Take my money Wonderstruck!

A lot of people would like to pay cash for portals. In survival. I don’t see that as a matter of fairness in game balance. It’s just a sort of executive decision, whether or not they want to accept cash for that. I don’t see a lot of “win conditions” in Boundless so I’m not as heavy about the P2W stuff as some.

I do see people asking for cash portal fueling if “they pay cash” is given as the reason for unlimited fuel in creative to survival portals.

As for the rest of it, it seems like those arguments could be summarized as “If a player wants a portal on a survival planet, they need to acquire fuel in the survival universe.”

I mean, how fair it sounds is largely a matter of presentation.

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Definitely true on both sides

Also good point about general paid portals.

In both cases: “Yes, if that’s Wonderstruck decide is part of the package you are paying for. Otherwise no”.

True, but in one scenario you are pushing people who only want one of those play styles to stick to their (and only their) preferred play style, while in the other you’re finding a way to keep the community as unified as possible.

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Well, yes, that’s true.

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Ok, let’s look at this from the perspective on a new player that wants to play on Creative and be connected to other players… not from a perspective of players that have been playing for 2 years, have all the skills and are sitting on a few million coins to buy whatever they want.

I’m going to use Nightstars summary as it perfectly describes what the current “simple” plan is with regards to portals on creative…

Buying Oort to fuel portals is out of the question for a purely Creative player, as they just won’t have the coin to do so. Let’s show this with some scenarios…

Scenario 1: Tell them to “join a hunt” … first let’s look at the minimum skills and equipment needed to actually join a hunt group …

  • They’ll likely need 8 points in agility to be able to keep up (ignoring that some players run n00b friendly hunt groups as this is play time limited - i.e. those hunts aren’t running all day every day).
  • They’ll likely need 12 points in atmosphere protections - 4 in each (again, can’t rely on groups just hunting on low tier worlds due to play time limitations - also remember that these skills only unlock at level 12).
  • They’ll need a loot stick, otherwise they’ll likely not keep up with the group as it will have moved on while they’re whacking individual corpses with a stick. Can’t forge your own, so they’ll need coin to buy one (or rely on someone giving them one, which should never be a factor).
  • They’ll need a decent grapple. Again, can’t make and forge your own, so they’ll need coin to buy one.
  • If they actually plan on shooting anything, just so they don’t feel like they’re a dead weight in the group, they’ll need coin to buy a Slingbow.
  • They’ll need food… as energy drain is a thing.
    All these things take time, playing in the survival universe, to acquire.

Scenario 2: No hunt groups running when you play, so they need to hunt solo. (Let’s completely ignore the fact that in 50 minutes you can get enough Oortstone for 900 shards… on a level 50 character).

  • You’ll need … actually I have no idea how a fresh level 1-2 character is supposed to get any of the skills and equipment needed to hunt solo, without playing a fair chunk of Survival first.

Bottom line, acquiring Oort is going to be a massive chore for a creative player… Ok, fine… let’s assume they have acquired some Oort anyway… now they need to process it into shards so they can actually use it…

  • They’re going to need to build an extractor… Stone, Base Metal (Copper/Iron) & Ancient Tech Remnant…
    • … which means they now need to make Shovels and Hammers for digging/mining.

Alright, let’s assume they’ve done all that…

  • They’re going to need some Portal Conduits to actually connect their chosen place in the survival universe to their creative world - Refined Rock, Refined Wood & Opal…
    • Now they need to build a Workbench - Timber, Base Metal & Ancient Tech Remnant.
    • Now they need to build a Refinery to make the Refined Wood & Rock - More Stone, Precious Alloy, Ancient Tech Component & Ancient Tech Remnant… Oh, and Spark.
      • Now they need to build a Spark Generator (Base Metal, Iron Furnace Base, Cog & Ancient Tech Component)…
      • Now they need to make Spark Links to connect the Machine to the Generator (Base Metal & Ancient Tech Remnant).

… I feel I don’t need to continue with this … you can see where I am going with it… (Edit: Even though I missed out getting fuels for smelting and spark!)

For someone that wants to just play in Creative and be connected to the rest of the main universe like everyone else, even though they gain no advantage over Survival players as they don’t get footfall, nor do they participate in the economy and certainly they take nothing away from the Survival universe at all… there is no p2w argument here as there is nothing for them to gain other than players more easily being able to reach and see whatever wonders they have built.


TL;DR
It’s absolutely NOT just about getting Oort to fuel a portal. It’s being forced (yes, forced) into playing Survival for countless hours (see above), just to get to the stage where you can be connected to the rest of the universe like everyone else.

For me, the simplest solution seems to be the absolute worse solution for getting players to actually rent a Creative world.

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It’s super late (early even) here so I’m going to keep this brief, but I want to offer an alternative scenario:

  1. Run around on survival for a few minutes, complete the tutorial and have nearly 1000 coin. Whack a few nox/swords along the way for bonus coin.

  2. Buy a loot stick for 600 coin.

  3. Buy 2 portal conduits for 150 coin. image

  4. Place the portal conduits in your tutorial build.

  5. ( a ) Run around T3 for dormants for a while (could be long time or not depends on many things)
    ( b ) Find an escort around a T3 for some quick oort
    ( c ) Warp to a friend on a larger hunt for some quick oort and to begin a lasting revenue stream

  6. Open your portal.

Admittedly I’m oversimplifying a little, but it seems like you’re pushing hard in the other direction.

There are lots of people willing to help in various ways. And someone who wants to “Be a part of the community” will have no problem finding that help. There’s regular discussion here of “helping” people so much it wrecks the game for them.

I can have some sympathy for this hypothetical complete new player but really I’m not coming into empathy with many of the scenarios being presented. If they want to bridge both worlds they need to operate in both worlds, and to me that just doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

By the time they’ve done even the most minimal prep to bridge the gap (no need for a completely solo, no economy, total solution) they will be able to acquire what they need. The point is they’re trying to be part of the community, right?

It would be so much better to be sorting community oriented solutions than just repeatedly painting more and more detailed pictures of how awful it could possibly be in the very worst case.

EDIT: I left out extraction, sorry rushing.

Buying an extractor is cheap and no power required. with a single spark generator and link it’s another couple hundred coins.

Also I’ve traded rough for shards before after taking a new player on a hunt, as well. As a community we can simplify this.

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Whilst I do agree that there are more simple ways to acquire the things mentioned… it still does require players to spend time playing in the survival universe when all they want to do is play in the creative one and have people easily come and visit them. My point still stands.

I know this is primarily a Survival universe and Creative feels like a bolt-on to that to some people, but both are supposed to co-exist harmoniously. Imagine this from the opposite end of the spectrum… imagine this was a Creative universe and you had to build a 200 plot build in Creative before you can set up a permanent link to Survival for people to come visit you… How many people would want to do that?

This is how it is going to feel to creative players. I’m not trying to paint a bad picture here. I want Creative and Survival to coexist in the same universe. I honestly think it’s going to be good for the game for it to be like that. I just don’t think forcing people to participate in Survival in anyway is a good selling point to allow them to be linked together.

I also just want to point out a flaw in your reasoning, as I see it… yes you can buy all these things from the community… but it’s reliant on availability and accessibility. A player shouldn’t have to rely on these things to be a part of said community.

Personally, I think allowing a single permanent portal per creative world to the orbited world, at the renters discretion, is a far better initial implementation than forcing people to play survival to allow them to feel like they are connected to the rest of the community. They’re shouldn’t have to try to be part of the community - they are part of the community - just with a restriction imposed on them.


Disclaimer: Even though I am advocating for less restrictions imposed on creative portals, I don’t plan on renting a creative world myself. I’m trying to make Creative world a viable, accessible, option for people to rent.

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Totally agree with this. If this is to be a pay service then there should be no gating to prevent one from being able to enjoy it immediately. It’d be nice if you got a creative booster pack or something in your first beacon on your new world giving you everything you need to start zipping about and, if you want to, get out to the rest of the game.

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In creative you can actually get going straight away with unlimited plots, a default skill set with unlimited changes allowed to it, unlimited colour changes for your world and access to all the blocks/colours etc.

It’s more of a case of being part of the rest of the universe and community at large and being able to connect to them without needing to play the other game mode.

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This :heart:
I don’t like the idea of us being even further split, we are already scattered across 50 planets and I love this community!

One of the big draws of this game for me is that we are all in one place. Maybe that’s selfish haha, but none of you can leave!!

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If you want to be fully isolated from the survival universe couldn’t you just stay on your creative world and not open a portal to survival?

You get full creative mode as soon as you get to the planet as far as I can see, and the only way you’d have to grind is if you wanted to connect to survival… if segregation from the survival universe is desired then the portal cost is a moot point unless I’m missing something!

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No that is not the MMO Creative that has been discussed if I want to play a single player sandbox I have enough games with that mode that it is not a problem. And if I have two creative planets (which is what I was looking at) then I cannot get between them at all without playing in survival. So it is not a pure creative experience.

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Ah so you’d prefer if you could open portals creative->creative for free, that makes sense.
To connect to survival for a price also makes sense to me… Maybe creative->creative portals should be looked at, I hadn’t thought of those wanting more than one creative!

If a game mechanic needs other players to take actions they would not normally take then I would argue it is broken, Are pure survival players just going to donate enough Oort to fuel a portal network? I doubt it and they should not have too.

This keep getting brought up and not just by you. What makes someone a member of this community that keeps being brought up?

It cannot be that they participate in the economy, because there are players that are not doing that now.
It cannot be that they are on the forums. There are over 3000 players a month that play according to James and probably less that 300 players active on the forums in a given week. So this is certainly not the community.
It cannot be that they travel between all the planets. I know I have not been to all the planets in particular the Australian ones due to lag issues. And I would venture to say there are Australian server players that may not have even left their region for the same reasons. So are they not part of this community?
It cannot be that they are in a guild because there are guilds that certainly do not interact or is each guild a community?
It cannot be that they go on group hunts, because not everyone hunts
It cannot be that they do gleambow or the other wonderstruck events. There are plenty of players that have stated on the forums that they do not participate in these events.

So again what makes it a community other than we play the game in the same universe? I would argue that is all it is. So if a pure creative player wants to stay on those planets and they are connected, then that should be enough. it should not require them to have to play on the survival side any more that the pure survival players are required to play on the creative side. What I think would be best is to maintain a way for players to go back and forth easily, which is not what the proposed solution does. As has been stated by others it forces players that want creative to engage in survival side activities merely for the ability to visit other creative planets or to visit a survival planet.

It would be interesting if the survival players were told they all had to maintain a portal from their home to another planet in order to visit any other planet in the universe. Because that is exactly what the creative players are being told.

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Yes, I think this is important

Here is where we disagree and at the end of the day, I think this discourages players that might have been waiting for creative from coming back to the game.

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Actually after doing a search I cannot find anywhere that the developers stated the creative and survival universes were ever going to be separate. I know there have been more than a few players that have insisted on it for various reasons, but until someone can demonstrate that this was the intent of the developers then is not a valid argument.

Edit this is incorrect there is a point where the developers stated that the public universe would not be accessible from the creative planets.

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Oh yes I saw that bit! I was thinking given items are creative only one might be delighted to begin with a kit of say; 2 portal blocks (first one’s free, kids!) and a handful of oort, a half-decent grapple, an exclusive Sovereign totem or something like that, etc.

Sort of like the backer rewards but something to give you a practical leg up too. It occurs to me that if my son came to this game on his own, he’d be starting from this end of the game and would be a very happy customer to get a pack to get him going. Also makes you feel special, never a bad thing to make customers feel.

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Cause building is fun. Ill be moving but not gonna stop me from enjoying it

We have to do that?

Just because he comunity is helping with hubs at this point it doesn’t mean that at the beginning some one had to open a portal to move between worlds.

If hubs decided to stop paying for the comunity then everyone else would have to find a way to move between the universe.

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Whilst that is true, hubs also earn vast amounts of footfall coin to help pay for their costs. They don’t need to go into a different play mode to facilitate that.

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