It creates a bit of a moebius strip there. 
Pèople need portals to be a part of the community, in order to participate in the economy, so they can be able to shop for portals and coils and other such necessities, so that they can have portals to be a part of the community.
It reminds me of Dwarf Fortress and the First Anvil Paradox: âYou need an iron anvil in order to make the workshop that can craft iron anvils. So where did the first anvil come from?â
Theres a really easy solution to this and thats to make permanent portal hubs on every planet. Indepently. No ownership by anyone. Then players once they unlock âbasicâ portal technology can open a basic portal predetermined to your local planets hub. This would solve a lot of the portal ownership/blocking/player manipulating that we have currently.
It will also take this messiah complex out of the game as well. These huge player run portal hubs are not going to kill the community if they arent there. The playerbase isnt going to cry and die. Especially if public portal hubs were constructed in a targetted manner. Imo if you want this to be a sandbox mmo and create rules that make it different from the standard sandbox, then you need to do it evenly where it doesnt benefit any one group more than another.
I really loved how ultima online had their portal system designed, via moongates. Those were public portals and look how great those worked out, in my opinion of course.
To prevent an unfair advantage by building close to the public portals, you can code in a no build line within certain radius of the portal.
Edits due to mobile posting being a travesty for any human being
I loved Ultima online more that any other game ever⌠ever!
that said this is an awful idea. this is a completely player run game. honestly if you think its unfair that ps own the market gang up with all the other people who dislike this cruel and unfair set up and beat them at there own game. you will find that itâs a lot of work and that the only reason they are so very successful is becous they put so much effort into it.
the idea of taking something away from people who have worked there mouse finger to the bone becous you are jelus of there accomplishment is beyond lame to me.
seriously you can start your own line today.
Straw man is made of straw. No one here, I donât think, is seriously saying âYou have that thing and I donât have that thing so letâs take that thing away from you.â People want to play the game, and people want it to live up to the sandbox part of the name and style (definitions of Sandbox vs Sandbox MMO notwithstanding). Footfall is a system that greatly benefits a very specific play pattern (build in cities, gleam whore, portals into your living room), and could maybe be replaced with something that lets more people play the game/be part of the community.
Im not sure what your saying. Ive never singled out one group ever. This entire thread was centered around footfall. Ive already made my statements i have to make on it. Im using the footfall mechanic to my benefit in return until there comes a time where they decide to chane the mechanic.
Not on purpose, perhaps. But since youâre fond of UO, let me lob this analogy at you: while you may not have singled anyone out specifically, it would be akin to saying, in ultima online, âLetâs demolish all the player housing and instead substitute it for a system where EA has fixed houses and cities in specific places and players have to buy those instead of forming their own citiesâ.
I think you can see how the not-singled-out owners of established player cities would consider that a bit of an attack.
(Its been about 20 years since I last played it so Iâm not even entirely sure if there are player cities there still :P)
There were never player cities that had their own moongates so Iâm not sure that analogy was appropriately made.
We had to mark runestones to open gates or recall to, remember?
Furthering your own analogy, we had to go well out of our way to visit player made cities. They had to draw you in. Completely different then he setup boundless has.
the analogy was unrelated to the moongates 
The analogy was to the player owned portal hubs vs system owned portal hubs, after the effort of establishing the player owned portal hubs has already been made.
Well then thatâs just a completely different topic then.
The discussion as I understood it was directly related to the footfall mechanic and how exploited it is under the guise of public portals that people seem to be crucifying themselves over to run.
Would it have to be either-or? If you set up a fairly basic game hub, wouldnât players still be incentivized to make better ones/ones you can build around/ones in cities etc. Just because the city has a subway doesnât mean there also arenât private cab businesses.
Itâs a core game concept that I think in all fairness it would be wasted effort for me to defend, because it simply will not change at this point no matter how many suggestions are made otherwise. 
But Iâll do it anyway, just for sport: It would be a fair complaint on the part of the portal hub owners that, not only the introduction of such a system would invalidate all the time, effort, and planning, that they had spent on the current system, with the full approval and consent of the developers, and with the developers stating that all cities and travel hubs and other such amenities would be fully operated by players, but also it would be unfair competition since the new players would view the system-owned hub as the âofficialâ one and tend to prefer it.
Not to mention that the system would never have to worry about running out of beacon and portal fuel. 
You make a fair point regarding the current status of portals. This would have been a conversation to have like 4 years ago (and probably was had). I think that outlook is as short sighted as the people in here making arguments that we just want to take away peopleâs thing because we are jealous, but it is a reasonable reaction given the initial time those groups put in.
Yes, Iâm not attacking the idea, or the people proposing those ideas, but one has to look at both sides, and also consider that one of the selling points of the game was that everything would be player run, so when any idea is proposed (even if it might solve some problems) that would run counter the âfully player runâ selling point, all the people that bought into the game (during early access or otherwise) because of it would feel very slighted, and I think reasonably so, even if no attack was directed at them personally.
Yea that post right there just shows what comes across as entitlement of older players while intended or not.
Iâm just here for the conversation. I personally feel the footfall mechanic is implemented terribly and I took time to voice my concerns over it yesterday.
Iâll continue to voice my concerns over various aspects that I think are limiting the game in terms of potential growth as I do enjoy the game at its core; it just needs some serious tweaks.
Right now the population is pretty meh. I checked steam charts and the daily average is 370ish people? Iâm not sure if that calculates PS4 players at all, I donât think so. This is a brand new release. This should be a pretty strong peak for games of this nature.
Unfortunately it has quite a number of bugs and mechanics that need to be addressed. I know the devs are working their tails off to address these problems and it may be like whack a mole trying to decide which problem is more important to hunt down. That said, those same problems (bugs/mechanics) are already driving people off. Iâd like this game to be successful as I find it a great blend of no mans, Minecraft, and UO. Itâs pretty fun and unique. However itâs a very niche game. If the devs are fine with that then these intense mechanics will likely stay the same and the player population will probably stay small. Thatâs just the reality of gaming today. Youâve gamesmanship long enough Iâm sure you realize that as well.
What do you mean by working harder? Iâve explained elsewhere that I made a reasonable footfall income, enough to get everything I need and still have money to sit on at end of EA, in a fairly remote place, alone. Itâs still possible now. If getting footfall is no work, how is being more remote more work? I donât get it.
//
If footfall goes (it shouldnât) we will need another money tree. Otherwise these notions about everyone getting to then sell on an even footing will be irrelevant, because the whole money supply would quickly be eaten by world tax.
Just adding in my 2cents - I look at footfall not as a thing to strive to get and influence economy, but rather as a delightful little surprise gift I discover whenever I access my beacon for what ever reason. No fuss, no muss, just a fun little extra
ikr
but sometimes games are designed to exploit that human weaknesses* for profit
i think we can (all) agree that the ff is pretty op vs other activities in the game rn
Yep, actually this reminds of some posts on the forums during the final months of early access, when release was announced, there were two camps of players that would often be unable to reach a consensus, because one half was of the opinion that the game was very niche, that it being niche was intentional, and so that it would never reach huge populations, and another camp that was expecting a massive influx of players once the game came out, and all the changes that that would bring.
The No Manâs Sky release showed the risk of making a niche game appear appealing to a wide audience: massive backlash from people that expected something entirely different than a niche game.
I really think you misunderstand why they do it. They do it for a number of reasons I would expect, but having been around here a while now Iâm going to stick my neck out and say itâs not greed. Exhibit A: they are giving all their money to the community. There are other reasons but they arenât firm data, just observation of player approach and attitude over time I know to be affiliated with the major hubs. Exploit is a strong word.
Because if you have a 100K plot in a city you are making more money from sales (which is fine, that is intended), as well as making whatever your footfall income in. With that money you can buy gear faster/replace it more and skip a lot of the mid-tier grinding so you can go right to gem tools. If you have 100K plot in the wilderness you are neither selling anything nor making footfall, so you had to grind for 99% of everything you have and that grind in the middle is slow. You have to do a ton more work to progress. Now, obviously, there should be a tradeoff to living out in the sticks, and thatâs fine. I feel like the natural economic advantage of being where people are is enough of a boon for city dwellers without them also getting a pile of extra money on top of that.
Do note, an updated system like the skeleton I proposed earlier, or some other system would need to replace footfall. There has to be a way for coin to be generated in game, there just seems like there could be a better way to do it. As @Arkhainn said above, putting Portal Tech on the same âtierâ as iron, even if only same world portals, would go a long, long way to fixing this issue. With that change, footfall as is would be fine.