Err... does anyone else think one million crates is a bit much for a "basic" mining badge?

Just as a simple non professional study, it takes me about.... 5 minutes with a nice roid to mine 120 crates and return to the station. Maybe a bit long, I haven't mined in a bit but let's use five minutes. 1,000,000 divided by 120 is about 8,334. 8,334 times 5 minutes is 41,667 minutes or 694.4 hours or 28.935 days. Straight.

As a comparison, here is my account info:

Signed up 2005-07-21 23:01:08 Account type: Subscriber
Time spent online: 143 days, 8:26:00

So in the past two years, it would have taken me roughly one fourth of my time on JUST mining. That's a lot of f'ing time.

So the suggestion part:

Cut the top two down by 90%. So 100,000 crates takes about 3 days of mining. Any person mining knows that's grueling but not undoable.

But the method for getting isn't particularly advanced. Basic in the case might mean simple, instead of quick, easy, or painless. And isn't that for level 3 anyways?

How do you make mining "difficult" unless you require specific rare ores? Besides keeping one's sanity, I mean.

"It [mining] should become less boring before long, because of all the other related stuff we're trying to do (making the Hive compete dynamically for ore, making ores tie into the economy etc), but interesting changes to the actual functionality of mining would be cool too." -incarnate

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/15417?page=2#194945

Plus that thread has some other cool ideas on advancing the actual mechanics of mining, potentially opening up new high scores to achieve. But you can't expect advanced badges when the game is still in a more basic stage.

There should be separate ribbon branches for each of the rare ores, with nifty gear going along with advanced levels. Specialization ftw!

I concur with Lecter *checks the proverbial sky*.

*sky falls on Tosh, eats his liver*

Luckily, livers have the uncanny ability of growing back. I can easily imagine you picking on livers, like that silly eagle did on Prometheus'.

Indeed, it's a unique organ with respect to regenerative powers. And deliciousness.

There will be more specific badges for particular rare ores, among other things. Anyway, I can look at nerfing the top basic miner badge. I tried to make them generally a steep curve at the end, so people would have a longer term goal. I also assume that future additions to the game will potentially make mining in quantity easier. But, we don't have those yet, and we can add an Advanced Miner tree someday.

steep curve like the 40-some mentor thing?

I dont know a single one that got that through legit means. It's still ridiculously high.

I like the mining badge levels, it gives people a long term goal. I see people working towards the highest one already, and it is good. A month of mining (closer to 4 months IRL) should do it. The game needs to cater for different sorts of players, and xith addicts are human too.

As for mentor badge, it is more to do with mentor system being too complex to work. If a player could give a mentor point by just saying something like "/mentor <name> [good|bad]" (default being good), without any inviting, assigning, etc. you might see more legitimate use.

Why didn't you just use quotation marks?

I was going for an effect. It failed...

You...don't do that thing with your fingers when you talk, right?

No, not that bad.

Whistler means air-quotes...

Yes, I know what he means.

Eh, I got the mentor badges without cheating. I simply was annoying. (that was at the start of 'em..)
I was asked to cheat by some dude, but I didn't...

For one thing, I didn't want HIM to get the medal ; )