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).