Hi everyone,
I’m here to talk something that is probably controversial, and I like to hear about the community and devs about it. It was intent to be this way? Are we with too much Oort Shards? I think:
Portals should be harder to build and maintain.
First I’d like to say that I think portals are “the thing” in Boundless, trailers and stuff show us how unique, awesome and “simple” transition between worlds are in the game (Devs, It’s amazing how you change us from server to server in a single step). But I think they are taking a great part of the experience: exploration.
Why? Well, when I just got into Boundless I was not finding iron at all,someone told me to go to given coordinates, which, after a long walk, took me to Pixel City. The journey was amazing, I found a lot of cool builds in the way, and even met another player, plus the extra difficult about running around if almost no equipment (at the time there was no skills).
That being said, today I feel kinda lost everytime I go from my base (somewhere in Alturnik) to any city to buy tools. There too many portals in the portal network, and some of them change owners from time to time. Although there’s awesome builds in the way, the majority of them I don’t even know each planet it was built in. I feel we are losing the experience of the journey, and the great achieve that is going to another world.
The solution? I’d propose making portal reachability (jumps) attached to plot prestige, and limit portal amount per plot. Or something like that.
I might be the only one feeling that way about portals, or maybe I’m too attached to my first experience traveling by foot. What you think about it? Comment and let’s talk
I myself remember how much i walked/runned trough Therka to reach the capital and go around, it was just like 3 months ago
Also i perfectly remember how difficult it is to craft the first time some portal conduits… now it’s easier to me, but only because i have a better knowledge of the game, better tools and this gives me the sense of growing up, it wouldn’t be the same if what is initially hard-to-impossible remains like that…
In my opinion things should be as you say limitating the accessibility to portals to lower level players…
for example devs already said that the atmosphere update should already limit a lot “noobs” capability to go everywhere, as they would simply die in a world they are not strong enough for.
On the other side I must say I do not agree with limiting the number of portals per plot or by bounding it to the prestige, as portal conduits also have a “funny” and decorative usage: you can use them as windows - for example an orizontal 3x3 portals high above your building that works like a living picture (just put some spark cord to make it unaccessible from your side), or hidden 1x1 trap-portals to send who doesn’t watch his steps on another part of the building… and i could make more example of things you would do as an advanced player
I was always advocating the original devs idea where warp blocks are the main mean of travelling through space and portals are high end technology that needs guilds to make its maintenance possible in larger numbers.
I would like balance that would allow me keep maybe 2-3 portals on my own (now I can easily run up to 10 portals).
I agree that a added level of difficulty should be included for off planet and further jumps “blinks”. I would recommend that for anything off planet pillars or similar structure need to be built “think Stonehenge”. The materials and space would add to the challenge of creating the portal. The further the jump the larger the structure would need to be. Perhaps by building the pillars it reduces the Orrt shard cost to a manageable level, and some unique hops could become available for special events, depending on the size, shape and materials in the structures build.
While I agree that portals are too many and too easy to make in the current version of the game, I don’t think you should limit it by prestige… All that will do is encourage someone to throw down enough Gleam to meet the requirement. Not only is a prestige limit easy to work around, but people will work around it in ways that contribute nothing to their builds and may even make them more annoying–i.e., another 2x2x255-block Gleam skyscraper.
But your story sounds similar to my earliest experiences… Long before portals existed, I had to scavenge enough Gold to make my first Warp Totem and jump from Solum to Epsilo. Not only did it feel like a worthwhile struggle even getting there, but it also made me feel like I was part of a special group of individuals who kind of lived out on the frontier of the game.
At that time, Epsilo’s population consisted of… 8 beacons, including my own. And I was so fascinated with my discovery by first arriving on the planet that it encouraged me to explore the whole planet and seek out all of the other inhabitants.
Now I can teleport to anywhere in an instant, and if I don’t like it or I run into danger I can simply warp right back. And, to be honest, most of the portal hubs are so elaborate and convoluted that I don’t even use them. Portals are pretty special and certainly fun, but I feel like the sheer volume of them has made everything else a little less special.
But maybe that’s just me? I’ve never wanted to build a corner store in the city market… I’d prefer to be that mysterious wizard’s tower at the edge of the wilderness. Whatever mechanism we eventually used to limit them, I do agree with you that are just too damn many of them.
This is an interesting topic. I think that portals right now are a touch too easy with maintenance, but portal networks are a utility designed by players to help everyone get around better. New players are always limited by the amount of stuff they have, but I agree that end-game players can very easily create and maintain portals. I’m sure the devs are constantly looking at balance, but Boundless at its core has always seemed to be about collaboration. It’ll be interesting how this work out.
We’re getting a lot of worlds to be on come 1.0. Not trying to say it isn’t a problem but portal hubs and networks are going to have a rough time being able to maintain their hubs and networks when there’s 30-50+ portals in a single hub or network. Multiple that out to 20-50 worlds with potentially hundreds of locations people want to link up to various portal hubs and networks and you’ve got a lot of Oort Shards being burned.
My view on portal hubs and networks and how challenging it is for the individuals and guilds to manage them is similar to massive and extremely active shops: it’s time consuming and challenging to do.
Making it harder probably isn’t a good idea. We can’t take the results of what was in an alpha or beta and consider it fact for 1.0. We haven’t had a fresh start in the game in a long time.
Portals are easy to maintain is a very arbitrary opinion!
First off Portals are easy for a select group of people to maintain… Hunters who hunt regularly.
I would like to know if the OP has made and maintained a portal?!?
I find it weird that a new player is saying portals are easy… This is not the normal new player opinion of portals…
I am thinking that the OP is jumping to a conclusion based on the portals he has seen and the people he hasn’t seen?!? And has decided that few people lots of portals it must be an easy feet…
If we take 13c as the average price of an Oort shard and 900 shards is enough fuel for 5w 3days… Then it costs… 11,700 to fuel a less then 3 blink sec portal for that period of time…
Thats a running cost of 308c a day…
In the current environment where vulpto is 3 blink seconds from most planets this is fairly easy…
However as we saw on the new worlds most planets were not even close to being 3 blink seconds apart… And that the live version of the game is going to be a much different beast when it comes to portals and portal hubs… Infact its looking Very costly…
So while It may seem on the cheep side now I think we are going to see a whole new world when all the worlds are spread apart like they will be when the universe goes live… So while this idea is interesting I wouldn’t go taking it to heart…
Again the most interesting part of this is that its being brought up bye a new player?!? And most new players find maintaining a portal to be too difficult…
Portals are currently very easy imo - I’m certainly not a new player (neither is @Chonps, for that matter, who has been playing for well over a year).
The reason I find them to be too easy, is that hunting is currently very, very OP in terms of loot - everyone in a hunt group is able to loot 5-10 rough oortstone per meteor… the more people that go, the more loot there is. If a group consists of 15 players all from the same guild, that’s at minimum 75 rough Oortstone per meteor. At a rate of about 4-5 meteors per hour (as an average), that’s looking a massive 300 Oortstone per hour. Break it down into shards with a few mass crafts and that’s over 4000 Oort shards (at the barest minimum) for an hours worth of hunting!! That’s crazy OP!
So yes, I do agree that portals are very easy at the moment. Adding a couple extra Blinksecs is not going to change that fact all that much unless the loot mechanic or the drop rate is changed.
I’ve mostly been a solo player, yet I have managed to maintain a minimum of 3 portals (and, at one point, a max of 8) since they were first introduced. In my opinion, this shouldn’t be possible - it should be an amazing feat… with them being so common, it doesn’t feel all that amazing.
I join a hunting party once a fortnight, sometimes less… and yet I can still maintain those portals.
I personally also don’t think new players should ever be able to create or even maintain a portal until at least a much later level of play.
I thought that somewhere the idea of portals being more of a group or a guild undertaking was thrown around by a Dev… Can’t remember but that would seem better to me honestly…
Warps are really underrated
I stopped using portals cause of hubs and networks. I am still sitting on 17.5k Oort Shards.
I think I remember hearing from a dev (can’t remember who or how long ago it was) that Rough Oort is going to be something you have to mine up. I could be very mistaken on that.
I just don’t want Rough Oort obtainable from meteors anymore. I want the actual real way we’re suppose to obtain it. Not that miners like myself need more stuff to get from mining already. lol
So bring on the Special worlds with Blink, Dark Matter, and Oortstone!
Blockquote Adding a couple extra Blinksecs is not going to change that fact all that much.
a couple??? many of those hops were 9-12 blink secs…
That’s what 10 shards an hour instead of 1 so 3080c a day…
And How many more 10 shard an hour portals will we need to maintain to keep the portal hubs functioning… with the world expanding and growing its going to be harder for the Portal Providers like Portal Keeper’s there is no doubt in my mind on that…
will it change the normal joe with his 2-3 1 shard an hour portals probally not… but if we change things for normal joe now it gets even harder for the Portal Providers who are already dealing with the large major hops.
Basically i think the expansion and size of the universe will be more then enough of a nerf to deal with the portal issue. We don’t need to make things even harder, then they will be…
While I agree that there are too many portals leading to portals that lead to the same portals that connect to other same portal groups, etc… repeat, rinse, repeat… I think it is fine.
Clearly the meteor event made Oort much easier to obtain because there was a huge rise in portals right as I shut down the Fire Caverns network.
In any event, I think we need to get into the new live 1.0 Universe with all the planets they have to then decide if we have any issues with portal numbers and how hard it is. There were 30 blink sec jumps there and I think it will be much harder for people to run them.
About, maybe the only thing I could see adding to portal management is a tax on portal networks since people are trying to treat it as a business. But, I still believe we cannot use the pre-launch world as a standard and need to get into 1.0 before nerfing or adjusting anything.
You two should get together and start a portal hub or something.