Shovel Combo

@jumli7 Yeah that would work too! Almost like timing your swing right for certain things in golf games. Love that idea also!

Honestly, anything to make digging treasure up less of a drag. Ever since the animation cancel was removed, it reminded me that the shovel animation is SO long and it feels wonky trying to spam shovel with no way to expedite the process.

@otherfanboy Yes fully aware that the # of digs an item requires is crew size based.

This doesn't change the fact that the animation for digging is unbelievably slow. And heaven forbid a Galleon crew is splitting up to do their Thieves Haven digs. One person doing a "4 man dig" takes a hilariously long time.

I get it, they want us to work together to dig up every single chest, but that's just not overly realistic when multiple skilled crew members are trying to maximize efficiency with covering large islands with multiple digs.

@otherfanboy Just because something's not a problem doesn't mean it can't be improved upon. But, I get it, you don't care for the idea and that's fine.

I certainly agree that something should be done to make digging a bit more entertaining again.

Three things I liked about the animation cancel:

• Sped up an arguably dull part of the gameplay

• Acted as a kind of minigame to see how fast you can dig / try to dig before the skeletons started attacking you when solo

• Actually made me pay attention to when teammates were digging and adjust on the fly

The third point is actually the one I think I miss the most. Some of you probably notice that if you and a teammate dig at the exact same time, it only counts as a single dig. The animation cancel allowed me to stagger my dig when needed, either by speeding up or slowing down so that the digging was asynchronous.

I agree with some of the suggestions here to make a kind of timing, but I imagine a kind of click and hold mechanic.

To do a shallow dig: simply click once, the dig takes about the current length, maybe a bit shorter than current
To do a deeper dig: click and hold, the dig takes about 1.5x as long, but digs twice as deep

Chests could be put at some intermediate range in between these two extremes (shallow and deep digging), making the best combo possibly two shallow digs, one deep, or one shallow, two mediums. Who really knows? Maybe how far up the chest moves as you dig can become a visual cue for whether you do a shallow or deep dig next? Lots of possibilities here if done right.

Ideally, the animation would be smart enough that once you stop holding, it would be able to adjust the animation speed for the dig on the fly, but of course, easier said than done.

The advantage of something like this is that everyone can develop their own rhythm this way, adjust based on what their crewmates are doing, and better adjust for other environmental factors such as skeletons attacking, volcanos erupting, etc. Maybe you do small micro digs in between attacking / dodging, or do you go for the longer dig which has better efficiency overall?

I don't necessarily think the game NEEDS to improve the digging, to some of the points of naysayers, but I think digging up chests starts to lose it's luster after playing the game for some time, and small tweaks to make digging a bit less predictably slow can go a long way. It's not about making things easier, or faster necessarily, it's about making them fun.

reminded a lot of us how much of an eye rolling and tedious experience digging treasure up is

Soo your saying digging up treasures, as a Pirate would has become a tedious thing. Some can even say sailing a ship and managing it also very tedious and shouldn't be so difficult.

If you are swarmed by mobs, kill them. If digging is such a hassle, dont do it.

@sweetsandman said in Shovel Combo:

@otherfanboy Just because something's not a problem doesn't mean it can't be improved upon. But, I get it, you don't care for the idea and that's fine.

It's part of the design that you want to do things faster as a crew, if you're alone, it's long, boring and tedious. I'm in the field of maximum efficiency, as I am a very objective-based kind of player, obviously agreeing with your idea would be the most sensible move, but I understand from a game design standpoint that if you're not getting help, it's gonna be a rough scenario for you in the long run.

I've learned that the devs don't really favor self-efficiency, or extreme fluidity. When they patched this exploit, they knew what they were doing when they designed the shovel digs in the first place.

I'd argue you can't make the idea of digging something up to be anymore interesting that thinking about the prize that could be inside, or its general worth. What you would be doing while you're digging, is checking the horizon/environment after each dig, chatting with your crewmates about various things, or if you're solo, humming or listening to music to vibe to while you eventually dig up your item.

The only time digging is a problem/an inefficiency is if you're digging when you really shouldn't be, and you can figure out when you're not supposed to be digging.

@nex-stargaze Rare has already started adding small things to the game to make sessions faster... buyable supplies, quick supply transfer, the quest board... This would only help to speed up sessions even if it's by tiny amounts, and it would certainly give you the impression that you're being faster and more efficient even as a new player.

The benefits would be for both newer players and veterans. For new players, a lot of them struggle with this game because the sessions are longer than anticipated and the skill gap between them and the current crop of hunters is massive. We veterans take our skills for granted and don't wind up spending a whole lot of time on islands digging up loot. A new player may spend 20 minutes trying to find their single Marauders Chest on Wanderer's Refuge...now if they could at least feel like they're digging efficiently, they may not feel so terrible about the other 20 minutes. And for us vets, a little mini game as suggested by @jumli7 to make our digging faster would be a fun little addition.

@sweetsandman said in Shovel Combo:

@nex-stargaze Rare has already started adding small things to the game to make sessions faster... buyable supplies, quick supply transfer, the quest board... This would only help to speed up sessions even if it's by tiny amounts, and it would certainly give you the impression that you're being faster and more efficient even as a new player.

The benefits would be for both newer players and veterans. For new players, a lot of them struggle with this game because the sessions are longer than anticipated and the skill gap between them and the current crop of hunters is massive. We veterans take our skills for granted and don't wind up spending a whole lot of time on islands digging up loot. A new player may spend 20 minutes trying to find their single Marauders Chest on Wanderer's Refuge...now if they could at least feel like they're digging efficiently, they may not feel so terrible about the other 20 minutes. And for us vets, a little mini game as suggested by @jumli7 to make our digging faster would be a fun little addition.

Logic would dictate that they would have already made a way to make digging faster by the time Season 5 launched. Especially when they patched animation cancelling the bucket and shovel around the tail end of Season 4.

I'm not one to criticize the devs' mindset on such a well planned out roadmap, but I don't think they want to change the speed in which shovels dig/bury. If they did, we would have seen something like this arriving in Season 5's initial update, or if we're feeling like predicting, maybe in the eventual emporium refresh for January/February?

@nex-stargaze Quick transfer for storage crates has been requested (and a fantastic idea) since they were introduced years ago. Any truly good idea has a chance, but a long roadmap for the game and a relatively small dev team means it's got a long time before it's on the list.

Maybe they do want digging to remain the awkward and slow mechanic it has always been (sans exploit)...but maybe a good risk/reward mechanic wouldn't hurt the intended design.

Imagine this ... Hit the "combo" just right and you're rewarded with a faster dig...mess it up and you'd actually increase the cool-down between digs. Or, don't bother with it and you've got the same intended design that's always been in the game.

@sweetsandman said in Shovel Combo:

@nex-stargaze Quick transfer for storage crates has been requested (and a fantastic idea) since they were introduced years ago. Any truly good idea has a chance, but a long roadmap for the game and a relatively small dev team means it's got a long time before it's on the list.

I'm gonna put my tinfoil hat on for this, but I believe they finally added storage transferring to reduce excuses for toxic spawncamping disguised as "siphoning" supplies; Since some players thirst for sending players to the ferry more than sending a ship down into the depths, and with animation cancelling the bucket also previously being patched out, they're trying to combat players that are doing certain things that encourage toxic gameplay. If it took them years to do that, I believe it's been on the back burner for a while and they're finally trying to fight off these problematic players.

Now onto the topic of faster shoveling... A plan could be on the back burner, but unlike toxic spawncamping, shovels don't cause any actually concerning damages to the enjoyment of the players, outside of boring and frustrating players with copious amount of solo digging and frequent PvE spawns (which I swear they've been tweaking ever since Season 3 and still struggling). I don't think something like this will make full fruition, if at all, anytime soon, and these ideas, while creative and nice, still leave me skeptical on how they'd speed things up the "Rare" way.