Topic

Revisiting "Help Mine" topic

I know this enveloped to a huge thread a while back and the pop-up dialog to allow "help mine" was removed, which is fine and all, but I am seeing a huge amount of greed/competition developing (*cough* Ajaya Bliss competition) that is completely against the whole idea of cooperation and teamwork.

Situation:
- Glitch#1 with level 1 mining enters a vacant map say in Salatu with 4 full rocks in it to mine
- Glitch#1 drinks earthshaker and begins mining
- Random Glitch#2 enters map and proceeds to "help" mine the rock
- Now, normally this is fine EXCEPT random Glitch#2 has level IV Mining
- Glitch#2 clears the rock, leaving Glitch#1 hammering at the ground to finish the cycle
- Proceeding to the next rock, the Glitch#1 may get maximum 2 clumps before it is gone
- This action leaves Glitch#1 very upset that this random Glitch#2 is not waiting or "helping", but is instead finishing the rocks and running off.

My friend reported this to me today as her situation and was quite upset over the callous actions of that miner. I then proceeded to the caves (I don't mine much and have level 2 mining) to see for myself. Sure enough, within 15 minutes of mining while waiting to see a ghost, I too was subject to the "help mine" problem and well, felt very cheated.

I'm not a "serious miner" and do not want to be competitive in mining, it's not important to me. If it were, I'd have Mining IV too. That in mind, think about situations such as these before commenting as this has nothing to do with how beneficial it is supposed to be (I agree it is in the long run more beneficial to share mining). However, it seems a bit lopsided.
 
Suggestion 1:
Impose Mining skill level comparison limit to automatically "help", requiring a dialog to allow help. Glitches with skill levels in mining within one level of one another do not require a dialog to "help mine". Anything greater than 1 level requires permission.

Suggestion 2 (per striatic):
The reward when you are helped should be increase by one. If one person helps, you get 2 bonus chunks. if 2 help you, you get 4 bonus chunks. It could also be managed that each and every time you help, the person you help mine gets more chunks.

Suggestion 2A (per striatic): Each and every time someone helps, the person you help mine gets more chunks. If someone is mining slowly because they are at low level, and the helper manages to get three 'helps' in during their single mining action, the player being helped would receive 6 bonus chunks per mining action - assuming the bonus is boosted to 2.  (#helpers x 2chunk=bonus)

Suggestion 3 (Per  Skwid):
This option is "first come, first serve". Mining a node loots the whole node in one go. This could take the current amount of time, or take 5 times longer than mining currently takes, it doesn't really matter as long as spawn times are consistent.

Suggestion 4 (Per  Skwid):
The second one is more in the spirit of Glitch in my opinion, but is much more difficult to implement. (The following is a summary of my interpretation of Skwid's suggestion) Throttle the speed of all players mining together to the same speed as the player with the highest skill level.

Suggestion 5 (Per ICountFrom0):
Make the mining speed of the first miner be the default speed for all others joining to mine. If a level 1 initiates a mining session on a rock, anyone joining to help will mine at the same speed (if lower than their own). This way you will "help" at their speed if lower than your own or mine at your speed if theirs is higher.

Suggestion 6 (Per Biohazard):
When you select the rock, you then choose "Mine!", which sounds a whole lot like it belongs to you. Perhaps this could be changed to excavate or pick (v).

Suggestion 7 (Per Many Many Glitches):
Change "help mine" to help the OTHER person mine their rock, resulting in the helper receiving less rock chunks than the person they are helping (or none at all).

Posted 15 months ago by c0mad0r Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

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  • I'll im you when game starts:) Don't want to annoy nasty posters.
    Posted 15 months ago by xoxJulie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • lovintnt: Wow, you're right.  This is a matter of perception.  I perceive that you suck!  I mean it was one thing to whine in a public forum lol that wah, some people are better at me in an internet video game!  But now to claim that the designer of said game is somehow offensive to you for listening to and attempting to go beyond the call to address your whine... unbelievable.  You're right, in fact, they should change the whole mining system because I thought that "Help Mine" meant that I would be helping the mine itself, and now I only want to play a video game in which I am the patron saint of mines!

    ...there are possibly some TS apologists around here, sure, but the fact that you have labored on for 250 posts about the same pathetic complaint is beyond me. Grr, I'll go cool down now.
    Posted 15 months ago by FlirtyvonSexenhaven Subscriber! | Permalink
  • What are you raving on about, are you some sort of griefer?
    Posted 15 months ago by xoxJulie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @Julie - There are times when I want to work alone too, so I think I understand.  I just can't think of a good design solution that covers all the cases.  My first impulse, after getting the "help mine" quest was to ask before jumping in and helping other players.  However, later on, when I was trying to get rock chunks to sell for currants, I preferred to have other players help me mine without asking, as transferring my attention to the IM pane was disruptive.  

    IRL, use case specification is part of my professional skill set.  So I've tried to apply that here, hoping it may lead to new design insights -- or at least to a better understanding among players of why they may have differing views of "help mine."

    At this point, however, this has become a long and complicated thread.  That makes it less likely that folks will read and process it all.  It's easy to misunderstand and hard to be misunderstood.  Perhaps it's best to let this thread die.  It's been informative in many ways, and I appreciate the time many folks have put into trying to understand how "help mine" works and how it can be made to work better.  But I'm now done with this thread.
    Posted 15 months ago by Splendora Subscriber! | Permalink
  • If you want to work alone, you could probably find other activities in game such as cooking that you can do in your home.  Nothing needs to be done at any certain time, its all up to the player.  I love that about Glitch, but it also makes it ok to work alone.

    Plus, if you want to specifically mine alone try Groddle Heights.  Lots of Sparkly up there that are untouched.
    Posted 15 months ago by Laurali Subscriber! | Permalink
  • flirtyvonsexenhaven:  "lovintnt: Wow, you're right.  This is a matter of perception.  I perceive that you suck!  I mean it was one thing to whine in a public forum lol that wah, some people are better at me in an internet video game!  But now to claim that the designer of said game is somehow offensive to you for listening to and attempting to go beyond the call to address your whine... unbelievable.  You're right, in fact, they should change the whole mining system because I thought that "Help Mine" meant that I would be helping the mine itself, and now I only want to play a video game in which I am the patron saint of mines!

    ...there are possibly some TS apologists around here, sure, but the fact that you have labored on for 250 posts about the same pathetic complaint is beyond me. Grr, I'll go cool down now."

    Wow.  You are perceptive.  And intelligent to boot.  And so very insightful.  Please, grace us with more of your wisdom.  And some of those 250 posts that you attribute to me, were in fact yours and the original OPs and striatic's and  many others.  But you're right, you should blame it all on me.  You should make this "MY whine" because I DARE to disagree.
    Posted 15 months ago by lovintnt Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Flirty, I love you bunches, you know that... but attacking lovintnt was really vicious and uncalled-for of you. Lovintnt has a different experience than you do, but it's just as valid, and recasting their posts in the Worst Possible Light doesn't help anyone. It just makes the Glitch forums a less pleasant place to be. Have you been having a bad day? You've always been such fun to chat with in game -- that post hardly seems like you.

    I'm a Mining IV Glitch. I've swept through and "helped" people, telling myself, "It must be ok. I'm helping!" But I didn't really think before how if they're lower level than me, my doing so actually leaves them less rock to mine, thus less fun to be had. Standing around waiting for rock to respawn isn't the enjoyable part of the game to me; this is why I don't hang out in Ajaya Bliss often. I just teleport there, join the mining party until we hit the waiting stage, and then I wander out into Suberna Spells looking for more fun.

    To use someone else's metaphor: If I go to the restaurant with a friend, and we order a dessert to split, I don't want to eat three-quarters of the dessert in the time it takes my friend to eat just a fourth. Sure, they can always order another piece of cake or plate of cookies, but that will involve waiting around when actually they had a movie or a job to get to. They have to choose now either to get to their next appointment later or to just resign themselves to not getting a fair share.

    That analogy gets unweildy very quickly, since no one has a set amount of cake they have to eat the way they need to get a set amount of sparkly and blue before they can make certain potions or metals. So -- switching back to the actual scenario -- if I'm wiping out the rock and getting more of it than the other Glitch is, I've made the task they're trying to accomplish -- whether it's getting enough sparkly and blue atoms to make a potion, or getting enough dullite to take back to a New Street project, or get more chances at a gem to donate to a shrine -- take longer than it would have otherwise. They didn't come into the mines to spend a lot of time idling waiting for a rock to respawn, but now that I've come and 'helped', that's one of their only remaining options.

    So this thread has helped me understand that just because the verb on the menu says "help" doesn't mean the recipient will experience it as "help." And, as in real life, "I'm trying to help!" isn't as important as whether the recipient actually experiences the attempt as helpful. And, as in real life, it's never attractive to guilt, or attack, or call names, when someone doesn't find your help attempts to be actually helpful. That kind of behavior only shows that helping wasn't actually your goal in the first place.

    I appreciate the change Stoot announced -- I think it will be an improvement over the current scenario. I also really appreciate this thread for helping me see how other players are experiencing the "help mine" scenario. I'm going to try to be more considerate of my fellow Glitches henceforth. It's not hard for me to say, "May I help?" or at least to refrain from swinging the pick more often than the other miner does.
    Posted 15 months ago by Vortexae Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oh hey. Actual suggestion!

    SO...  my understanding is that the devs wouldn't want to implement a "This Glitch would like to help you mine! May they?" permission box that locks down the rock if the answer is No, because it defeats the purpose they designed "Help Mine" for in the first place: avoiding a scenario in which all available rocks are locked down by the Glitches that got to them first (and potentially starting fights between people hovering around a rock spawning point).

    AND... a lot of players find the "May I help you?" "Yes you may!/Please don't" conversation unweildy because of how, by the time the conversation is over, so is the rock in question, making the conversation totally moot (such that you might as well have remained mute; ha-ha, type-A English Major humor).

    SO WHAT ABOUT THIS... What if, when you started to mine a rock as the first Glitch to do so, you got two choices: a normal "Mine" like we're used to, and "Mine, Inviting Helpers". If you chose the latter, then, as you mined, there'd be a visible indicator above you that said "Help appreciated!" or "Feel free to jump in!" or similar. That way, passing Glitches could easily see whether the current miner would have answered "Yes" to the question "Mind if I help?"

    This would streamline the courtesy conversation, saving time and not requiring a miner to spend Impervious Miner time in chat windows. Meanwhile, I'd strongly recommend that the other option be simply the neutral "Mine" that we're used to, because a "Mine (prefer solo)" option that hangs a "keep out" sign over the rock puts us back in the territory-claiming situation and would make fights and strife inevitable.

    ...Of course I have no idea whether it's likely the devs would implement any further suggestions about mining at such a late date, but... making such suggestions is what beta testing is for, and I'm a beta tester, so here's a suggestion.
    Posted 15 months ago by Vortexae Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oh, my! I love it when someone correctly uses moot in a sentence.  Then then correctly uses mute as well!

    Brava!!
    Posted 15 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • No. "Moot" is a word I might be expected to use, but even seeing it used at all in these forums is a pleasant change. Too many people here with legal studies maybe?
    Posted 15 months ago by Fokian Fool Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thank you Vortexae I feel like my job here has been accomplished.  I tried hard not to sound like a whiner when trying to explain why I don't need help mining a rock.  Your comments are completely reasonable and I appreciate everything you said.  ")
    Posted 15 months ago by xoxJulie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Yes, thank you, Vortexae.  It is beyond frustrating to be one of many voices expressing an opinion and still be singled out as the ONE person "whining" about it because someone else doesn't perceive that a problem exists.  I tried to not only express the problem as I see it, but also to offer possible solutions.  I repeatedly stated that I do not view the rock as "my rock" and yet was repeatedly told that that is how I feel!  Unfortunately, I guess there will always be people who resort to name-calling and bullying in these forums and you're right, it does make them a less pleasant place.  But, fortunately, there are also people like you, Vortexae, who speak up when they see someone cross the line; and that helps to make them more pleasant.  Thank you again.
    Posted 15 months ago by lovintnt Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Hi guys. Can we all chill out? :-)

    There are lots of game rules that I find annoying. For example, why do I have to jump through hoops to make sure that the stuff in my old house ends up at my new house?

    So in that vein, "help mine" is a game rule that TS explicitly added. Some people like the rule, and some people don't. Maybe it will be changed in the future, or maybe it won't, but I don't think it is a huge deal either way. I think it's fine to discuss possible changes, but I am puzzled by the intensity on both sides.

    Why not just enjoy the game? Just my opinion.
    Posted 15 months ago by magic panda Subscriber! | Permalink
  • oh, you would say that! that's typical of a panda! I HATE PANDAS,  MOST RUBBISH OF ALL THE BEARS
    Posted 15 months ago by shhexy corin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • stupid bamboo eating idiots
    Posted 15 months ago by shhexy corin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • ;)
    Posted 15 months ago by shhexy corin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Hmmm, didn't I hear somewhere that pandas aren't really bears?
    Posted 15 months ago by Shepherdmoon Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I think they are... red pandas and koalas aren't bears 
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_panda#Classification
    Posted 15 months ago by shhexy corin Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Ah, I see there was some debate about whether or not they were bears when I was a kid. So I was either hearing that back then, or I was thinking of the koalas... OK, pandas: bear away!
    Posted 15 months ago by Shepherdmoon Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Well, they're definitely not magic! :P

    ...unless you mean magically cute! ;)
    Posted 15 months ago by FlirtyvonSexenhaven Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Ha ha shexycorin!
    Posted 15 months ago by magic panda Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Also, according to that Wikipedia article:

    For many decades the precise taxonomic classification of the giant panda was under debate because it shares characteristics of both bears and raccoons.

    From childhood, I remember hearing that Pandas were relatives of raccoons and not bears. I guess science has since proven that hypothesis wrong!
    Posted 15 months ago by magic panda Subscriber! | Permalink
  • From that same Wikipedia article..!

    "However, molegicular studies suggest that the giant panda is a part of the Unicae family,[42][43] though it differentiated early in history from the main unicorn stock. The giant panda's closest magickal relative is the spectacled hippogriff of South Fantasia.[44]"

    o_O;;
    Posted 15 months ago by FlirtyvonSexenhaven Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Whoa! Who knew I was related to hippogriffs??
    Posted 15 months ago by magic panda Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I am going to rename myself "Most rubbish of all the bears". I like the sound of that.
    Posted 15 months ago by magic panda Subscriber! | Permalink
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