Belt mining would be more fun if there was a chance of something good happening that makes you want to stay for “just one more asteroid”. Perhaps emptying an asteroid has a chance to drop something good - something for miners to look forward to.
Sites have this with random faction spawn and faction drops. Other games might have this say in the form of fishing where you never quite know what you’re going to pull up! So just one more fish! Mining would be more fun if you never quite knew what would happen if you just stay for 1 more minute in the belt.
I mean, I think mining does suck, but there’s also plenty of other stuff to get into. In fact, you might like exploration.
Anyway, I think mining should be made more active, but here’s something that’s kind of in keeping with your idea. How about instead of lowsec ore anomalies spawning randomly, you get a chance of an escalation for one when you clear a belt. This might reduce cherry picking, and make finding cherry picked belts less annoying.
Either that, or add a Catalyst escape bay to mining barges. That would certainly make mining more exciting.
When this came up in the past i thought it might have been an interesting idea for the pirate hauler npc’s that occasionally appear in belts could drop ‘coordinates’ for a mining base/belt.
The chance of “something better” already exists with anomaly spawns in highsec - lots of opportunity to find Jaspet, Hemorphite and Hedbergite by scanning for anoms (or even checking the Agency these days).
In the near future, we’re promised significant changes to the quality, quantity and location of resource spawns. They will be less predictable, rewarding those who actively look for opportunity. Hopefully we’ll get more details at the virtual Fanfest presentations later this week.
Make asteroids have a chance to drop refillable mineral chunks, like RNG loot in other PVE activities.
Make highsec have the lowest chance of getting asteroid loot, while in lowsec the chance doubles."
Biggest reasons against is the fact unless drawbacks are also given, it’ll just be a flat boost to mining income, which will devalue minerals and lower prices even more.
Also a lot of miners like the AFK fire and forget mining, since it’s “relaxing” and changing the formula at all will have dire consequences.
But the idea of escalations sound good. TBH, I’d be down with anything new, especially if it promoted less “relaxing” gameplay.
I like it. Although yes I take your point that there may be a balancing issue. I’ll resist the urge to risk turning the thread into an argument against any type of AFK gameplay!