for getting more herbs, but can also harm the gameplay of locating herbs. To counter balance it, when the engine detects chosen herbs within the radar, it does not show the Skill challenge images right away. Instead, it shows a number of spots within the radar area where possibly contain herbs. The gatherer would have to pick which spot to play his “skill challenge on”. This will help decide how many hidden herbs would be shown within the images, contributing to the number of herbs collectible. Some spots provided will have no herbs at all, and the resulting images generated will show 4 images with no inconsistency.

The player skill required here is to pick the right herbs that can be found. If he is new, maybe only 1 out of his 4 desired herbs exists within the radar. If he is a veteran gatherer, he knows which 3 different types of herbs can be possibly found in the same spot. Thus, number of herbs collected will be both dependent on player skill, and in game skill.

One more thing, the radar should pulse once a while instead of notifying the gatherer the moment a desired herbs falls within the radar area. If the gatherer is notified the moment a herb falls within the radar, it's equivalent to telling the player that herbs are located exactly at the edge of the radar area, defeating the searching aspect. The radar should pulse like once every 5 or 10 seconds. The engine will only allow the gatherer to choose his spot for the skill challenge when the pulse hits a herb. Higher level herbs would need to be hit by 3 or 4 pulses before being included in the skill challenge images. This will create situations where impatient gatherer feels hard to find high level herbs and also encourage gatherers to stay a while to “search”, instead of sweeping the ground for herbs.

Spotting the inconsistency :
The last part of the skill challenge! At first glance, spotting the inconsistency sounds familiar. People are used to spotting differences between nearly identical images, but we are not looking at nearly identical images here. Instead, it is spotting the inconsistency from 4 different angles of the same spot. The players have to imagine how each image should look like from a different angle. Obviously, the images are taken as if we are looking at the spot in game, so the gatherer can always walk to East of the spot to recreate Image B on his screen. This of course would be a waste of time for players good at the skill challenge. It should also be emphasized that even the gatherer is standing right on top of a herb in game. No herbs can be seen by anyone. The herbs can only be seen when the skill challenge is finished and the character identified the herbs within the images.

Since the images are taken real time from the spot chosen by the gatherer, the images should show the effect of the weather and the season. This makes it possible that some herbs would be easier to spot in a specific season, or under specific weather condition. Experienced gatherers can then pick the best weather /season to gather their desired herbs, adding more depth to the profession. Moreover, the day / night cycle will also have a similar effect. In the end, we might have a type of herbs that can be easily spotted in the a rainy night ~ ~

Another aspect we must address, is how building up in-game “Herbalist skill” will affect the productivity of gatherers. For each each 5 or 10 “Herbalist skill” level, we can allow players to add a colour filter to the 4 images. E.g. players would be allowed to turn the images into a black & white images, to increase contrast. Other filters like colours filter used in movies can also be added. Another option would be allow players to shine angelica's tears on the images so that herbs with a reflective appearance would be more eye-catchy under the light.

Obviously, the difficulty for the skill challenge should raise according to the rarity of the herbs the gatherer is looking for. The rarer the herbs, the closer it looks like the environment it lives in. Basically camouflage, nothing special here. So the more abundant herbs will be more eye-catchy in the resulting images, while the rare herb will demand sharper eyes. Gatherers may only spotted the obvious herb in the images, but not the rare one. Then the rare herbs will remain there until someone else come over to collect it. Another way to increase difficulty is to increase the number of images the player has to go through. This force players to process more data, and also narrows down the angle the gatherer can approach the herb after the skill challenge is done. A rather boring way, but still effective. When the swarm mechanics we spoke of above actually takes place, it essentially adds a timer to the skill challenge. The length of this swarm timer is dependent on the path of the swarm. The gatherer picking a spot far from the path of the swarm, increase the time he has. Essentially, the amount of time a gatherer have is affected by his understanding of the path of different swarm.

Lastly, let's speak about failed attempts. If a gatherer fail to find the inconsistency within the images, what should happen? Of course he is not going to get any herbs. But he should also be showed where the hidden herbs are in the images, so that he can learn and advance his player skill. However, if the game just shows everything, the players may learn too fast. So only 1 of the unfounded herbs should be shown to the player. In addition, the missed uncommon herbs should only be shown to gatherer who reached a certain “in-game skill level”.

Undecided points : I realize there are a few aspects I have not addressed in my suggestions. The following are those that I am not decided how they should be implemented.

1) Should the encyclopedia be an in game item that can be loss, stolen? If yes, should others be able to read it? How should the gatherer recover his knowledge.

2) How should gatherer learn about new herbs? Insects and plants can be easy, cause they can be seen, but herbs are hidden from plain sight.

3) How should other professions / skills interact with herbalists? Should a gatherer need tracking skills to read the path of a swarm? Should the herbalists visit a papermaker to expand his encyclopedia?

4) How should knowledge be passed down from character to the heir?

Hopefully, we would have fun discussing these topics, and anything related to gathering herbs

Ok, are you going on the apac server? Because I could introduce you to some people who are seriously conservation-of-natural-environment oriented, and I think you'd get along well. Also, anyone who includes in their ideas post 'another way you could increase the difficulty...' and it's anything more subtle than 'stack the dice/rng' that's great.

I also like the idea that you could, theoretically, play a character that got accidentally maimed whilst categorizing a particular species of moss that only grows in those woods every other month...

In short, this is an awesome idea for a research herbalist. If I could bold that last sentence without having to track down forum formatting shortcuts, I would.

Are you going to consider taking some friends or guards along for protection if you stumble across some wild trison breeding areas? Or bears? Or poachers?

I love the CoE brings all kinds of players to the table, especially people who just want to master a single skill, and get very, very good at it.

A master herbalist? Invaluable.

Is it going to be executed in-game anything like this? I kinda hope so. For all the plant nerds, tree-huggers, and poacher-shooters out there!

Ok, are you going on the apac server? Because I could introduce you to some people who are seriously conservation-of-natural-environment oriented, and I think you'd get along well. Also, anyone who includes in their ideas post 'another way you could increase the difficulty...' and it's anything more subtle than 'stack the dice/rng' that's great.

I also like the idea that you could, theoretically, play a character that got accidentally maimed whilst categorizing a particular species of moss that only grows in those woods every other month...

In short, this is an awesome idea for a research herbalist. If I could bold that last sentence without having to track down forum formatting shortcuts, I would.

Are you going to consider taking some friends or guards along for protection if you stumble across some wild trison breeding areas? Or bears? Or poachers?

I love the CoE brings all kinds of players to the table, especially people who just want to master a single skill, and get very, very good at it.

A master herbalist? Invaluable.

Is it going to be executed in-game anything like this? I kinda hope so. For all the plant nerds, tree-huggers, and poacher-shooters out there!

@Expectorate - 10:40 PM - Sun Jul 17 2016

If there is an Asia Pacific server, I would play there. But I doubt there will be one. After all, it depends on the player population.

Hopefully, Caspian would read through this and agree that it is a good idea XD. It is actually very hard to figure out a way to make gathering profession fun.

I would be keep brainstorming on suggestions for other professions. I have yet to decide if I wish to be a herbalist ~ ~

Wow, very in depth and detailed ideas. I can tell you put a lot of thought into it. I think that for some of the higher end herbs having a really in depth and difficult means of finding/collecting them would be great. More common herbs, like dandelion and whatnot, should be easy by comparison.

In WoW the only herb that was hard to find sometimes was sungrass because it looked a lot like the other grass graphics, and then they made everything sparkle anyway. ESO as I recall had a talent that could make the herbs glow from X number of feet away, but you could just turn your ground fauna off and they stuck out like sore thumbs.

I really like the idea that you could mess up and think you had one herb but it's really another herb, and instead of making a health tincture you just accidentally poisoned someone to death. Woops.

Hmmm, thought provoking! Bravo on the amount of good, insightful effort that went into this!

J

Sorry for my late reply, I have been busy these days.

Isn’t my suggestion similar to searching for herbs in the wild? It is simply searching for herbs in pictures taken from the wild. If herbs are visible from players’ sight, players who are not within the profession will have a chance to locate different herbs. I believe leaving herbs gathering exclusive to the profession adds to the identity of the profession. Moreover, it would be very hard for Soul Bound Studio to adjust difficulty of gathering for rare herbs if herbs can be seen directly in game. It is hard to make finding herbs a challenge and still possible when it can be seen from every angle by everyone especially when we leave herbs generation work to the engine.
Soul Bound Studio has expressed its intention to include a skill challenge in every profession so that player skill can be a factor in each profession. I base my suggestion around this. I wonder, how will a skill challenge be implemented in your mind? In fact, the skill challenge I proposed is the very last step of gathering the herb. Before anyone can play the skill challenge, they must locate the herbs using all the insects/ plants etc. I think we share the same idea here.

I sincerely agree with the idea of herbs can only grow in certain environment. Similarly, the related insects / flower can also only be found in those area. That’s my intention too. When you say the real challenge is “real looking: Getting down on your knees and loking around”, do you mean, do you mean you can only see the herbs from a certain angle? Wish you can explain more.

One major difference between MMO herbs and IRL plants is that the former are simply "spawn X plants at random locations within this vast area/zone". Since placement is random, you need a radar to highlight them or sharp eye to catch the sparkles floating overhead.

IRL, plants will readily grow in environments that meet certain conditions, and are hindered (or outright nonexistant) in others. If there's enough interplay between flora in-game to model this, then a master herbalist really only needs to know whether the desired plant likes dark/light spots, little/lots of moisture, grows on/under/around rocks, etc. They can then search the environment until a spot that meets those conditions is found, and whatever's growing can be harvested.

Herbs in real life will only grow in specific environment. In MMO, the developers can also make herbs only grow in specific area. It would just take a bit more work to code in the restriction. If we plan to implement gathering herbs with “searching” gameplay, hiding them from plain sight saves the developer a lot of time from worrying the difficulty of herbs being discovered. Restricting the area where each type of herb can grow with varying degree of rarity (difficulty of spotting them) is no easy task.

As you said, if a master herbalist really only needs to know whether the desired plant grow, don't you think it will make the herbs gathering profession a bit too linear? How would we create more breadth for the profession?

Hello,

GREAT write-up. I "think" that this is kind of Caspian's thinking. In a number of Q & A he has stressed that everything will have a number of parts and almost everything has a use for it. From the leaf, to the twig, to the berry, to the bark etc. -- so I am anticipating that level of detail. Once they listed "Herbalist" as a profession - I knew what family I would be born into. I am hoping that the family will have the beginning "primers" and that the libraries will have more info and that maybe some of the "bloodlines" have more affinity to the craft. The only thing I see a problem with is the limit size of the pack back -- I can see lots of pouches in my future.

Posted By BarriaKarl at 1:29 AM - Fri Jul 22 2016

Sorry for my late reply, I have been busy these days.

Isn’t my suggestion similar to searching for herbs in the wild? It is simply searching for herbs in pictures taken from the wild. If herbs are visible from players’ sight, players who are not within the profession will have a chance to locate different herbs. I believe leaving herbs gathering exclusive to the profession adds to the identity of the profession. Moreover, it would be very hard for Soul Bound Studio to adjust difficulty of gathering for rare herbs if herbs can be seen directly in game. It is hard to make finding herbs a challenge and still possible when it can be seen from every angle by everyone especially when we leave herbs generation work to the engine.
Soul Bound Studio has expressed its intention to include a skill challenge in every profession so that player skill can be a factor in each profession. I base my suggestion around this. I wonder, how will a skill challenge be implemented in your mind? In fact, the skill challenge I proposed is the very last step of gathering the herb. Before anyone can play the skill challenge, they must locate the herbs using all the insects/ plants etc. I think we share the same idea here.

I sincerely agree with the idea of herbs can only grow in certain environment. Similarly, the related insects / flower can also only be found in those area. That’s my intention too. When you say the real challenge is “real looking: Getting down on your knees and loking around”, do you mean, do you mean you can only see the herbs from a certain angle? Wish you can explain more.

@Roarer - 11:00 PM - Wed Jul 20 2016

I guess i am really looking at it from a realistic point of view. I dont know if you have already being in a forest trying to locate something, it is so damn hard! So much green and everything looks the same, where is north or south?

My idea was that locating a herb would naturally be hard to find, like natural camouflage. Hence the "get down and look at it", an example would be looking for one actual leaf type then getting close and examine it for a few seconds, if it is an actual herb that you are skilled enough to collect the option to would pop.

But even though this is okay to me i can see people complaining that this would be too bothersome and time consuming. That would require some (maybe a lot of) actual knowledge about the herbs. The encyclopedia you mentioned would be useful...

I am, in fact, okay with your idea. It is just that your idea is more gamey and mine is more realistic. My idea wouldnt work in any other MMORPG i have seem before because you can tell if something is collect-able from miles away (highlight, sparks, natural difference between background and item)...

Hey there, thanks for your reply.

I do believe our 2 ideas are not mutually exclusive, save for the "getting down to look" part. The minor difference on leaves you spoke of, such as veins details , leaf shapes etc can still be implemented. Different veins can indicates varying degree of effectiveness of a herb, or may require different storage methods.

However, if different type of herbs are only distinguished by these minor details, players may get frustrated as they are constantly misreading what they have collected. I doubt if this makes the game better.

I understand your wish for a realistic representation of searching herbs. Yet, if we flood the players' screen with flora and other decorative plants just to hide the useful herbs, I wonder if this is an inefficient way of using data flow. Moreover, we have to take into account the development time needed to add such decorative plants that looks like herbs, but do not serve any herbal purposes. If such thing can be done by procedural generation, it won't take much resources. But if it can't be done, it feels like the feature is asking for too much man power.

I do wonder what's your opinion on that, and the undecided points I listed above, e.g:

1) Should the encyclopedia of a herbalist be a steal-able item in game?

2) How should we learn about new herbs?

3) How should knowledge be passed down to an heir?

Posted By Jedzea at 0:32 AM - Tue Jul 26 2016

Hello,

GREAT write-up. I "think" that this is kind of Caspian's thinking. In a number of Q & A he has stressed that everything will have a number of parts and almost everything has a use for it. From the leaf, to the twig, to the berry, to the bark etc. -- so I am anticipating that level of detail. Once they listed "Herbalist" as a profession - I knew what family I would be born into. I am hoping that the family will have the beginning "primers" and that the libraries will have more info and that maybe some of the "bloodlines" have more affinity to the craft. The only thing I see a problem with is the limit size of the pack back -- I can see lots of pouches in my future.

Thanks for the compliment! I am sry to be a bit slow on replying, real busy this week.

Your suggestions on adding uses to branch & roots sounds great. First question : should these separate parts be searched individually as a separate item in the images? Or should they be collected together with the herbs?

Designing uses for that many items can be quite a huge tasks. Instead of making all these items serve only medical purposes, maybe they could be raw materials for other professions. For instance, the fruits can be feed for mounts and pet, certain roots can be fertilizers for farmers.... the twig and bark? Anyone got any ideas?