Where have all the mines gone?

[kobnach]

I miss knowing that at least hypothetically I could do anything myself, but maybe J&L will be able to cook something up to balance that.

1) Yes, we will cook things up to balance that , because;
2) while I do enjoy the hermit life, I never liked the idea of being able to do anything myself. Rather, I think it would be much more fun if the resource tree were large enough to support a couple of different styles of hermit life and village life, with each character having to specialize on some more-or-less-self-contained part or another. That way, there'd still be a lot left to discover by making new characters once in a while, and others' lifestyles could actually seem foreign to you.

Personally, I like being able to do everything, and that's one of the reasons I describe this game as practically requiring alts. Sure, it's nice to work with other people - but they aren't always on. And there's too much I want to be able to acquire or do conveniently, without having to wait around for a differently specialized helper or trading partner.

Of course the game doesn't really allow self-contained lifestyles at the moment. Metal (iron) is a necessity for more than minimal survival. So is food - and not just meat alone. That was always true - now add the problem of needing good water - which won't be near the iron mine - and wool - like as not near neither mine nor water - etc.

Even living in a group, I've got alt hearthfires all over the place.

[Pacho]

I think you would be happier in a single player game mate.

I guess I'm with loftar on this one =|

[g1real]

The system is semi-functional already, with the new skills you can train you can have players focusin on one skill-stat like cooking, this allows for specialization and very high quality products.

That said, the best division out there probably is farming and mining.

[Pacho]

yeah, but its caused entirely by the nature/industry slider.

[Ruggan]

yeah, but its caused entirely by the nature/industry slider.

This is true and I'm not sure I like this. There should definitely be reasons for speciaization, but this is imposed rather than brought about by emergent gameplay. The problem is thinking up natural reasons people should specialize rather than dabble, without imposing restrictions (e.g. a slider).

Ultimately, it feels like the only way this could be done would be by deviating completely from the LP system. People are best at what they do most often, and skills should probably be based off of this. This would kill two birds with one stone - it'd encourage specalization and hamper effective means of macroing anything useful (whooo boy, my character just ROCKS at picking bark and apples and well... that's about it!). However, this change may not be a direction the devs want to go.



Example of a system working like this, with completely arbitrary numbers:

All LP gain is automatically devoted to the skill that was used to acquire it. Skills atrophy at a rate of 2% of their total acquired LP per 24hr, and atrophy until reaching 50% of the highest value ever obtained in this skill. This encourages players to focus on the skills they want to specalize in, to prevent the atrophy and raise the minimum floor of their skill. (The idea being Short term vs. long term memory).

[sabinati]

that's a pretty good idea ruggan. skill atrophy should be x% per y hours played though, so one could go a few days without playing if one ever wanted to do that for some reason.