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Wurmhole

Mining (and other) skills need overhaul

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Ok, many players know the mining system and some have no idea.  Let me sum up how skill is rewarded for mining:


 


complete, utter fail (1ql shard mined) = no skill gained


Really poor job of mining (>1 but less than 40QL shard mined) = woot, I get mining skills!!


Wow, I am doing awesome and mining really high QL shards = zero skill = big fat loser!!


 


Where in life do we have to strive for mediocrity to get better at something?  This is literally the only game I have ever seen that makes you have to use crappy tools to lower your performance/quality to get better at what you do.


 


This is the dumbest thing I have seen.


 


Make skill gain a result of doing something great - PLEASE - we should strive to push the limits, not see how lame we can be.


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Always thought that using high quality tools and getting high quality results should give you high skill gain.


You don't learn much in real life by doing something you already find easy...you need to push the boundary.


 


Right now, if you want to be a miner, there is no reason to buy/make/use a high quality pickaxe until after you've finished training. A 10-30ql pickaxe is going to be sufficient for a pretty long time.


 


Good tools -> Good results -> Good skillgain.


 


I like the idea that different types of veins are more difficult than others though, I think that is done right.


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I agree seems odd that the only reason to have a high ql good enchanted pick is to get the job done faster or for when you are collecting high ql ore.


 


That is one reason my mining is just now getting past 70 i am not one to maximise my skill i just want to get the fastest pick i can get and get the work done and move on.  


Edited by Kegan
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I know there is a whole skiller tool market for rakes, hatchets, picks, etc.  We have all made and purchased them.  Would anyone object to not needing those tools anymore?  Not me.  I can finally imp them up and not worry about breaking them all the time.


 


edit:  although for those that just want to only click a few actions to make full use of stam bar, the skillers might still be useful?


Edited by Wurmhole

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I like the current way of mining.  It offers the choice to a player: efficiency or skill gain?  Giving it all to high quality tools means we lose some freedom in the game.


 


Also, how would skill be gained? By reaching some minimum quality of shard (say half of your mining skill or something?)  This would force people to use higher quality picks AND negate the need to find new veins to work their skill on. Everyone would stick to rock or maybe iron for skilling (since they're the easiest).  It would also hurt newbies who are unable to craft high-quality picks.  They'd either have to suffer the low skill gain, level their blacksmithing skills, or be forced to purchase picks from a higher skilled player.  (There's a fourth option of being gifted a pick, of course.)


 


Or should we change it to a set percentage of skills receiving a skill tick? Say 50%?


 


We'd have to lower the overall skill gain then or mining skill gain would get out of hand.  If we want to maintain the same effort to get X level of skill, then the rate we level in your proposed change would have to be slower than it currently is when we're focused on leveling mining with a low QL pick. 


 


Either case seems unsatisfactory to me.  How would you propose changing the skill gain system?


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Please don't change the system. As far as I'm concerned, it's worked. If we start basing things on actual "realism", then we might as well only be able to carry what we can carry with our real life pockets and other things.


 


If you change the way skill is gained you change the entire game.


 


-1


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The optimum skill gains should be at a  tile of a max quality close to your mining skill level using a tool near your skill level, with a bell curve to drop the skill down when not in that sweet spot, but not down to zero.

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+1  This is one of the reasons I stopped playing years ago (bridges convinced me to come back).


 


 


Edit: I think I may understand why they have this system, so perhaps a nice compromise would be you get max skill gain when your tool is within the level range of the node you're mining.


Edited by Aariez

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I like the current way of mining.  It offers the choice to a player: efficiency or skill gain?  Giving it all to high quality tools means we lose some freedom in the game.

 

Also, how would skill be gained? By reaching some minimum quality of shard (say half of your mining skill or something?)  This would force people to use higher quality picks AND negate the need to find new veins to work their skill on. Everyone would stick to rock or maybe iron for skilling (since they're the easiest).  It would also hurt newbies who are unable to craft high-quality picks.  They'd either have to suffer the low skill gain, level their blacksmithing skills, or be forced to purchase picks from a higher skilled player.  (There's a fourth option of being gifted a pick, of course.)

 

Or should we change it to a set percentage of skills receiving a skill tick? Say 50%?

 

We'd have to lower the overall skill gain then or mining skill gain would get out of hand.  If we want to maintain the same effort to get X level of skill, then the rate we level in your proposed change would have to be slower than it currently is when we're focused on leveling mining with a low QL pick. 

 

Either case seems unsatisfactory to me.  How would you propose changing the skill gain system?

I hear what you are saying, but essentially the way skill gains are now, it is like saying "wax on, wax off" will make you a karate black-belt.

 

Imagine a chef at culinary school.  Pat (gender neutral) goes to class to become a chef and while there, the instructor says "Make sloppy Peanut butter and jelly sammiches all day, then throw them out, cause nobody would ever want to eat those gross looking things.  Pat ask for the point behind this and instructor says "this will make you an awesome chef, just keep making them".

 

We can all follow the current system to get better.  But most new people have no idea how backwards skilling in wurm is and actually strive for making great stuff, only to get slapped in the face later, being told how they have been mostly wasting their time and should go make crap instead.

 

Yes, this current system works.  How about we just make a skilling system where you open a menu, choose your preferred skill, then you have a "skill me now" button to click.  Just keep clicking it....

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It's Wogic that runs this game, not logic, remember that.  In order to do what you are asking, the entire skillgain system would need overhauled, and the spells that affect skillgains.  Skillgain is based on timers, and so are the spell effects of coc, woa, botd, etc.  What you are suggesting would mean an enormous amount to recode, to change a system that works already, albeit in a seemingly backwards fashion.  And do you really want to go through all the problems that would come up with that much recoding?


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First off, mechanics and a balanced system should almost always come ahead of "realism".  We're not playing a true simulator.


 


And if the crux of your argument is 1. It's tough on people who don't want to learn game mechanics and 2. It's not "realistic", I see no reason why to change the current mining system.


 


The first point is the mistake on the player's fault.  There's explicit guides on the forums.  After all, the idea of imping for skill is strange as well, yet no one complains about it.


 


As for your latter point, realism isn't good enough to usurp a reasonable mechanic decision.  People do have to choose between skill or quality and it is a meaningful choice. 


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It's Wogic that runs this game, not logic, remember that.  In order to do what you are asking, the entire skillgain system would need overhauled, and the spells that affect skillgains.  Skillgain is based on timers, and so are the spell effects of coc, woa, botd, etc.  What you are suggesting would mean an enormous amount to recode, to change a system that works already, albeit in a seemingly backwards fashion.  And do you really want to go through all the problems that would come up with that much recoding?

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It is obvious that the best experience comes from the most challenging accomplishments. I have always known that failures, whether versus an opponent or otherwise, can provide the most significant self-improvement. Even professional athletes deliberately restrict themselves in awkward ways for training purposes.

We also know that doing easy and consistent work can teach you very little. A major contributor to workshop accidents is due to a developed lack of attention. If you are comfortable, then you have basically 'mastered' your specific task/circumstances; if you can mine with a toothpick, then you are surely a master.

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It would also hurt newbies who are unable to craft high-quality picks.

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Where in life do we have to strive for mediocrity to get better at something?  

 

 

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The thing is most people train their accounts from scratch. Some of them have spent years grinding their toons how they are. I believe it should be important to respect those people and keep things the way they are.


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The current systems hurts newbies far more than Wurmholes proposed system.

 

I disagree.  Newbies will be hitting rock and iron for a while.  They'll imp their tools as high as they can, generally--20s, 30s.  This is exactly where they need them to be.

 

By the time they hit outside the sweet zone of rock/iron, they should have been playing for a couple of months.  Plenty of time to learn the ins and outs of mining.

 

Forcing a newbie to buy (and continue to pay to re-imp!) a pick is brutal.

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-1 the system we have now works fine


 


Challenge ran a new skilling system that relied off high ql skilling and it was an absolute disaster


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It's Wogic that runs this game, not logic, remember that.  In order to do what you are asking, the entire skillgain system would need overhauled, and the spells that affect skillgains.  Skillgain is based on timers, and so are the spell effects of coc, woa, botd, etc.  What you are suggesting would mean an enormous amount to recode, to change a system that works already, albeit in a seemingly backwards fashion.  And do you really want to go through all the problems that would come up with that much recoding?

 

 

YES!

 

You obviously have not been around long enough to understand the problems that inevitably occur when Rolf recodes anything, else you would rethink that answer.

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Progress comes with great pain, not from doing exactly the same thing we have always done.

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Consider bridges. They have brought about a massive cascading series of bugs and fixes that cause more bugs. If we took a vote, I bet people would choose to keep bridges and plow through the pain.

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Ok, many players know the mining system and some have no idea.  Let me sum up how skill is rewarded for mining basically every mat gathering skill in this game:

 

ftfy

Edited by As_I_Decay

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sorry -1 from me. We are getting a lot of bandaids and there is soo many bugs out there. With every bugfix new bugs comes out... Don´t think a full rehaul of the code is worth it. FYI it took me a week or two to understand the mining system as a newb. Anyone can do it and if someone does not bother to look into that its their own fault.


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Huge -1 on this one from me, as this is not only affecting mining it affects the whole game, every tool and (almost) all we do.


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