Mining Update

[Adrillf]

Mining seems to be significantly nerfed, and I think that it's time that we look at it again and potentially help improve parts of it.

Mining used to have some redeeming values, but after spending a good amount of time with it recently I think some things need to be discussed

1 - LVL 4 stone rates seem to be extremely low. The rates on them are very low and out of the 200+ picks I've gone through today, I only got one. Mining is a significantly slower source for those stones than trying to farm them off the monsters that spawn once per hour. Is this intentional?

2 - Oricalcium (or whatever the item is for the mining hat) drops at an even lower rate than level 4 stones. Compared to fishing and fish pots, getting a mining hat is taking FOREVER. I've done a few full mining trips (full cart + 90% weight in picks) with 100 mining points at the advanced spot, and have only managed to get one of these. And it's expected that I get 50 of them? This seems a bit extreme.

3 - I understand why the miner pops up with questions, but could there possibly be more benefits than a pickaxe to his questions? Even minor exp from him would make him less frustrating and more of a benefit to seeing him. In slight relation to that . . . .

4- The mining plant/poring/custom mob killing warp thingy to make sure you're not AFK was easily the highlight of mining. I wish this happened more. Maybe not as crazy often as the miner quizzes, but it'd be nice to see this more often because the benefits of it were worth the interruption in mining. The miner showing up was a headache and an annoyance. Getting warped to kill some monsters that rewarded me with something of value while I was mining was a very welcome break.

I understand that some things had to be removed from mining (like the gold that it dropped) and that makes sense. But it feels like it's been nerfed so hard that it's no longer valuable for anyone to use, and the hat portion of it is out of the reach of anyone that isn't willing to sink 300+ hours of uninterrupted mining. Seriously, from my experience, it has taken about 6 hours to get one, the request is for 50. That seems a bit extreme of an investment for a very limited reward.

What do the rest of you think?

[GM-Ayu]

This is the part where everyone wants to stab themselves for different reasons:

Gianluca- for http://www.pandoraonline.net/forum/showt...tid=29982. Date posted: 2018. GM updated in both 2018 and Jan 2019. We're in Dec 2019. It's nowhere in sight.

GM team- for god awful amount of passing the scripts around through at least 6 people at this point and never finishing it. Even though the core scripts and framework are all completed by Gianluca, lot of other people passed it around for fine-tuning and attempt to balance it.

T&D volunteers- for going through 3 versions of statistics analysis and tweaking at least 3 versions of mining rewards. We were constantly struggling with "this is too good that you'll never hunt again for zeny" to "why would this matter to anyone at all." Even when that is done, then there were balance issues of the new mining leveling curve vs the auto-generated mining spots vs their difficulty (be it in mining difficulty or if the field is too difficult to handle.)

Ciar- for seeing probably way too many statistic math models from the balance teams that are all quite difficult to read without a formal post secondary statistics class

Everyone else on the server- for dealing with something that's not even balanced by 2009 standard, and it's even worse by a 2019 standard.


Best part: this is only the 2nd most delayed quest/update in the server. For you old 2008 players and helped out with the server in any capacity: there's always bunny slippers as the absolute rock bottom. [[Insert PTSD scream of every old GM + ex GM + old T/D members from that time period here]

[Adrillf]

I wasn't hyper active in T&D, but I do remember that sometimes it helped to put out a sample result to see what happened. So here's the result of my most recent mining trip.

Number of picks used - 300
Mining Level - 100

In a slightly organized order ----

-Junk-

Rusty Screw - 14
Bacillus - 12
Rat Tail - 12
Sand Clump - 12
Flexible Tube - 15
Cyfar - 19
Elder Pixie's Moustache - 16
Dry Sand - 16
Poisonous Powder - 37
Dust Pollutant - 16
Old Pick - 20
Rainbow Shell- 15
Mole Claw - 13
Mud Lump - 18
Mould Powder - 13
Scell - 17
Zargon - 17
Used Iron Plate - 12
Stone Fragment - 14
Brigan - 14
Toxic Gas - 14
Sticky Mucus - 11
Lantern - 18

-Forging-
Iron ore - 126
Coal - 59
Iron - 56
Steel - 38

- Elemental Stones -
Ice Stone - 18
Flame Stone - 19
Wind Stone - 16
Shadow Orb - 14
Star Crumb - 24
Wind of Verdure - 38
Crystal Blue - 49
Green Live - 44
Red Blood - 38
Rough Wind - 4
Mystic Frozen - 7
Flame Heart - 8
Great Earth - 6


- Upgrading -
Phracon - 21
Emveretacon - 29
Rough Oridecon - 44
Rough Elunium - 55
Oridecon - 15
Elunium - 7

- Gems -
Blue Gemstone - 32
Yellow Gemstone - 26
Red Gemstone - 23

-Other cool stuff -
Pyroxene - 1
Amethyst - 1
Cracked Diamond - 9
1 carat Diamond - 14
2 carat Diamond - 5
3 carat Diamond - 5
Aquamarine - 1
Agate - 1
Ruby - 1
Opal - 1
Turquoise - 1
Garnet - 1
Topaz - 2

-Items -
Dead Branch - 18
OBB - 5

Events -
Multiple miner quizzes (didn't keep track)
Zero metal poring warp events.

[GM-Ayu]

It has come to my attention that this is actually just the 3rd most delayed quest/update in the server. Although I have a feeling the first 2 are so meme tier at this point that it'll always be a part of T/D and never actually released.