Please equalize the harvesting tools

There's a different word that would be more accurate than equalize, but I'm not sure the filter would allow it.

There are a lot of different harvesting tools. Quite a wide variety actually, but there is inconsistency with the performance of the tools.I understand that animations that are with each tool have different lengths, because each animation is different, but it would be, in my opinion, a decent QoL update to have the tools all modified so that they bring in the same amount of material per "hit".

Right now, there are tools that bring in more material than others per animation/"hit". I'm not suggesting, necessarily, that all tools be brought up to this level. It would be my preference, of course, but I think having consistency is more important overall here.

I don't buy that many gems. Haven't been that happy with the way Arenanet has done things over the years (that's no secret), but I do know that other than purchasing an item for the glyph that is in it, I have passed on buying certain harvesting tools because I'd simply never use them. The Unbound harvesting tool skins have their added bonus, and for me that's just enough convenience to make me pass on other tool skins.

While on the subject of harvesting tools:The bug with the flute harvesting tools is still not fixed. Of all the harvesting tools, these three have a slight chance to root you in place while animating in a manner that the WASD keys won't break out out of it as experienced with the other harvesting tools (including the basic ones).

The molten harvesting tool is one of the fastest that is there. The others feels so painfully slow in comparision.

Theres much more to the inequality of the tools than you say here.I came by this spreadsheet a while ago:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1stw9RIOjS2ENOelHPhp494ne90e2G3xQNUUfmQ6mXBs/edit#gid=1489005975

I'd expect that if ANet took time to readjust all tools to extract materials at the same rate for each tool type, they'd make all of them as slow as the slowest ones are today. If that's the case, I prefer the status quo: I can trade off efficiency for charm, if I want.

What they could do is make it easier for us to compare the tools by including the channeling, cooldown, and extraction times. Currently that's impossible for most of us to do. The most accurate data we have is from people building their own tool, so it's dependent on which tools they own. We have some additional data from people measuring over 100s of gathers, but that suffers from a variety of unpreventable measuring issues. (It's pretty good, just not 100%; definitely better than nothing.)

As I recall, that spreadsheet incorporates both.

The last time they adjusted the tools they made them work as the fastest version possible, except for Foraging tools. The earlier ones (except the flutes) which collects the items immediately and lets you move.

I'm more interested in the amount of materials harvested. As I said, the animations that are associated with the various tools are going to necessarily require different time lengths. I see no problem with that.
The Consortium Harvesting tool, for example, is super fast when harvesting a single plant node, but if you hit the plant nodes in a guild hall, the unbound harvesting tool is optimal because it takes all three swings at once.Again, just my opinion, but I think the rather worn out "convenience vs. appearance" argument needs to be set aside. In a game where cosmetics is the end game, the majority of the appearances do not affect the item they are applied to in any way (weapons, armor, glider skins, mount skins, minis, etc.)

@"Neural.1824" said:I'm more interested in the amount of materials harvested. As I said, the animations that are associated with the various tools are going to necessarily require different time lengths. I see no problem with that.

The Consortium Harvesting tool, for example, is super fast when harvesting a single plant node, but if you hit the plant nodes in a guild hall, the unbound harvesting tool is optimal because it takes all three swings at once.Again, just my opinion, but I think the rather worn out "convenience vs. appearance" argument needs to be set aside. In a game where cosmetics is the end game, the majority of the appearances do not affect the item they are applied to in any way (weapons, armor, glider skins, mount skins, minis, etc.)

Not a really good argument there. The unbound mining and logging tools both takes multiple hits in one strike, and is the fastest gathering tools for mining and logging, before you can move onto next node. So yes, theres a problem if some of the tools takes +50-70% longer to gather.