Jump to content

War declared on Miners, New solution needed!


Recommended Posts

Hi, I have played miners since Live, as my mains.  My Current main is a L92 Progen Sentinel, who I was finishing up his EL /TL with a mining run in the L7 - 9 Gas fields of Glenn.  Imagine my surprise, when I jumped into the gas field yesterday to find myself a smoking hulk from 2 l47 manes.  I spoke with a Dev, who was very courteous, and told me that it is a temporary measure against botting.  Unfortunately, that means this field is now off limits to me, a non-botting toon.  Several people made suggestions of where I could mine, but I have found Mobs there that my CL 16 toon just cannot handle.

   The message seems pretty clear, at this point.  "You must push your PS to CL50, if you want to mine for EL/TL".  That is 1st, just backwards of how I want to advance my toon, I want to max EL / TL for max shield / reactor before starting to push CL.  2nd, I like to mine... I dont want to run jobs, I dont want to run tours.  I also notice that most of the people that I suspect of Botting (there all the time, dont talk or reply to tells, will warp to a gas pocket I am mining, etc) apear to be l150 toons.  So, if they haven't already, they can just incorporate a script that says "if attacked, Vaporize mob, resume mining".  So, what we have accomplished is denying the mining to all who are not botting l150 toons. 

  I believe we need better solutions!  In my conversation with the dev, he pointed out the following things:

(a) This is an attempt to fix a problem.

(b) the devs / gm's cant police the fields 24/7, and if they police them when they are on, that leaves them less time to do other things for Deserving players.

(c) this is a low priority for the admins, because they are trying to fix other things for us, the player base.

 

My answer is that WE need to not only identify the problem (botting), but WE need to offer the devs a solution that WE are comfy with. (I learned a long time ago that pointing out the problem = whining, unless an idea of how to make it better is attached)

  I'm sure there are folk with more experience than me, who will come up with better Ideas, and I hope we can discuss this and arrive at a good & beneficial solution.  So far I have come up with 2 answers, 1 of which I do not think will be popular with the player base, or the GM's, and the other that I think many (including myself) will not really be comfy with.

 

Option A:  Let the botters bot.  I dont make a living off mining. I save things of use, gve them to guildies if they need them, and vendor the rest.  These people dont bother ME, and my goals with mining. As a matter of fact, in huge fields, they can get me a "field clear' bonus where i could never clear before respawn alone.  Dont think anyone else will like that solution, but if they want their PC to play the game, I hope the PC enjoys it.

Option B: Self Policing.  Set up a program where, if you see someone mining and they appear to be botting, you send in a ticket that says, where, when, who, and what attempts were made to contact them.  When a GM logs in, and sees that 12 people all think "joeblow" is botting, then the GM can check on that toon, and if HE determines them to  be in a field, mining, and not responsive to tells (that is the important thing to me, to make sure the toon IS doing something, and no human at the controls), he can then issue a temp ban if he deems it appropriate.  This is NOT player enforcement, with all the potential for griefing that offers, but rather Players IDing "suspected" botters to make the GM's job easier (hopefully).

 

So, I hope someone has a better answer than me, and brings it forth in a reply.

 

 Sevin Dragoon, Signing off

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Group mining. Mining covenants will protect the individual, factor the Explore experience, and clear the fields faster. Add in a Terran Trader for his Negotiate and his group $ buff, and you receive a worthy operation that is safe, effective, and circumvents the asinine AFK-botters who are ruining the economy, the reputation of Miners and Scavengers, and the game.


I'll just step off my soap- *crashing and tumbling sounds*........... Edited by Pakkrat
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You said it yourself, Level 9 field with L47 manes? Perfectly reasonable...

 

It is Risk vs. Reward, greater risk greater reward. You might find that kind of challange actually fun at a point. 

 

As far as I know, you don't need to kill guards to mine, there are various ways to stay away from them... (eg. waiting for them to move, mine & run, cloak / powerdown etc.)

Edited by SiSL
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here is my 2 credits worth.

 

As a PS as well, some (not all) of us have schedules that prevent us from getting a group together just to mine.  

 

As I remember from EA Live mining was a relaxing experience, a break from combat. Mining in this live IS combat with a little mining thrown in.  This is not a complaint or a WHINE of the day, just an observation.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We are reading a posting about mining a level 8/9 field with a pretty unbalanced toon (CL 16) and the complaint about too high mobs in that field, is that right?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My 2¢ is that if they go throwing high cl mobs in every ore field then that slows down Exp gain while still granting stable Cxp therefore making a character unbalanced. Either Exp from mining needs to be boosted if this continues or cl of the mobs needs to be low enough that you get 0 xp for killing them, but you still have to kill them to mine.

Group mining is a good idea, but current Exp gains are too low in grouped situations. I Elvl is about 2 trade levels worth or ore. Oops.

We want to level up by playing the game and not staring at a job terminal.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here is my 2 credits worth.

 

As a PS as well, some (not all) of us have schedules that prevent us from getting a group together just to mine.  

 

As I remember from EA Live mining was a relaxing experience, a break from combat. Mining in this live IS combat with a little mining thrown in.  This is not a complaint or a WHINE of the day, just an observation.

+1

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ill go on the record as saying that while I am all for discouraging botting, i do NOT support the concept of forcing every miner in the game to fight every &^$(*&#  time they mine.

 

If we start putting high level guardians in every field, it will destroy the casual mining playstyle, I brought this up at the dev meeting about this rebalance when it was decided that we were going to scale guardians to level of field, if you recall I was vehemently opposed to adding guardians to every place in the galaxy.  As a content team member I am voicing my direct opposition to this and making a thread in the dev forums about it now.

  • Upvote 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ill go on the record as saying that while I am all for discouraging botting, i do NOT support the concept of forcing every miner in the game to fight every -------- time they mine.

 

If we start putting high level guardians in every field, it will destroy the casual mining playstyle, I brought this up at the dev meeting about this rebalance when it was decided that we were going to scale guardians to level of field, if you recall I was vehemently opposed to adding guardians to every place in the galaxy.  As a content team member I am voicing my direct opposition to this and making a thread in the dev forums about it now.

THANK YOU.

Please try to solve booters at first place before ruin game for others (I mean at least me)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We are reading a posting about mining a level 8/9 field with a pretty unbalanced toon (CL 16) and the complaint about too high mobs in that field, is that right?

I can understand putting field guardians in. I am a miner, and I do understand the reasoning, however, what I don't like is Zack implying that in order to play the game 'properly' your mining toon MUST be balanced or it will suffer the consequences. I like to mine my tail end off and gain my experience that way. If I happen to end up lvl 100+ with EL/TL of 50 each, isn't that MY choice?

 

I guess my point is, the unbalanced remark is not a good way to helping the community at large understand why/what you are trying to achieve here. It just sounds snarky and 'holier than thou'.

 

That is all I have to say about it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Risk v Reward.  I have mentioned the lack of guardians in high level fields in many posts before.  High level fields SHOULD have high level guardians - botting or not.  Pop-roids should be popping appropriate MOBs too.  If you want easy mining then go to Io and Jupiter.  If you are wanting L8 and 9 ammo and weapon ores then you should also expect it to be a little tougher.

Now if those MOBs were also dropped interesting loot along the lines of normal MOBs then people would be out there helping clear them.
  

 

It's less of a 'war on miners' than a 'war on lazy miners'?

  • Upvote 2
  • Downvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Risk v Reward.  I have mentioned the lack of guardians in high level fields in many posts before.  High level fields SHOULD have high level guardians - botting or not.  Pop-roids should be popping appropriate MOBs too.  If you want easy mining then go to Io and Jupiter.  If you are wanting L8 and 9 ammo and weapon ores then you should also expect it to be a little tougher.

Now if those MOBs were also dropped interesting loot along the lines of normal MOBs then people would be out there helping clear them.
  

 

It's less of a 'war on miners' than a 'war on lazy miners'?

Incorrect.  There is already risk/reward in the mechanics of mining itself.  It is a massive time sink, you can already get poproided into oblivion, and you have to deal with spawn competition.  Forcing another mechanic on top of it (combat) forces the crossover of playstyles.  Should we install combat mobs in stations now to blow up builders for the lulz?  No I dont think so.

 

Combat =/= Mining

Mining =/= Combat

 

It is really that simple.

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, in live I did a lot of mining and most fields had some kind of guardian, but most of the times the guardian only spawned like once an hour or so. So when you got to the field, kill the guardian, commence mining, pay attention for the guardian and then kill it once it spawns again in a while (1/2 hour to an hour later).

 

Most fields would have ONE guardian that would stay dead for a while. Basically, if you were level balanced for the field, you could kill the guardian, mine the field and much fun was had by all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hate guards at every field also, and for those that relax/mine there should be spots as well. Forcing players into a mold to mine isn't correct also, 7dragon freely admitted that they were CL lite and El/Tl heavy, they shouldn't be forced to group or Cl up to mine. Don't know much ideas on how to fight Botters if they are deemed to be a problem now, dragons idea about a report to be confirmed by GM has some validity, allowing botters to run rampant...I agree I feel a bit unconformtable about that, especially if its warping game.

 

My only idea for a fix:

Design a mob like that yellow dragon thingy they had in live that popped up now and then in areas that people Botted for rep/loot, that when their bot auto targeted and shot it owned them. When they returned to check on their bot all they found was a smoking ruin and xp debt.

 

Design a resource node that is obviously not a node by a human eye, but by a bot appears as just another ore. When the bot opens up mine pane and starts mining, it aggroes it to a firey death for the mine bot. The player base can be warned that targeting that mob isn't death, but mining it is, beware! Then they will avoid mining it when it's in their mining window.

 

Just an idea, I loved watching bots in live when that yellow dragon swung through and all that was left behind was smoking ships :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is NOT that simple.  Virtually every game has some kind of mining/cropping element, and the higher the reward the higher the risk.  If you want a no risk game then there is always Hello Kitty.  www.hellokittyonline.com :blush:

  • Upvote 1
  • Downvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is NOT that simple.  Virtually every game has some kind of mining/cropping element, and the higher the reward the higher the risk.  If you want a no risk game then there is always Hello Kitty.  www.hellokittyonline.com :blush:

Being snarky with me will not validate any point you make.  Making the game less fun for everyone else under the guise of stopping cheaters is not a direction needing taken.

 

It really is that simple, when is the last time a combat mission (other than Agrippa) required you to mine ore eh?  There are several distinct playing styles, and not everyone wants to fight all day long.  The game is not about just combat, else we should just have ores dropping off of mobs and do away with the whole mining mechanic, frankly.  While we are at it we might as well do away with half the classes of the game, too.

  • Upvote 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeh about the "lazy miner" thing, we aren't asking for easy mode, not "lazy" by any means, any more than warriors are "lazy" killing CL50 mobs with a group of 6 are. In live there were a few spots were there weren't guards on fields, usually they were out of the way so it was a time sink to go vault them etc. Leave a few for the relax miners to enjoy and not guard ever freakn thing.

 

Also  Yendor was right, there were scads of fields were there were 1 or 2 guards of correct level, that once killed had a nice window before they returned, so you or a friend could clear them out and then (with always a eye on respawn) mine for a time without being hassled. Right now, guards have fast respawn rates, most like any other spawn lvling spot, if that was altered to a long respawn timer it wouldn't be so onerous, miners that were CL lite could play dodge em if they didn't want to kill them, and those that did could mine in peace for a bit.

 

for the warrior types that feel the miners are whiners and want it easy, maybe we should add mining to their combat, make them clean out 20 nodes or so of stuff while being disrupted by mobs, that they got no credits or loot that amounted to spit until they had emptied those nodes of junk first, of course the emptiing of those nodes would have to be intereupted in mid stream every time a mob nicked them just like miners have to put up with also....feel our pain before you dismiss opinions out of hand as "whining"

Edited by Mattsacre
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Being snarky with me will not validate any point you make.  Making the game less fun for everyone else under the guise of stopping cheaters is not a direction needing taken.

 

It really is that simple, when is the last time a combat mission (other than Agrippa) required you to mine ore eh?  There are several distinct playing styles, and not everyone wants to fight all day long.  The game is not about just combat, else we should just have ores dropping off of mobs and do away with the whole mining mechanic, frankly.  While we are at it we might as well do away with half the classes of the game, too.

I agree +1.

 

Another game I played also had guarded high level fields, but If you didn't want to go into a mining area with full combat gear. You could still pull what you needed just not as fast.  You had to travel farther and pull lower yield ores (quantity of ore).  

 

And that game still had the "higher the risk the higher the reward", you pop the guards (that spawn way too fast) pull a few nodes...rinse and repeat.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok, now if all miners was forced to be in group with fighter player...what about every player who want kill mobs have to be grouped with at least one miner? I mean you cant solo kill mobs.

 

Same logic...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

While I do think there should be some orefield guardians in most high level fields, I think Yendor has the right idea.  They should take a good amount of time to respawn, and should be something an explorer can handle one on one if played well.   Orefield guardians should generally have poor to average scan ranges, low altruism, and they should lack the ability to see cloaked.    Loot tables should be interesting, and comparable to mobs of similar level

 

I would say that if you have a very small L9 pure orefield then one or two guardians is enough.  If you have bigger fields spread out over more area, then more guardians as the field gets bigger, but most time spent by explorers should be mining, not fighting.  The 2 pure L9 fields in BBW in EnB Origins had mostly CL51 Splendid manes guarding it, though it had the occasional CL53, and the rare CL56.  They were relatively small, and I never saw it having more than 3 guardians at one time.  With a low sig a well played JE could mine around them, hadn't tried it with a PE as Torrie was too small in EnB Origins. 

 

Generally speaking, I would think that explorers, especially JEs and Scouts would tend to let their CL trail behind their EL and TL, since that's the harder bar to fill for most explorers.  Spillover is sometimes more efficient.

 

I don't think the warriors protecting miners works here, especially where Manes guard the orefields.  Nothing worth their time or ammo in the drops.  Interesting loot tables for Pop-rock mobs would be a nice addition as well. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No one is intentionally making any changes to annoy players - thats why constructive posting is required.

We needed to do something against afk macro miners as it was a huge problem lately, thats why the Glenn field got mob added with this patch.

 

There were some good ideas here tho which will be brought up at the next meeting.

 

Let's see what the next patch brings (if).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know if this has been suggested before now, but here goes.

How about some pop-rock mobs-only loot? How about some system that only drops specifically from pop-rock mobs? There could be some interesting story potential as to why such a mob might exclusively have such systems or even vendor loot. How about level y Historical Data Discs that, in their descriptions, hold some moment of history along the Earth & Beyond Storyline prior to the common present time? Could they be turned in for credits or Faction to those Factions that care about accurate history or recent history? There are many different items I could suggest that point back to and encourage pilots to read the Storyline resource document to better puzzle out which Faction might want that particular tidbit of lost information.

As to systems, perhaps the drop could be of use to pilots who mined the 'roid or of value to other classes? Many is the miner that has succumbed to the 'roid monster that ate their system. Perhaps the 'roid is a coprolite after that Nagifar ate Trader Joe-Shmo who was not paying attention to his radar.

There is potential for pop-rock mobs to be more than just space fauna.

From the archives at NET-7 SOL, this is the Pakkrat. Edited by Pakkrat
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've somewhat hinted at loot unique to pop-rock mobs, though I don't remember directly saying it, but I think it's a good idea Pakkrat.  I usually couched it in terms of "interesting loot".   I do think that at the very least they should have loot comparable to mobs of the same level. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Let's start with this... 

 

Simple Google check about macros gives me result of "Gas mining macro" , not anything else why Gas? it is barely used in a few components or ammo with a few exceptions, because Gas mining (due to nature of number of types) takes much lower cargo space and can take more time to fill cargo without docking and there was no guardians in Glenn... 

 

That's why 6 people were banned in a day just for macroing there... (ref: Blacklung) 

 

 

And about risk vs. reward... 

 

Mobs are there for players in front of their computers, they can see them, they can avoid them (and easily)... Yeah, some macros are designed even to combat them but they will never be good as a player.

 

Combat vs. Mining analogy seems quite meaningless to me. If that would be right, I would say I'm Level 50 combat but 20 trade / 20 Explore and I want to loot Pitbull Sr. Can you make mobs hitting less? We are talking about L8-9 ores here... And about crossover style, how about we can buy entire Ammo components without mining? 

 

Granted I agree with respawn rate of guardians of any field being really fast (since those are not points where people camp to get combat xp or loot etc.) but seriously ...  Entire field, I counted total of 4 manes... Was that really the fuss about? 

 

In the end, it is not "high level field guardians for every field", it is "high level field guardians for high level fields"

Edited by SiSL
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is a temporary fix for an ongoing/growing concern of macro mining.

 

I would love to take my JE or PS out and enjoy mining like most other players, but I don't because of the problem we are faced with of macro mining.

 Yes I could log on to my Dev toon and take care of it as I see them, but I'm not on my play acct to shadow players, I am trying to enjoy some game time.

 

Please, keep the sugestions coming. The last thing I want to do, is go through 50 % of the mob spawns and change them.

 The spawns in Glenn got your attention, but we still need a solution that works for everyone.

 

Thanks again for your opinions, and keep them coming.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...