[REQUEST] Mine/herb node frequency tracker.

[Mohfuu]

I was wondering if there existed, or if it were possible to make an addon that does some of these functions..

• Track when you last mined a node. Not for specific nodes but to help you grasp how much time has passed since you last mined a node. This could be a timer that resets every time you mine a new node.
• Track what your avarage nodes mined per minute is and in which zone and what nodes you have mined.
• Keep logs of your "mining sessions" - what you mined, where, for what duration and what amount was mined.

The purpose of this addon would be to figure out what route is optimal in which zone and for farming a specific type of ore, perhaps even what time of day is most profitable to go mining. I guess there is no actual way of making an addon realize when you start and stop mining, so I guess an on/off button would be best?

[Seerah]

Not what you were looking for, but you mentioned finding optimal routes. Have you tried the addon Routes in combination with Gathermate2?

[Xinhuan]

Gatherer records some of the information you are asking for (the time you last mined it, the number of times you mined a specific node), and has a HuD that shows you a heatmap of the areas you last flew over based on time. Routes works with Gatherer as well.

[Crissa]

I'm not sure how this would be helpful. Node locations aren't more or less common than other locations - you'd be reading trends that aren't there. And you have no data when a node gets mined by someone else.

I don't know if anyone wants to know, but circa 3.0 nodes were put on the map in 'sets'. These sets would respawn based upon the same timer; and only n of these would ever be up at any one time. Sometimes sets would overlap, and sometimes a set would overlap zones. Some sets would have a rare setting, and their rare version would pop less often - this meant that if you did not pick the mundane version, the rare version would not repop in that location and you've eventually run out of the rare version. Same for nodes with bonus items; if you take the bonus items and leave the base, the bonus items would not repop.

I doubt they've changed this model because having less timer operations on a server is beneficial to overall latency of processes. They do see to have put altogether more nodes in any revamped zone.

Lastly, I've never seen anyone else actually write this stuff up except at Gatherer. I got kicked from a guild once for explaining this to another member... Alas.

-Crissa

[Xinhuan]

Originally Posted by Crissa Lastly, I've never seen anyone else actually write this stuff up except at Gatherer. I got kicked from a guild once for explaining this to another member... Alas.

Lol what??

[Mohfuu]

I've never heard any of that before, Crissa, and I'm not sure I fully grasp it, do you have a source of some kind for this information?
But what you're saying is that the world respawns nodes based on a timer and any one person will never be able to optimize a route based on the information that a "mining-frequency tracker" would gather.

Seerah, thanks for the suggestion but I have unfortunately tried "gathermate2" in conjunction with "routes" and found that I limiting my routes is more effective than flying across every route in the map. Yes I know there is a "taboo-option" but the addon is just too micro-managerial/rigid/detailed for my purposes. And I would argue that the optimal "route" would not necessarily fly past every single node but rather attempt to make a route that flies past an optimal "potential nodes discovered per second" over an "optimal duration" (in length and time) and that those two factors relate to eachother.

[Mohfuu]

Originally Posted by Crissa Lastly, I've never seen anyone else actually write this stuff up except at Gatherer. I got kicked from a guild once for explaining this to another member... Alas. -Crissa

Sorry to hear that, was this by any chance on the european realm "Aggramar" I just had the weirdest sense of deja vu. And where was this discussed at gatherer?

[Crissa]

Originally Posted by Mohfuu I've never heard any of that before, Crissa, and I'm not sure I fully grasp it, do you have a source of some kind for this information?

Mostly original research. When they changed the map sizes without changing the data on the maps (at 1.8. 2.0. 3.0) I was able to gather in some zones solo without interference and map out their patterns. This gave me a predictive model which continued to run positive through 3.0 - I'd scan the server for players in the zone, collect nodes, and scan for players. This way I was able to check for interference of my guesses and find segments of the server which were not active with other gatherers.

However, it isn't as certain as people who have hacked servers or getitng NDI (non-disclosable information) from devs. And off the top of my head I can't link back to anyone else who has done this.

But what you're saying is that the world respawns nodes based on a timer and any one person will never be able to optimize a route based on the information that a "mining-frequency tracker" would gather.

That's that I'm saying, yes. It would be better to track your path and then count the number of nodes you got information on/gathered at and then compare the paths. The human brain is far better at this stuff than computers, anyhow.

-Crissa

No, it was on Silver Hand (US). Although, the guy who did it was EU, an annoying kid who had just been promoted to officer. He never did like it whenever I'd explain anything or link to resources - game info or not. His official reason was 'spamming the guild channel'. I'd already gotten kicked out of the raiding group he was involved in (our guild was split between different raiders) for pointing out their hypocrisy (and not showing up on healing meters that didn't measure heals-over-time and therefore didn't count most Druid heals). I can't help it, I'm argumentative and care more about programming than guild drama.

[Xinhuan]

Originally Posted by Mohfuu Seerah, thanks for the suggestion but I have unfortunately tried "gathermate2" in conjunction with "routes" and found that I limiting my routes is more effective than flying across every route in the map. Yes I know there is a "taboo-option" but the addon is just too micro-managerial/rigid/detailed for my purposes. And I would argue that the optimal "route" would not necessarily fly past every single node but rather attempt to make a route that flies past an optimal "potential nodes discovered per second" over an "optimal duration" (in length and time) and that those two factors relate to eachother.

You could be right that a better route revolves around "potential nodes discovered per second", but there is no method to measure these objectively. You could get ganked while herbing. You could be distracted by a phone call, increasing your time to fly around. You could see a rare mob triggered by _NPCScan. Your 1 hour flying around herbing might really be 50 minutes and an addon wouldn't know.

You simply can't measure stuff like "nodes found per minute" for a given arbitrary area without a very large margin of error, and even then, this value is largely meaningless because it would change based on the time of the day. You might have diligently measured how many nodes you did in 1 hour today at 2pm, got 52 nodes, then another 1 hour at 8pm got 26 nodes. Then another 1 hour on Saturday's 8pm and got only 20 nodes. Now what?

It's not practical to store these sparse data that will vary across servers, regions (US vs EU, etc), seasonal influence, weekday/weekend influence, temporary demand spikes due to a patch, etc.