He means gather like press R, then it keeps gathering and not have to hold. I agree. I need to have a gather macro otherwise. It's too hard to do that for a long time, for me.
I don't want tools because it favors people who put money into it, thus favors the people who are rich, gathering should be hard. Like I said, gathering should involve getting to places normal people can't as easily, like w/ heavy armor on or w/e, or swimming... and the gains need to be good. Obviously if water is involved the gains need to be REALLY good because you gotta go thru w/ a small-ish amount so you don't drown.
If nubs went out to gather and came back with stax of gatherables, they could make a living off that. That part of the economy is inbalanced imo.
Tools don't have to be really expensive and expensive ones shouldn't have that much cost either. It doesn't have to be a material sinkage feature (necessarilly).
There could be a different variety of tools, easier more accesible ones made of bones or stone byproducts and then metal ones which would require metals lore to make. Needs certain balance guidelines, but Id say in general, not massive cost for the highest tier of tools and not a big gap between the lowest and the highest tier tools in terms of efficiency/utility.
By cost i mean, not making a skadite scycle or scissors to be really expensive and rewarding.
The utility and effects of tools could be faster gathering and slightly gathering yields depending on the type of tool for the task, tool skills proficiency and material lore.
For example a very crude reference at max skills max tier material with values set only as a reference obviously.
hand gathering yield/gathering time 100%
Bone tools gathering yield 105% gt 140%
Stone tools gy 110% gt 160%
Metal tools gy 115% gt 180%
High tier tools (?) 115% gt 200%
Then the crafting of tools should be somewhat versatile and cost somewhat close to weapons, a different variety of tools for different gathering options. Pickeaxes, axes, scycles (and all plant related tools such as scissors, knifes, wooden sticks to gather fruits from the top of the trees, no límit), butchery tools for meat and skin just to start, then alchemycal tools (vial crafting, keg crafting, at least), extraction, cooking and more.
All tools should be crafteable and have durability.
Crafting tools could be simple with more or less complex alternatives, certain woods for the shaft should be required depending on the type of tool, softer/maleable and heavy ones for example. Weight could affect the tools buffs and be less impacted by the tool skill proficiency.
Blades that are more or less durable depending on the material, should also affect the gathering buff stats. For example lighter materials that have less dura also have a lower yield boost coeficient while heavier ones could have better yield boost at expense of gathering speed. Players could opt for more balanced tools, tools that have more yield bonus and others with higher speed, and the whole spectrum in-between. But offering the possibility to opt between a range of versatile tools seems the way to go.
Fine tunning version, idk make optional to put a gem inside the core of a tool to provide whatever status (that shouldnt be OP) for gathering certain type of things for example. An amethyst inside a scycle grants the chance to find seeds or insects or insert material, and same to any other tool. The chance to get collected or extracted somewhat exceptional or rare mats (not OP), why not.
All should be ment to make the game easier at a certain cost. To promote crafters to offer a more wide variety of specialty services required for other playstyles to trade with.
The whole idea would be to set a system that will generate material usage and boost the quality of life for many playstyles in the form of balanced meaningfull pve content.
And thats just a portion of the pve aspect of the game, there needs to be a bunch more things taken care of, such as AI, material distribution, small random lawless npc camps with equerry and broker, and many more things.
Gathering needs tweaking obviously, theres plants that give too much and others that don't at all. That makes their value fluctuate also in stagnant economy when materials have devalued due to not enough demand. But for a gathering remake it would require for more crafting classes and professions to emerge and add more layers of material consumption/usage.
Gathering certain things Is really unrewarding and often their price depend on that, still a whole spectrum of cooked gatherables that don't provide any real advantage buff or status besides growth and age stuff and nourishment. Those are fixed recipes that even tho they should be ingame not all cooking recipes should be like that, theres no healing overtime, raw fishes are better health nourishment, no other statuses or reasons for people to gather anything for cooking at least. Alchemy Is more involved and developed but just responds to a fraction of the materials.
Also i definitely agree gathering by itself needs better environments, more challenging and involving scenes. A cave you have to swimm into or through to access certain gatherables, a design that encourages exploration and makes travelling worth while. Killing certain creatures to access certain resources, involve bandit villages, crop farmers idk you name it. Theres many possibilities to make pve a more attractive scenario, part of what consider should be a good start Is a gathering remake haha.
