Etch, it’s been said before but will (I hope) bear repetition:
CCP could have all mining performed by NPCs, leaving PvP-warrior types to devise interesting ways of plundering their harvests, and serious Industry players to factor-in novel variables. It could be done (though not without perspiration).
The Company wants to offer miners a fully-fledged and absorbing playstyle, but if it’s too absorbing we see mewling posts about over-complication, and if it’s too simple the same miners complain of boredom.
There would still be a game, of sorts, under such a regime, but I believe it would be an impoverished one.
Playing-Miners would not be necessary at all for the mere extraction of ores. The rest could be performed by NPC haulers and processors, or even interested Industrialists.
There’s a reason that mining appears to be the most bot-able activity in the game.
I am no more grateful for miners than they are grateful for gankers.
I’ll ignore the thinly veiled hostility “if this miner thinks he has any worth we will just replace him with an NPC. That will show the uppity little sh*t”. Lol joke.
I mean how is that good for the game on any level. All ore comes from npc’s? So presumably NPC set a the ore prices and competition for industrialists goes out the window because they can’t set buy orders? Sounds great.
And then when the explorers get uppity why not just get Npc’s to sell salvage. I mean some people find that boring and not very engaging. May as well just axe that to.
To what end? Constant supply at a CCP determined isk price point?
Let’s not forget why: a solid two-thirds of contemporary gamers are interested in nothing but a casual clicking emulator, which is the reason why the mobile game market is worth like ten times the amount that the regular console/PC gaming market is worth.
These EVE miners are coming from somewhere.
Listen, before this whole “Orca” and “Rorqual” nonsense, pretty much like two-thirds of the minerals in the game came from rogue drones, T1 loot reprocessing, and null-sec hauler spawn drops. And no one complained.
Sasha is pro ganking, at least as far as I’m aware, but is not at all forum hostile, and I doubt he means to be derogatory. It looks to me like an expression of technical feasibility and of the difficulty of satisfying all desires at once even within a single sphere of gamer activity preferences.
Look, I know you don’t like hearing this, but you’re going to have to come to terms with the fact that despite how you personally feel about the activity, high-sec mining just isn’t that important.
Etch, I sought only to disparage your stated assertion that miners enable warriors to pursue their activities.
It is not miners who do this, but materials fashioned into products, by manufacturers, which are bought and used by those warriors.
The ores, specifically, do not have to be extracted by player-characters.
You spent some time dismissing my poorly-argued comments about NPC miners. It would, of course, require a great deal of work; certainly more than I have given it!
End of the day. I and countless others are doing something we enjoy. That’s good for us. That means there is ore on the market. That’s good for others. Especially others that hate mining.
That’s the game working as intended. Is it not?
Why is it so important to you guys that the minute someone says they enjoy mining that they must be put in their place?
I’m perfectly fine with you enjoying mining. Hell, I’d be fine with you sticking forks into power outlets, if you’re doing so by your own genuine volition and out of your personal enjoyment. It’s a free country. Well, at least I hope that it is wherever you live.
But when you start parading your stance as some kind of moral high ground, is when I’m going to call you out.
That the ores are currently mined by player-characters does not preclude the possibility that the activity could as usefully be performed by NPCs.
My point about that activity’s bot-ability was salient. If scripts already exist to automate mining (and they clearly do…), then half the work may already be in place.
It is not you I’m talking about Etch, but an activity within a video game.
But that wasn’t my point, and I’m anxious not to allow this to drift into murky and well-wallowed waters…
You stated that miners mining is what enables PvP-ers to wage war. The implication was that player-miners are vital because of the task they perform in the game.
I repeat; it is not player-miners who are vital; it is the activity which is vital in the current form of the game. I merely posited that it does not have to be so (EDIT: I mean that the activity does not have to be performed by players - soz).
You can’t program true human entropy into an AI system. Not with contemporary technology, at least.
CCP can compensate for miners leaving the game by literally adjusting a dozen variables that control yield amounts from various ores (or simply changing the amount needed to refine while keeping the yields intact).
CCP cannot emulate true player behavior through NPCs, because AI is linear, and just like with every mission, every anomaly, and every incursion site in the game, players will document how, why, when, and where this AI functions, put it in some online guide, and tell you exactly what kind of ship you need to fly and how to fly it to wholly mitigate the danger. But it’s absolutely impossible to adapt to human behavior in the same manner outside of some general strategies (e.g. “don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose”).
This is why player-mining isn’t critical to the game’s health, but player piracy absolutely is.
