Thoughts on Lost Whiteguard Silver Mine

Where the !@#$ is the entrance to this place in Whiteguard Foothills...
I'll try Solania...
Found it, hey looks cool.
Wonder if I should take the mine car.
Oop, skel knocked me off the top level, let's just look around.
Where's the ore?
!@#$ I'm lost already.
Anyone see a ladder?
Oh here's one ore.
Let's try this way.
!@#$ have I been here already?
Anyone see a ladder?
Lot of skels down here.
Hey here's a fake wall.
Found an ore behind it, now we're cooking with gas!
Yeah, there was just that one ore.
Let's go this way.
Hey a ladder!
!@#$ boards collapsed beneath me.
Have I been here already?
Just gonna hop on that damn train.
Anyone see a ladder?
Anyone see any ore?
Hey a locked door! No key on me though.
Let's go this way.
Have I been here already?
Found a ladder!
I'm going to stand right !@#$ here until that damn mine cart comes.
Got it, now we're cooking with gas!
Damn, mine cart just dead ended and now I'm going backwards, let's get off.
!@#$ I am so lost.
Screw the ladders, let's just go this way.
(Repeat for 20 minutes)
Hey I found the locked door again and somewhere I picked up the key!
What's down here...bunch of plants? And some Whiteguard skels.
And a few ore.
Ok.
Dunno why there are plants down here, but ok.
Let's get out of here.
Anyone see a ladder?
!@#$ I am so lost.

In conclusion, I can't wait to go "mining" there again.

In all seriousness...I'd mine in outdoor zones before I ever did that one, if I was lower level. Sorry to the dev that worked on it for being snarky, it's cool but...you guys don't seem to get what "mining" is. No one wants it to be 85% wandering around lost killing skels and 15% actually mining ore. You kind of need to know where you have already been, for example, so you can go collect ore where you haven't been.

 

This fills me with... a minor dread for future changes to existing mines being turned into MOB theme parks with 1/10th the ore as we see today.

 

I can understand the silver being sparse in a T2 mine. I do think the harvestable count needs to raise. I like finding the salt and coal nodes. I'd keep the silver nodes steady, bump the iron ore nodes up a little, and increase the coal and salt significantly.

 

Yes definitely needs some more ore added to it.

 

That's already happened to most of them. We're all waiting in dread for it to happen to Elysium Mines when it gets uncloned.

Understood, and I don't want to take you too hard to task right off the bat...but I'll repeat my original statement that I don't think you understand what mining is as an activity. Even once I know the layout of that place (sure, there will be a map), and even though I can mow down the skels without even slowing down, that place was clearly designed to slow you down. The original mine layouts were designed "snake-like" so you can work one end to the other, then start over again.

The newer layouts are clearly "MOB theme parks with some ore" as Nelzie said (paraphrased here). No one wants mining to be exciting, we just want to get it over with relatively efficiently. It would be different if the resource requirements for progressing in crafting were different than they are, or if I had to fight/search for an ore node but it dropped 10 ore. But neither of those things are true.

You're working at cross purposes internally, here. I truly believe this is just going to royally tick off early stage players with unnecessarily annoying game features. They were better off working rock features in the existing outdoor zones.

Look at the layout of Spectral Mines...that's a mining layout.

 

I think that this type of design is perfect for a lower level mine. The second day that I was explore/mining I was able to gather ore at a faster pace..

I will continue trying it out.. but so far the mine seems great as a low level mine.

 

Speak for yourself, because I definitely don't feel that way. You wouldn't want mining to be exciting? That seems strange. I say make everything as exciting as possible. This is a game afterall, it's suppose to be fun.

 

what, no one is going to like Sannio's post https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...st-whiteguard-silver-mine.104515/#post-905761 ?

how about three free /stuck a day in the mine ?

THE HENDOMAN

 

With all the worry about upsetting an economy we continuously effect the fun of this game. This mine is an example of that. Provide players the opportunity to get much needed ore and you will have a happy player. Continuously take away the opportunity for the miner to get ore and he will not mine or like this game. The selling price for ore may go down a little perhaps. The player who buys ore for convenience will be the one who buys still to keep the market going. So for those who do not want to mine for whatever reason they just make money another way to buy ore like grinding or whatever they like to do. It will balance out, but what will not balance out is fun verses not fun. Not fun will win. We do not need to get mines added to the game that skimp on ore, such fears are bad for the game. Do not call them mines then. This is my opinion. It takes tons of ore to do anything and we don't get enough of it even in mines that do still have ore. Masterworking 3-4 times and my silver 100 ore is gone. Hours of work sometimes. I understand you are keeping an eye on it but put the ore in the mine and then adjust from there is my opinion.

 

as a miner, I wanted to mine for an hour in Lost Whiteguard Silver Mine but the extremely low output bored me... I guess, I managed more or less 40 minutes, stopped and went back to Elysium...

 

My opinion seems a bit different on this subject. Mining nodes over and over in close proximity isn't fun. It's very boring and monotonous.

If I'm mining of course I would prefer the nodes to be closer together so I can earn more. But I would much rather have a fun challenging experience with an opportunity to mine here and there.

If they added some random mini bosses or randomly spawning, more challenging mobs, I would be all for it. Even if it slowed down my mining big time, I would have much more fun killing some rare creature with a chance at a rare drop.

 

There's good feedback here, and I put likes on a lot of the contrary posts to mine - they're good contrary viewpoints. I still don't think if you were trying to mine as a lower level player as a way to advance crafting, this mine would be a very happy place. But there's a good variety of opinions here so I'd say @Sannio is right, let it go a bit and see what the monitoring looks like. Appreciate everyone's feedback, and I do really appreciate a dev weighing in.

 

What i like doing is being part of the world and being productive when i don't really have the time to play while doing say study/netflix or housework I feel that if you allowed players to do certain things like mining as a prime example, afk for much diminished returns though, then this would encourage players to log in and stay logged in, boosting concurrent numbers and good for all. I'm not talking of 200 or an hour or anything, but say 25 ore an hour in a pain free environment...no mobs. If i was designing a game i would by design encourage players to be logged in even when they don't have time to actively participate, Black desert does it with fishing and it also helps keep people attached to the world instead of being distracted with other games as easily.

 

The Lost Whiteguard Silver Mine was quite pretty and fun to check out once, but I can't see any reason to return. I've realised that there is no way that mining as it currently exists can be considered fun, and since I value my time highly, in future I'll pay for any ore that I need.
I'm quite happy to provide some additional income to anyone who is prepared to spend hours in there chipping away at pixels. That way each of us gets what we want, and I can spend my time doing something that I actually enjoy.
The same applies to all the other mines - these days I only enter mines to access passages leading to other scenes.

Of course, if mining had random events like this...
"As you break open the rock you free an ancient, fossilised hand clutching a small wand-like device. A symbol that looks like a triangle enclosing an asterisk can be seen etched on the side of the device. You place the device in your inventory, intending to examine it later."
or
"As your pick strikes the ore node on the floor of the cave the ground suddenly gives way and you find yourself falling into a pitch black cavern below. After a few seconds of silence, you hear a slow, methodical tapping sound that seems to be getting closer."
then I would be a lot more interested in mining.

 

I get that you can't just have mines that are loaded with ore guarded by low level mobs, but I think it would be better to have a lot of nodes that yield less than to have not many nodes and tons of running around and fighting. The latter method makes for mines that aren't much different than most other adventure scenes.

Tin, Nickel, and Tungsten could be made much more rare. Multiple gold/silver on first swing could be made much more rare. If it was done this way, then you could have an actual mine where low level players could spend most of their time mining and building producer xp without messing up the market or obsoleting higher level mines. (Maybe low level ore nodes are already that way, in which case, I don't really see why they'd need to be that sparse)

edit: I was pretty happy to see some low level mines added to the game btw.

 

I completely agree about us needing more folks in the game, but in this instance they would not be interacting with anyone else since they are afk, and all they would do is add lag to the shared scenes they were in. Concurrent numbers don't really mean that much if many of them are simply bots. I also love spending time doing 'boring' stuff like resource gathering, but if I'm doing that in multiplayer I'm at least available to chat with in-game friends, folks I meet in game, or on guild chat if I choose to, and people know there's actually someone 'on the other end of the line' when they talk to me.

 

All three mines, as well as the two they already screwed up need to be mines, not adventuring zones. Yes they need to have mobs but I want to mine not spend 90% of my time fighting things. I thought with all the flak you devs. received about the changes you made to the first two mines would tell you something. I guess not. Not good work guys. We miners like and want to mine. When we want to adventure we will go to adventure zones.

 

Here's an option... Add chunk(s) of ore of the types found in the mine to the loot tables of mobs in the mines. That could help make them more worthwhile destinations for people looking for ore despite the low node count. After all, those skeletons were mining before they died. The elves and kobolds are actively mining now. It fits the flavor of the zones. Increases efficiency for the miners. Adds immersion to the mine denizens. And preserves the 'danger' of the mines.

Example: Any random mob in Lost Whiteguard might have a 33% to drop a chunk of ore. If they do drop a chunk of ore, it has a 40% chance to be salt ingot, 30% chance to be lump of coal, 20% chance to be iron ore, 10% chance to be silver ore.

Any random mob in Elysium Mines might have a 50% (higher tier) to drop ore. If they do it might be something like 50% to be gem fragments of types found in the mine, 25% gold ore, 25% silver ore.

Naturally devs could math out exact drop rates better, the examples here are just to show theme of the idea.

 

That's is one of the best ideas so far this year. Simple, makes sense and makes all happier...