Trying to keep portals between creative and survival simplified here, I have two basic proposals.
1) standardized size, single point of return.
this is the simplest, but has a major restriction. In this plan, all portals to creative worlds must be of a standardized size and shape. This standardization eliminates edge case issues with variable portal sizes and makes it possible to have any portal leaving the creative worlds to return the player to the exact same portal they entered from.
If you entered a creative world from a portal seekers hub on Biitula, travel to a creative world orbiting Berlyn, and take a portal to exit the creative worlds, any portal you take exiting the creative worlds will return you to the same portal you entered on Biitula.
This also means all exit portals will be able to render your ingress point from Biitula. No matter where you go in creative, your exit is always the same.
This is my favored solution.
2) variable portal size, multiple exits.
This strategy gives a lot more player agency. It uses the same concepts of standardized portals in that if you exit a creative portal to survival through a portal of exact same dimensions as the portal you entered, you always return to the same portal you originally entered. If you exit a different sized portal, you instead enter the sanctum. From sanctum, you can either warp home, or pay the warp cost to exit on the planet your portal would have exited.
I like this because the community has the opportunity to agree upon a standardized or proprietary portal size to return to the travelers start point, or possibly span the universe by paying coin. This opens up shortcuts that the traveler pays for out of pocket instead of traveling through multiple hubs or portal networks. You could travel to opposite ends of the universe in a single hub, but you will pay to do it.
Iâm not sure how this solves the âfree fuelâ issue or any others the Devs outlined. Also anything having to track portals seems much more complicated on a technical level.
Any portal that returns you to where you entered, or to a single âgenericâ location solves the âfree fuel issueâ which isnât anything to do with people not wanting creative planets to have portal access.
Itâs to do with not wanting them used to bypass the travel requirements of the survival universe.
The rest of the issues related to this, as I understand it, are implementation barriers related to implementing a new system for this, or making modificaitons to the existing system.
Honestly, so far my favorite âwild ideaâ is that creative portals be a different, fixed size unit, as proposed by @majorvexin this post.
@DKPuncherello also made a solid suggestion about a dream realm but that would require implementing a lot more (I think) into the game vs. simply using the sanctum as an entry point.
In every case, thereâs a minimum requirement to come up with new stuff - ranging from simply a new way to browse planets in the sanctum to entirely new features or components in game.
Of course I canât say for sure but it seems like tracking what portal you came in through is going to be a lot less development overhead than many proposed solutions. But Luca has indicated that one of the major obstacles to that is the use of various sized portals.
So thatâs why you see proposed solutions revolving more around standardized or fixed portal sizes right now.
Both of these options fail the developer requirement that âPortals work as expect and [are] not confusing for players.â
Having different players enter the same portal and end up somewhere different sounds confusing. Even more so when those portals that look exactly the same as other portals. If you added a requirement for portals between creative and survival to be visually distinct, then you might be moving in the right direction.
Going back to sanctum sounds good solution but if system allows those portals could be also shown as conduits to players, everyone should be able to use return sanctum anyways.
Good to that there is talk about warp costs. I havenât seen much talk about that, it would be need to be counted from entering survival planet or parallel networks could become new way as those wouldnât need any oorts and warping from orbiting creative wouldnât cost much.
My favorite suggestion for portals has been this time debuff which would allow use other portals if said long enough in creativel.
Yes it would be good, right now it costing even between creative planets to warp what can be confusing first as players might not take care of coins. Warping costs from creative to survival should be count as warp entering point would be on planet where player did leave survival.
As much as I do not really like this solution it is so much better than what is being proposed implemented.
The game already stores where you are when you exit so it can set up a portal from sanctum to that location. Would it really be that much harder to also record where you where when you left the survival universe? They are already changing your skills and inventory so the event has in game mechanics associated with it.
As fair as it not being confusing for new players . are they not already going to have to explain why you cannot create a portal to another creative planet? If they are not that far apart and you have the skills then I can see players making the attempt only to have the system stop them when they try to open it or to create a token. And want to talk about confusing. . lets look at the forge. If the forge is not considered to be too confusing then I am not sure why this is any different.
I guess if we allowing âcreative charactersâ to run all over the place between âcreative planetsâ for free but when they flip back to survival their âsurvival characterâ is at the exact portal entrance they were at when the flip happened then I might personally be able to get on board with it.
Right now my big issue with this solution is it is a different method of how portals work and doesnât feel that it matches things in survival. It also still allows for Creative hubs to create this huge network that might feel over balanced versus survival. It makes me a bit worried that creative might get more and more players and survival just dies out. But, Iâm not sure that matters and I know lots of people like survival over creative.
I do still like my 1 portal (1x2) for the planet owner that allows a connection to the orbit world. The issue with that is creative-creative canât be allowed. If it was then it would open the opportunity to jump throughout the survival universe for free and large hubs might suffer which I donât think is fair. And we know the second people have unlimited fuel they will create some sort of cross the Universe solution.
I guess the real issue is the âfree fuelâ that is the biggest issue. At the end of the day, while I am basically on board now with the âput you back where you enteredâ solution it might have to be that if people want the Creative - Survival Universes to interact then players themselves are going to have to âfund the Oortâ. Since people get footfall in survival for this it seems like a good in game business opportunity even though not ideal. This makes âcreative linkingâ an option and not a requirement. We could, though, find a way to use the only 1 1x2 portal per account/planet is free fueled merged with this âwarp back to enterâ as the grouped solution.
Building the tech is always the block for almost everything. Maybe @lucadeltodecso or @James can be generous to the community and share a bit on the technology side the complications or concerns they have with the solution being talked about (OP and our discussion). Iâm not sure how easy it is to track players âportal/planet locationâ from the survival/creative transition. Iâm assuming just another DB entry or something outside of the âportal size questionâ which Iâd want more details on. I donât have enough details on âcreative vs survivalâ tech implementation since it is a whole new area.
Ultimately, the only ones with a concrete idea about how hard it would be to implement an idea, or how long or if it is even worth the dev time is the devs themselves. As a suggestion, I donât take into account the amount of work required, I just propose a design path they may not have already considered.
I seriously feel like the best solution is just a combination of all the suggestions that have come up. Use @majorvex idea of a special portal that you can use between creative and survival. Make portals between creative worldâs the same as normal portals. Allow every creative world owner to have one free creative-survival portal so the owner can get to survival and back for free and allows people from survival to visit the creative worldâs. Then since this portal is unique it solves the portal size issue, so it can track where you entered creative. This will allow the devs to make to so any portal that isnât the one you entered from will bring you back to where you did enter from, and then combine @lucadeltodecso idea of adding an interact with the portal so you can choose to pay a warp cost to come out at the actual portals exit point if you donât want to exit where you entered. I donât see how this wonât solve every issue.