What would be the downside to doubling the ore in Serpent Spine?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Scoffer, Apr 5, 2017.

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  1. Belladonna Rose

    Belladonna Rose Bug Hunter

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    There is ore in Serp Spine but alot of it is smaller nodes that are hard to see and in very obscure places. If i hadnt been camming around looking I would never of seen half of what i did see and get. Really just bad layout.
     
  2. 2112Starman

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  3. Lars vonDrachental

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    Did anyone of you thought about the point that mines are still scheduled as multiplayer scenes?

    If there are too many enemies between the resource notes it sounds like this is on purpose.
    I think normally there shouldn’t be everyone interested in harvesting ore as SotA still isn’t meant to be a game with just all-rounders so maybe Serpent Spine is their first try to change mine scenes more into group play scenes. E.g. while four group members fighting the enemies the fifth is just harvesting ore and I think in this scenario the number of collectable ore could be significantly higher for the harvester.
    Generally I do not think all scenes are made for solo play even if some avatars are way more powerful than the average and maybe now this point simply just attract negative attention by the solo players...but that is just a guess.
     
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  4. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

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    I seriously hope that with this spawn rate of ore there isn't any plan to make this multiplayer.
    Even the existing mines can't support more than a single miner because the ore respawn rate is slow. Even alone you end up standing around waiting for ore to pop unless you're running a circuit through the entire instance. Put even 1 more player in there and you'll stand around even more.
     
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  5. 2112Starman

    2112Starman Avatar

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    So I'll throw in my opinion about Serp spine after running through it yesterday in the stream.

    I was amazed at the zone, especially once I filled it with water. I absolutely love the interaction now with the environment and cant wait to see what else they have planned. This is *exactly* the kind of awesome design we need!

    I think I get the zone now. It really isnt meant to be a pure ore farming zone, more of a mix between adv and producer xp (hybrid). although the one was to low level for me, if thy had the 5 skull kinds of mobs that hover around 1000 hp, I would hit this thing all the time. I'm used to farming in an almost pure adv XP zone, Serps moves towards a hybrid. As someone who would never step into a zone with my main that is mining only, I like the idea a lot.

    But, even so... the devs need to put more iron resource nods in the zone, even for a hybrid they are to few and to spread apart. I think I had what 40 ore in the hour+ that I was in it. But I was also exploring (for the first time) and trying to kill mobs for xp. I can drop my alt into The Epitaph and pull 50 copper out an hour with no danger at all.

    Even then on the flip side, I died twice exploring and one was a loss of 80K xp. The reward vs danger is not there, at any time one may fall off something and die.

    So the zone needs more nodes.

    I would also ask the dev's to give us a higher level hybrid scene like this with the 1000 hp type critters in the same kind of looser (mobs not congested in groups) type spread of mobs. Throw silver in that one lol.
     
  6. Lord Ravnos

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    Serpent Spine Foothills is NOT uncloned folks, please stop comparing it to the mine in it's current form, lol.
     
  7. 2112Starman

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    odd, I just looked through the whole thread, who's talking about Foothills? I see everyone talking about the mines.
     
  8. Lord Ravnos

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    Scoffer and kaeshiva's "1 hour test" ? How'd you miss that.... they compared the uncloned foothills to the mine... which seems silly because the foothills are clearly not balanced at all yet!
     
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  9. Alexander

    Alexander Avatar

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    I don't mine that often, and only go to these mines when I need to. That being said, I have noticed a difference in terms of gathering ore. In the old Serpent Spine mine, the ore was generally clustered in one room or mining area, making it easier for the miner to just focus on gathering ore. Now, it's all spread out, requiring more time to search out the ore nodes. This is generally NOT what miners/crafters want to be doing with their time. Also, just as a side note, the moving mining cart, was a nice novelty at the beginning, but that novelty became old for me back in Blood Bay. I think the focus has shifted from functional/practical to 'eye candy' appeal. Just my observation and 2 cents worth.
     
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  10. Alexander

    Alexander Avatar

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    Yes, and I dread what they may do to this in terms of ore nodes.
     
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  11. Lord Ravnos

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    Everyone dreads balance when it makes it "more difficult, less fun, against my play-style, insert other adjective of your choice here" to do what they're used to, and accustomed to doing throughout all these months and years of development... I just wanted to point out to folks who plainly didn't realize that the Foothills are an unbalanced scene, that changes ARE coming, so prep yourselves! :D
     
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  12. Scoffer

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    I think you may have missed the point slightly, this zone is supposed to be a mine and that implies that there will be ore in it. We deliberately compared it to a non-mine zone (uncloned or not doesn't matter) to see what the difference was as it will come no where close to being the same resource rate as the other mines.

    The point we were trying to make is that the zone you pass through to get to the mine actually has more ore in it than the mine itself.
     
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  13. Lord Ravnos

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    I see your point, point taken, but if all mines are supposed to yield more ore per hour than non-mines, don't use an under construction non-mine for comparison, as that will most likely end up yielding less ore than the new "mine" will after being uncloned. So I disagree with your statement that for the sake of comparison of yields it does not matter if a scene is balanced or not. In fact I could go so far as to say you specifically picked an unbalanced example to help accentuate your point, but I don't think so, and thought it was an honest mistake.

    I also agree that once they increased the actual size/volume of the mine they should increase the number of nodes proportionally, IF that's the balance outcome they intend.
     
    Last edited: Apr 6, 2017
  14. Viper_Venom

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    The good news is I didn't like the zone before and I still don't like it. It's not a loss to me. All you have to say is 300 xp nodes and I'm not going to bother with going there. I'm more worried about the other mines being uncloned, horribly spread out with reduced producer exp per node and more mobs that spawn fast. :(

    If anyone has any reason why I would go to a mine and get less exp per node, please explain it. I can't figure out any reason and I've been thinking about it a lot. I must be missing something, right?

    In my mind, there are only 2 different reasons why the zone would be useful in this game as an actual mining zone.

    1. It's a zone for lower to mid level characters to go before they can handle the more difficult 500 xp node mines. (It took me quite a while to get high enough level to be able to go into the mines and handle the mobs there. It would have actually been nice to have a mid level mine where it's not quite as good as the other mines, but I can go there at an earlier adventure level)

    2. The difficulty is somewhat similar, but there are more ore nodes than other mines to make up for the fact the nodes give less exp.

    I went to Serpent's Spine mines once to check out the new zone. I do not plan to ever go back. Currently, the only small tiny reason I can come up with is I get so tired of going to all the other zones, that I just need something different to get a break. Still, there is a large list of other zones I would go to before this one. I can't really see in the zone. It's just too dark. I realize it's a mine, but it's so big that the darkness seems really prevalent. I find myself squinting my eyes while in the zone to try to see. I constantly fall to my death losing adventure exp. I have not heard of anything of substance in there. Sorry, but tier 6 liches is not a reason for me to try to get to the bottom without dying a bunch by falling along the way. Maybe I just need to get used to the zone, but I don't see the point since it has 300 exp nodes.

    The one thing I would like to point out in this thread, is that people are not used to the zone yet. The test done should be done after someone has learned the zone inside and out and knows where all the nodes are. Unfortunately, I'm not sure people want to waste that much time with the 300 xp spread out ore nodes to even find out. They could be gaining much more exp and ore in the other mines, so what is the point? This leads to my concern.

    I'm seriously scared that my answer lies in the fact that in the future the other mines will become even worse for mining than Serpent's Spine and that they will also be reduced to 300 xp nodes. This is the first time I'm seriously worried about the future of this game.

    They said at the telethon they would not reduce the exp in the mines, but they also said things like they would add more vendor space, then they go have their offline discussion and don't make the change they said. I understand that they may change their mind when they look at the details more. I'm not complaining about that, but this makes me think that maybe they will have a discussion about the mines and say, "well ore is more valuable than other resources, so exp should be less on all ore nodes". Please give us some feedback about the future of the mines to calm my nerves.
     
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  15. Lars vonDrachental

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    Did you read my example? There I was talking about a 5 avatar group with just 1 miner. I’m aware that currently in such a 5 avatar group would be certainly 5 miners as it looks like today still everyone is doing everything but if I remember right this was never the plan for SotA.
    That’s why I conjectured that Serpent Spine might be a test if people can be conducted to group play in such a scene…because if you are not able to fight the guards alone (in a reasonable timeframe) it is expedient to form a group out of avatars with different priorities to support each other. If this guess is true than fighting just the mobs must be at least not inefficient to gain experience or gold.
     
  16. Barugon

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    Why did you GM Survey?
     
  17. uhop

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    I live nearby that mine (unfortunately purposely), so if I needed iron ore quickly, I could pop in. Now all we have left is Spectral Mines. Look at the map. It is beyond a ridge, so I have to either travel to Kiln, then to Kiln Cisterns, then to Midmaer Pass, then to Spectral Mines. Or go over Brightbone Pass or Eastreach Gap (and travel to them overland first), then to Spectral Foothill. It'll takes more time than to mine locally.

    I deliberately left out Etceter Mines, because they are not strictly iron ore mines => less iron output. Still they are far away from me too.
     
  18. uhop

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    Let's hope that it was just a showcase of possible level design techniques, which was applied wrongly. To wit:
    • The Serpent Spine Adventure Area looks cool.
    • Kobold's steampunk elevators.
    • Puzzles, which show how to interact with the environment, including:
      • Landslides.
      • Flooding.
    • Breakable walkways.
    • Run-away mine cart.
    To me it is SotA V2. We saw glimpses of it already in Upper Fortus, and North Drachvald Spur, and even Brittany Sewers (a puzzle) --- all great areas too.

    So I am looking forward to see these (and more) elements of new design in other places. And I hope that Serpent Spine Mines will be fixed, and functionality will not be forgotten, when uncloning existing areas.

    PS: When criticizing an unfinished game, sometimes we go for obvious things, like loot tables --- to test the functionality it is enough to hand out 1gp per kill --- it can be easily changed and tweaked later. The same goes for how tough mobs are --- it is enough that there are different mobs with flexible parameters, which can be set and tuned later. The same goes for how many ore nodes there, and what kind of mobs guarding them. From my experience, it is all trivial. What's not trivial is strategic placement of different area types, geography in general, any singletons like key cities, dungeons, and so on. Unfortunately Serpent Spine Adventure Area violates this principle. It is still fixable, in the same way as a beehive can be fixed --- any solution will leave a lot of people unhappy.
     
  19. Viper_Venom

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    I understand what you are saying. At the current status of the ore nodes being 300 xp I just have no interest to go there when I can get better xp elsewhere. If the mobs are tier 3 mobs there, then I don't mind if it's that way. I don't know the actual tiers of mobs in all the mines, so I could be wrong, but it just seems they are fairly similar but this one mine gives less exp per node and I just don't understand why.
     
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  20. majoria70

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    So me and a friend spent quite a lot of time in Serpents Spine Mine today. So here is my take on it from having revisited it several times under different circumstances. A couple of times exploring with a group, today it was just me and a friend. So the area has such exploration spots.

    So we walked down the water fall and listen to the beautiful rushing water. I even found a node of iron ore in the water, yay. We walked across a platform bridge where it would break and we got to practice jumping. ;) There were a lot of areas where there could have been hidden nodes of ore, where the discovery was the coolest part, but once you got to the other side challenged by jumping your way to it, there were perhaps slimes a crystal or two, but not much and no ore to be found *sighs*. And then when you had seen it why do it again that we see at this point over and over.

    So do I think we need more ore in the mine, yes we do, much more.

    We need hidden nodes that keep us coming back all over the place, in the water, hidden behind a water fall and definitely hidden little rooms of it.

    And another thing we need for this scene is discoveries, cool things that you find once you venture forth and climb those rocks and fall into the dirty pool by the lich mages.

    Where is our cave cod to fish up and that pool looked a bit stagnant was it perhaps a bit poisoned, well just a little ;), and what are the discoveries we find to show that life has been there before us.

    Also where are the picnic supplies and camps to build. We found a little hidden alcove, well lots of them, we wanted to take a break and build a fire and place a blanket and have a picnic. Talk about sandboxy things, this area has all of this possible. ;) It just needs stuff and way more ore to make it fun to adventure in.

    I would also like to see elementals become mineable one day and as mentioned miners sometimes drop ore for sure. I don't want to hear economy ever again. In a fun game economy will take care of itself and WHY because People will be playing it. Let us have ore, let us have stuff, let us discover stuff, let our play time feel rewarded by achievements, tasks, even daily quests to keep us coming back and adventuring, or people don't want to play. ;)

    [​IMG]

    I couldn't resist adding these since they fits with our new weapons coming ;) Fur is used on it even, well the outfit and we have the hat already ;) oops I got distracted yikes, and perfect mining clothes j/k ;)
    I do want those boots *sighs* so bad ;)
    [​IMG] [​IMG]
    Ok pick up a a task here perhaps too ;) Draws her attention back was the wishes for those clothes *sighs*
    [​IMG] [​IMG]
    Underwater mining and discoveries ;)
    [​IMG] [​IMG] [​IMG]
    [​IMG] [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    Well along with mining and fun which this game needs lots of, I did get off track a little but here's to fun *raises glass* and this game being the same thing :) *cheers* and more ore ;)
     
    Last edited: Apr 12, 2017
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