Yeah, I know it’s possible… But would THAT harm anyone, either? At least we’d incentivize something that actually benefits other people more often than not.
It might incent the builds near portal hubs or well traffic areas, but maybe not the ones off the beaten path. An interesting thought.
And there are plenty of things we could do in an attempt to balance it out. Maybe you only get one award per day to hand out? Maybe it counts for significantly more the first time that you do it? Maybe you get an XP award as well for finding a new location?
It’s more fun for all parties involved, than mass-producing stones that you’re going to throw into the lake.
Throw in the lake? Craft it into refined. You need no spark and it takes a lot of stone. Once the coin machine is introduced I think players will sell it for coin.
Well, that last part was sarcasm, but… yes, craft it into Refined, and then sell it for 1c apiece. Then that person can throw it into the lake.
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You could probably sell rock right now to players scrambling to level. Lol
I’ve watched him, and he is good, very good. But I have to go that the one who is not well known but still my favorite is a forum member DonBab who has a series called Dad and Dax plays games. He stated a new series from a newbie playing so not only could he see the changes, but new players would see what they could and would need to do.
He is funny at times when he makes a goof, he is human so does make mistakes, but I have learned from his mistakes. Gotten me out of a difficult place one time and I was mid level 30s but didn’t know I could do that. Gained a lot of info, some causal and some important from him.
I highly recommend him for new players to watch and even those who aren’t new, give him some support.
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As this game has NO conpetitive mechanic what so ever, someone leveling at a fast phase doesn’t affect you in any other way except if you both live next to each other and want to plot a specific area. No one is forcing you to use these mechanics. I would agree that it’s an exploit if it directly affected others negatively. This however doesn’t affect anyone and nobody would even have known of it if people like me didn’t show off top xp drops.
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Really… because I’ve already suggested one that doesn’t nerf anyone else’s gameplay… except the one that the devs are trying to prevent.
[edit] Ok, I’m wrong, this IS a drawback, without the kind of data that Boundless has access to, I can’t say who would be more affected, though I have my supsicions [/edit]
AoE tools = no ‘non-resource’ drops. You could potentially balance this by saying lower tiers impart a % chance to get block drops, down to 0% at 3x3. You could even do it so that mathematically, 1x3 is the most efficient for gathering rock.
Then rebalance recipes to compensate for less available rock.
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People can still chew through mountains, gain xp for breaking stone, and find resources.
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Players without forged tools can still gather rock ‘normally’ and gain a reasonable amount of XP from crafting it.
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Players with forged tools are still able to gather ‘more’ rock than unforged, just not over-the-top amounts.
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Builders would end up with a roughly equivalent amount of stone to work with, as recipes have been rebalanced.
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[edit] Downside - People who build out of actual rock and not any derivative would need to put in more effort.
As an additional bonus, if rock was harder to get hold of, it would ‘probably’ boost the economy for newer players, as their mining effort invested would give a (relatively) more meaningful output than it does right now.
In fact the only reasons I can think of to be for the changes to rock-to-stone crafting xp are:
- It’s quick to implement, so screw low-mid level players and what’s good for them.
- Someone already has all the XP they want, and would now like faster rock crafting that the Devs have suggested they’d implement to back it up.
Oh boy gathering those tens/hundreds of thousands of rock for a large build just became a nightmare 
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You’re killing me here.
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Fair, rock build would suffer… I’ll add it do the list.
I am? Oooo, I’ve never been a murderer before.
Perhaps if you actually add to the conversation and explain how, I’d take you seriously.
Ah, excuse me. You mention a solution that doesn’t nerf anyone’s game play, and it turns out that solution is to negate one of the primary purposes of one of the most important class of tools in the game, AoE block harvesters.
This nerfs every builder, hard core. As mayumichi mentions the obvious impact to stone builds, and people are talking about hammers a lot right now.
Let me add on wood builds, which I have at my main build. It takes just as many bricks to build it out of wood as it does to build it out of stone.
I don’t want to forget brick users, who require 2 or three types of harvested block to produce a single building block.
Perhaps there are even long term benefits worth discussion, but this is very far from “not nerfing anyone’s style of gameplay”.
How many hours will this add to a casual weekend player’s brick build?
I don’t want to misjudge your intent. But I think this solution misses a couple of key points.
Is that better?
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I keep hearing this. I want to emphatically assure you that you are right. It doesn’t impact me negatively at all. You are a 100% right.
Which is why I am not changing it.
The Dev’s are.
In a single player game, it doesn’t ‘hurt’ anyone if I can exploit a boss (edit: AI) to make them useless…or dup items…but those get hot fixed all the time. Those don’t hurt anyone…they are literally single player games 
The Dev’s have a design for how the game is to be played and experienced. This exploit fundamentally throws that off balance. We can see the EXP curve through other activities, we know this is out of balance. Therefore, it should be fixed so that it is in line and working as intended.
And also on your point:
Yea, imagine how much longer the rest of us could have used this if there hadn’t been so many forum threads “level 1 - 50 in 5 minutes using this method” 
lol (I don’t think you made those threads, just a funny point!)
But they did make the threads, and people did use it…and now the Dev’s realize what it does and that it throws off the balance of the game so they are changing it.
That’s it.
On to the next easy exp grind Because we all know there are more…but lets keep them off the forum.
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Didn’t we already HAVE this, essentially? Bomb mining? And we know how that debate got settled…
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Yeah I don’t think this is resolved by nerfing other items. Hammer metrics are good for all. Materials, economy, reducing the grind!!, and generally fun!! I still say leave it alone and focus on adding more fun content.
It’s not a problem, only an annoyance for a few!
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Perhaps we need a poll to access how players on the forums feel about this change. Collectively are we for nerf to xp? Against the nerf xp - no change? Want it adjusted but not nerfed ? Or don’t give a ■■■■ what happens?
I am curious to know if I’m wasting my time expressing my opions.
I think we need to be very realistic here and acknowledge that there will be nothing you can do to stop people in doing things like this. The reality for people doing stuff on one character and transferring to another character will always happen. In any model and any situation as long as ALTs can interact. People use ALTs to do stuff they can’t do on their main as easily.
This issue was created the second the decision was made to require people to have ALTs. If we were on solo characters and been allowed to have them, then this exploit would have been used less in the Alt - Alt scenario. It would have only happened when people decided to make an Alt. Also originally we had 3, not 9.
Ultimately how does it hurt the game if a person creates their 9 Alts in 15 minutes? They will be maxed and the exploit will cease to exist in that context. Sure people will still make lots of XP via stone but not gain levels so fast.
We have now traded XP for all activities into an XP on certain activities… That doesn’t feel balanced. At the end of the day, this decision felt like it hurt more people than helped the game or really brought any balance.
I get that maybe something needed to happen but we should have cut the XP gain from 2 to 1, not 0.
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“We could still have a time based XP buff, but this could expire when leaving the game.”
one problem i have with this is i always get connection lost (kick out of the game) and it would be unfair and a total waste if the xp get loss because of this issue.
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