In the 7+ years I've played this game, I think I might have mined maybe twice. Max. It was not for me. That being said, mining is one of the most important and fundamental aspects of Eve and it has never been improved upon since the start of the game. I'd like to share my thoughts on why it's so important and what could be done to revitalize this lackluster and horribly unrewarding profession.

A few quick thoughts:

Mining is generally boring.

Mining is rife with bots.

Mining is marginalized by other mineral streams, namely Rogue Drones and T1 loot drops.

Mining is also the foundation upon which all production is based and is the key logistical resource that should be managed to ensure winning any large scale conflict.

Let's get the easy stuff out of the way first: Get rid of ALL other mineral streams other than through the express act of mining. Will this cause some short term mineral shortages? Sure, but it won't last more than a month. I have faith in my fellow (extremely greedy) Eve players and I'm sure that when Trit hits 400+ ISK/unit we'll see all the PVPers and mission runners out there in a shiny new mining barge trying to cash in while it lasts. In short: remove Rogue drones as a source of minerals (convert them to bounties) and change all T1 loot drops to limited run BPCs for named modules (turning a mineral faucet into a mineral sink in the process).

Now something a little more complicated: make mining FUN.

How do we do this? The EPIC WIN, I say. What if, while mining some basic ore, you have a chance, however small, of mining some exceedingly valuable alloy or mineral (or whatever)? What if it was valuable simply because it had attributes that were completely unattainable via any other means? Like mineral compression for instance? What if while mining Trit you happen to see some "super-ultra-mega-compressed-hyper-density-quantum-tritanium" (I just made that up by the way) pop up in your cargo hold? What if this stuff converted to 10 MILLION Trit per unit, and you just got 10 units of it in your cargo bay? And guess what the best part is? Each unit only takes up 10m3.

Now you have something that is extremely valuable because it has a special quality, but the original use/intent of the material remains the same. Furthermore, the value added to the material is a one time use, one way mechanic (once it's refined, you lose the compression), but the value to people who need to transport vast amounts of ore will be dramatic. Not to mention that you just scored 100 million units of Trit in a single mining cycle that is worth 400M+ ISK on the market.

Such drops would be rare, and there would be various levels of similar drops with varying degrees of probability, but the point is that the possibility would be there. An event like that would really stand out in a player's memory- it would be an EVENT. "Man, remember that time when we found that crazy 20 unit deposit of super-ultra-mega-compressed-hyper-density-quantum-tritanium?! IT WAS AWESOME! I'M RICH!!!" <<<< That my friends is what is missing from mining.

The lower the sec, the better the chances of striking it rich. Again, 10m compression super ore would be hyper rare- the equivalent of a top officer spawn. But you get the idea.

Destroy the bots.

This is the most important part.

Every time someone posts about mining and bots, it doesn't take too long before someone talks about a captcha test to "make sure" there's a person behind the mining. I think that they're right in concept, but wrong on execution.

Bots are good at analyzing data, doing repetitive tasks as fast as possible and so on, but with the concept of a captcha, a designer is trying to break the bot with a mechanic that it's not good at: visual decoding.

But what if there was another area that bots weren't good at? Say... intuition?

What if 95% of the ore in a belt were concentrated in 5% of the asteroids? Same yield per belt, same time taken to mine the minerals etc., but the difference is that for every rock that has minerals in it, there are 9 that don't. The human operator could pick out the rocks with the minerals in them because say, all the rocks had a spin rate, generated in a random direction and axis, but the mineral-laden rocks have a spin rate that is 50% faster than barren rocks. Or maybe mineral laden rocks have more "gold flecks" in the texture, maybe 25% more, or the gold flecks are in a more veined pattern than on the other barren rocks.

There is an impossible number of visual cues and variations that could be implemented to allow players to pick out what rocks have ore in them and which one's do not. My goal here is to incorporate the idea of a VISUAL CAPTCHA in concept right into the rocks themselves, so that it's transparent and players don't even notice that they're doing it. They're simply picking out the "good ones" and leaving the rest behind! Like, you know, being a REAL MINER FOR ONCE!!!

The game designers could make the coloration even more subtle, so that the best and most experienced miners could cherry pick the belts of the choicest rocks by discerning combinations of spin rate (denser ore = faster spin) and subtle variations in the asteroid texture and coloration (this one has specs of gold ore on the surface, but this other one has spider-like veins of black and silver ore woven through it etc...). This INVOLVES THE PLAYER IN THE PROCESS. It makes it engaging and fun. If you're smart and experienced, your production per hour could be dramatically higher than a "noob".

If you've read this far, I congratulate you. Thank you for your time and attention. I look forward to constructive posts on this topic. No, it doesn't belong in "Features and Ideas". GD has more views and this isn't about a feature, it's about fixing the game as a holistic system.

So, let's hear it! Thoughts?