Meticulous Collection

I got offended when you suggested I was a power gamer. Its ok though, we can both be offended, nothing happens.

I'm not sure how you can differentiate between loop farming and grinding though, surely they are the same thing?

This is not about min/maxing or loop farming or powergamers. This is about if someone says you can do something for an hour and get £100 or you can do the same thing for an hour and get £120 which would you do?

Trying to steer this back on topic slightly....We essentially have a skill in mining which means over time it means you get less of everything the higher you go with it. If that is by design then fair enough but if its not having the intended effect of higher skill = better then it needs looking into.

 

Min/Max is a misnomer. There is no min!

 

I think looping it around is an advanced unintended tactic and when we're talking about producing fractional benefits while being as efficient as possible, that's not really the same no.

The first sentence contradicts the second sentence. I think you seem like a smart guy and will acknowledge you didn't mean to do that.

There's a designed power curve in all the skills and spells, so I think this IS by design. The fact that you're efficiency is allowing you to effectively consider ignoring meticulous collection potions is a testament to your skill at loop farming and as I said before it might make the devs make a small change to keep you using their potions. However, I'm not convinced that gold ore mining needs any more efficiency. I never have any trouble finding it for sale.

 

My experience and observations in Elysium Mine.

In one hour I can run the entire mine 3 times, harvesting only ores. I average about 80 ore per run or 240 per hour. The average from when I was Adventure Level 60 and 80 was nearly the same. The average when my skills(gathering) were all locked at 40 and were all locked at 80 remained the same. The average when I would sprint and use a fleet flute between nodes and walking remained the same. The average when I used potions and tools to enhance my percentages and when I used normal tools remained the same.

I did notice, or had a paranoia induced hallucination, that the more meticulous collections I got in one room, the less nodes were spawned in the next room. So that even if I was luck and had 10 extra ores in one silver room, the next one would have 8 or 9 less. This appeared to be consistent over dozens of hours.

My tentative conclusion is that an ingame mechanic may exist to mitigate increased success.

 

Is it how they are supposed to work? Don't know. But at the moment it is how they do work. Assuming that at this late stage, this aspect isn't changing, then in our current scenario I am suggesting that the meticulous skill could be improved to be worth investing in. Just from the very basic stance of:

1: Go Mining. Get ores.
2: Go Mining, use mining related potion/level mining related skill, get more ores.

Using the potion should improve your results. Currently this is not the case, except for very particular casual approaches. In the grand scheme, account for variables such as mob respawn, node respawn times, etc. etc. increasing meticulous is of dubious benefit or can even be a detriment.

The only thing I am trying to say here, really, is that investing in a skill in the mining tree should noticeably improve your mining experience. That's all. I'm not trying to start a social movement or revolutionize the economy, even though I think both you and I agree it could certainly use a revolution....

Your scenario of non-respawning is interesting. I think it would make a whole lot more sense if the monsters didn't respawn either. I mean, how many hundreds of times do you have to kill these monsters and they keep coming back? Surely players have cleared this place out by now? Where do they keep coming from?

In reality, a valuable deposit would be mined, the tunnels going deeper and deeper until the veins are depleted. I suppose that wouldn't really work here, unless we were constantly discovering new veins, and that's probably not practical. Our mines are magical and nodes respawn. Personally I wouldn't have a problem with stepping into a mine, finding an appropriate vein, and hacking away at it for an hour. I could then read a book or something. But I don't think idle gameplay is what we want to encourage.

 

I've thought about this a lot during this conversation.

My conclusion is that I doubt the problem is that it's not working as intended. Instead, I think the problem is that the OP is looking at this from a "per hour" basis and not a per node basis, which everyone in this thread seems to agree is not in question (you get more ore per node).

If you look at it per hour, you have to have a lot of things go your way. The RNG has to produce the same amount with and without using a potion in your sample size. Since we can't control that we would need a huge sample size (at least 1000 for both with and without a potion) to really understand what the potions are doing. Then we would also have to come to the decision that this style of play is intended, and the developers want us min/maxing ore farming to this degree and are willing to support changes that make that more profitable - I don't think that's the case.

The potion is supposed to give you an increased 10% chance per node. What that translates to per hour while maxing out your mining run efficiency is irrelevant.

At least, that's how I see it. It will be interesting to see if the developers have a different point of view, or if they use this opportunity to sell more potions. Whatever their decision I hope we don't make ore farming more profitable than it already is. I think that would be bad for the economy and the game overall.

 

That wasn't a contraction, the second sentence was about using basic common sense. If you can do the exact same thing in the exact same way in the exact same place and the only variable is pay a coto, drink the potion and get less or don't pay a coto, don't drink the potion and get more...I don't see this as powergaming or min/maxing

 

I am guessing part of the reason Portalarium removed the extras is because it "was economically damaging".

However, I agree that now it does not seem to be worth having in the current rendition..

I just wished they added to the algorithim a small bonus they may add one of those specials again.

Doesnt have to be great but should be increasingly cumulative with addition meticulous roll in a row.

An Example.

At a cotton bush, 1st harvest a chance to get 1-3 cotton, carapace, etc,

on meticulous roll 1 cotton 0.00001% for carapace, etc,

2nd meticulous roll in a row, 0.00001% 2-3 cotton, 0.0001% carapace,

3rd roll in a row, 0.0001% 2-3 cotton, 0.001% carapace,

4th roll 0.001% 2-3 cotton, 0.001% carapace.

....etc,

Some aspect like this would make it worthwhile as long as a chance.

I hate getting a 5 rolls in a row and see that wolf spawn thinking I going to get attacked and I have yet to harvest anything else in the area.

This way you at least willing to keep going. Right now I only keep track to see if "I can beat my record" of meticulous rolls in a row.

 

More data is incoming!

Just having to do the without potion first until I have over 1,000 nodes hit before drinking the potion and being stuck with it for 7 days not being able to do comparative results

 

Oh I'm sorry, I thought you would see the relationship and get a laugh out of it. Here let me explain.

You said...

Which I disagree with. But your next sentence was...

Which seems like a very min/maxing/loop farming/powergaming thing to say. I mean, who's more interested in the amount of money they make per hour than a gold farmer? Kind of makes me wonder what this whole conversation is really about.

 

I agree there, that it is probably working as intended.
As with many things though, I question the intent.

Basically though what is happening is by increasing ore per node -and time spent per node - you are able to collect less nodes in an hour, thus bringing you back to square 1 in terms of ore acqusition, but actually penalizing you in exp gain, since exp is based on how many nodes you tap. Adding a diminishing xp curve to subsequent meticiulous ticks could help equalize this.

I can understand not wanting to add additional yield to the meticiulous ticks for economic reasons, but if the purpose of meticulous is to get you more ore for time spent, its not doing that. And its actually getting you less exp.

So...not getting more ore, not getting more exp for your time invested = why use it ? That's the only point I'm making.
If you want us to invest exp in a skill or a coto in a potion, there needs to be a tangible benefit for doing so.

 

That second point was probably badly explained on my part. It was trying to use a real world example of something not sota related to illustrate the same ideology.

let me change the scenario to better explain the same concept:
You work 9 hours a day in a post office and its your job to lick stamps. In a 9 hour shift you can lick 2000 stamps.
The royal dictator of that post office implements a new type of Tea which it is option to drink but says it will increase performance.
Drinking the tea and expecting to become stamp licker of the week, a prestigious award that every stamp licker aims for you start your next shift
You work 9 hours the following day licking stamps and at the end of that shift you have only licked 1900 stamps.

The Tea is not doing as expected which is increasing your output of licked stamps.
The obsidian potion of precision which increases your mining output is not increasing your output of ore mined.

 

And now Scoffer is licking things again.

See what you've done?

 

The point of mining ore is to mine ore. It's not, and shouldn't be, an XP farm.

If meticulous collection is giving more ore per node, isn't that all it's supposed to do? I don't get a lot of artifacts because I like to kill things that give more XP. It's a trade off I choose to make. Mining large amounts of ore gives you large amounts of ore, if you want more XP, do something else.

 

Yet it IS increasing mined ore per node. Which is what it's supposed to do.

 

I'm not talking about more xp, I'm talking about more ore

 

But you're NOT getting more ore for the time you're spending, that's the entire point!
If meticulous was 'instant' and just 'gave you more ore per node' then the entire argument would be moot. Its costing you more time to meticulous for insufficient benefit.

 

Right, I was replying to Kaeshiva who was talking about XP.

ONLY if you're mining like crazy in loops.

That's so important to understand. It's not costing you anything if you're a normal player doing normal things. In fact it's helping you quite a bit.

And just looking at Scoffers preliminary numbers it's not hurting you. It's just not helping at a rate that is going to make a huge difference (although it will be interesting to see what the final numbers say).

 

Look at it this way:
In a fixed amount of time:

If you could mine 50 nodes and get 3 ore each you'd have 150 ore.
In the same amount of time if you could mine 100 nodes and get 2 ore each, you'd have 200 ore.

A player's time IS relevant.

Even if you disregard experience, which is a big factor that I don't feel should be disregarded, watching the mining animation for the duration of meticulous collection with a yield =1 gives you less than vs watching it on a fresh node with a yield of 1-3 + other metals potentially.

More ore per node, yes, not arguing. But also more TIME per node, that's where it loses its benefit.

 

Sure, but that is still incomplete. Moving to a new node has a time cost. A meticulous collection fires instantly where you are already at. Again, it's very easy to approximate the collection rate of a meticulous collection, and it is a much higher rate than anyone's overall ore gathering rate anywhere (afaik).