The Yield Bug That Should NOT Be Fixed

AGS is fixing a bug that's been in the game since launch. But, should they?

The Yield Bug That Should NOT Be Fixed

The December Update Patch Notes include a fix for one of my favorite bugs - the Territory Standing Gather Speed bug, which is honestly a bad thing to do in my opinion.

What the Bug Is

The Gather Speed card is supposed to give you, well, increased gathering speed. However, it actually gives a yield boost. AGS decided to finally fix the issue, according to the patch notes.

Fixed a bug that was causing harvesting speed territory standing bonuses to improve yield instead of speed.

How It Affected the Economy

It really... did not. Most people don't know about the bug. Most people put a few points into that card (values here) and probably never notice the difference. The economy is fine with this bug existing.

Why It Shouldn’t Be Fixed

Fixing this bug is gonna be a pretty hard nerf to gathering. For the casual player, a 25% passive yield boost from the card (8 points invested) is probably gonna be most of their total yield bonus. For the hardcore player, this nerf reduces the maximum potential yield boost to less than 100%, which means double procs aren't a thing anymore.

While I understand that it's not functioning as intended, it does not mean it should be fixed. To me, the way it works right now makes sense. It gives the card some actual value. Sure, a gather speed boost is not nothing, but it's incomparable to a yield boost. A lot of time is spent running around finding nodes, there's a bunch of competition for the high end ones, and we already have super high gather speeds anyway.

Plenty of players have actually deleted their characters to start over, because they wanted to invest into the gathering card. Can you blame them? I can't. Now, these same people will be stuck with a card that realistically has almost no value once changed.

Plenty of people also picked the card thinking it was a gathering speed boost, and they got used to the amount of drops they'd get with it being a yield boost. That drop amount feels natural to the player, and now they are just getting a reduction in gathered materials.

Potential Solution

Keep the card as it is right now and change the wording to reflect it being a yield boost, rather than a speed boost. Potentially tweak the values a little to incentivize putting more points into it rather than just going for the current sweet spot before the diminishing returns start to tank the value really hard.

If AGS is keen on double procs not being a thing (which happen at 100%+ yield boost), then this can be fixed at the code level (if it's a quantity of 1, don't apply yield to it; sure, there's quantities of 0-1 too which are used to halve a drop rate, but I'm sure there's a better solution than nerfing the card).

Also, we really need a way to reset our points allocation for territory standing. How many of you use the Standing Gain card? And if you do, is it worth it? I personally can't be bothered to even do the math to decide if investing more than 3-5 points into it is worth it, and I shouldn't need to. Having the option to reset it allows me to use that card during my early progression, then reset and allocate points into what I need.

Ending Note

I generally keep opinions like this on the Discord, but I wanted to bring some attention to the matter and see how you all feel about this change. If you feel the same as I do, please post your thoughts on the official forum. I've opened a thread here.