Mining Nodes

Has Shroud considered changing the node style of mining to a tile/texture based system?

In Ultima the simplicity of walking up to a mountain tile and swinging a pickaxe was gratifying. Knowing you may dig up a low - high quality vein was mysterious and extremely rewarding when you found something of greater value, especially when you were leveling and you came across a new vein for the first time.

Another element I enjoyed from Ultima was the ability to share/sell information. an example, marking runes to those higher quality veins. This is possible now but I feel the visual depiction of nodes degrades the value of the information.

If Shroud took this approach, I believe adding more complexity to the tile/texture based mining would add interest. We could encourage interactive mining by adding a variable called "initial mining" to only return a mixture of dirt & iron ore before reaching any potential higher quality vein.

Thanks

 

While the idea of being able to prospect anywhere does actually sound fun to me, I just don't think I have the kind of time to be denied workable ore when actually mining. This topic has been brought up before, however, and I believe while the devs have said the current node system was a placeholder, they aren't going to go back to the UO system.

 

this part of your statement made me curious - do you intend to mass produce items and saturate the market? all ore, basically, is "workable" in its way.

 

No, but right now if I mine an iron node I get an iron ore, known quantity. In what I imagine this would be like, I could mine anywhere, I might get lucky and get a rich vein, but more likely i'll get nothing or a low grade ore that is equivalent to 1/8 an iron ore, and i just don't have time for that. I must dominate the market.

 

The limitation is technical in nature and related to the Unity engine. This was discussed early in the project and a lot of community members was purchasing pitchforks and torches from ebay. However they ordered them from China and they were all so low grade that no actual mob action took place.

Starr and Chris has answered this several times and they would have also prefered a more generic approach, but due to the limit it was never an option.
So everything is built on node based resource gathering.

 

Spoon,
I'm sorry for the redundancy. I truthfully only searched a short period of time on this and didn't really find an answer. My opportunities to participate or interact with the Shroud community are very rare.
Thank you.

 

A tip when using someone's name is to add an @ in front of their name, the forum engine will then send them a notification that they have been mentioned.
For example you should get one when I use @joeymeyer.

No worries at all. Just trying to answer/clarify and wasn't meant as a dissmissal.
Its not info that is easy to get to since mostly it is from kickstarter and video hangouts so a search here in SotA wouldn't help.

Personally I hope we could get someting better than just "pure" nodes now that they are implementing the fishing tech. According to the streamathon fishing will work by being close to deep water, then activating the skill, there is then a throw gfx area where you try to get as far away as possible, then you 'reel' in, and for the duration of the bait being in the water one could get a 'catch', which you then need to 'get' somehow.
With such tech I could easily see a real mining survey skill which does then same on rocks, or on treelines or something. You throwing out a survey area, then for every such trail one could have a chance of finding ore. But that is just me and not something I think they are even considering.

 

I think harvesting would work well if it was based on texture/model, instead of raw nodes. But I don't think it should change for episode one.

After release, make every SpeedTree have a chance to produce the correct wood (even without falling animations, save those for the nodes), and every mineable surface have a small chance to produce (instead of nodes, which always produce). This increases the capabilities and complexity of the game, while giving a reason to have both nodes and nodeless gathering. The same system gives us the ability to harvest sheep without butchering them.

 

To answer your question: No, they haven't considered it... Too exploitable...

The node system is fine the way it is, IMO... And now that they have added "dynamic" respawning, makes it even better... IMO, the grid system was too easy to "macro mine" your way to wealth, just get a rune book full of what you wanted and set your macro programs, then go have dinner... I think that is the main reason we have this system...

 

I think it's because its the easy option to implement just following the trend of todays casual play MMO's

 

Woah, Ultima 1? Old school man. If you're referring to Ultima Online; The Shattered Legacy, or any of it's expansions I'm afraid UO is not called Ultima 1, or I, if it were to have a number though, which it doesn't, but if it did, it would be Ultima 8.5 or Ultima 9 pre Ultima IX. Making Ultima IX Ultima X, making the failed Ultima X the failed Ultima XI.

But mining in UO, if UO is what you're referring to, did have a more free flowing organic immersive feel than the generic WoW style, here's a Node, let's go mine that Node. But limitations of time and money and coding and etc factor in, but I'd 100% prefer the UO style, which is like other games as well, other games that feel more like a living world.

 

i then wonder why guild wars two node system did not break the crafting system and the market itself..

players were allowed to access the same node, when it spawned. i'd get my loot table, you'd get yours. the materials were readily available while also still being sold on the market, and refined materials sold for more, while finished products sold for even more, again. i think part of it was the marketplace was one big bazaar crossing all of the servers, before megaservers became A Thing...along with a plethora of styles one could implement for the same piece of armor (type and stats).

i also think they (arenanet) had (i no longer play it, so past tense) an overall policy of making most decisions based on 'cooperation' methods... including the mentoring system as just one of many examples, that tied this together. that overall theme i experienced with that specific game, has caused me to always look at the broad view even for the not-so-broad details in any game i decide to pick up and play. the more cooperative aspects that tie us together in a productive way, the longer we tend to stay, together.

 

Perhaps some of the mining nodes could be transparent until a particular skill threshold was reached for each type, say the skill "Prospecting", as mentioned above. That way the node based resourcing required by Unity would be intact, but the node would be extremely tough to see unskilled, but more visible as a skill increased. Just a thought on how that might work.

 

Nodes make it easier for any bots I want to develop, not that I would, so I prefer nodes.

 

I am hoping we can get a "dowsing" skill (or the prospecting skill becomes an active skill) that will direct us where to look.

It's sometimes hard to locate them, and as I am colorblind, it makes separating hues very hard.

 

i'm NOT colorblind, and i still have problems finding ore veins in the game.

 

Oh good, not just me then. Iron ore I *literally* found by accidently hitting it in combat.

 

The nodes are subtle, especially iron ore nodes. I find using the Night Vision skill is often helpful, as it changes the tones of the rocks in its range. The light spell has a tiny footprint and does not allow enough "reach" to see both sides of most pathways.

 

I am hoping the prospecting skill, the higher it gets, would show the nodes brighter and brighter. Basically fully trained an iron ore node would practically glow.