I think the best way to do it is to open it up. Most of the fears people have come down to the small scope they view the game through. If done right, we aren’t looking at a dozen planets people are using as private farms, we have hundreds of new colors people are opening up to the game. If one person does a private black gleam planet, our whales are likely to toss two up for public use just to crush that kind of behavior.
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You are right, the world builder is probably out of the question for a lot of us. I’ve played with it, but getting it down to a science would take months. I’m not against random tertain genetation. I’m just not thrilled with the possibility of purchasing a random color scheme planet and having to restart in a year when they expand the options.
Honestly, I’m beginning to think I would like a half sized planet and just personally terraform the entire thing so its exactly what I want.
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There seems to be some mistaken concept that the developers have made colors rare on purpose which is not the case based on what I have been told. Let’s use black gleam as it keeps getting brought up. If new planets were spawning due to new players then it is possible now for black gleam to spawn on one of those planets. So if this happens then suddenly it is not rare anymore and why should it be? Maybe some players are looking at exos for some rare colors but again, this is only because the universe is small and does not have permanent planets with these colors. The rarity is what is artificial and making this some rule that has to be followed when designing a rental planet just seems like a good way to discourage players from renting planets. How is someone going to feel if they are limited to the current colors, they rent a planet and a few months later one is spawned or rented that has the color they wanted? I would feel really cheated and all because of players trying to preserve the concept of rare colors. We have rare materials, why do colors have to be rare in a building game?
So what happens if I take random colors on a rental planet and get black gleam and some other colors that do not exist anywhere else. Since this is possible already what do the players that think this will crash the economy expect to happen?
Is the goal to drive players out of the public universe and into a private universe? Do players really want to have players that just want to have access to more colors to build, leave the public universe permanently in favor one where while certain resources might be rare colors are not?
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Yeah, I wouldn’t want to do that either, way too time-consuming for me.
On the previewing before paying, I agree in theory, though if it stays that we can’t choose our palettes and we can roll different ones, people would be able to just roll over and over til they get one they like - which I see as good, others would take issue with perhaps for the economy reasons. But then it would be fair I suppose, we could all do it equally.
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3 Importen things.
- Block color choice. Why i should pay for a planet and then only ugly colurs?
- Controll wich player can plot.
- Wich tier.
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Yeah, it needs to not be a time hog for the developers to create and show worlds. They definitely have a tough rollout ahead of them.
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Me in my head to everyone while I’m watching the forums say “James replying”:
Me when James is no longer “replying” (edited for even better gif):
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Overall I personally like the color rarity aspect of the game but I definitely see both sides of the argument and understand why some people say it shouldn’t exist in this game.
I just personally feel a sense of accomplishment if I were to find a rare color and be able to add that to my build knowing it’s not a permanent color. Makes the build feel more special knowing it’s not easy to get those materials. But like I said I definitely see both sides of the argument and understand why some don’t like color rarity in a building game.
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I always picture us sitting there in Lord Faquad’s seat looking out at the masses and saying, “And though some of you may die, it is a sacrifice I am willing to make.”
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And see to me all a rare color shows is that you were online and playing when the color was around. When I look at builds I admire them based on how creative is the build and do the colors look good (definitely my opinion). But even so given what you said, so how do you feel if you used white wood from an exo and then it spawns on a new public world? Suddenly not so rare and since it was not intended to be it is possible. edit: Does that mean your build is suddenly not good anymore or to be admired? I would say no, how you use materials and how creative you are should be what matters…
I guess my frustration is players trying to make something rare that was not intended to be rare and trying to drive new game mechanics based on that.
I do not disagree that there are items that should be harder to get like umbris and the other exo only resources. But I think a building game should not be restricting colors.
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I think a world with underground oceans would be cool.
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this is what I would like to see the developers make. the surface of the planet would be at elevation 220 two or three blocks deep perfectly flat ice. The ocean would be at elevation 10. And then the land would be above that. the ice I believe allows light to pass through it so you could have your day and night cycles are supposed or you can have some sort of iridescent light effect from some of the rocks. Maybe gleam? Forest with trees that dwarf a redwood tree. Deserts made of sand. Mountain of course and of course an Ocean, Lakes and we got to have some waterfalls epic ones too. I think if the developers were allow you to have creative mode for a couple months or whatever allowing you to terraform your own world I think that’d be pretty cool. Devs would have to inspect the planet before they would put it in a normal World under the normal mode to make sure that you didn’t cheat and hide a bunch of diamond blocks or whatever
See I think that rental planets are a chance for players to add a ton of variety to what is really a pretty boring universe in many ways. The planets are all pretty similar in color and biome based on tiers and classifications (lush as an example). If there is a way for players to create unique combinations of biomes and colors, the entire universe could be so much more interesting and the possible builds could be so much more interesting as they use the new colors and take advantage of the biomes.
I just think if it is too restrictive then a real opportunity will get missed.
I do agree that planets need to follow the rules of the public universe as far as resource distribution. No diamonds on a tier one as an example.
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But all of this is possible in world builder 
I don’t think it’s going to be possible to just flip a switch on creative mode for worlds connected to the public universe. It’s not just like switching between creative and survival in mc.
I don’t think you will need to save up for them, it’s just a monthly payment just like Gleam Club is.
I’ve asked James about pricing in March last year and back then he said they are trying to aim for $/€5-10, maybe $/€15 at most, per month.
Of course a lot of time has passed since then, server prices might have changed, they might have changed the way to implement them, etc. but am assuming it won’t be more than 20 a month. They could also have decided to make pricing dependent on how many players you want to be on it at the same time. If it’s just for yourself it could then be cheaper.
He did ask me once which size I would prefer, to be honest, I want a normal public world size, but options are good so an exo size could also work and perhaps even smaller or bigger! The reason I’m saying this is to show that the devs have been thinking about different sizes. I have no idea tho what they’ve decided in the end…
The worlds aren’t prefab’d, they are randomly generated by a pre-made configuration. There are quite a few of those and they’ve added 2 new ones for Lush planets.
If you and I choose a planet with the same config they will be very different!
If I understand it correctly they will allow us to make changes to those configs later on!
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Oh yes it is… the worlds are just Data…
Yeah I am going to have to spend more time in world builder. I had messed around a little but not enough. Even if they just let us use world builder for the non-resource blocks and then did an overlay for the resources based on the tier, I would be happy.
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Yeah but that means it needs to be generated completely again which means the terrain will be different, any builds on it will look out of place then…