Old School Mining... WAAAYYY over used.
 

One of our philosophies at Niromia is: Our players keep the server up and running, so why not make them a part of it? Well here I am posting this thread to help keep players happy by asking for their opinion on a part of our job systems on Niromia, mining.

Mining in Graal has been historically one of the most common means of gaining money on various servers. Along with that, the method of mining has generally stayed the same; mashing away at the D key to break up rocks (not to mention the D key...) and collect the ore (and tiny, broken, plastic fragments). So my question to you is this: If you could come up with a new method of mining, what would it be? Come up with some fun, creative ideas and remember to try to include detail. :)

It's stayed the same because it's pretty much stayed the same in real life.

Bombing is always an option, or you could stick with the old style, but rather than holding D, it could show cross hairs , which you would have to target the rock, and mouse click. depending on where you hit the rock, that fast it would break.

I was going to do mining once, where instead of mashing insane amounts, just hit it a few times and the rock breaks. Of course, I guess in the longrun it's the same, it just feels a bit faster. Like I did sprites for 9 different images for the rock, and the rock would break down a bit more after every hit. The actual view of progress I believe makes a lot of difference, instead of just mashing at the same rock without seeing anything happen.

What you could do is have an arrow show up, and have to press the right direction+D(swing the pick-ax), much like DDR or something.

Everyone is doing this idea recently :(
It doesn't really work on Graal since we are limited to a large 0.05 seconds which is no where near the frame count you need for something like DDR (by the way, ITG so owns DDR)

Well it wouldn't be nearly as complicated or timer-sensitive as DDR :P
But really just adopt the 'press the button they tell you to' thing. Then again... that would be more annoying than pressing D over and over because now you have to actually focus on mundane repetitive tasks.
I say stick with what it is, after thinking it over. Stuff like mining will never be fun. Not because they can't be, but because people will be doing it so much they will want something as simple as can be, so they can do it a lot without having to really focus. I think the best thing to do is keep with what I said, make it fast paced.
If you make rocks break in 5 hits, and have a sprite for each stage of the rock being broken, so that there is visual confirmation of their progress, and knock down the price so that it fits with how much rocks they will be mining, it will be faster, but won't be as dull.

Fine ignore my idea

I don't think any idea has been ignored?
Just my opinion is, the more the player is going to be doing it monotonously, the less work that should be done. Sure, D bashing isn't fun, but for something like mining it's perfect, because people can do it mindlessly. But if you throw in something more 'compelling' like your idea, or my arrow idea, I think it just goes from mindlessly monotonous, to annoyingly monotonous. Either way they're going to be doing it over and over, and that's the problem, and there's nothing we can change about that.

Era's got a decent system. :)

Era's set in a time where something different is possible.
Perhaps making it so instead of repeatedly bashing D, just make holding D continuously swing the pick-ax. Also, maybe mine carts somehow would make it more 'fun'.

Fast mine carts, pressing D continuously but seeing damage everytime you press it, neat graphics for pick axes, mining levels, chance to get more than one mineral from each rock.

Mine carts... PERPLEXING! I think maybe I can work something out with that... although it will not change the actual extraction of ore, this system could add a value of excitement... Thanks Dusty for the inspiration! :)

That's a perfect mining system if you ask me :o

Hiring NPCs to mine for you. Lets say you got 3 bums wanting to mine for you. Suppose each bum will mine and obtain certain types of rocks based on their materialistic appeal and work ethics.
Bum A, will give you 20 different items found, for example he gives you 12 pieces of fools gold, 1 real gold piece, 2 diamonds, 4 pieces of gralats, and a rare artifact.
Then Bum B, gives you 5 items, but 3 of them are diamonds and 2 being real gold.
Then Bum C could be a sick workaholic and give you 60 items, half crap, but the other could be of every type of item allowed.

Just an example for you to expand on.

You could perhaps bring up a zoomed up version of the wall or whatever your mining and use the mouse and click particular areas of the rock/wall/whatever to hit. It would make mining slower, but you could make the results larger/worth more.

Or you could integrate it into a combat system. Make a mining tool a weapon. Particular attacks being more effective on rocks than others.