EVE Online - Bob's dead baby...

[18-Till-I-Die]

Why not just make it so it mines faster, so instead if four hours it lasts like five minutes. Why does it take so long anyway? For that matter, why not make leveling up faster in general, so levels can be progressed in a few days of playing instead of months?

I mean what's the point of making it last any longer than absolutely necessary?

[Stark]

There isn't any levelling in EVE, genius.

[18-Till-I-Die]

There isn't any levelling in EVE, genius.

What's your fucking problem, i didn't know that i didn't even really KNOW about the game until yesteday, i don't read much about MMORPGS. I heard about it like once before.

Actually yeah i recall hearing about it TWICE, once when there was a glitch that fucked up the computers of anyone who logged on, and one here in detail. So i had no idea weather there was leveling or not, i presumed there was because leveling up is common in RPGs, but frankly your pissy little 'tude is fucking retarded since the fucking sentence "Oh well, you don't actually level up in EVE" would convey the same information without you coming off as a major douche and getting snippy for no reason. But yeah thanks for the huge glut of information cause it's not like i already acknowledged i don't play MMORPGs or anything, like having said as much or whatever.

[Duckie]

Partially because one of the Whole Points Of EVE is that it has no leveling and that it's EVE's most awesome mechanics in that you don't need to grind to get better at the game, or even play except for logging in to do 10 seconds of Next Skill To Train selection, and then you walk in and say "I can solve this problem by increasing level up speed" (which has its own problems in itself being a stupid idea, but also that eve doesn't have traditional leveling up at all).

Although I'd like to see it easier to respec in EVE- in a competitive world like EVE if you have to make a new character because you trained as a miner and realised Mining is Boring As Fuck you lose months or years on competition so that suddenly hundreds of nublets are better than you.

[Samuel]

That is right- you get better when you aren't playing the game. It sounds stupid, but people have to eat, sleep, work, etc (usually) so the skill advancement gets put in there.

[GuppyShark]

And to address your other half-assed suggestion - reducing mining time. People use the product of mining to make stuff. People would not mine less, they would use the same bots to BUILD MORE SHIPS.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

The downside to that system being: There is nothing you can do -actively- to get better. Therefore older characters will always be somewhat better in more areas than newer characters. (Mitigated somewhat by the low bonuses of the various skills, and high time sink to get the final 20% of that bonus.)



But for the devs... Hell it's money in their pocket. Since it can take months to get a character up and going, and then the MMO addiction kicks in. ("I already spent [a month+] getting here, I can't quit now!")

[Keevan_Colton]

Although I'd like to see it easier to respec in EVE- in a competitive world like EVE if you have to make a new character because you trained as a miner and realised Mining is Boring As Fuck you lose months or years on competition so that suddenly hundreds of nublets are better than you.

The thing there is that there'snever really any point to rerolling a character. Why make a new character when you can just add new skills to what your old character has? There's no limitations that prevent a character from learning every skill to max level except for time.

Then again this is coming from someone who has several years in EVE under teir belt. I do miss the ghost training though...particularly since they used to say it was a feature and used it as a selling point and now claim it was a bug. Ghost training was when your character would continue to train whatever you set running even if your subscription lapsed...meaning you could take a break from EVE while a really long skill trained up (say some of the stuff for getting into a capital ship) and then come back later and not have wasted a large sum of money in the meantime.

[18-Till-I-Die]

And to address your other half-assed suggestion - reducing mining time. People use the product of mining to make stuff. People would not mine less, they would use the same bots to BUILD MORE SHIPS.

What the hell does this even mean? What bots? Build how? And what the Hell is your problem, exactly? What about my comment got your shit in a knot...that i asked a question or that it was somehow wrong or what, are you angry, should i laugh?

I'm sorry if this seems like a lot of questions but seeing as our actual sentence conveyed zero information to me i need a followup. Look, i don't play this game, i have no idea how it works, is it possible for someone to say something that isn't some veiled insult because really if i offended you people so fucking much i honestly appologize. I am seriously sorry if somehow i insulted you or made some suggestion that was wrong, but really you're being tremendously assholeish for no fucking reason and frankly it looks bitchy and not "tough" or whatever you're trying to convey. So is it possible for anyone to actually speak to me without insulting me to my face or what because frankly i don't appreciate being perfectly civil and then getting insulted by assholes for literally nothing at all...and then not even explained why? I'm sure you're going to say i'm "whining" or whatever but surely you can speak without veiled insults for like five seconds, yes?

[Keevan_Colton]

Mining gives you ore.

Ore is refined into minerals.

Minerals are used to build everything in EVE.

Mining is the underpinning of the entire economy in EVE.

There are people that use bots to mine. They set up a computer running using macro software to control a mining ship, basically mining 23 hours per day AFK endlessly. (23 since there's an hour downtime for the servers each day) To be honest this helps keep the mineral prices down which keeps the prices of ships and equipment down too...though most often they macro mine ice (it's what gives the minerals used for fueling capital ships) using macros.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Ok well then, thank you that explains the sitution perfectly. So cutting out the mining would cause the prices of ships and equipmnet to go up, and most people can just use a computer function to do it anyway.

That explains something, though the way it was described it sounded like you had to mine yourself for hours on end like grinding in an RPG (which to be fair it still is, though grinding that appears to have a concrete purpose). That's actually something of a novel idea, having prices effected by actually gathering resources by the players as opposed to some blanket price or something. I'm not sure if any other MMORPGs do that or not.

[Keevan_Colton]

There used to be a sort of hard cap on the price of the most basic mineral Tritanium, but that was because NPC stations always sold shuttles, and you could recycle the shuttles to get back some of the materials...that meant the price of tritanium capped out at the price of shuttles/units of tritanium they contained. Now NPC stations dont sell shuttles and the price of tritanium has gone up from around 1 to 2 isk a unit to over 4 isk a unit in most areas.

Technically macro mining is against the EULA, but folk do it anyway...though a mining operation can be fun so long as you've got voice chat going and some entertaining people to banter with while you're at it. I've been on some 50+ man mining operations in the past that were actually good fun.

[GuppyShark]

I mistook your question for an arrogant assertion that clearly the solution* was to just make asteroids drop more ore.

"Why not just make it so it mines faster, so instead if four hours it lasts like five minutes," doesn't quite convey the attitude of an innocent seeker of knowledge, although the fault could have been with the way I read it.

I'm not being defensive about my pet game or anything, I have minimal EVE experience.

* The problem the previous posters were discussing being that actively mining is not sufficiently engaging/rewarding compared to AFK mining, and suggesting minigames etc to prove the player's presence or distract them from the zappy lasers.

Ok well then, thank you that explains the sitution perfectly. So cutting out the mining would cause the prices of ships and equipmnet to go up, and most people can just use a computer function to do it anyway.

Removing mining (is that a new suggestion, before you were just asking if nobody had thought of making it quicker?) would s offend the core sensibilities of the EVE universe, who tend more to the simulationist, player-driven bent. I like the idea that a lot of the stuff you use was created by someone, somewhere, and didn't just appear in a loot bag.

Except that NPC pirates drop loot when you blow them up...

If a person has a set goal, then making mining quicker will reduce the time they spent mining to reach it. However, a competitive faction in open warfare will still spend the same amount of time and effort mining, they will just have more ships and weapons to wage war with, and the differences in productive output between small and large factions would be magnified.

That explains something, though the way it was described it sounded like you had to mine yourself for hours on end like grinding in an RPG (which to be fair it still is, though grinding that appears to have a concrete purpose). That's actually something of a novel idea, having prices effected by actually gathering resources by the players as opposed to some blanket price or something. I'm not sure if any other MMORPGs do that or not.

Even WoW has market behaviours from player gathered resources, it's just a much smaller part of the game. Crafted gear in WoW is only one way to acquire upgrades, everything in EVE's "endgame" is built from raw materials.

[Commander 598]

The most tedious part of mining is the part where you've filled up your cargo hold and have to go back to a station (The trip is always too short to actually let me do something else and too long to ignore) and dump it then go back to the belt, and the primary reason why ice mining is macroed so much as ice takes up a lot of space and requires you to make lengthy trips either to a nearby can or a station very often. The act of mining itself doesn't bother people too much, I for one just alt tab and browse the internet or use out of game and in game chats during that time. (Note: Making the in game browser actually work for something other than very specificly build pages, which does not include the EVE website and forums 70% of the time) would probably keep a lot of people IN the game)

I propose something crazy: Add on to the autopilot to do macro/bot like activities. It would likely eliminate most external macros/bots but I'm unsure of just what effect it would have on hisec mining, 0.0/lowsec would rarely if ever use it because not paying attention gets you killed. Even mining in a battleship with about 7 Miner 2s burning, and actively flying back an forth to the station for hours (Over several days) I didn't make shit. You could also put whatever silly fluff restrictions on it you want, let it only run for X hours or whatever without pilot input.

As it is, most miners have Hulks which have a ridiculous amount of unmodified cargo space and can strip belts in a very short period of time. The catch is that they cost arout 100m (I think), are some of the slowest ships in EVE, and require quite a bit of training time to get into. When most every other ship is flying back to the station, the hulk is moving to another belt.

[Yogi]

Usually I just mine into a jetcan and pick it up with a hauler later. Using a tractor beam lets you drag the can along with you, so you can just drag into it. Personally, I feel that making mining more interesting (see Dwarf Fortress, or even World of Warcraft) would be better than making it easier to surf the Internet while playing the game, or making the game play itself.

[Keevan_Colton]

One of the things that makes mining in a group better is that you can have dedicated haulers, or cheat and have someone in something like an Orca as a giant can

[White Haven]

Curse you all, the chatter about EVE recently has got me re-DLing the client. No doubt I'll end up hating it again eventually, but I can't resist. >.<

[Keevan_Colton]

Curse you all, the chatter about EVE recently has got me re-DLing the client. No doubt I'll end up hating it again eventually, but I can't resist. >.<

If you want drop me a line in game "Caoim Fearghul", there's a few of us from SDN with a corp.

[White Haven]

Sounds like a plan, especially if I can find my old account. I wasn't LOADED or kitted out or any such, but at least it's not ground level. God, it's been so long. T2 was new and scary and incredibly expensive and out of reach and battleships were the largest ships in existence.

[Rahvin]

Same here. I restarted my EVE account, and now have to completely re-familiarize myself with the game mechanics. Think I'm going to fly around in a frigate for a little while before I do something noobish with my battlecruiser...

[Coaan]

Well, we're all at fearghul Corp, so look us up in game if you're interested in having folks to run with.

[Vain]

Watching this unfold has been hysterical. I don't play Eve, but I went to college with The Mittani. It is exceedingly hilarious to me that he's turned into a minor internet celebrity.

[Commander 598]

Usually I just mine into a jetcan and pick it up with a hauler later. Using a tractor beam lets you drag the can along with you, so you can just drag into it. Personally, I feel that making mining more interesting (see Dwarf Fortress, or even World of Warcraft) would be better than making it easier to surf the Internet while playing the game, or making the game play itself.

I think trying to make it more interesting (As in more hands on cause that's probably what it's going to involve) would only make it even more tedious. You'll already be dealing with limited cargo spaces (Unless you've got a hulk), and if you've got ANY decent mining rate you'll have to handle that probably in short order, if you're jetmining you'll be watching for ore thieves, and if you're mining in potentially hostile space you'll probably be watching local like a hawk in addition to everything else. Anything more involving will probably just be like having to play an unfun game in your game of an unfun job. The way to improve it in my opinion would be to require to player to be present as little as possible without actually making them completely not present for this situation.

[Tanasinn]

Considering that BoB was a collection of assholes with constant dev cheating on their side, nothing could possibly please me more than their downfall.


Except combat actually becoming fun.

[wautd]

This and watching the alliance tournament makes reactivating my acount very tempting. When was the next major expansion coming out again?