In parallel to all the threads on how to make activities more fun, I was wondering: why aren't there other activities using the mining mechanics to harvest different types of resources?
I was thinking about fishing, gathering plants, hunting (although there isn't such a skill), wood cutting, and there would be others. How far are these skills in the planning?
The existing process is basically like this:
- go to a spot where you know the resource can be found
- equip your best tool
- wait for a while
- move a bit if you were successful or try again anywhere if you found nothing.
That system could easily be copied for:
- fishing: go to a pond or river spot, equip your pole/harpoon/net, then /fish
- woodcutting: go to a wall of trees where the wood is worth something (or where it's legal to cut), equip your ax, then cut
- herbal: go to a mushroom/flower/grass spot, equip your knife/sickle, then harvest
Hunting with traps could be similar, or slightly different: you go to a spot where you see small, harmless animals, and they disappear (hide underground or in trees); you leave your trap there (instead of equipping it), then walk back a bit, and come to check once in a while. Yes, someone could steal your trap if you walk too far away.
I know this doesn't make mining better, nor does it make the nature life that fun, but it has the advantage of a cheap addition for the sake of variety, while waiting for specific improvements. The more similar these processes are, the easier it will be to propagate the improvements.
About fun, btw, I also thought about a system along these lines:
- go to the spot, equip your tool and start as usual
- when successful, instead of just getting your price and the yellow message, you get the focus on an object, captured in a way similar to how an attacked creature is focused on. You're now in "harvest" mode.
- you have to "fight" with the resource, using the 5 head icons (aggressive and such) until its "health" bar reaches 0. Your skill, equipment and actions determine the "damage" you inflict.
- your life is not at risk, but one of your progress bars goes down, and if it reaches 0, you lose the catch. That's the failure. For fishing for example, it would be a fight of endurances (fish's red bar vs your green bar). For mining, it would be your gray bar (willpower).
That system needs more tinkering (meaning of "health" bar, of aggressive or defensive actions, etc.), but it has the added advantage of reusing the fighting icons (it's sort of... ecological
).
