So the first few times I encountered this, I figured, eh the players are just plotting their little chunk of the mountain… and there are many more mountains to mine. So while it may have cost me an extra 10 minutes or so, I can always find another location.
Today, this happened to 4 times. There are a small number of players spending hundreds, if not a thousand plots or more to plot and block access to diamonds. I’m not going to name and shame, but since, in the last week alone, this problem has multiplied, I was wondering what the official response is to this behavior.
I know in the past, James has said the counter to this is introducing more planets, thus people can’t plot all the resources. Since we haven’t seen any expansions in terms of planets, and since the number of plotted areas in mountains are increasing rapidly- I’m wondering what are we supposed to do? Is it reportable? Are new planets coming? Should I use a couple thousand of my own to counter the behavior?
Again, I wouldn’t be concerned if it was one off, like as it has been over the past few weeks, but now that people are claiming several hundred plots worth, in the dosen or so viable locations… what are we supposed to do?
He is not talking about just reserving plots… players have been claiming whole CUBES of the planet. they just claim the outside of the cube, so you cannot mine in. The juicy center though… it is essentially only available to get to by 1 person.
I’m not a fan of this tactic.
Sure it might sell a few extra plots, making money for the game. Which is a good thing, but sure sounds like a form of grief…
That’s a pretty ridiculous thing. This is not Eve. This is supposed to be a community building game, no pun intended, but all this type of behavior will do long term is drive divides in the community long term and drive off newer players that encounter it. Having to be forced to market (though not a reality yet) is absolutely ridiculous. The devs clearly don’t agree with it even though it’s allowed currently otherwise we wouldnt have seen them postulating the idea of introducing a mini-titan that would regenerate the massive tunnels and bomb holes with new resources instead of what they were previously.
I’m sure your emeralds will be safe for a while longer though.
First I am not a fan of this at all. However the website did talk about taking control of a resource. I hope having an essential resource in the hands of a few players was not what the developers had in mind.
The more I stick around the forums to learn more about the game, the more I wish I’d done due diligence and researched the game for buying it on the ps4 new release push they did.
It’s interesting that in the first few minutes the worst offenders have appeared. How is this not directly pay to win? You spend 100 bucks you can probably claim an entire mountain. 1200 or so should be able to get you all of Surfin Safari’s diamonds?
You said, “You” I said “We”. The difference is, I did not state a singularity I stated a whole. If the people spending money on the game stop. Then the game dies, unless you know of a magic trick to pay bills?
It may not be a popular statement, but the ones buying plots (or whales, if you like), will always be the target demographic when micros are involved. I don’t care what any game devs of any game say, because in the end, the share holders speak the loudest, and they want money. Money comes from people buying micros, not people who aren’t. It’s an unfortunate part of gaming these days. Nobody will care if “non spenders leave”, because the few whales will be keeping the game alive (just how it works). On that note, I buy plots. Happy to support the game.
I’m sure the game has what is commonly known as a bank account… It will continue to make money from purchases of the base game. Any purchases on top of that probably add to said account. making it fatter.
Anyway, this has veered off the rail.
I halfway agree with this tactic, when it comes to public mines…
You fully agree.
Everyone gets my point. And they get yours. Imma go play boundless now =P
The marketing for the game itself mentions you can find a resource and claim it to cut off others from it, so I don’t foresee any action on that front. That was initially alluring to me when I started playing, but then I quickly realized how difficult it would be to keep people out of a given area since you’d have to have a 3d cage around the entire resource zone.
Still, players have managed to do that with large amounts of plots. Devs could add more planets like they say but that doesn’t strike me as a great idea. If they need to add an entire planet to the game every time some players monopolize 1% of the total plots on another planet, we will end up with many many many sparsely populated planets each with their own 1% of resources monopolized.
Here are some other potential contributors I can think of. Mostly around the player progression curve.
Cubits as a level-up reward without cap is an extremely dangerous inflation source for the premium currency. It’s actually profitable to spend 600 cubits on a new character and then do all the intro quests and come out net positive on cubits. Since you can delete characters, the cap of 10 has no impact on this exploit. Big guilds with lots of resources could set up “level-up rooms” which contain the items you need to interact with to quickly finish objectives. And cap it off with a teaching pie + thousands of rocks.
Deluxe and better backers get 10% more plots, forever. This means their cubits simply go further than others’. When we are talking about having 1000+ plots, these players now have 100 more than you. That’s enough to encase a 3x3x3 area, for free.
When these two issues combine we get high level players, who can freely mint more high level characters for more cubits, buying even more land, which they get 10% cheaper than others. It’s them versus newer players who want to get some diamonds for their first power coils.
Lots of these top tier players have a ton of plots because the game systems have plot inflation built into the economy. That’s my theory! We can hope they all build towns. But some of them will wall off mountains.
I think the best response is for the more altruistic players to come up with a community-focused solution. If you build a small base on top of a mine such that all the ground is reserved and other players can dig freely, is there a way to guarantee they share some of their success with you? (footfall, gem request baskets, etc)