Mining Thoughts

[Tempus]

I like the way the ores are segregated to their specific zone(s) now, but at the same time this makes a cliamte where you have to choose which ore you are after. I would like to see the veins have a longer respawn (more like when mining was first introduced) and the ores have a higher "drop" rate from the veins. To go along with this since it will make collecting ore faster if the veins you want are up we will need a balancing detriment. What I would propose is adding in Gas Pockets that will explode for AoE dmg and disturbed earth elementals both that are level appropraite for the zone and the ore that it contains.

This would promote less "afk mining" and "alt mining", a level 20 - 25 mining bot in First Ruins for example. There is enough diversity in the zones that contain the various ores that it would be improbable for any one person to "lock down" a certain zones veins with a longer respawn timer and try to corner the market. However, if that does staart to happen we could always just add some veins of that ore to a new zone.

I think a 3 - 4 hour respawn timer on veins, with a 100% increase in ore drop rate coupled with the gas pockets and mob spawns would make mining more active, fun and rewarding.

EDIT: This is just a brainstorm from me while mining so please toss our your ideas and critiques.

 

[shadowknight3]

I think the gas pockets just killing you would be more realistic and fun. Or you could be permanently rooted to that area. It's like a mine cave-in or a gas explosion. Maybe you could have mobs roaming by that you have to avoid or kill, since they'd frown upon you raping their land of its natural resources.

It does make more sense to be able to mine what you want more quickly, but with some hazards.

 

[Manguadi]

While I think the idea of making mining less of a total pain is a laudable endeavor, I think that if there were not supposed to be "alt miners", pathing would have been added into these mining areas. Your suggestions are very interesting and neat from a flavor perspective, but the same thing can be accomplished by a couple lines of code. Also, the general trend in MMOs is to provide alternative or independent means of advancement. You can be a merchant, a craftsman, or an adventurer. I can't see why we would want to require everyone to be an adventurer first, and whatever else they like second.

The only reason I can see to support this is to promote parity between the tradeskills - no other reasonably profitable harvesting can be done by low levels. But, as always, the more choices there are in my game, the happier I am. Also, the availability of mining to all levels does not seem to have made the selling price of deepmetal any different than the selling price of imp hide/SS, so I'm not convinced there is a balance issue at all.

If less "alt mining" and "afk mining" is a goal, something as simple as breaking picks, perhaps based somehow on your strength so lowbie break picks often, would force players to pay attention. However, I think harvesting is painful enough as it is, and robbing people of the ability to read, watch movies, or do homework while harvesting seems cruel.

 

[Tempus]

It does make more sense to be able to mine what you want more quickly, but with some hazards.

That was the ultimate goal of my suggestion.

 

[Soulmonger]

I think the gas pockets just killing you would be more realistic and fun.

I fail to see how randomly dieing would be fun in any way.

 

[Tempus]

If less "alt mining" and "afk mining" is a goal, something as simple as breaking picks, perhaps based somehow on your strength so lowbie break picks often, would force players to pay attention. However, I think harvesting is painful enough as it is, and robbing people of the ability to read, watch movies, or do homework while harvesting seems cruel.

The idea is to spend an hour actively mining something with hazards instead of 4 - 5 hours "afk mining" with basically zero risk at all to get the same ore.

The only reason I can see to support this is to promote parity between the tradeskills - no other reasonably profitable harvesting can be done by low levels. But, as always, the more choices there are in my game, the happier I am. Also, the availability of mining to all levels does not seem to have made the selling price of deepmetal any different than the selling price of imp hide/SS, so I'm not convinced there is a balance issue at all.

Clearly the only items smiths and tailors can make are Deepmetal / Imp Hide / Shadow Silk, and the rest be damned eh?

While I think the idea of making mining less of a total pain is a laudable endeavor, I think that if there were not supposed to be "alt miners", pathing would have been added into these mining areas.

syduck: That is a wild assumption on your part that every scenario and situation can be dervied before implementing anything. Many, many times things are altered or changed after they have been live for a while so your logic on this, that they would have had pathing, is irrelevant.

Your suggestions are very interesting and neat from a flavor perspective, but the same thing can be accomplished by a couple lines of code.

I am pretty sure you are not a one of the coding developers here so lets reserve those judgements for them.

Also, the general trend in MMOs is to provide alternative or independent means of advancement. You can be a merchant, a craftsman, or an adventurer. I can't see why we would want to require everyone to be an adventurer first, and whatever else they like second.

There is still plenty of ways to advance yourself on the server even if mining was made more dangerous and rewarding. This doesn't require you to be an adventurer first, it just prevents you from taking your level 25 alt into a level 65+ area and happily mining the day away. It will still allow you to mine at all levels so pretty much this argument is moot.

 

[Tempus]

I fail to see how randomly dieing would be fun in any way.

I have to agree here, that a death touch would be a bit much. However, and aoe big enough to kill a level 25 character who is mining ghostmetal, but not big enough to kill a level 45 character mining the same would be more what I had in mind.

 

[Manguadi]

If you want stuff to come and beat you up while you're mining, then why not just have ore drop from mobs in the zone. You're making a very complicated suggestion here. Mining is one of the truly different thing from just killing stuff that you can do. If you mingle it with fighting, it loses that distinctiveness.

 

[Minerios]

I like mining the way it is now, but if it is to be changed to include more risk, I'd really like to see a way to make this risk avoidable. As a stupid example, instead of having a cave-in or explosion, you could threaten the integrity of the gallery (spawn some "a structural failure" around you), and you'd have to fix these quickly before the actual damage occurs (either "killing" these or using a second item on them, I don't know, an "emergency kit" with the right-click effect of "fix structure"). That way, a character who is mining in a zone dangerous for him can still do it (after all, not everybody mining in a zone too dangerous for hunting is a mining bot), but you have to pay some mind to what you are doing or risk dying.

Anyway, I'm not yet of a smithing level to be after the most valuable ore, but is there really a problem with widespread mine camping?

 

[Manguadi]

I like mining the way it is now, but if it is to be changed to include more risk, I'd really like to see a way to make this risk avoidable. As a stupid example, instead of having a cave-in or explosion, you could threaten the integrity of the gallery (spawn some "a structural failure" around you), and you'd have to fix these quickly before the actual damage occurs (either "killing" these or using a second item on them, I don't know, an "emergency kit" with the right-click effect of "fix structure"). That way, a character who is mining in a zone dangerous for him can still do it (after all, not everybody mining in a zone too dangerous for hunting is a mining bot), but you have to pay some mind to what you are doing or risk dying.

Anyway, I'm not yet of a smithing level to be after the most valuable ore, but is there really a problem with widespread mine camping?

I think this is a great idea. Tradeskilling that includes hackneyed mini-games is much better than tradeskilling that involves moving once in awhile.

As for mine camping, that's not the whole problem. It takes forever with no risk involved. If risk can be added to also increase the reward, everybody wins.

 

[GuiardoTuneweaver]

I must say I'm against the idea of making mining more dangerous. Mining, like fishing, is exceedingly boring and for the most part done while your attention is on something else. Making it so that it's randomly dangerous, makes you put your attention on the mining for long exceedingly boring stretches so you don't die when one of these events happens to come along.

Also, this proposal would introduce class-balancing issues to mining. A mage or necro can still essentially afk-mine, as when they get attacked their pet will take care of the killing. But what about a warrior or rogue miner? A couple random spawns in a row (or even a single) of level-appropriate mobs could make short work of certain classes.

If you want stuff to come and beat you up while you're mining, then why not just have ore drop from mobs in the zone. You're making a very complicated suggestion here. Mining is one of the truly different thing from just killing stuff that you can do. If you mingle it with fighting, it loses that distinctiveness.

I completely agree with this solution (although I know Tempus doesn't =P).

If your main concern is with alt-mining such as your FR example, put level limits on the ore as well as skill limits (so only a 60+ character can mine deepmetal, for example). I however think this is a horrible idea, as 1) those alts are really the only way to effectively mine any amount of deepmetal, and 2) it's a huge hit to all those people who decided to do their tradeskilling on an alt instead of their main. Are similar restrictions to come for alt-fishers? Alt smith, tailors, brewers, and alchemists?

Mining is a much easiery (able to be done afk) way of gathering materials for smithing than farming materials for tailoring (as an example), and I personally would like to see this addressed in some way. However, I don't think this proposal is the solution, as tailors can buy their materials from others who happen to get them while XPing, whereas nobody mines for xp. I think the mobs-dropping-ore proposal would be a much better solution for this disparity.

As an aside:

The idea is to spend an hour actively mining something with hazards instead of 4 - 5 hours "afk mining" with basically zero risk at all to get the same ore.

But you say increase the drop rate by 100%, so you're really talking about an hour of actively mining (which again, will be for the most part very boring) instead of 2 hours "afk mining", not 4-5.

 

[Tempus]

If you want stuff to come and beat you up while you're mining, then why not just have ore drop from mobs in the zone. You're making a very complicated suggestion here. Mining is one of the truly different thing from just killing stuff that you can do. If you mingle it with fighting, it loses that distinctiveness.

I personally have no problem with this, but I think that it might undermine the miners (no pun intended)

I must say I'm against the idea of making mining more dangerous. Mining, like fishing, is exceedingly boring and for the most part done while your attention is on something else. Making it so that it's randomly dangerous, makes you put your attention on the mining for long exceedingly boring stretches so you don't die when one of these events happens to come along.

I am not sure that, "we need more boring semi-afk skills than fishing", is a good reason to just leave mining as it is.

Also, this proposal would introduce class-balancing issues to mining. A mage or necro can still essentially afk-mine, as when they get attacked their pet will take care of the killing. But what about a warrior or rogue miner? A couple random spawns in a row (or even a single) of level-appropriate mobs could make short work of certain classes.

Level-appropriate was based on the ore being mined and the zone you are mining in, not the player doing the mining. So you are taking that about 70% out of context. All that was to mean was mithril zones would spawn easier things than deepmetal zones. I am not advocating death traps here, just something to keep you honest.

If your main concern is with alt-mining such as your FR example, put level limits on the ore as well as skill limits (so only a 60+ character can mine deepmetal, for example). I however think this is a horrible idea, as 1) those alts are really the only way to effectively mine any amount of deepmetal, and 2) it's a huge hit to all those people who decided to do their tradeskilling on an alt instead of their main.

No, my main concern is that it is a massively boring thing to do that is required for use in an actual tradeskill.

Are similar restrictions to come for alt-fishers? Alt smith, tailors, brewers, and alchemists?

Yes they already exist, tailors have to get drops from increasingly harder level mobs to do their craft, as do brewers and iirc alchemist. Mining is not the same as smithing, tailoring, brewing or alchemy, and trying to compare apples to oranges in absurd. It is similar to fishing, but the difference is you don't need fish for anything I know of except baking and Tmaps can be farmed as well as caught. The ONLY WAY to get the ore you need is to mine it, for hours and hours on end with no way to increase your reward if you increase your risk. (Excepting twisted ore)

Mining is a much easiery (able to be done afk) way of gathering materials for smithing than farming materials for tailoring (as an example), and I personally would like to see this addressed in some way. However, I don't think this proposal is the solution, as tailors can buy their materials from others who happen to get them while XPing, whereas nobody mines for xp. I think the mobs-dropping-ore proposal would be a much better solution for this disparity.

Easier? No. It is safer to a certain degree, but it is pretty damned easy to just pay someone who happend to get a few hides, furs or silks while they were exping, or go and get exp yourself while farming hides, silk or furs.

Like I said already I have no problem with mobs dropping ore, but that pretty much trivializes mining ore.

As an aside:

But you say increase the drop rate by 100%, so you're really talking about an hour of actively mining (which again, will be for the most part very boring) instead of 2 hours "afk mining", not 4-5.

You are absolutely correct in that my math was off here. I am trying to discuss the concept overall, and the fine details can be tweaked if in the end the concept holds merit. But let me rephrase to say "Increase the drop rate by and appropriate amount, to allow for the same amount of ore to be dropped in 1 hour as 4 hours takes now" so that we can avoid any future mathmatical mistakes on my part clouding the actual issue I am trying to discuss.

I like mining the way it is now, but if it is to be changed to include more risk, I'd really like to see a way to make this risk avoidable. As a stupid example, instead of having a cave-in or explosion, you could threaten the integrity of the gallery (spawn some "a structural failure" around you), and you'd have to fix these quickly before the actual damage occurs (either "killing" these or using a second item on them, I don't know, an "emergency kit" with the right-click effect of "fix structure"). That way, a character who is mining in a zone dangerous for him can still do it (after all, not everybody mining in a zone too dangerous for hunting is a mining bot), but you have to pay some mind to what you are doing or risk dying.

Anyway, I'm not yet of a smithing level to be after the most valuable ore, but is there really a problem with widespread mine camping?

I like this idea. So that if you just keep bangning away at the mining pick you are gonna get smacked. Like I said originally what I would like to find is a viable way to make mining more risky AND more rewarding WHILE making it less of an overall time sink. Just as Gunder pointed out, right now you click on a movie and just start spamming the mining pick.

EDIT: Sorry fixed a few typos and cleaned up some formatting ot make it easier to read.

 

[GuiardoTuneweaver]

I am not sure that, "we need more boring semi-afk skills than fishing", is a good reason to just leave mining as it is.

That was not the point at all. The point was either make it interactive, or leave it afk-ish. Don't try to mix the two so that it's really boring but you have to pay attention anyway.

Mining is a much easiery (able to be done afk) way of gathering materials for smithing than farming materials for tailoring (as an example), and I personally would like to see this addressed in some way. However, I don't think this proposal is the solution, as tailors can buy their materials from others who happen to get them while XPing, whereas nobody mines for xp. I think the mobs-dropping-ore proposal would be a much better solution for this disparity.

Easier? No. It is safer to a certain degree, but it is pretty damned easy to just pay someone who happend to get a few hides, furs or silks while they were exping, or go and get exp yourself while farming hides, silk or furs.

Mining is easier than farming materials (yourself) for tailoring, not than buying them from others. That was the point I was trying to make... Miners can't "get exp yourself while" mining, nor will people mine while XPing. Making mining less AFKish, while not making it fully interactive and XPish will make it even harder for smiths to buy their materials from others, which is "easy" for tailors (etc.) to do now.

Level-appropriate was based on the ore being mined not the player doing the mining. So you are taking that 100% out of context. All that was to mean was mithril zones would spawn easier things than deepmetal zones. I am not advocating death traps here, just something to keep you honest.

Sorry, you are right, I wasn't thinking about it completely right. Although its still true that a 65 mage/necro mining in a 30s zone can still do it afk while their pet takes care of spawns, while a warrior/rogue would have to switch the pick for weapons to dispatch the baddies.

And about the math, I did say it was an aside. I wasn't trying to distract from the main topic.



What about something combining the mining skill with the ability to xp... something along the lines of a fusion between mining and treasure hunting. Maybe like indoor tmaps but requiring mining skill instead of digging. Take a group into a dungon and mine to spawn mobs and dig up treasure, which would contain some significant amount of ore. That way you're xping and not trivializing mining. You might require some sort of special map (maybe also obtained by regular mining?), so it's not an unlimited source of xp/loot. Lots of details to flesh out here, just an idea.

 

[Tempus]

What about something combining the mining skill with the ability to xp... something along the lines of a fusion between mining and treasure hunting. Maybe like indoor tmaps but requiring mining skill instead of digging. Take a group into a dungon and mine to spawn mobs and dig up treasure, which would contain some significant amount of ore. That way you're xping and not trivializing mining. You might require some sort of special map (maybe also obtained by regular mining?), so it's not an unlimited source of xp/loot. Lots of details to flesh out here, just an idea.

That seems pretty interesting to me, and definitely worth pondering about.

Mining is easier than farming materials (yourself) for tailoring, not than buying them from others. That was the point I was trying to make... Miners can't "get exp yourself while" mining, nor will people mine while XPing. Making mining less AFKish, while not making it fully interactive and XPish will make it even harder for smiths to buy their materials from others, which is "easy" for tailors (etc.) to do now.

I am saying lets make it more interactive AND faster to get ore. So that you can just mine for 30 mins - 1 hour and still get something accomplished. Right now the reason that mining is pretty much perfetly safe and able to be done semi-afk is that it has the draw back of taking tons of time.

 

[Ponden]

I would just like to add that I personally looked into mining as a possibly fun skill to work up, maybe make some cash, etc.
Its not even close to being worth my time.
To keep this clean -- lets just say ANYTHING to make this skill more interesting/enjoyable/challenging/ whatever -- gets my full support.

 

[shadowknight3]

I was just thinking perhaps you could create concrete from mining garbage (rocks or whatever you get that doesn't have a use), and use that to patch holes/cracks that may develop.

I still think the cave-in or explosion could be a neat, but rare occurence, kind of like the effects in MoP, that make it more interesting. It wouldn't have to kill you, in fact it might be cooler to get "black lung" from mining - which has some detrimental effect.

 

[lynnettell]

I absolutely abhor this idea. For a few reasons, one of which is I do semi AFK mine...

The *only* real way to make money in smithing is to mine yourself. I have had many, many in depth conversations about my prices on smithing, to the point that I did raise them because my time is worth something. You simply cannot be a successful smith, and not have an alt miner OR buy ore. Combine into that the highest ore you can mine is basically ONLY mineable in FR (yes, I do know there are other places, but no where you can solo at even 65 and spend hours mining.... yes, at a 1.6% chance of DM last check, even sitting & clicking mine non stop, it takes about four hours to get a stack, and trust me, I've done it many times!!).

I have THREE 250 miners... myself and two rogue alts. I levelled to 250 on Kero first, just to find out, much to my dismay, I could never mine deepmetal solo. So... here comes the rogue.

If you make the ore more challenging to get, yet mined more readily, it's going to screw up the economy.

A. Everyone & their brother is going to start mining, when they don't even bother to smith it, which is going to drive the price of ore down, and people are going to look for prices to drop even further than they are already on DM, which is flat out not gonna happen, due to the other component costs involved. When I started mining DM on my rogue, I couldn't even smith it yet, I sold it to get money to level in smithing. Back then, 2k a stack was the going rate (and we're only talking last fall), I'd sell to a couple folks at a discount price of 1.5k a stack that I knew would buy at any time. The market is flooded with miner bot alts trying to make money to the point I've seen ore for 1k-1.2k a stack. I've dropped my DM to an all time server low, due to the fact I *do* semi AFK mine on two rogues on my days off & have things to do, so I rarely if ever buy ore. Want to see 1k deepmetal, and trivialize the thousands spent getting to 250? Well, I ain't playing that game. I'll tailor first, since I have a 250 in that as well.

B. Everyone is going to try to be a smith, much like everyone wants to be a tailor when they see how much they can farm their own stuff & make money. So market will be flooded, just like it is right now with lack of SS/Imphide sales. My DM sales already <insert nasty word> on listsold, the only way I sell stuff is if I do combo deals with augs.

C. It ain't broke for what it's intended for. Don't fix it for smiths. Mining is good for one thing right now... for smiths. And I've said since I was level 20ish when I started smithing, if you don't bother to mine your own at least sometimes, you're not going to make money smithing.

D. Want to do something interesting with mining? There's been TONS of proposals, including mining gold, silver, plat, gems, etc., so jewelers can use things, and add something else to the skill besides just smithing. I can mine silver ore, why can't I make it into ingots usable in jewelry?

Mining is easier than farming materials (yourself) for tailoring, not than buying them from others. That was the point I was trying to make... Miners can't "get exp yourself while" mining, nor will people mine while XPing. Making mining less AFKish, while not making it fully interactive and XPish will make it even harder for smiths to buy their materials from others, which is "easy" for tailors (etc.) to do now.

Mining is easier, but *way* more time consuming. I can easily go farm furs, silks, etc. (with the exception of the horrid kedgewater drop rate) and exp at the same time and I would make more money actually vendoring on the tailor, than I do now selling my smithed stuff. There *is* a reason that ExQ Type 2 augs sell for 225, and ExQ Type 5 augs sell for 400... it's the component cost. You're not going to find anyone now selling four ghost/warp ore for 50pp each... which is what ice kobold furs go for (four ore for aug, two furs for lining). Our component other costs on those augs is higher, but the augs themselves are lower, due to the fact... YOU CAN MINE IT!

There are many options to do with mining, that have nothing to do with making it a non semi AFK thing.

 

[Tempus]

So having massive amounts of time that you can spend semi-afk clicking a button over and over is a pre-requisite to being a successful smith / miner and you don't see a problem with that?

The sheer fact that you had to MAKE NOT ONE BUT TWO ALTS to do your mining for you is proof in of itself that mining is a bit wonky. It should be viable for miners to mine many types of ore, not just make a few alts and swear them to the right diety so that after they sneak hide down into the midddle of FR they can extract ore AT ZERO RISK.

If you make the ore more challenging to get, yet mined more readily, it's going to screw up the economy.

That is pretty rediculous as it is something that can always be tweaked after implementation if it is putting too much or too little ore into circulation too fast or too slow.

A. Everyone & their brother is going to start mining, when they don't even bother to smith it, which is going to drive the price of ore down, and people are going to look for prices to drop even further than they are already on DM, which is flat out not gonna happen, due to the other component costs involved. When I started mining DM on my rogue, I couldn't even smith it yet, I sold it to get money to level in smithing. Back then, 2k a stack was the going rate (and we're only talking last fall), I'd sell to a couple folks at a discount price of 1.5k a stack that I knew would buy at any time. The market is flooded with miner bot alts trying to make money to the point I've seen ore for 1k-1.2k a stack. I've dropped my DM to an all time server low, due to the fact I *do* semi AFK mine on two rogues on my days off & have things to do, so I rarely if ever buy ore. Want to see 1k deepmetal, and trivialize the thousands spent getting to 250? Well, I ain't playing that game. I'll tailor first, since I have a 250 in that as well.

This is just a wild assumption on your part that people will flock to be miners, most people on the server don't give two shits about doing a tradeskill themselves. Hence. the reason you can make a profit smithing. They won't suddenly just get all giddy and change the entire way they play because mining got made less of a timesink. If you are implying that prices on Deepmetal armor would fall to 1k then you are just being silly.

B. Everyone is going to try to be a smith, much like everyone wants to be a tailor when they see how much they can farm their own stuff & make money. So market will be flooded, just like it is right now with lack of SS/Imphide sales. My DM sales already <insert nasty word> on listsold, the only way I sell stuff is if I do combo deals with augs.

Uhh, just cause you make mining less of a MASSIVE TIME SINK FROM HELL does not mean that everyone on the server will instantly decide to invest all the time, effort and money into skilling up smithing. Meh, any ancedotal market comments about right now are still in the wke of the BoE changes.

C. It ain't broke for what it's intended for. Don't fix it for smiths. Mining is good for one thing right now... for smiths. And I've said since I was level 20ish when I started smithing, if you don't bother to mine your own at least sometimes, you're not going to make money smithing.

You can make lots of money smithing and buying your ore. I know, I have done it, but I also have 2-250 skill miners as well. Mining is not part of blacksmithing. It was implemented as an independent skill that should be useful to people who don't even smith for the selling of ore.

D. Want to do something interesting with mining? There's been TONS of proposals, including mining gold, silver, plat, gems, etc., so jewelers can use things, and add something else to the skill besides just smithing. I can mine silver ore, why can't I make it into ingots usable in jewelry?

So you make to make mining more profitable while not increasing the risk at all? Would you leave First Ruins and go mine some silver ore? I highly doubt that you would, becuase the only place to get the most out of your mining skill is on 2 rog alts you made expressly for the purpose of mining the highest level ore at zero risk to yourself.

Mining is easier, but *way* more time consuming. I can easily go farm furs, silks, etc. (with the exception of the horrid kedgewater drop rate) and exp at the same time and I would make more money actually vendoring on the tailor, than I do now selling my smithed stuff. There *is* a reason that ExQ Type 2 augs sell for 225, and ExQ Type 5 augs sell for 400... it's the component cost. You're not going to find anyone now selling four ghost/warp ore for 50pp each... which is what ice kobold furs go for (four ore for aug, two furs for lining). Our component other costs on those augs is higher, but the augs themselves are lower, due to the fact... YOU CAN MINE IT!

WTH does this even mean? You can mine it now, under my suggestion you will still be able to mine it so i fail to see the point of this.

There are many options to do with mining, that have nothing to do with making it a non semi AFK thing.

There are none that I have heard that do not increase the risk as they increase the reward.

 

[GuiardoTuneweaver]

I've dropped my DM to an all time server low, due to the fact I *do* semi AFK mine on two rogues on my days off & have things to do, so I rarely if ever buy ore. Want to see 1k deepmetal, and trivialize the thousands spent getting to 250?

Wait, you've undercut all the other smiths on the server to sell your DM at "an all time server low" (essentially starting a price war), and you're worried about prices dropping? syduck:

 

[le12ro]

Mining shouldn't me changed, and i agree with the people who defended mining. Efforts should be put into changing/alternating different tradeskills - mining is, in my opinion, fine as it is now.