honestly I would pay for a name change right now. I hate that my first letter is lowercase…
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ok so i am one of those forum readers who look at a post like this and reads through the OP in full… and then speed scans the rest in a second or two inpuuut… innnnpuuuut!
ok so here are my ideas (after reading Karoko’s post and coming here to read the full explanation)
- What should be purchasable/tradeable for real cash vs in game cash of XX (which you earn by leveling)?
.Plots (as in OP) i agree with this… not very useful to those non builders… but they always need a base-point on every planet right? maybe give those guys/classes 50 > 100 free with class plots… and then allow them to both be purchaseable one - with cash and two with coins (?) from other players - hence tradeable… (hey Mr. X i can’t afford $5 for xxx plots… and you cant afford $5 for XXX - how about i trade you my 1k coins of xx for 10 plots of yours? then you can buy your XXX)
.cosmetics (clothing/tattoos/names etc) this should always only be real cash
.Skill change - ok so i am slightly torn on this one - i think the first one or two skill changes should be free (hey im a nub… i don’t know what i enjoy yet… oh *&%^&% im stuck as a builder unless i want to pay $5! Bye game!) - however after the 1st one or xx free changes yes… again real cash purchase
.extra character slots (???) are they needed? I mean if we can still have 3 max then we can have three diff skill-sets and hybrid (if hybrid is going to be a real thing?) - if they are going to be implemented (extra slots) then real cash purchase
- thats all i have currently… and as for reward crates due to XX feat of XX they ofc should be free with the feat… and maybe add a little something random to them? (i know you want feats/leveling as flat as possible - but make it slightly exciting? if it can be done fairly ofc - to make it fair, maybe add a choice system where you have achieved xxx feat… you now have 2/3 crates to choose from… you can see everything in each crate… which one would you like?
I do have a question about buying your own world. Will the standard beacon rules apply to the things you make? Or will they be considered as part of the world? And if we buy a level 3 world, do we get to pick the element?
I also have a question about the Supporters Club, will we get a unique title for being part of it? Will we get stuff monthly? Like in Star Citizen for being a monthly subscriber to support them, you get stuff every month. Lastly, when will the Supporters Club (name tbd) be available to join?
well if they get xxx per month… it has to be fair and balanced as non subs (cosmetics or something) because as James aid in OP, he wants an almost perfect balance (and not P2W mechanics at all)
and about the private worlds also… how much are we looking at (price) and is it more pricey the higher the level world we buy? and what about a server pack (As in get multy-worlds from level one > level x all inclusive)
I know they might not be cheap (unless we are renting the servers worlds from you - which would be a great idea as a server sub mechanic ok so you want xx world/xx levels/xx ammount of… ok price range from (E.g only) £12/15 > 50 P/m
Reason i ask is because i am very interested in a server, but my pc cannot run one from home + i dont get much money at all! (are you going to make them accessable enough to everyone to do so?) as an example of, there are a lot of builds going on, with various cool places already taken - which would be one of the main reasons a small group/individual would want their own world(s) / server(s)
That is part of why I asked. I can imagine there are people with the mentality of “If I own the world, I should be able to do whatever I want on it without restriction.” I also do want to know if there will be different costs for different world levels, maybe even world sizes.
Actually thought of another question, will the level of privacy of a world be fluid? So I can edit it whenever I want.
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i am srry i did not say the context… my reply on this was about that Club thingy, not the worlds 
sorry for confusion
which is why i paragraph my response
Most of what you are after I don’t know. However, @james has said a few times that private worlds you get to make various rules (like who can visit, who can build, pvp or not, etc. However, if you use standard rules for general worlds then your world can connect to the general worlds the average player goes to. However, if you make rules (something like all gems commonly available on your world would fit in here) then your world cannot connect to the main worlds. The reason is simple. If you want a world where everything is available to you easily because your interest in the game is only a love of building then you can have that and not go to general worlds or take items or resources from your world to general worlds. It would be an unfair advantage for you to have whatever rare resources available to you without danger and take them to a general world where they are rare or the items you make with them are rare and then you sell them for a ton of money. That would both be unfair to others and break the economy. So, bottom line is you make rules, but, if you make the wrong ones your character and items have no connection to the general game. If you and friends just love building, role playing, or whatever easily then it’s a good deal for you. If your interest is making money in game selling to others, or showing off your builds to others, then you should either use general world rules and connect to the regular worlds, or simply use the regular game worlds.
You might want to review the benefits of different backer tier levels and see what you can do with the different levels.
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sorry but are you saying we can only have a prvate server, or connect to main game? or are you saying we can connect private with main, as long as it sharesrule set?
Worlds not hosted by ourselves would never be allowed to connect to the main game universe as we would have no ability to prevent modified servers from introducing exploits or modded character data incompatible with the main game.
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Will we be able to rent tier 4 worlds (assuming they come back) or even tier 5 worlds with very hard enemies for our hunter alts?
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Will we be able to pick our three stone colors and shades? - I would seriously consider renting a world that gave me black, and dark green stone.
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Will we require beacons on our rented worlds.
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What would happen to the rented worlds if we needed to take a break? Would there be a grace period before they went public for example. Or would they remain frozen waiting for us until our eventual return.
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Current plan is that you would be able to own a world at any level.
We’re planning to allow players to customise the world colours. (Although this might not be available in the initial release.)
Beacons stop your builds from regenerating. So unless you want to disable regen, then they’re essential.
Exact details to be determined, but they would no longer be accessible until you restarted them.
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Thanks for answering. Probably better they do require plots anyway, it avoids any p2w calls that having infinite plots would bring.
Well, the ones connected would have to require plots. If they are disconnected, I don’t see an issue with it.
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I really don’t understand why some people have issues with this. None of these things are pay to win. And who expects a MMO game to not have microtransactions? We should be happy about this, cause its either microtransactions or subscriptions.
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This has nothing to do with dogma and a one way solution. It is very obvious people don’t want to be honest about the problem, but that isn’t really my problem. I don’t expect to win and this isn’t about winning. It is about getting developers to be realistic and honest about the problems with the game models they created.
We have a right to give them ideas and suggestions on how they can offer plots for real money and not effect the economy and create an unbalanced way people can get money.
When we have developers responding to my posts and talking about “empty plots” when I never said anything about them and that they are quite confident that they have a system that works just fine – we know very clearly that we have a big problem on the development side. I don’t know if @james feels the same way as you but if you are being driven to create a P2W scenario on the most important part of this game - plots - then so be it.
The benefits Founders get in the economy is very clear and if you are choosing to ignore it then so be it. Just look at the data seen everywhere. I mention some later in this post.
Please go back to my original post because it brings simple clarity to the problem – plots + resources (that are mined and put on the plot) = prestige. I am not wrong that is the game design. You take some blocks you get from resources and place them on a plot and you get prestige.
Stop trying to argue with me when you don’t even understand what I am saying in my original post. Income is income and it links to the economy.
This is exactly what I am talking about. An average player that does not “pay for more plots” will NEVER EVER be able to compete with a player that has “founder plot bonuses” or “buys plots”. This is not fair or equal. It doesn’t matter if they lose 1 coin or 1 million. The game will be rigged, unfair, and giving those that buy plots an advantage.
We already see this VERY CLEARLY with how Founders are able to dominate the game:
- Any founder that has more plots than the original Mayor of a town will be able to take it over and control the town.
- Any founder was able to take hundreds of plots over all the major cities as the “beacon expiration cleanse” happened at the end of the year. They places hundreds to thousands when an average person in the game at level 50 only have 350 plots.
- Any founder can build huge places and sit high in planet city ranking on MANY planets because they have 1000+ plots to their names and the other accounts they have. Look around… you see the same names in tons of cities with HUGE builds.
All of this generates passive income and allows domination of the economy or many other things and an average user that refuses to pay for plots will NOT be able to compete. It is not about the “empty plot” it is about the “cultivated plot”. This is P2W and broken as long as footfall and tax system is linked to city ranking and plots.
I am not opposed to selling plots and might have done it myself. I am opposed to it being linked to income because that creates additional unfair advantages to players in the game mechanics. We can easily have plot selling and an economy based on non-footfall.
I was there with he started Aquatopia and could have helped lay the groundwork but I was out of plots because I don’t have Founder benefits. I had to choose which plots to keep and remove to build my small corner in the Universe or help his. Meanwhile him and others had hundreds of plots they could just use to build city after city and reap the rewards and KEEP both their cities. Nothing against Moebius but this is a perfect example of how it is unbalanced in relation to economy. He made money from both locations but I had to remove one to create another or had to stop building.
When people respond like this it means they are in denial and help prove the point further. I didn’t do my posts for your approval, I did it to show @james and the development a clear path on why the current game model WILL lead to issues and why they should take some time now to fix and build a correct economy model. Also, you don’t need ANY of that passive plot footfall traffic or tax return. So you should be just fine with it being removed.
Thank you. This isn’t about IF something happens or not and all the variables around it. This is simple because IF the design allows it then it WILL happen in some form or fashion.
See the above paragraph Luke. You can put a MILLION variables and IF/THEN statements in there to try to create a way around it but NONE of that will matter when your base design is wrong from the start. You will still give those who purchase plots MORE than those that do not. This is clearly PAY TO WIN in that part of the game.
There is NO reason another model could be introduced to give income to classes based on WHAT they do and completely remove the “passive footfall” traffic income model. The only reason people fight this is because they want “lazy money” or they are too lazy to create another model that is more aligned to a true economy.
Stop wasting development time trying to build some algorithm and model to support footfall and just remove it. Put your effort into a contract system and something that helps EVERYONE EQUALLY build their income. Not something that in some way favors another person over beginners.
IF you don’t do this sooner or later people will just recognize how hollow the game is and give up trying to compete with the ruling Founder/plot purchaser group. In the end you will lose a lot of good people that loved the game but wanted it non P2W.
This isn’t an answer to anything. Let people get what they want or buy their own world. Restricting will not solve the plot = income issue. It is a fundamental design problem. We just need it to be removed.
If you knew the amount of people that have left the game so far because we don’t have a real economy and they gave up trying to compete against all the people that have cities everywhere or have so much money that can squash anyone… Imagine when we go live. That is why the economy needs to be a separate model and focused on class and other things than linked to Founder plot bonuses or plot buying. It allows each person to do what they love without causing additional problems with the game.
Yeah that is the simple problem with it all. They just need to link the right things and remove the link between the things that are the problem. WE all get what we want… money for the game development and money in game that is provided fair and with work not based on outside real world money influence.
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Based on my experience so far footfall is a very minor (in fact completely insignificant) part of income. I can make more coin in 5 minutes farming than I make in a day from my shop’s footfall.
Also - no planet I know of is controlled by players with founder’s bonuses. Munteen Paradise (Munteen #2) is basically me and Cookviper and that’s with less plots than any player has before reaching endgame. Therka is Aquatopia which is Moebius’ doing and is mostly due to his great social network and desire to build. Nasharil is Amanda and one (?) other significant contributor.
Based on my data and point of view we don’t have any of the scenarios you are fearing at present. I posit that the new system will net even less average plots per player than now (since non-builders can pick cosmetics) - with a higher focus on quality builds. I further posit that it will benefit the economy by increasing the demand on resources and generally stimulating the economy by providing builders (whom currently have a plot deficit) with more sources of plots. None of this will disadvantage the average or below average player - in fact it will benefit any player without sufficient time or desire to build extensively.
I also feel that you should keep in mind that anybody wishing to compete for prestige needs to invest significant time to gather enough resources to attain the prestige. The plots are inconsequential - maths follow. With the current XP/plot ratio you need to gather 400k XP to get 10 plots = 40k per plot. That’s 10 000 block placements/destructions. A plot has 8x8x8 area (512 blocks). This gives 19 block actions required per block placed. The average material built with requires 7.2 (refined rock) - 30 resources (silver/gold) plus craft time and travel time to create (18 blocks average). Tools, buffs, etc consuming roughly 30% of your gathered resources (unless of course you exchange that for equivalent time using lower tier tools which is moot). A player going outright for prestige will optimally benefit by filling plots with lowish materials - in this scenario they would gain enough plots from just leveling to not need to purchase any additional plots anyway. The only people who thus benefit from plots are those who build extensively and elegantly.
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Objectively false.
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We plan to iterate the prestige calculation to minimise any advantage of plot size alone. Simply reserving a large area shouldn’t result in additional prestige. The prestige should come from the what you put into the reserved space: the blocks, the chiseling, the variety of tints, the machines, the portals, etc.
Clearly a perfect large build will still generate more prestige than a perfect small build. But the effort required to make it efficient will increase with size.
We definitely don’t want to hamper players who want to build big. But we also want to make sure that players can’t trivially buy their way to high prestige.
(I hope this makes sense.)
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