Mining/Crafting Idea - Essences

[Deemer]

Okay hear me out for all you mining haters..

Step 1. Mining area/caves in various locations each have their own levels ranges... Also have monsters relating to the levels inside (make them extra hard if you want with low XP yield). All mobs can see through clear rings to avoid AFK players too.

Step 2. Players refine that specific mineral based on it's purity into refined ESSENCES. Mineral of higher quality like 80% becomes an 80% value essence etc. They will be refined in the same process as items are salvaged.

Step 3. All salvaging of items produces DESIGNS only, yes this is a major change but let's be fair.. the crafting system at present is horrible and unfair.

Step 4. This creates a market for players without the best gear to earn money and farm/sell essences. This will also massively increase the crafting on the server by giving people more designs to experiment with and will create more balance and fun into the crafting system.

Step 5. Happy Mining!


- Low levels will struggle to sneak into higher level areas due to the mob difficulty and clear rings now working.
- Crafting and economy will benefit from this and has no negative impact of any part of the system.
- It brings in a whole new feature and element to the game that gives people more things to do.
- You can sell GG potions that provide a higher rates of mining/chance of better minerals mined.
- You can sell the lower tier stuff to vendors for a similar price to Arcamon food.
- You can salvage weapons, knowing you'll get a design rather than a crap essence from a 30mil weapon that is now useless.
- It allows people to craft more and experiment in new builds and items.
- People will be more enticed in trying to perfect their gear and the demand for items will increase thus increasing the baseline cost of standard gear as it'll be re-crafted with it being less RNG

 

[Scorpian]

Thanks, it is an interesting idea however I am not sold on it. There is already a large bias towards getting Designs on items such as weapons and weapon drop rates have been greatly increased since March when there was a release of quest upgrade-able weapons/armours. Plus crafting was made better recently so you are more likely to get a result rather than nothing.

I don't think another system is the solution - rather just increase drops

 

[Deemer]

Thanks, it is an interesting idea however I am not sold on it. There is already a large bias towards getting Designs on items such as weapons and weapon drop rates have been greatly increased since March when there was a release of quest upgrade-able weapons/armours. Plus crafting was made better recently so you are more likely to get a result rather than nothing.

I don't think another system is the solution - rather just increase drops

Maybe increase the drops for lower level items since lower levels rotate through gear so much more quickly. It's all quite overpriced for lower level stuff.

Your idea might be more valid for all the high-end level of players, but falls drastically for the lower-end who rarely get drops unless your bossing. Advising people to farm in ZD for TDB for example, I recall someone on the forum mentioning they killed thousands of mobs and not a single drop. Surely at that point it needs to be understood that lower level gear should be a lot more frequent with a much less value. Seeing level 100-120 gear on the AH for millions doesn't seem right and starves the population of gold when they need it the most at the higher levels for repairs/crafting etc.

I can happily go leveling daily and kill 10 blues without a single item dropping. Champions in my opinion should guarantee an item dropping, yet it feels more like 20% chance for a champion to drop anything. Imagine a new player, all hyped up killing a champion, which might be quite rare to them to get some pet food and a wildpotion.

I hope the next wave of changes are based off the communities feedback from low to high levels to as the community is dwindling at the moment and the vast majority of low & mid level players I use to play with have stopped playing or rarely login.

You should do a report on all new accounts, compare the last login date to when they were created and do a comparison. You'll understand your retention rate of players remaining on the server instead of getting fed up with little intricacies that are tailored for the inner circle of high-end players.

 

[zad48231]

While I agree with a lot of your points, I feel like I have to step in regarding your last paragraph. Scorp has been running Mir servers for the best part of 20 years, through good times and bad. Explaining user retention to him seems a bit insulting.

 

[Scorpian]

Maybe increase the drops for lower level items since lower levels rotate through gear so much more quickly. It's all quite overpriced for lower level stuff.

Your idea might be more valid for all the high-end level of players, but falls drastically for the lower-end who rarely get drops unless your bossing. Advising people to farm in ZD for TDB for example, I recall someone on the forum mentioning they killed thousands of mobs and not a single drop. Surely at that point it needs to be understood that lower level gear should be a lot more frequent with a much less value. Seeing level 100-120 gear on the AH for millions doesn't seem right and starves the population of gold when they need it the most at the higher levels for repairs/crafting etc.

I can happily go leveling daily and kill 10 blues without a single item dropping. Champions in my opinion should guarantee an item dropping, yet it feels more like 20% chance for a champion to drop anything. Imagine a new player, all hyped up killing a champion, which might be quite rare to them to get some pet food and a wildpotion.

I hope the next wave of changes are based off the communities feedback from low to high levels to as the community is dwindling at the moment and the vast majority of low & mid level players I use to play with have stopped playing or rarely login.

You should do a report on all new accounts, compare the last login date to when they were created and do a comparison. You'll understand your retention rate of players remaining on the server instead of getting fed up with little intricacies that are tailored for the inner circle of high-end players.

I just want say, I appreciate your ideas and I don't want you to think I am replying to say "they are bad, you are wrong".

Now, you said it yourself - they rotate quickly through the gear. I can't imagine newer players wishing to go away from normal game-play to upgrade an item. For the most part refining an item is not worth the time because you will outgrow it soon enough.

The idea itself is really good but it is not really the intention of the system - which was way of removing unused items while allowing us to increase drops. Previously a set would be 5x as rare, but once enough players had one there was never any need for it to drop anymore - they got sold on and used by new players. Crafting is really targeted at end game where gaining power by alternate means becomes more difficult.

I would contest the "killed 1000s and got nothing as conjecture", it would really depend on what they killed, did they really kill 1000s, what is "not a single drop" and when did they do it because a lot has changed.

Supers / Champions don't have set drops. It is more like 200-400x drop rate of the mob plus other perks. So really that depends on the rate for the region and whatever is set to drop there.

I understand you are concerned about the player-count however I am not so - disappointing maybe that there were so many players a couple of months ago but many of those players just wanted a little bit of fun. That's understandable and this is a year by year phenomena, especially around summer when people spend a lot more time outdoors.

Look out for Halloween when many people will return

 

[Deemer]

I just want say, I appreciate your ideas and I don't want you to think I am replying to say "they are bad, you are wrong".

Now, you said it yourself - they rotate quickly through the gear. I can't imagine newer players wishing to go away from normal game-play to upgrade an item. For the most part refining an item is not worth the time because you will outgrow it soon enough.

The idea itself is really good but it is not really the intention of the system - which was way of removing unused items while allowing us to increase drops. Previously a set would be 5x as rare, but once enough players had one there was never any need for it to drop anymore - they got sold on and used by new players. Crafting is really targeted at end game where gaining power by alternate means becomes more difficult.

I would contest the "killed 1000s and got nothing as conjecture", it would really depend on what they killed, did they really kill 1000s, what is "not a single drop" and when did they do it because a lot has changed.

Supers / Champions don't have set drops. It is more like 200-400x drop rate of the mob plus other perks. So really that depends on the rate for the region and whatever is set to drop there.

I understand you are concerned about the player-count however I am not so - disappointing maybe that there were so many players a couple of months ago but many of those players just wanted a little bit of fun. That's understandable and this is a year by year phenomena, especially around summer when people spend a lot more time outdoors.

Look out for Halloween when many people will return

Can you just adjust the loot table by increasing the chance on lower tier items? Problem solved.. I can't help new players or create alts without a nightsmoke ring costing like 2mil for example because no one sells them..

There's been times I've wanted to help gear up new players to help them out but everything is overpriced for them. Stuff that should be 300k is like 1-2mil.