Coin Generation on Reserved Plots (block farms)

Suggestions
1

With this suggestion I’m hoping to help the block farms out there. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve noticed that setting up a sand, dirt, or other block farm tends to be more of a charity act than an effective way to create footfall and help the community at the same time. Footfall is supposed to reward useful builds, but what happens with these farms is that someone comes just one time, you get your 60 coin pittance, and then dutifully refill the portal.

The only ones making coin here are the people who own the portal networks. So I would suggest increasing footfall when blocks are mined in reserved plots. This would be great for mines as well, encouraging better mines, and potentially fewer private mines.

3 Likes
2

How are you going to track a reserved plot in the context you are talking about versus the reserved areas that are way below?

3

I think you should just get somehow rewarded for running a portal, which at the moment you don’t. And the only way to make money from a portal is to run a shop and sell more. I think it’s a big flaw in the game that running a portal is very expensive and doesn’t reward you for doing it. And the only way to make money of other players is by running a shop.

Reserved plots in a farm are “not reachable” from the outside. The game can detect that, afaik. (James once mentioned that it would be possible to not show gems on the atlas that are not reachable by everyone)

3 Likes
4

So you are saying the plots above, below, and all the way around are plotted completely to leave only a select set of unplotted plots in the middle of that cube?

What happens if a person misses a plot or does not plot under or above?

5

I don’t think it would make a big difference whether someone was digging what you advertised as your farm or if they happened to be digging below it. If, for some reason, the plots did need to be specifically tracked, there’s always the possibility of adding different types of plots or enclosing the plots like @scrufola had mentioned. Making sure the plots don’t have gaps would be up to the player.

6

Well in this case I’ll buy plots and reserve all the hotspots in the entire universe. Lol. This also cannot work with this particular coding.

7

With these farms if its actually useful people would be coming by multiple times to keep on getting blocks and you would be making footfall from it. If your not getting any i guess that would mean people arent using it or maybe people dont know about a portal to it that you have.

8

This actually would make quite a big difference because there is TONS of reserved land that aren’t farms, and there’s no way to designate what is/isn’t a farm. If you gave people a choice to mark their beacon as a farm, everyone would to get the revenue from their reserved areas.

9

This leads off topic but they could make portals pay “footfall” and take it off of plots entirely, I wouldn’t mind.

4 Likes
10

Actually it works nicely in theory, because people are unlikely to do anything besides use the farm for its purpose. I’d like to know just who would be digging rocks all day underneath someone’s mud farm. If the farm was placed well enough, and landed over some ores as well, it would be just as well if that added into the extra coin generated.

11

This should be true, but if I remember footfall rules correctly, you will get a set amount per player, per day. So even if they run back and forth, filling their inventory each time, you still only get those first few coins. Most players spend as much time as possible on single tasks so their time is used more efficiently. So it comes back to what I said about how only the portal network owners are making anything, since those players who are doing the farming hit one or two farms one day, then go to different ones another day. They get their inventory, and it will be awhile before the need to farm arises again.

12

And what is wrong with this? Clearly your farm for whatever reason is not as useful as you hoped it would be otherwise you would be attracting more people, thou it is also a problem that anyone can make their own farm and dilute the pool, making it less likely for people to come to your farm if it is not top of the notch Steller, But just because there are more farms to pick from is not a valid excuse for people to get more from nothing.

If all you care about is coin, then I would suggest you look into marketing, and selling items that give you coin,

It is statements like this that make me think footfall was a bad idea from the get go, getting passive coin because you built something, and the moment it isn’t enough for whatever reason, instead of going out and finding other ways to collect coin, no, the problem is, we just are not getting enough of this passive coin, once a farm is set up, it kind of runs itself for the most part, other then refueling the portal, unless you redesign it to make it better.

This is the only part of your post that I agree with, but the solution to that, in my book, which is going to make some people stomp up a storm, is to reduce footfall generation for portal hubs somehow, I think they did that, but all that did was cause the controllers of the portal hub to split the hub over more then one beacon to try to maximize their profits. so maybe the solution is just to remove footfall and add in better ways to generate coin that are not passive. because otherwise portal hub owners will always have an edge over pretty much everyone else.

Then portal hubs will go under as it might become unsustainable for them to keep it going in the way they are doing…so that solution doesn’t really work either if you enjoy having portal hubs around, maybe you need to just let them have their „Unfair“ Footfall generation.

Buffing footfall in the manor you propose, I feel will just cause people to spam plot things for the sake of trying to cover as much of an area as possible to get more of this passive coin from people digging out blocks from under their plots. A bad thing to promote so some people can have a little more pocket money.

I feel this would promote worse mines as it will then become common practice for people to just plot over hot spots in hopes to get extra passive coin for doing gar nichts. It will encourage more mines, not better mines

And maybe I am alone here, but for me, the best mine, is the 100% natural mine, that haves had no man made tampering. other then maybe one plot with a portal, but anything more then that I feel just gets in the way of a mine. And that one plot for access to the mine area, will not get much or any bonus from your proposed solution either.

I disagree with this, If you are to be rewarded for simply running a portal, then maybe the more logical solution is to simply reduce the cost of running a portal.

Running a portal I feel should be somewhat of a luxury, I am a hardcore player and I really don’t find myself needing to run costly portals, You can piggy back off of the Portal seekers network or any other hub you enjoy using, and only use the smallest portal size and save on fuel costs, if you insist on running large portals, then yes, you will pay the cost, and i feel that is fair.

The bottom line from me is, if you don’t like the amount of coin in your pocket, then you can do something else that will give you more coin.

If you think building a farm is a charity act and that for some reason is a problem, then you do not have to build a farm.

1 Like
13

I agree. Very well thought out shutdown ha!

14

I don’t really like to consider it a shutdown as a shutdown suggests I am trying to totally 100% end the topic.

I simply disagree with the points, and made rebuttals for each and every point I disagree with, and each and every rebuttal I have made, is open for anyone else to attack it and try to undermine my logic or convince me otherwise if they so choose to, or they can simply pick to ignore what I said and press on as normal. I am fine either way.

15

You’re right. I didn’t really mean it that way. Just read the thread as though it was a good idea. Until You broke it down for me ha!

16

Lol, the one thing you agree with is one of the biggest reasons to introduce a spread. Farms are a good idea, people use them. The footfall distribution is uneven, so I’m pointing that out by offering a potential solution to encourage more farms, which are good, and that people use.

17

I agree on that.
But you’re not everybody.
I’d wager the people who are invested enough to run portals for the community (like the Portal Seekers @Gorillastomp) could appreciate a mechanic that rewards the dedication.

Then again, maybe not, in which case my statement could be considered null and void.

18

I don’t think there has been a single farm that could run a portal from the footfall income. If somebody has such a farm, I’d be interested in knowing which resource is it for. Farms generally aren’t in an established high prestige settlement, they’re fairly small builds, so the settlement doesn’t get to the millions of prestige required to make enough coin from FF to sustain an open portal. The current playerbase is also pretty small so the number of unique players using a farm is somewhat low. Most players also don’t need to visit a farm often, since they generate enough resources from a single visit to keep them self sufficient for a while.

The farms I built would still be private, only for my own usage, if TNT didn’t offer to help. So they are a charity atm.

19

The point i was trying to make with that statement was more along the fact that the average player doesn’t really need to run massive portals. People who are indeed building portal hubs and other public connections to be used in that way, are not the people I am referring to, Perhaps I did not make my statement clear enough in that regards. Since I was mostly referring in the context of portals being connected to farms and shops, not hub to hub connections.

The thing is, Should you be allowed to run a free portal, from passiveness? if so then maybe portal costs themselves should be looked at, not footfall.

20

Yeah I have one ‘farm’ at the moment and over the months it has existed, footfall probably wouldn’t pay for more than 2 weeks of portal fuel. It serves a dual purpose for me though, and I’m more than happy to let others use it. For both purposes.

It doesn’t help that it’s a tree farm and there are two other farms at one of the hubs it bridges, including Bob’s lol. But at the time I built it there wasn’t another so constrained to this specific style, though Greenheart’s is similar and where I learned the technique.

The other hub still doesn’t have any other farm linked to it. And with my connection I’ve needed that network bridge on a couple of occasions. Actually I just realized I should put some storage there, I’ve wanted storage on alcyon many times and didn’t want to place a beacon just for it :brain: