by dcastello79 » Sun Mar 21, 2010 11:36 pm A major problem with this game is the lack of available metal for players who either do not own a mine, are not in a large, powerful guild, or both. While technically this shouldn't really be a problem in the sense that the 'market' will work itself out to deliver metal, at higher prices, to those who need it. This would be nice if there was a market...but with the new reset, villages are spread-out, and largely logistically hard to locate..etc. etc. Thus, many players are left without even small amounts of metal, and no I'm not saying that players need metal armor or metal weapons, but what about things like frying pans and other such essentials?
An alternative:
I saw an extraordinarily helpful solution to the problem of metal scarcity. The program, in short, explained how the ancient vikings, a group of people who inhabited Scandinavia, procured metals from their mine-less environment: they got their metal from gathering particles of metal which had been swept away by the mountain rivers into the nearby plains in which the metals settled. So, the vikings would collect these particles and then they would undergo a very long, complex process of smelted clumps of collected metal particles together to form workable pieces of metal.
If the developers were to incorporate something like this, they could have very small amounts of metal spread out along the lands immediately located near mountains where players can dig in the ground, like clay, to find them. Then, the developers could introduce another diversion of the metal smelting process to enable players to make small particles of metal into workable clumps of metal, which would eventually become the same as metal found in mines. The thing which would balance this method is that it would be: 1) hard to locate and dig-up these metal particles 2) tedious to procure accumulations of these hard-to-find metals, which would thus allow players without mines to get metal without receiving an advantage over players who already have mines...in fact, the latter group would have an advantage still over the former.
Idk...it's just an idea. If you have read this far, I thank you, and I won't mind if you relentlessly destroy my idea. I'm fully aware that there isn't much I could say or do from keeping people from acting in their natural manners.
