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This is one of the player types that I cater to when designing a game; a higher order of the Explorer archetype, ones that like to explore the game rather than the world.
One of my fondest moments in my mud coding career occurred after I had added some rudimentary gemology to the mud. I had given a class of players* the ability to mine gems in addition to other ores, and to "cut" them. These gems could then be attached to player-made equipment to enhance them in some way. Very Diablo, yes.
My release of this change was essentially "There's a bunch of gems you can do stuff with. Have fun!"
One player in particular began cataloguing these new gems and their properties in earnest. Indeed, she had found fifteen of the sixteen gem types out there. Then, something unexpected happened. She had practiced gemcutting (and had increased the ability through repeated use) to such a degree that a part of my code kicked in, producing a "perfectly" cut gem instead of a "carefully" cut gem, changing its properties significantly. This, as the game-explorer type, pleased her greatly as she had not exhausted this new feature at all! The ensuing statement "Wow!" pleased me, as the designer of the system, even more greatly.
In an earlier post, I gave a choice of two schools of thought, both of which ultimately lead to the same conclusion. In this post I wish to make the point that these are not fixed philosophies. It is perfectly fine to give away formulae, as long as they work as expected. If you're "85% good" at something, then you'd better succeed 85% of the time. Anything else just doesn't make sense. It's equally possible to make the discovery of the system part of the game itself, however.
Kas.
*the supplier class. A player generally had two classes - one combatitive and one professional. A supplier was responsible for extracting and refining resources to be used in player-made equipment.
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