Player Features and Ideas Discussion

A minigame won't make it more interesting though, because in the end it'll still be the same task repeated over and over again and it'll rapidly get old. You'd need a deep overhaul of the entire system to make it entertaining and non-repetitive on the long run, but that's not an easy thing to do, especially for a money-making activity.

There are a lot of small simple games that are totally addictive and can hook someone to them for hours on end. The problem is of course that they are simple in nature but hard to think of. Sure, Tetris is a simple idea, now that we know it.

Still, I think it is totally possible to do this. But don't make just one minigame. Make multiple. That keeps up variety and even a specialised miner can do something slightly different a different time. Of course, the player has to be able to choose which minigame to do but he must not be able to just pick the easiest one every time.

The solution is to make one minigame for each type of ore, except for veldspar, which should keep the current mechanic just for nostalgy's sake and not to destroy the miner bumper / ganker 'occupation'. The minigames should be completely different from each other. If one is loosely based on roguelikes like the present hacking minigame then another should be based on tetris and third on http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g3/bells.htm.

That would mean that if one minigame would be totally easy compared to the others there would be oversupply for the ore and it would be more profitable to do the others. And since most minerals come from multiple ores it wouldn't ruin the market if one minigame is so mingbogglingly stupid no one wants to do it.

I would be happy with some additional mining types with meta gaming attached.. however I would not support moving all mining types into this camp.

no more minigames

Thing about the minigame idea is that it prevents or at least makes it much harder to multibox. And mining is really only worth doing with a few accounts.

Especially since 99% of the actual people who mine, mine BECAUSE it requires low interaction. They do it because their main focus in playing EVE is to hang with friends and post links to sites of dubious morality to get a good jolly.

Face it, Mining is a decent-risk (anywhere but high), extremely low-income, low-involvement profession. If you turn it into a mid-risk, high-involvement task, then the only way to balance risk/reward will be to reduce the overall minerals mined per hour, but NOT reduce the mineral need of production, drastically increasing mineral cost.

Right now mining is in a spot where its income is justified for its risk and involvement.

not to mention, adding minigames and other things needlessly plastered across the screen is a good way to make mining in wormholes/low/null even MORE non-existent, as your no longer able to pay proper attention to d-scan or local/intel. which is BAD. kinda like the reason the exploration minigame sucks, it takes forever to complete the mingame when every other hack is followed bychecking through d-scan, and then all your effort is wasted the SECOND you se combat probes and have to let the can explode because you close the minigame (not to mention the loot in everything but upgraded null exploration is on par with mining in income, because of ******* forever-lasting interfaces, but thats a rant for another thread).

closing, minigames suck, there is no way to make them fun, and any "overhaul" to the mechanics of mining would make it an undesirable proffession to even attempt anywhere but the safest of systems due to information overload on the user end.

You want to make mining more exciting? This guy gets it... Imagine your D-scan and survey scanner combined into a HUD and mining drones become mining probes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8SOZxCXokg

what about this would do anything besides make a miner have to do more clicks for the same result, with the added bonus of increased risk from rats to go along with whatever player risk is present.

you basically take an activity from one you can do while hanging with friends or doing something else, to a horrifyingly grindish mechanic that holds you captive at the screen, all while dropping its potential fun factor to a third or fourth what is use to be, as you now can no longer operate it as a social activity.

Make it like mining in Space Engineers, drills on the front and mining by taking manual control of the ship and smashing it into an asteroid, allow damage to the ship if you aren't cautious. Smash into the asteroids carefully.

I wouldnt use any mechanics from Firefall of all thigns as an example. Was in for that game since the closed Alpha, stopped playign roughly 6 motnhs ago when every update either removed more content with the promise of NEVER re-adding it, or just plain made the game less fun and more grindy for no real benefit.

more related, then what would the point in even having mining barges be? also, this would make low and null/wh mining IMPOSSIBLE as there is no longer a "take what you already got, cash out" option, since now you have to get yourself stuck butt-humping an asteroid field to be within loot distance, and get slaughtered, or just leave the can and waste half an hour.