Players claiming hundreds (or more) of plots to block access to Diamonds

[james]

(Minor abuse of my privileges by replying to a closed thread - but whatever…)

@Manabanana

I am trying to be positive here… but how is this not directly pay to win? As a player, I can spend real life currency to gain an advantage in game using this method. Sure there will be other less dense areas, but following these guidelines, I can ensure I have access to the most dense areas, thus giving an advantage. It isn’t even that expensive to do so, it would seem (I guess everyone’s $ is different though).

If players were able to pay to beacon the monopoly of diamond sources then I fully agree this would be a pay2monopolise situation. But in this particular case I don’t see that. It’s 1 player claiming a tiny area that is no different to building a base. The resources that have become unavailable are basically the same as someone building a base in the same area. They have claimed a tiny fraction of the viable spawning area of diamonds. This will have zero effect of the availability of diamonds for all other players.

Now let us assume that many players claim chunks of the world. Then let us then assume that finding viable diamond spawning areas becomes much harder, then as I said here:

@james

New worlds are generated based on concurrent population, beacon coverage, and some other heuristics.

… new worlds would automatically be spawned.

So again - I don’t think it would ever get to the point where non-paying players wouldn’t be able to easily find the resources they seek.

(To be clear - we’re working very hard to make sure the game isn’t pay2win. I understand that introducing any monetisation into a game could lead to winning - but we’re working hard, and thinking hard, and striving to keep stuff fair and reasonable and considerate of everyone in the game. But we need some monetisations to maintain the game servers. If we didn’t need to maintain the game servers, say it was an offline game, then we would never had introduced IAP.)

@Manabanana

Your comments about walling off half the world seem to make sense. Is there really difference between walling off half the world and walling off a large cube, with the sole intention of denying players access? What is the threshold?

My point is that it’s almost impossible to determine what a player is claiming and why. It’s extremely open ended. So ideally we want to be able to give players freedom.

(A quick note - I’ll be posting shortly about some ideas for reducing player-player claiming conflicts.)

@Manabanana

In a way this relates to 1. In a game we play for escapism, should we really be bounded by the amount of $ we have? If we are accepting this behavior, and it is enough of a hotbutton issue with the 1000 or so daily players we currently have (best stats I have), how will it get better?

Totally agree. You should not be bound by the number of $ you’ve played. I don’t believe that players who can claim a mountain are at an advantage give the huge amount of unclaimed resource rich environments. Once the world contains too many plots a new world is automatically generated.

Additionally - I’m also exploring a system for temporary worlds. These worlds would be added to the universe for a fixed period. They could be discovered, warped to, explored, mined for resources, and harvested for unique colours. But as they’re temporary they wouldn’t allow claiming plots. This would also limit the value in claiming resources. There will be other worlds that offer the same resources.

@LennonMarx

I just want to piggy back on this, as my reaction is largely the same. The community in this game has great elements, but the economy is trending toward EVE, and the economy of EVE makes all of EVE a cesspool. For a game that at least wants to use the term “sandbox” in it’s marketing, I don’t understand the desire to have a hyper competitive economy driven by artificial scarcity.

To be clear I said:

@james

6. But there is an argument that there is an economy in the game and we should leave the economy to work.

I’m not saying this is my argument. But rather it could be argued.

I think this is already happening. But the unlimited amounts of resources per world via regen makes it almost impossible. So it’s really an issue of time to gather rather than payers monopolising any resources.

@fidach

With diamonds, and I wish to concentrate specifically on these, you have created a resource which is essential for making advance crafted items. And there is only 1 planet with limited points on this planet that these can be gathered.

So to say there is little difference between plotting the surface to build and plotting the limited spawn area of a resource to block others access seems a little skewed.

Understood. But you’re thinking this with only a single Blast world in the universe.

Whereas I’m thinking about this knowing that more worlds will automatically spawn based on plot density on the Blast world. (And the ideas for temporary worlds that I’m exploring. Maybe we should turn off regen on them?)