You can only make 9 blinksec portals anyways… Right? At the moment anyways…
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One thing that you may not be considering here is that many planet hops in the new universe will be in the low blinksec numbers (as even some on the hunting servers were), otherwise it’s going to be prohibitive to actually getting off of the starting planets without investing heavily in the increased hop skills.
I can honestly see those planets as the ones being over-populated with portals.
I still think we can use some of the data collected (and the play-styles of the current player base) during pre-launch. It’s just a case of scaling that data up in accordance with the expected player-base at 1.0 and beyond.
We’ve already heard from the devs that the meteor events are too OP - this may be because of the number of items dropped, but I think it could also be to do with the fact that you always get Oortstones at the end of it. This is a guaranteed way to acquire them. Mining for resources has no such guarantee that you will actually find the resources you are looking for… and only one person can mine said resource, not a whole group of 15+ players getting an equal amount.
I’d personally like to see the probability of Oortstones being dropped for a meteor event being tweaked, so on occasion there may be no Oortstones dropped.
I understand tweaking drops, but the hunts are one of the very few activities that draw a number of people together. If they reduce the amount of resources (whatever they might be) too much, the group hunts could die off. Why hunt for two hours if I can accomplish the same thing mining?
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Yeah good point. I didn’t mean it all was of waste, just that because of a tighter universe structure it gives a different perspective because things are not spread out.
I really wish they would bring back normal monster hunting where things are dropped on other creatures and not just meteors. That would be nice.
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I think it’s about finding balance. Not everyone enjoys hunting, not everyone enjoys mining.
If they’re going to keep Oortstones as a drop from meteors, then it needs to be balanced so that people that prefer mining and dislike hunting don’t feel like they have to also hunt just so they can contribute to the upkeep of a portal.
Because everyone gets to loot when hunting - and it benefits a group more?
It’s a double edged sword… I could say “why mine for two hours if I can accomplish the same thing hunting”?
…and then I remember, I enjoy mining more than hunting 
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I already don’t like hunting… this would guarantee 100% me not attending a hunt. oortstone is the ONLY reason I hunt.
^me. that’s me right there 
I was even going to suggest another way of fuelling portals, but if the mining thing is true I would be happy about that. its an easy fix and doesn’t take much development time away from proper polishing which is what this game needs right now.
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I don’t hunt because I don’t like it. There’s enough portals around being fueled by people so that I don’t have to manage and maintain my own. So even less of a reason to hunt. If I could mine up the Oortstone, I would just spend that extra time mining.
Right now the only point to hunting is to get those drops and turn them into Centraforge crafting mats. I don’t know if I can wait through snorefest meteor hunts just so I can get some creature drops for very little effort.
I wish those meteors were just more fun to clear.
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I will agree that some people like hunting more than mining and others mining more than hunting. I only hunt due to ort and the gems other than diamonds. With the forge, not sure I need the other gems since I can make an Iron tool do what I need. If hunting becomes a less reliable source of ort then mining, I will spend my time mining. You need a group to make hunting truly worth while. If you start loosing too many people to mining, then this group activity could contract in frequency. I think if the developers want the community to do things, then they need to keep things like hunting as a good source of something for everyone involved. Be that ort, gems, or something else. I am not against tweaking and I can understand the position that maybe too much ort is being dropped. I would just like it reduced gradually (if at all) so the developers can see the impact to the game and the group hunts.
I also recognize that you do get more XP hunting versus mining, but maybe that is a balance issue also. If I mine consistently for two hours should I get a fraction of the XP that I get from hunting?
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Shout this from the rooftops dude! 
If the real concern is how easy it is to create a portal then maybe that can be remediated through changing the recipes versus ort drops. Make the conduit take power to make. Make the recipe part of the Advanced Block Recipes so it take more skill points to get there. Add additional items to the recipe.
Maybe this will keep relatively new players from creating portals.
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Portal conduit are in no way near easy to craft as it is. It’s a huge pain to craft for new players. That’s one of the things you buy at a shop before your crafting place is ready. So you can reach the city to buy more if you need to or do any kind of activity.
And keeping relatively new players from crafting portals? What? It’s the main selling point of boundless. Portals. You want to tell new players they can’t craft it, they have to grind for 2 month and maybe get one now? I would be fricking pissed.
I don’t understand anything of this thread. I understand op got lost through the portals. Yeah I did too on my first days. I though I was in The matrix:reloaded it felt great.
Come on now. Portals are fun. Everybody should be able to maintain a bunch. You get your own portal to a few planets, maybe one for a mine, maybe one for a building. One to link up to your group of friends, one to link up to a city obviously, and maybe 2 for a fun maze or something. You know, the minimum to do more than survive.
As for hunt vs mining. Both activities need to stay rewarding. Hunts need to be a tad more rewarding because it takes organisation. And as much as possible they need to drop different things.
See I disagree with that too. Both activities need to drop precious things you can’t find elsewhere, That’s how you get an economy going. if everybody get everything from it’s one fav activity, then you greatly reduce interactions. You can buy and sell stuff. Or simply associate with people with complementary roles. That way everybody can feel like they bring something precious to the community.
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It’s odd that you removed the first part of my statement to change it’s context to suit your needs… I did in fact say …
… this is because we already know that Oortstone is, and always has been, intended to be a mined special resource.
Whilst I do agree that different activities should reward different things to promote trade between players, I don’t agree with it being something like Oortstone. With this particular commodity, you’re essentially saying that you can only efficiently run a portal if you’re a hunter. Meteor hunting is also already more rewarding, because each and every player is able to loot all of the creatures you kill, and the meteor itself.
Hunting meteors is also currently far more efficient at providing multiple gems per hour than mining is… again, this needs to be balanced as with meteors, it’s a guaranteed earning of all gem types without ever needing to leave that one planet (something which I hope is addressed before 1.0). Should components, devices, ores and gems be removed from meteors because they can already be found in the ground? No, I don’t think so… It just needs to be balanced so that meteor hunting isn’t the best way to get resources that were intended to be mined,. Hunting already has it’s own set of items (meat, eyes, hide, creature mantle, blood, trophies, shards etc) that cannot be attained through any other profession.
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i belive that the problem is not “new players create portals”, because new players doesn’t create new portals, it’s way to expensive… 800 spark and 1000 power, to get that 1000 power as a new player isn’t that easy…
i think the problem is new players - aka characters below lvl 20 - having access to other players hub ( @Jiivita 's video “how to reach lvl 8 in minutes” ). I would put a nice warning appearing on your screen You are too weak for interstellar travel (so you can only use portals that connects on the same planets)
Bomb-mining gives the similar or same if not more xp than hunting (as you don’t have empty spaces of time to go from a region to the other or to search for mobs packs)
Hello, that’s me. I don’t want to have to do X to be able to maintain a portal.
Despite being advanced in other areas of the game, I’ve opened a single portal jump once - to move house - and never again. It’s too expensive for someone whose oortstone income is once-in-a-few-roadrunners and meteors they happen upon. You either have to actively hunt as you say or something else to earn coin to buy oortstone.
As soon as a game element seems to me to be forcing n hours of activity on me I resent it and just ignore it. Even if it’s things I like, I just can’t stand the idea of having to log on to have to do a certain thing. Then it’s a job not a game.
//
I’m fine with costs being higher, if the routes to oortstone are more balanced. As of now with afk kid commitments I don’t get to do group hunts, and I believe it’s already been mentioned that these will be rebalanced in terms of reward. I think portal cost increases should wait until then before changes, or in fact come down for now.
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I only quoted the end of your statement because I just disagreed on that last point. Of people not needing to get near another profession.
I realise now that it put world on your mouth and wasn’t nice to do. Sorry about that. I’ll try not to do it again.
I guess if the plan is to make oort shard minable, Then yes removing it from meteorite drop makes sense, provided you can get access to the minable resource fairly early.
It always bugged me that hunting and mining share so many resources in common.
I’ve been thinking about the balance of hunt rewards, and how it needs to be so finely balanced to get people to group up together and yet not make other activities irrelevant. It’s always a problem because hunting and mining share the same resources. And hunting need to make people gather together, so it should always be more efficient at getting resources.
If all the resources you get by hunting are exclusive, then it’s not a problem. It balances itself. Offer and demand. Mining isn’t overshadowed anymore. Hunting needs it’s valuable resources though. Without the gems/oort there would be pretty much no point in them, the mobs drops alone won’t do it.
I would have been happy with the gems disappearing from meteorite drops but keeping oort exclusivity. That way you get no overlap from one activity to the other and hunts are still rewarding. I guess that’s not what’s planned.
It worries me that so much stuff has yet to change and yet release is so close. I hope you guys tested a bunch in the hunting servers. I wasn’t there for that.
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Never mind I did not read your post right the first time sorry
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I’d be happy with gems being dropped removed or replaced with the various elemental shards, but would people still group hunt if that was the case? I’m not so sure on the exclusivity of Oort dropping from meteors, as it comes back to my point of you have to be a hunter to run a portal effeciently. As others have stated, they’re a big selling point of the game (but just too abundant).
If Oortstone is mined and drops from meteors, but is much more balanced (so as not to be over-abundant or be dominated by either profession), I’d be ok with that.
Whilst this may be true, the major difference is that bomb mining destroys most of the byproduct of mining, whereas hunting does not.
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There is a warning in flashing red letters when looking at a Portal that leads a higher lv world (with a low lv character) though I probably should have mentioned something about it… my familiarity with the game dooms me sometimes ><
building your first portal feels like an arduous task… but after a time it feels like no big deal. Progression? I mean shouldn’t time invested equal being able to do things a bit easier? Otherwise it would feel like a grind that never lets up.
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I think that’s the dev post you have in mind:
And I agree with you, this sounds way more interesting than what we have now.
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Another thing to consider… on the hunting servers, some of the jumps were 20+ blinksecs… planets could be clustered together into systems which would be relatively easy to connect but getting to the next cluster could require a very expensive portal… it all depends on how they arrange them ^^
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