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Mining Whining: On CIGs plans for mining – let's have some refined discussion (warning: long post)Post at: Sa 21. Jul 2018, 22:05By /u/bacon-was-taken
\"Obviously a screenshot from alpha 3.2\"Mining is at the very core of the world of Star Citizen; it is a so called "primary occupation", so obviously it makes or breaks the game. Some of us wouldn't even be part of the project without it.
I see some people enjoy mining in 3.2, but there's a lot of us who think it should be a lot better. And before you tell me to "mine" my own business, hear me out! (And I hope to hear some thoughtful opinions from you as well)
"But wait!" might you rudely interrupt;
"... we all know that mining is in its first iteration – there will be lots of patches down the road with updates and content and tweaks! It's too soon to complain about it!"Well yes, it's the first iteration and we can't talk about it as if the current build is all there is to it...
BUT we do actually have fairly detailed descriptions (
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14522-Star-Citizen-Careers-Mining) on the future of mining, from official CIG sources, not linking all the ATVs and other sources but there's definitely been a lot of information. And I think early discussions are important! I'm sure CIG is constantly working on making mining an amazing experience, but we're a community and as such we should provide feedback and generate discussions about what's important. I mean, people have been saying things in bits and pieces on youtube comment sections and the like, but I thought I'd just make my own post here on reddit.
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To speak about mining, I'd like to bring attention to another game, known for great mining experiences...
Minecraft! What else? I mean, there's a lot of "else" to go with, but Minecraft has a robust procedural mining experience which ties into a myriad of refinement and crafting options, which feeds into a larger, very clever and very satisfying world economy – from what originally was a singleplayer game that branched out to millions of people with servers and mods and communities that has hooked gamer for years, and many more to come. That's a dream come true... in fact, this dream sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Because a lot of what Star Citizen wants to become, is something that Minecraft has been for a quite a while now. Certainly not the blocky graphics, but the incredibly enjoyable gameplay loop of mining and it's stimulating transition into economy. I could bring up other games such as "Spelunky", or even free browser games of old such as "Motherload", but I chose minecraft because it's a good game that most people have encountered and can relate to.
My concern for Star Citizen is that CIG want to needlessly "reinvent the wheel" on an occupation that already has multiple success stories. In fact, there's almost nothing similar about what has been envisioned for mining in Star Citizen, that can be found in other top-tier mining games.
Lets talk about specifics, comparing SC (Star Citizen) to MC (Minecraft)
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1. SC features mining from ships, MC has manual 1st person miningSC is amazing because you can both fly and walk around inside beautiful beautiful spaceships.
It's just that... mining doesn't require any character movement. You'll all be sitting in chairs, whether operating a solo spacecraft, or multi-crewing an Orion, you'll be seated at a station for a fairly dedicated purpose.
That is understandable;
it is the future, after all. It makes sense but... does it make a game?
Meanwhile in MC, a couple hundred feet below the surface, you're tunnelling tirelessly, swinging your pickaxe repeatedly against a stone wall. Then one of the blocks cracking apart, reveals a slow but deadly stream of hot burning lava – which pours into your tunnel! It's a trap! However, you're an experienced miner, and do not fret easily; you quickly retreat a few steps back, and empty your bucket of water to obsidianize the imminent threat. Thinking that the danger is over, you suddenly hear a familiar, chilling sound from the dark tunnel behind you; SSSSSsssss – it's a creeper, the infamous green exploding monster, known for sneaking up on unsuspecting players and sending them to the netherworld. With no other choice, you run towards the lava again. You throw out a few blocks as stepping stones above it, then climbing through a small hole up to a spaces above the lava pocket. The creeper pursues, nearing detonation at any moment now. You have so much valuable gear and ore on you; it would be terrible to lose it all! Right before it explodes in your face, you manage to throw out another couple of blocks, effectively cutting it off – just after this, you hear the explosion go off in full force back in the tunnel. A close call. Then you take a quick look around to assess your situation; you're in a small lava pocket, balancing on the edge of the naturally shaped pit. Your eyes fall on a shimmering blue across the pit, and all concerns are forgotten; diamonds! The most valuable of ores! You carefully bridge your way across the lava, and begin mining the rare ore.
Back in SC, in the Orion, everybody's still sitting in chairs, looking at monitors. Not so exciting but graphics are indeed impressive. You catch yourself thinking that you hope some pirates would show up soon.
After a weekend of gaming, the MC-miner has fought numerous monsters in tunnels and dungeons, bridged across ginormous underground ravines, almost drowned in seawater flooding from an ocean above, and barely escaped burning to a crisp by the occasional lava pit, built railroads with carts and placed torches to speed up his work, discovered an ancient temple, and much more! But the SC-miner has sat in a chair, mostly... perhaps he/she ran to a turret to shoot down a pirate, and if he/she were lucky, shot a couple of boarding pirates, but still, very much, just been sitting in a chair. Or at least, that's my fear, because that's all we know thus far.
I took the time to write this little made-up scenario because I want people to understand that mining can be so much more than just "operating a station" while juggling made-up numbers. To me, SC-mining sounds so much cooler on paper than it will actually be. And this first iteration is a chore; not something I'm eager to show to friends when I introduce SC to them.
Now don't get me wrong; multi-crew mining will probably be awesome in itself, just for the visuals and the socials, and it's cool that people get to use their ship actively in this occupation!
But I worry, the way it is now... how long can you endure the sweat shop work? This cycle of static, great-on-paper gameplay loop deprived of variation and personal exploration?
Will mining really just be managing a station, making sure this or that mundane little task doesn't f*** up the entire operation? The pilot, will just sits there mostly, waiting for the next asteroid to be mined complete? Which from what we've seen with the prospector, might take a really long time... And the laser beam operator, making sure 55.42% doesn't go higher than 56%? The cargo dude? A glorified waste sorter? And scanning operator... I mean that might be a little fun, honestly, navigating the RMAP around the asteroids. Might actually be enjoyable.
All in all, being a gamer that enjoys mining, and having read and re-read all material concerning mining, I am concerned that SC will not leverage the numerous opportunities of 1st person mining, and also that key-ingredients seen in other successful mining games will be left out.
2. SC features a mini-game for the act of mining, MC has a simple click-to-mine mechanicHere's a quote from the SC website:
There are no aspects of mining that allow a player to simply press a button and wait without concern for a result, or that require players to perform an action repeatedly without some element of thought and/or dexterity coming into play.
Interestingly, Minecraft has solved the problem CIG had, not by cluttering the base mechanic of mining with little protracting "math" games of percentages (and the occasional explosion), but by adding dynamic content that constantly stirs the surroundings, causing fluid scenarios and thus a mining that feels like a proper adventure. There has been a lot of comparisons between EVE online and SC; it's understandable that
"the best damn space sim ever" doesn't want players to go AFK while their ships revolves asteroids. However, what we got is burning it's way into your retina; the cockpit, the laser, the rock, the surface. And the slider UI (which I'm sure will be reworked!). Will players really just be staring at this for hours? And usually, nothing much happens. The rock puts on a nice light show, though, and disintegrates into smaller rocks, so there's that. It is satisfying, but...
My point is that other games have made mining fun, but you'll never see one where the player must look at single rock for the majority of their time, with 5-10-minute intervals before finding a new, equally rocky rock.
3. SC features flying and scanning, MC doesn'tScanning in SC looks and feels really cool, I'll admit it. But it does take away one thing though; in MC, much of the enjoyment of mining is traversing difficult terrain, rounding a corner in a cave, and scouting for rare, valuable minerals – with your eyes! On Minecraft servers, there are hacks such as "Xray" which allows users to see the valuable ores and go straight for them. But it's a hack and not part of the vanilla game for a reason; mining isn't an adventure if you know where the ore is. You don't need to explore! Like a robot, you go straight for the profit, and then you're done. It's a fetch-quest with no incentive to study your environment closely.
But this "hack" is actually part of Star Citizen from default... It's true that in Star Citizen you can kinda go hunting with scanning, doing it again and again from different places with the prospector, especially as a scanning operator on the Orion as well... but isn't it shooting a greater possibility for gameplay in the foot? Discovering ore with a more close-up approach could have given the players a reason to look around, and enjoy the environment, instead of just speeding by.
Maybe even players would have to get out of their ships to take samples in the ground? Or deploy mining gear?
Hide and seek wouldn't be so much fun if everybody had x-ray eyes, right? The fun is in the tension of carefully moving around; looking for the big score, yet wary of the risks at every moment. It could be a real thrill to keep your ship moving steadily along an uneven surface or the edge of a ravine, struggling to stay close enough without crashing, while doing a continuous short-range scan, or even just visual checks for suitable places, all in all trying to find the best spot (like the scan operator of the Orion). Sure beats going from rock X over here to rock Y over there, IMO.
My point is that successful mining games usually makes a big deal out of manually searching for and discovering the valuable ore. SC will focus on scanning however, sacrificing to some degree both navigation and perception, and that has me concerned.
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TL;DR
[*]Mining in SC will have you sit still on a chair; in essence, it's a mundane repetition of unchallenging tasks and a lot of waiting, something which no other successful "mining games" has done – rather the opposite, in fact.
[*]The tedious mining mini-game in SC seems to be unnecessary, since other successful "mining games" has no such mechanic, yet doesn't suffer the "press-of-a-button"-issue as seen in EVE online AFK mining.
[*]Scanning for mining may feel good for a short moment but provides an unfortunate short-cut that skips potentially better gameplay. Other successful "mining games" has proven the manual search, perception and navigation aspects of mining to be the strongest appeal of the genre.
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... but enough from me. What do YOU THINK about the future of mining in Star Citizen?
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