Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I started out as a miner, and i have to say, it is very boring and the entire gameplay style just begs for botting.

I mean, you sit there, dragging a cargo full of rocks into your partner's orca once every 3 minutes. Repeat. Every day for months. You've got to be a pinhead to NOT consider macro'ing that bordom away. (and a pinhead for indeed macro'ing as well!)

Mining is, and has been forever, a very bad gameplay mechanic. Its not FUN in any sense of the word. Its simply a chore that needs to be done in order to get your space gold.

It should take work to earn money but it should have some sort of entertainment value, other then 3 minute laser cycles and drag/dropping rocks from one box to the other


The real problem is: What do you replace the mechanic with? Nobody has yet come up with a good solution.
Mining needs to be in the game, in some form.
Suggestions like minigames wont ever work, people play MMO's for its MMO content, not for its Bejeweld/Tetris style minigames.

And for the most part, i doubt people would even enjoy the minigame. It would just be another turn in the painful knot that is mining, and i think most people would just prefer the boring current implementation over that.


Someone needs to come up with a GOOD replacement for the mechanic, and nobody has, yet

What? One who's mined more than twice in 7 years? Yeah I guess I'll have to be the voice of reason.

I like also how when someone disagrees with you with your epic plan to "save mining" then they are a troll. That's your answer when you can't just blow someone up that calls you out for talking out your ass.

Use some of your mad pvp skills to blow up some miners... like a boss!

Being a miner myself I like the idea of having some sort of "jackpot reward" while mining. It would make for some better entertainment while mining. Maybe add some meta3/meta4 BPC in roids that you recive when you mine the whole astroid.

Would be fun to see messages while you mine:
"Your Modulated Strip Miner II stumbled upon an old blueprint that has been captured by the astroid in deep space a long long time ago. The blueprint is severly damaged but it does seem to be possible to fabricate at least a few rare units before it is fully destroyed"

As for all sorts of visual effects as bot deterence measures, it would probaly destroy the game for me as i'm color blind. Trying to see different colors/veins/graphic anomalies on astroids is just not possible for me. Not sure if this is the way to go. To deter botting you are making mining harder/more of a challange or whatever measure is persued. The real solotion would be a more aggressive and active policy by CCP with specialized software and DEV-teams active trying to hunt down and ban IP and people (not just accounts) who where caught.

Hardly the "voice of reason".

I like how you try and discount the validity of what I have to say with the reasoning that if I haven't mined very much then I can't possibly offer anything positive to contribute to the situation. The majority of the posts in the thread say otherwise.

Furthermore, you don't offer any concrete reasons as to why my ideas are bad, offer other ideas in their stead or try and suggest modifications of my ideas that would help improve the situation.

Hence, you're a troll.

I kind of like the idea of scanning for belts, but you should still keep statis belts, just make them not have as many asteroids, while the ones you have to scan contain rarer ores and denser asteroids, and they would be less likely to be visited by rats, making them safer.

I also like the 'Intuition' idea, OP.

Making botting harder is all fine and good, but whatever happens that needs to be a secondary consideration/side benefit of improving mining. Fun and gameplay for the players needs to be the only consideration while designing the new system. If you can then incorporate anti-botting aspects to it without diminishing the fun and gameplay, then fine, but fun and gameplay are and should always remain the primary focus of any changes.

If I post contrary to the majority of posters on the eve forums, I'm pretty ok with that.

Most people don't have the patience for mining. If they made every change you asked for I'd guess you would mine for a week or so, then go on to something else. Those who like it the way it is may not after the changes and unsub more than a couple accounts (miners are known to multibox).

I should go write a post on how to fix pvp. Probably won't matter that I haven't killed another player ever, but why should that stop me. I'm sure I'll think my ideas are grand and worthy!

A couple of your ideas I do favor but only the ones that don't impact the current mining mechanics.

Random rare loot that pops into your hold during mining... sure. Since everyone is getting this change while mining then it should affect everyone somewhat equally. The only change it really will make is multiple stacks of stuff in your cargo hold and perhaps make mining minerals more profitable.

Getting rid of minerals generated by reprocessed rat loot-droppings. Big change that I doubt CCP would want to tackle but who knows. Obviously this would make mining rocks more lucrative.

I tend to not want to see mining yield increased a lot as logic would dictate that the mined product would be in larger supply and it's value depreciated. However, apparently most minerals in the game are not mined but are gained by reprocessing rat-droppings so a higher mining yield should still help miners in general.

The other stuff about interacting with a rock in space while it spins or whatever.. inferior to the current system. Not everyone has to be smashing keys like a monkey on crack every second of the day. If I want that I can fire up Rift.

I wrote in my post that static belts would be there... but would have smaller roids that are not good for strip mining and are all the ppl with smaller ships need.

I support this idea of overhauling mining. The concepts presented by the OP are the kind of things that are needed to retool mining for 2012 and beyond and help curb botting. The only thing that I would be concerned about is if this would overall affect the quantity of total resources in the galaxy available for construction. Hopefully it would be ensured that the current production capacity wouldn't be affected by tweaking the specific values for the asteroids themselves.

Some great ideas! I'm driving an effort to get some folks elected to the CSM 7 with the specific goal of improving the mining experience. I know enough about miners to know that even though the CSM 6 thinks they are addressing mining concerns by changing the drone regions most miners know the bigger problems are mining needs more "fun per hour", not just "isk per hour" and that bots need to finally be removed (and there are some pretty easy changes that could make that happen.

Miners ( and the OP), I encourage you to follow and participate in my thread in Jita Park and the threads soon to follow where we discuss how to best encourage CCP to improve mining.

Issler Dainze
CSM 7 Candidate