Are portal networks a commodity now?

Oort isn’t that hard to get. Join a meteor hunt or two and you’ll be set for weeks =D.

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yeah, I did a few 1-3lvl meteors, got plenty. Maybe I could maintain my own network, haven’t actually tried :thinking:

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Exactly. Everyone acts like it is insanely difficult to get oortstone. Hell, I hunt just me and my girlfriend and we get a few hundred oortstone in a small amount of time.

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I find it so funny seeing so many people say they would quit if the hubs wernt a thing. The old gaming days are so dead now days. Everyone just wants the easiest way to the top. No hard work no feel of accomplishment. Such a sad thing to witness.

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To be honest, when we started playing we knew nothing about portal hubs or the main city on planets. We spent a week in the wilderness semi bored of the minecraft clone. Then we ran into a guy @Knightsb! Calling you out guvna! who opened our eyes to the portal hubs. And we were addicted to Boundless since. Even backed the game to the Master level cause we enjoyed it so much.

Several months later, here we are helping run Ultima Hub and enjoying sharing that feeling with others. It’s just a shame there are so many people running around acting like these places shouldn’t exist.

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Agreed. I don’t think there would be a mass quitting at all if hubs were just demoed or portals were made to work so that networks wouldn’t be practical or efficient to do. I think the game would be played how the devs originally envisioned it. Theres a pretty large martyr complex as far as those networks go. People keep making a footfall argument about portal networks, but footfall is the least of the problems that are associated with these hub networks.

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I think we’d find a way. Between all the people making networks, we’d find a way to make it happen :slight_smile:

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So I understand. Tell me, what’s the problem with portal networks? Why do you believe they should be removed?

For me it’s not even the top that I’m looking for. Just want my time to be well spent is all. Its not about the faster route to being #1.

But I also dont want to waste time grinding for 3 months just so i can get my first gold ore.

I understand the hard work, most of the people playing this game remember old gaming. But having balance is important if you want a healthy game.

Grind is fine. I like some grind. But I want to make progress too, dont want to waste night after night unable to see the build I want to coalesce into something.

I think it’s a little much to expect people to grind 6+ months on a single game to just see the basic worlds, on top of all that life has to offer.

I know right. Could you imagine? Portal Seekers and Ultima… working together? :wink:

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I’m sure you would :wink: Thats what an involved fanbase does. They can take the tools a developer gives them and come up with ingenious ideas. I just happen to feel that it’s not a good idea for the game, just the one biggest reason pointed out already in that it gives players much easier access to areas far outside their ‘abilities’.

But on the flipside of that conversation, many people who do use those portals to planets ‘outside their current abilities’ find a way to make that work for them and often get a netgain out of it. There’s a vast majority of the population who aren’t doing that though hence we’ve seen a lot of complaints about coils/gems/ores/etc.

Like I said, it’s a Pandora situation. We can’t unbox what we’ve opened now. Which is why I suggest the current networks run as they do and future planet generation take that in to account and give warping a reason to exist.

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Okay. We are going to take your advice on this. All hubs will now be built underground. If you want to go to a planet you can dig out through the hub’s walls. If you’re unable to, then you’re not meant to be there :wink:

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so there has been talk about temporary planets that can’t be beaconed. Since portals need a beacon, that means they wont be portalable either. This might be something like what you’re looking for?

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I really have no clue why you are such a defensive individual. If you built underground to ‘block’ people, someone else would just build a new network to service ‘the blocked’.

Such a silly suggestion.

I don’t think so, but I don’t think it should cost same to open personal portal and one you want others to use :slight_smile:

I think I even referenced them in this thread in my 1st or 2nd post…

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I like portal hubs and have no issues with them, but I can see that other people are not so happy about portal hubs and I think their points are fair. I do not think Portal Hubs are going anywhere, they have been around too long and their removal would most certainly kill the game. So what can be done to solve the portal hub problem?

Since portals are not going anywhere, then something needs to happen to them. I see two options, personally:

  1. Give portals travel time.

or…

  1. Tax portals.

I do not think hubs themselves are the problem, but they are too convenient: it costs players nothing to use them. On any given day playing, I must travel through portals at least nine times without a care in the world because it is no skin off my teeth. I build my main home on Alcyon and I run my shop on Boori. I travel to Storis II for easy to get Ash, Sand, Silty, Peat, Wood, and Sap. I go to Serpensarindi because my favorite hunting spot is not far from the PS hub there. I tell ya, I would be doing this stuff A LOT less if they took more time or took coin from me.

On the other hand…

I feel like taking this from me would make me quit the game :confused: I already log on these days kind of meh sometimes and when I cannot get somewhere I want to go easily, I just log off. For example, Cardass was down the other night and I wanted to work on my shop in Boori. I build my home on Alcyon and the only portal I can get to easily that goes to Boori is a network that runs through Cardass. There were other activities for me to do, but I WANTED to work on my shop. Since shop access was not an easy thing for me, I just logged off for the night.

In conclusion
I think the best option is to time gate travel through portals. Travel time is not a foreign concept to video games: World of Warcraft and Eve both famously implemented travel times and it is arguably one of their best features. A time gate on portal travel would not take anything from the players, really, but it would make portal travel annoying enough that players will make different decisions about using local shops instead of running to the cheap ones or just going to farm what they need and influence the economy. Just make the travel time interesting so players are not just sitting their and twiddling their thumbs… Maybe a wormhole mini game where we can grab random coin amounts or a special block/material or some sort of monster shooter where we can get some experience blasting foes (these ideas remind me of minigames in games like Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, Phantasy Star Online, and Kingdom Hearts). These are just ideas, but I think it would be a nice compromise.

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A portal tax! that is a genius idea. All users should have to pay a portal tax. This would be a great sink to compete with the lack of sink that exists now that warping isn’t so common.

See, an ingenious idea from an ingenious fanbase.

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As molav said, it’s nothing about being number 1 to the top or a rush to end game. But I don’t feel like spending hours of my time running around an empty planet in the slim hope that I’ll manage to find some random shop selling whatever items I need to finish of a craft or having to spend all the coin I make warping to another planet where I just make enough coin to be able to get home or end up stranded with no access to any of my things.

The game isn’t populated enough to manage us being stuck of tier 1 planets for weeks on end and no access to easy travel

I would fully endorse this. Make people pay to use portal hubs. Not even give the money to the hub owner, just a coin dump so people are more "Maybe I shouldn’t hop through 50 portals today*

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