Suggesting new mining area.

Given the recent discussions about changes to mining areas, I would suggest an entireley new zone be made as a social mining zone.

Anything would work, but I will suggest an open map area in one of the chasms coming off grunvald shardfall

One side of the valley would have iron nodes every few steps along the wall, the other side would have the same number of copper zones. Up along the top we could put timber and wolves if we wanted.

We would all hang out there as a community when we wanted to mine and chat while we worked. There would be enough nodes close enough together that 20+ people could work it at once and always find a node to go on to when they finish the one they are mining.

There would be creatures, but level 1 and not so many they were a bother, they would only be there to keep you paying attention.

I dont think it should have player housing or workbenches, because nobody would ever leave, but they would make the area incredible to work in.
There would also not be and gem nodes, because again nobody would mine anywhere else.

Nodes would still be useful in adventure zone because people who prefer to adventure would still grab them as they pass by, but miners would also have a space to work that is more social than working by yourself in a unique instance.

As I see it iron and copper are core resources and you can not work at all without them.The value should be based on the seconds it takes to walk to a node, mine it, then smelt that ore. People adventuring will gain the same value add when they see a node, walk to it and later smelt their ore. I do not see it devaluing the resource as much as seting a base value for it.

We could also have hospitalers there if someone wanted to talk about crafting and hospitalers could send noobs there whenever they complain they cant find resources in zones.

Done right it could also open up business opportunitys, I would buy your kobold hammers for 1 gold so you can keep mining and sell you a pick for 20.

 

Fun removed ( tick )
Working as intended

 

Not really sure what the point is you are trying to make NZguzzi

 

Maybe highly susceptible to lighter than siege cabalists with the occasional wave of heavy spawn with more serious cabalists? I just don't think Portalarium wants any mining farm without risks. The cabalists have to mine stuff too sometimes aye? Many of the good mining spots in UO were this way, where friendship was needed to get past the spawn and contain it by mining it in numbers of players.

Just brain storming on this because everything is a place holder for something else here in our SOTA But we need to party with our gatherer/crafters just as much as with our fighters and mages.


~Lime Tord~

 

I would rather prefer to less grind than to adapt to it and create such grind areas.
This would lead the hardcore grinders to more hardcore grind which would lead to more consuming recipes because some won't accept that things are "easy" to obtain and ask for correspondingly reward for their "work" and time Invested.

I would like to be able to mine before i have a level 80 char!!!

 

I honestly never saw anything wrong with the way the mines were before they started changing them. They are not open scenes...they are solo scenes unless you are in a party so i really see no reason to mess with them. If you dont like mining then dont go into the mines. Pretty simple. Some were tougher than others but to radically change them like they have just makes no sense. If folks want higher end adventure scenes there are plenty places to go. Those level 5 scenes have ore nodes all over if you look for them and you can still get all your kills you want off the mobs.

 

What about player owned mine, or guild owned mine
members could spend their producer xp to add nodes, faster respawn, dig deeper, add vendors ... in the mine (expensive for long term guild effort)

 

Done right also means keeping an eye for economic balance.

Such nodes should produce the 20 XP per mining that batch refinement gets.
Ore harvested from these nodes should be useful for crafting but have a 0 gold value for NPCs.
Such nodes should provide only iron/copper and maybe granite. No rare drops like tungsten or nickel.

Basically, a way for folks to work their craft but not a place to grind out XP or gold. This would still tank iron and copper values in the player to player market.

 

This is an important element My Brother brings, using Mining as a good example ...
There's something deeper to this mine shaft we all need to address and Mining is a great vehicle for it's addressing.

Something doesn't feel normal about the instance and thus less immersive.

Let's put the coal miners back to work? SOTA is not in modern days ...

I think what we are pointing to is more of a "Fellowship" situation here. When we desire more happen chance to become full of chances to meet other Miners (in this case) for those that enjoy a more benevolent game play style.

When we "get into" our preferred craft and life style of play here in current day SOTA, there's not that many chances to interact together within benevolent scenes where we may comrade together, not as a party, not as a guild or hunting party, but as a stranger meeting stranger or how a normal worker may wish to chat with the person next to them, while going about their mutual benevolent business ways. This was an element of our past ways within Lord British games. Lord British has often spoken of such enjoyment of his own to come up to a fisherman or minor and interact within common conversation as to what the player's day is about and the player ask about Lord British's as well. It doesn't have anything to do with high or low or side to side, it's just about happen encounter interactions with real people in a benevolent setting of mutual interest. The hunter has this, yet the crafter or gatherer does not within our game and thus it seems as though something is missing. We don't wish people to enter "our instance" because of the way nodes are which are in shorter supply when those nodes are a fixed amount and that's all. It becomes more of a competition then than any meaningful personal connection enjoying the task at hand.

The question is, how do we fix this situation and lack of mundane task personal interaction. Possibly this could be overcome by a low, yet required in vast quantity element (iron, coal or whatever) for the existence of a major public need, yet not enough to make it a gold farm without it's "challenges within the recourse node itself" instead of the monster being the obstacle. Possibly even a team work of Miners (in this case) which may be require to mine that or those special nodes, yet with no, or few monsters because the difficulty is within the node. Possible cave-in ...

Benevolent team actions and efforts may be the next big thing, or could be if we can figure it all out.
~Time Lord~

 

They need to come off some of that cash.

 

I hope not.

I just saw how resource gathering works with Elder Scrolls Online. I kept thinking "why not Sota?"

 

Excellent points as always brother.

Like you are suggesting, we dont mine all day in solo areas because we are antisocial. Mostly. It is because having competition for the available nodes makes it less profitable.

Perhaps instead of hundreds of nodes in a zone, having one public zone that respawns nodes individually for each player. When someone mined a node it dissappeared for them but was still available for you. Your harvest potential would all be the same, but your success would still be basedon personal performance.

 

I keep thinking about what it was like in the spirit of UO Mining and what elements of there we could bring into our SOTA which would not only remind us of those times, but to bring that fun here for new players to enjoy because it had elements to it which did attract so many of us to mundane mining operations, and possibly be able to jazz that up a bit through modernization of those elements.

• We all remember "the task" and how fun it was.
• We all remember sometimes working as a team.
• We all remember being ganked by some PK who stole our best pickaxe along with the more valued ore.

Possibilities;

• The Task could be made through what we have spoken of here through "an area" where it was gathering or task specific.
• Some tasks of greater value could have the need to be mined as a team where one miner couldn't get anything, unless they had others pickaxing along with them (chopping large trees, or harvesting a bush which is alive and fights back but doesn't move from it's rooted position. There could be more risk of total cave-in depending on the number of miners gathering there. The more the better, the lesser the more likely cave-in will happen and thus loose all our stuff and equipment. (cutting down a team tree could also suffer from similar styled catastrophe, or the giant bush may also eat us with our stuff along with it)
• Some monster King Kong of the place could at any time show up (by the planets or random?) and gank everyone and taking their stuff, which would then have the need for a rescue party to go deal with it before the area returns to it's normal more benevolent relaxed atmosphere. But the monster not showing up enough to make it worth while to have a constant guard or hunting party waiting there for it, which would take away from that mundane benevolent atmosphere of peace for the task.

I'm sure there are others, but I'm just listing some of the elements of there that could have modification potential for such an area.

There's a similar discussion going on within this thread but the topic is slightly different (I linked them both);
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...edicated-to-mats-gathering.85343/#post-786773

This subject has so much wonder in it,

' It's Stevie Wonder !

~Time Lord~!

 

I really like the way Project Gorgon does survey. Creating a map out of ink and parchment and having to find a random location on the map from that is almost like a treasure hunt.

I just wish we could have some crafting and harvesting that wasn't just wait for the yellow line. I'm really quite tired of that yellow line haha.

 

I think the whole problwm with this discussion, is they havnt elaborated on their long term vision for minin/ crafting and the economy balance lately.

Theres no way to be a pure crafter atm.
Do they intend it ever to be so?
Etc etc.. i think devs need to share the vision on this subject a lil more before its even worth brainstorming suggestions.

 

Port has said in multiple threads that they will not be making easy mode mining zones. So if you want more nodes you will have to fight off elite monsters to control the lucrative mining spots. I would like nodes to spawn more everywhere but I don't think Port will do that either. They keep quoting "Risk versus reward" so if you are not risking something while mining there will likely be no reward for doing so.

 

While I'd love to see additional ore acquisition options, the prevailing sentiment based on what we've seen release after release is that if you aren't adventure level 80+ you aren't supposed to get ore. We've seen owls nest nerfed twice, the second time to complete pointlessness. Etceter was nerfed and then high lvl undead took up residence. Hilt was nerfed, then nerfed again. Other changes to the game (such as resistance change, instance reset timers, etc.) have further worsened mining in these zones. Then there was the global 'things aren't all spawned when you go in' nerf. Serpent Spine is now useless and Verdantis likely to follow a similar pattern. I'm afraid the only conclusion we can draw from this is that they don't want us to get the shiny shiny ore and each release makes it less efficient and more difficult to do.

A low level mine zone is sorely needed. More efficient mining is sorely needed. The reason SotA can't do "harvesting" like [most other games] is that the material usage rate in SotA is astronomically high. In most games, you go bash a few nodes, you can then make a sword. In SotA, you must spend 10 hours mining to maybe get a sword that isn't crap because you're fighting against the ore spawn timer, the monsters guarding the ore, the exceptional chance RNG ,the breakage RNG, the random effect RNG, etc. In a game that requires 40 ore to make a ring (with no stats) or 80 ore to make a ring that adds a couple of stats that will usually give you junk bonuses or flat out break in the attempt to craft, the rate at which we gain materials vs. how many are needed to do anything is, quite frankly. ridiculous.

We need more ore, not less. We need more efficient mining, not more hampered mining that is 90% combat. There's so much 'material waste' inherent in the system that spending an entire weekend clicking rocks can end you up with nothing to show for it. If the extremely wasteful, frustrating, lossy crafting is here to stay, the only saving grace is that you can throw more materials at it.

 

In Defense of Portalaium's Way; (because most of us here have differing views and there's not much opposition)

SOTA is Different and Meant to Be that Way;
If you look at most all resources they travel up the chain of skills and become more valuable as most other games do, yet they are more encouraged to go up that chain in the way they do because of overall design. Many games have not taken such a deep approach to intertwining everything all together. In SOTA's way, those resources don't become so much of a gold farm which wrecks most other game's economies. When we have more resources, then the excess causes an great increase in the amount of objects within the game which go unused. SOTA's other tied in overall design perk is that it recycles more than other games through it's ransom feature, which means that special things are special and wont last forever which only enhances the object's ability to be seen as being special. In contrast to other games this means that allot of special things makes special things less special and therefore the loss of that object by the player is not as easily replaced.

Indeed Risk Does Equal Reward in SOTA;
But this is where our development team has not separated by condensing them within single instance scene. What I see our Portalarium failing to do, is creating instance scenes that have overwhelming monsters which do not come often enough to be considered as a hunting area. They reject benevolent scene which suddenly may turn to a bloodbath situation. Yet what they've done instead, is to have our benevolent cities, towns and POTs, and turned them into a bloodbath situation through Cabalist Siege. By using Siege scenes as blockers or hindering the flow of benevolent crafting, gathering life, they make the same situation split in two. The benevolent crafter can still craft if they want to, remaining in town, while the benevolent gatherer who may wish to gather from safe lesser skull areas must avoid or engage their way to those more benevolent hunting areas (ie 1-2 skull lvl areas).

Our Challenge for Any Changes;
We must stay the course within Portalarium's philosophical boundaries when we do ask for changes by crafting those wanted changes to fit where our game is heading. SOTA wants to be different and needs to be different or it's just another game with everything other games have and in the ways they have them.

Yes They Do;
They do intend for any single craft to be difficult to stand alone and dedicate all one's playtime to. "This is the overall concept design within SOTA". It's this overall design which makes our SOTA such an activity minded world. We can see this as well though "SOTA's classless character design", where if any character has been restricted by the player o skill fit into a pure mage or pure melee or ranged fighter, then all that player has done is to have made their way more challenging for their own enjoyment, as others that embrace the "all skilled character" will see themselves less challenged and more able to get ahead by adapting skill and tactic from all their skills to whatever combat challenges face them. This is a very good thing for the player who may not wish to need many game accounts to operate autonomously, which also fits into SOTA's ability to be played Multi-Player Online, Single Player Online or Single Player Offline. Without such ability to be the way within the gaming philosophy that Portalarium has taken our game, "it overall would not work". This is where SOTA excels over other games which have a more compartmentalized and fragmented gaming program which comes in pieces and restricts class of character design, by the design of their classes. So it's integration (SOTA) vs segregation (other games) which is the defining point between our SOTA and other game designs.

This is something I'm beginning to understand @Lord Baldrith and enjoying very much within our game. Recourses have become the treasure hunt!


~Time Lord~

 

Timelord, I disagree that more materials means more items unused, precisely because of "portalariums" way where 90% of everything you try to make is either nonexceptional salvage, or explodes. The extremely high resource costs were palatable when you could actually get high amounts of resource. I would suggest that if they are going to do this kind of massive reduction in acquisition rate the recipes and wastage should also be reviewed. Especially since all the crafted items are essentially disposable after a couple of weeks of use, they are far too labor intensive / costly to make. In 6 months time we'll all be running around in indestructible founder gear 'cause its just less hassle. Some people are already doing this.

 

Hmm, that's funny because I just replaced my Founder's gear with Epic crafted gear not too long ago for the very first time, (adv level 60ish).....