Yeah it was interesting in the beginning before the portal networks formed. We were constantly strapped for coin so there was no economy as everyone was warping around. That was before warping home was free, but it took most of the coin out of the game. We actually waited for the portal networks to form and now a new player or experienced never has to open a portal at all.
But on the creative side a portal network is impossible and a player is forced to maintain a portal in order to not be stuck on a single planet. Definitely not the case for a player on the survival side. I have never opened a portal in the public universe after EA was over. And I never had to in order to move between planets.And I never had to spend coin on warps once the networks formed also.
Sorry, I’m not advocating for creative to have free portals everywhere without limitation.
I’m only saying that the current proposed “simple” solution would be forcing creative players to participate in the survival game mode in order to be connected to via a portal to everyone else. To me, this is essentially the same thing as locking content behind PVP and forcing players to participate in order to get to it.
If you have no skill points then you cannot build efficiently, you cannot terraform the land for your build efficiently, and you cannot efficiently fight off the mobs which are annoying when you are trying to build. You also cannot have the atmosphere protections that might be necessary on certain creative worlds as was in fact needed in testing them.
So I am not sure I understand how you can be in creative without skills.
I’m still up after what turned into an all nighter, and I’m not sure I want to point for point a lot of what’s been said since my last post.
I did some digging on this though and got here:
I don’t think anyone is trying to read into the original intent of the developers, but until at least the actual release of creative worlds (now known as ‘local sandbox’ ) there was a common perception that planets which didn’t follow the rules of the public universe would be disconnected from the public universe, and that served as the basis for much of the discussion.
As far as I know the first developer mention of a “creative universe” was the announcement of release 246.
Prior to this and going way back there was the assumption that all hosted worlds would follow the given rules for resource distribution:
I will agree it has evolved. Since these are not self hosted planets that is a change. And I guess I should have just scanned my old posts to find the other quote.
Then maybe that was the better idea in the first place. Separate the creative from the survival so neither side is handicapped or punished to protect the play style of the other universe. So my prior statement is untrue.
Let the players segment along those lines if that is the only way to make a MMO creative universe. At this point I think that is a better solution than making the creative planet setup so unpalatable that it significantly decreases the number of players that rent them. Or delay the release of creative planets until a better solution can be devised and tested.
I actually came to both of those quoted posts using google to search the forums.
The developers gave themselves this new goal of merging the two universes. As long as everyone has access to both, I agree that the simplest solution to the logistics issues is to keep them functionally separate.
This first release might not be optimal for every player. As long as it doesn’t mangle what’s already in place, I’d still rather have something ‘experimental’ and iterate vs. waiting for a perfect solution to get hammered out in theory.
With that said, discussions about how to merge them have brought about some interesting ideas. In the end though, we’re all just waiting to see what they deliver, and how it will continue to evolve.
My issues is how can we even be sure that there will be another iteration? Will the developers feel this is more important than what they had planned on doing next? Are we going to have to wait two months or two years for them to take a look at it again?
The only thing I am certain of is that I will not be renting a desert planet or a high tier rugged planet in creative mode until a change is made. I have no intention of fueling multiple beacons and traveling across the universe to get to move between my own two planets. Especially not when I am paying for them.
Is it really better to have creative planets completely separate with zero option to go back and forth than to have free warps to creative and an option to open portals? Seems like hyperbole to me, personally.
If the player can go back and forth, does the avatar matter?
Something like the dream realm or any of several other ideas amount to a fully functional separation between the two systems, too.
The fixed/dedicated creative portal ideas also serve this purpose.
I mean it’s close - once it’s done so that moving around in one universe doesn’t move you around the other, I think most players on both sides of the issue would be satisfied.
The option to warp where? Between creative planets? I have not seen anything that says these are free and unfortunately we did not test to see if they were free or not when we had the chance. As far as opening portals, the creative side is limited to opening portals that are from one point on the planet to another. So unlike the survival side, they are severely restricted. An option to open portals from the survival side has all the drawbacks already stated and is at the root of the issues I am having with the solution.
When a player enters sanctum when they launch the game, just let the elder ask if the player wants to see the survival side or the creative side and reload sanctum with access to the proper universe.
Well, to me any system where I don’t have to log out of survival and log into creative seems like an unexpected bonus.
Also, people keep bringing up how if new boundless players don’t get a free portal they will think it’s super unfair. They don’t even know about portals at all, why would they expect to get one free? And why would they quit boundless just because they don’t get one? Seems like a stretch to me, like people who just want a free portal are trying to polish the point (no offense intended, I mean, who doesn’t want a free portal)
I don’t think survival players will be happy when a bunch of prime portal spots in hubs get taken by people who pay real money for them. As a hub owner, all things being equal, it would be logical to in fact give preference in giving portal spots to people who don’t have to fuel their portals over people who do (since those portals would be more likely to stay open).
Does it make sense for people in creative to get preferential treatment in survival mode ahead of those who actually live in survival? I have no objection to giving an equal boost to ALL players if people really think free portals are a dealbreaker.
This may not be the proper place for it but I do have one more solution. The unfortunate part is I have no idea how much programming it would take.
what we need to make this work is one way portals. . and two home beacons. If you can create one way portals from the survival side to the creative side then you cannot form a network. Let the creative to creative be two way portals. Then if the only option to get out of the creative side is to warp home then all you need is for players to have a home beacon in the public universe. Their exit point is always their home so this does not make it useful for a portal network. Then you can have a home in creative to warp there free from where ever and one in the survival to warp home for free. The big change is the one way portals. and if on the other side they showed closed then would this not work? Since most players do something and warp home anyway would it create too many issues?
Isn’t that up to the player(s) running the hub? If you think there will be more traffic and therefore more footfall by allowing a connection to a creative versus a survival planet, isn’t that an economic decision? And if this is truly a player run economy is that not the way it should be?
I would have personally believed that a mall or a shop or another planet would generate more footfall during a typical week.
Maybe they can change the time on the Warp Blocks that go to creative worlds to unlimited time. We already have the item for one way transportation in game, it just needs to tweaked.
That is not a bad idea at all. No portals between creative and survival at all. Like it currently is in test. A warp that is infinite if it connects survival to creative. We just need a way to close it. So if we can interact with it to close it then that works. If you allow a second home beacon so the survival players can have a home in the public universe then I think it works.
