Just prompted by the post in Code Problems...
I'm sure pretty much everyone knows and hates mining systems where you click the same spot forever and sometimes it gives you ore and sometimes it doesn't, and there's usually an annoying delay...
I played a game recently where you could mine by visiting different sections of rock and attempting to mine them. You could mine there as long as you wanted - maybe there was some ore, maybe there wasn't. Usually ore would be awarded after one or two attempts if there was anything, and if there was anything you could keep going to see if you'd get more. But once the rock was empty, it was empty and there was no point in mining there anymore.
I know its still random success to some extent, but at least if mining were done this way, the ore locations would be set and not based on chance, although chance is still involved a bit as to how many tries to takes to find the ore if there is any, it will only force you to try a few times before giving up its treasures. And the good part is that it forces you to actually move around and explore. Different kinds of rock would produce different kinds of ore, so if you were wandering around a cave and stumbled onto a type of rock that you knew had nice ore, you could check those rock formations and try to get some good ore out of there.
You'd just need to set things up so that ore respawns in new, random locations periodically.
Don't know if its really much better, I just thought it was a simple yet different approach to your standard RPG mining.
ID:151731
 Jul 10 2009, 8:56 pm
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Like with most design decisions, I would say that they depend on the kind of game you are trying to develop.
Try to have the feature of mining blend in well with the rest of the game, in a nice and entertaining way. As for an RPG which has a decent sized map, I'd scratch on that 'click a rock' method and become creative instead. Why not work mining similar to Leftley's Lode Wars? As most RPGs have some dungeons, you could as well... make these dungeons by digging into a mountain. A geologic skill might show you the direction where you could expect some mineral/metal. That way, you can 'stay' at a location for longer, since digging into a mountain might take a bit of time. You'd get a reward based on location and your skill. And you might even require a bodyguard (team-play!) to save you from lurking bandits or evil creatures. You can very well expand on this system and it allows some choice for the player. Might even be used to 'get an own dungeon' to store and hide away treasure. | |
I was mostly looking at simple methods, since mining tends to be an afterthought if its there at all, with a few exceptions. If people are going to throw in mining because they don't want to incorporate a whole unique mining system, mine was just an alternative to the norm.
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People seem to have some sort of insatiable desire to nest random systems, which is just annoying. World of Warcraft has something like this, only it's straightforward: mining nodes randomly spawn (in a set of possible locations). If you can mine it, you will always mine all the ore within it in one attempt, and then you are free to go find the next one.
Because nobody actually enjoys repeatedly watching a progress bar to fill up only to have it say "FAILED". | |
I think a random factor can still be included without dulling the system down like retail games do. Honestly its about creativity and the more ideas you can incorporate into your idea as a whole the better it is. Thats why I get frustrated when a game dev makes a game that doesn't use good features from previous games they made. Its like a child growing up and never learning how to eat properly or read or whatever.
In short, good ideas should be gathered as a group and then broken down into a concept of what is actually possible. I prefer designing based on logic, so the most logical ideas/system would be what I came up with. For example, in real life we have no progress bar, that idea wouldn't fly. It would need to be as realistic as possible while still fun. Though I have to mention that some retail games do have stat bars for the meaningless stats like FFXI and the mining/farming/cooking, that is excessive and it tends to take the focus off of the gameplay and onto the boring grinding of stats just to get better to make them useful. Not a good design by concept. Stats shouldn't really be the focus, the gameplay should. After all we play games to entertain ourselves not give us more work. Stats should be something you look at after you levelup because you were killing all those zombies. But just to keep on topic, my system would involve some form of metal/gem/mineral based mining that would be locale specific with random placement (along cliffwalls, in caves, etc) and contain a random amount of a random material (that would be icon specific it wouldn't just show a rock for everything.). This system adds a lot more information that people probably don't want thus they just use one pile of rocks for all types of things mined. I would like to point out that specific location means a certain area, not in specific spots. Coming back to an old area and finding mining locations you never found is what its about. "Farming the mine" because the locations are always set the same is not fun. - End post (Post was to entire thread, not to Gragglethor.) | |
UmbrousSoul wrote:
I think a random factor can still be included without dulling the system down like retail games do. Honestly its about creativity and the more ideas you can incorporate into your idea as a whole the better it is. Thats why I get frustrated when a game dev makes a game that doesn't use good features from previous games they made. Its like a child growing up and never learning how to eat properly or read or whatever. World of Warcraft used to randomly have mining fail, as well as require you to repeatedly mine the same node until you got all the ore out of it. They removed those, because it wasn't fun. In short, good ideas should be gathered as a group and then broken down into a concept of what is actually possible. The limiting factor should not be what is POSSIBLE, but what is GOOD. I prefer designing based on logic, so the most logical ideas/system would be what I came up with. For example, in real life we have no progress bar, that idea wouldn't fly. It would need to be as realistic as possible while still fun. Though I have to mention that some retail games do have stat bars for the meaningless stats like FFXI and the mining/farming/cooking, that is excessive and it tends to take the focus off of the gameplay and onto the boring grinding of stats just to get better to make them useful. Not a good design by concept. Unless you are suggesting we simply remove all feedback entirely, then your complaint is simply an interface one, not a design one. And if you are, then I personally think that an utter lack of feedback is a mind-bogglingly stupid idea. And, once again, realism for the sake of realism is face-palmingly stupid as well. | |
I'm quite fond on WoW's randomly spawning mineral nodes. They only spawn on cliffs and if they aren't used after 12 hours they despawn to make room for a node somewhere else. You only have to mine a node once and you get 2-5 pieces of ore. The mineral node despawns once you loot the ore.
There's no grinding away at the same node and there's more of an "Oh boy!" sense of excitement for finding one. | |
SuperAntx wrote:
I'm quite fond on WoW's randomly spawning mineral nodes. They only spawn on cliffs and if they aren't used after 12 hours they despawn to make room for a node somewhere else. You only have to mine a node once and you get 2-5 pieces of ore. The mineral node despawns once you loot the ore. I agree with this. Nothing like stumbling across an awesome mine while your group is being lead by an impatient dolt. While I enjoy the random mine spawns because they reduce grinding, I don't enjoy not having more to do as a miner. I want to mine and explore more than I want to fight. If you want to be a miner, it would be nice to have locations (mines) that are designed specifically for miners. They go in and perform tasks, spells, puzzles, and other creative ideas in order to find a good spot to mine. If they did a bunch of stuff right, an uber rare place in the mine will reveal itself via bright glow that only they can see. Anything less is just a lesser glow. It would be like a random spawn that only they can see. Another idea is to have quests inside the mine and again, specific to just miners. A team of miners can go in and perform tasks, puzzles, clear out monsters, and etc. If each contributes some form of skill to the quest, they increase there rare drop chances. It would be awesome to have mining classes like they have fighting tree classes. In order to get the uber rare stuff, you have to have a multi-tude of miner class types all working together to read all the historic glyphs on the wall which reveal clues to things. One miner can't read another class's clues because it looks like ancient gibberish. and when I go into a mountain to mine, I want to go in with mining equipment and minimal armor and weapons. I want the adventure to require some armed guards who's reward will be whatever I mine at the end. They need me and I need them. ts | |
Maybe now someone can (more easily) make a Nintendo DS-type menu.