Just to be clear, I did say that meteors need balancing, and I meant that in difficulty and rewards.
I think that Oort should be a rare resource, that you could get by hunting (meteors) and mining (like you can find max 1 in a 2 - 4 hour mining trip) with this system, there still will be portals to other worlds, but you wont have portals to every build/shop on the planet and it feels more satisfying when you actually find an epic build, instead of just taking a portal to get there.
Just my 2 cents.
(Im not an native speaker but I hope you guys get my point)
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Assembly
This is a fair way to look at things perhaps it should be more rare but if it were then how would you feel if it was neigh impossible for you an individual to maintain a portal?!?
Or How would you feel if it made maintaining portals between the 8-12 blink sec jumps to various different parts of the universe so hard that groups like Portal Seekers whose entire goal is to great a Portal Network for you, and everyone else to be able to use free of charge, unable to accomplish this goal because there simply was not enough oort being acquired in the universe to accomplish those goals…
The new universe is not going to be only 12 planets, its going to be a number far greater then that. Infact the number of planets is going to be so many that there will be more planets then members of Portal Seekers currently… which means some members will need to own more then 1 gateway…
I think people get a false sense of the cost of Portals when at the moment most all portals you see in game are less then three blink sec’s or 1 oort an hour in fuel costs… The reality of the new universe is most portals are going to be far more expensive then that, which means there will be a need to streamline the network just to maintain the one link, other convenience portals simply won’t be cost effective…
And this is based on Oort actually being available… If oort is as limited as it is now… I doubt it will be feasible to connect all the planets with portals running 24/7
To put this is a little more perspective… The current Vulpto Gateway has 8 primary links those are all 1 shard per hour connections… So while the vulpto hub looks impressive its very fuel efficient… As all 8 of those links cost a total of 8 per hour…
I portal to bridge a 12 blink sec gap will cost 10 per hour that’s more fuel cost for the 1 primary portal that will need to exist, then the entire vulpto gateway costs for its primary connections…
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Thats a fair point you get there. Ofcourse (as an solo player for now) I want to be able to connect my private portal to a hub and make sure I have enough fuel to get it up when I need it. All I hope is that there will be some sort of balance that there will be portals to all planets available, just not to every hotspot on the planets. But it seems that this isnt possible with the current system so they will have to do some more tweaking.
I understand what you are saying, but it is a little inconsistent. Why do you deserve a portal and someone else does not? You want to avoid portals to every “hotspot”. How do you decide which places deserve to have a portal to them and which do not? There really is not a good answer, but one of the major points to the game is the portal. It is a key component to player movement and limiting it by limiting the resources to run it or the number of portals is a bad idea in my opinion. If you want to create dissatisfied players show them the entire universe in videos and websites and then trap them on a planet without the ability to build or find portals.
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Its really not about deserving, everyone deserves a portal or portals. My main issue with the current amount of portals is: There are simply to many of them, I can go to whatever planet within less then a minute (from a portal hub) and thats fine, but from there I can go to almost al important spots on that planet and again there is nothing wrong with that. I only hope that there will be more exploring then just going through a few portals and you have seen all hotspots on an x planet. But thats my feeling and I totally understand other players old and new that they expect to be able to go everywhere using portals.
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Personally I’d be happy if I could comfortably run just 2-3 local portals …One to a major city on my home planet, another within my base/home and the third just incase I need to make one to somewhere else for whatever reason I don’t know yet … The one within my base/home is because my last build was quite vertical and running up and down a ton of stairs became a real pain and a waste of time.
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There is nothing limiting you from just exploring, you do not have to use the portal networks. I understand the value you see in people exploring, but some people are not explorers and may not be a curious as others are. Are they maybe missing an opportunity to really see the universe and feel like the first to person to actually visit someplace? Maybe, but that depends on how much they value that experience. I think the other thing to remember is that some people may not have as much time to play, so the convenience of an extensive network may matter to them more than it does to you and maybe even me.
You made your point clear and I agree with you. In the end this is Boundless and we can all do what we want and how we wanna do it. Cheers!
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I prefer to have some more ways to obtain oortstones, everything should not favor shopkeepers.
They will surely survive if i can get some oortstones by myself.
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I would agree, there are enough limits to a single character being able to craft everything that the store owners will not suffer. They have not so far and I doubt they made all their profits in the pre 1.0 release selling ort stone/shards.
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Maybe some don’t understand what it takes to run a portal network, but not all of us. I ran a very popular network right before PS started theirs. Plus we have Jeff’s, Moebius, Betulix, and some others that clearly know the challenges around running a network. In fact, I did extensive cost analysis and everything on my network.
It should not be easy, but I am not sure where the line should be between solo, group, easy, or hard for a portal network. That is why I want the developers to share their views so we aren’t arguing points with no context.
Second, why should all the worlds be connected? Maybe it would be good for the game if we had to travel in a smaller fashion to get all over the place. We aren’t an advanced civilization - we are just starting out. Look how long it took for humanity to even be able to travel around the globe in a reasonable time. So why is everyone expecting to run portals that can go 4-6 or 8-12 blink secs permanently. Maybe it needs to take you a week of hard work to travel from one side of the universe to another… not 5 minutes of portal hopping.
Less individual portals means more use for location tokens (making them and trading as well).
I often think that maybe portals should only be allowed for interplanetary trips and not within one world, so to make people run around a bit more and use warps more (and the said tokens).
I agree that fueling portals shouldn’t become too difficult so that a single player could maintain 2-3 of them without breaking sweat.
@James or @Steggs101, some questions:
- I assume no matter what character slot a new character is purchased under it will clear the debt? So character A buys B and B buys C, then the 2 alt debt is cleared. Right?
- I assume by “new character” you mean a character that can have a different name than the ones our Alts might already have?
- I also assume that when we purchase a slot while having this debt that we then need to use one of the character names we already have for our Alts (since they were reserved) and that will then clear part of the debt. 4) Or will when we purchase a slot to remove the debt we can name the character anything we want but the debt is still cleared?
Do you get what I mean? I think we could use some clarification on how this debt thing works before we go live because there are some people that will be wanting to get alt.
I think the character debt (alt debt) means that any alts beyond the first one are locked and when you buy a new alt with cubits you simply unlock one of them and can use it. So if I have 3 alts now, I will start with the main one. When I buy a new one with cubits I unlock the second I had in EA, then if I buy one more character with cubits, I unlock the third alt I had in EA, and only when I buy a new character the third time, I really create a new one (instead of unlocking old ones I used to have in EA).
Hi @Xaldafax.
Yeah - this does seem to be unnecessarily confusing.
- The issue is that the old accounts didn’t own the required number of alt slots from the Exchange.
- Instead of creating a migration that simply gifted the required slots so that everyone had what was required - we’ve got a setup where all characters are in debt.
- If you delete an alt you can’t create a new alt to replace it - as you still don’t own the slots.
Basically - we made a bad decision, likely driven by trying to do the simplest thing and mindful that the new universe is coming. I reviewed this with the team after the update, and again concluded that the most pragmatic thing was to focus on getting the new universe ready rather than fixing up this mistake.
Additionally just so it’s clear - this debt has nothing to do with the coming new universe where you should never be able to get into this strange state.
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Hello!
I got a chance to log in and see the new skills (and epic skills). I tried them out, and I really like the setup for max level.
I felt like I could create a character that did things I wanted to. I also liked the choices you could make.
Excited to use it in 1.0 and level it to see how it feels! Definitely felt more impact and straight forward then the old system.
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I understand the point that it took humanity a long time to be able to travel all over earth. But now we have various modes of transportation that do allow us to travel anywhere on the planet. You are correct from what we know of the Boundless lore we are discovering ancient technology including portals. But once we have discovered them, why would we not use them to go wherever we can? Boundless is not a sequential game where discovering one technology leads to another which leads to another. We are given/find all the technology at once. With the way the game is structured, making technology discovery sequential is almost impossible at this point. If we know how to make portals and have the resources to make them, why would we not make them? In the case of humanity, if I can build a plane why would I take a horse?
As far as keeping a portal across larger blink secs work permanently, if someone can gather enough resource, why not let them do it? If they fail it closes, they are the ones that will have to go through the process of gathering the ort and fueling. If that is their choice, let them play the game that way.
To your point of it taking a week to travel across the universe. I would not support this choice. Just limiting how many blink secs any portal can jump will not have a large impact on travel time. You just go might go through 20 portals instead of 4 in order to get somewhere. The developers would have to put in some limit to how often you can use a portal or the total number of blink secs you can travel for this to work. the problem with this is even if I am using a portal for short distances, if I use it too many times I am then stuck for some period of time until I can travel again? I see this creating a lot of dissatisfaction.
I am somewhat confused as to why this is such an issue, I do not recall anyone complaining that the portals were ruining boundless in EA. They are used extensively in promoting the game and in almost every video out there. As people have said before, if the game is truly Boundless then let people explore the universe. everyone has the choice to play how they want to. If someone does not want to use the portals then don’t, if you want to build a network across the universe, good luck to you!
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Thanks for explaining @James. One followup question, and another point to consider…
So I assume this has nothing to do with the naming of the character and in some form or fashion those names we used (case insensitive??) will just be assigned to us somehow.
In regards to the cleanse point issue, here is one thing you might take into consideration on why you should find a way to adjust the “must purchase via cubits” to include some other form or fashion where characters are at least gifted some to reset themselves without purchase:
The tutorial and initial game play requires you to get certain “crafting” skills to do things like make torches, doors, etc. So a player really does need to put points into crafting because of the game flow even though maybe they don’t want this player to build a true “builder”. No one will be that happy to then have to spend cubits to respec ourselves.
Since we are in a “new universe” this isn’t a matter of easily finding another player to be “the builder” or going to a shop to buy the stuff. So it is kind of a catch 22 situation that almost all people are in due to no cities, shops, large player base, etc.
Plus like I said the tutorials kind of direct you that way so you will basically just follow the steps and then spend points you will regret later on. Please figure out some way to give us free cleanse points not related to cubits in some form or fashion as we level characters to allow for mistakes or situations we cannot easily control.
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If this is truly the case, that needs to be changed. All basic items like doors, floors, walls, torches, etc should be standard to all players. Someone who specializes in crafting skills should be unlocking specialized items, like coils and that advanced forge stuff.
Right now you’ll definitely get people who put ALL their points into hunting because they think this is like a standard MMO, and then find themselves unable to build anything basic, and probably rage quit.
I’d be pretty mad if I thought I was making a hunter, and then realized I couldn’t make a torch because I didn’t put a skill point in it… Now, as long as the basic versions of every item is available, that’s okay, because you wouldn’t want a hunter to be able to craft the most advanced light sources in the game, but torches, I mean really, that should be standard.