That’s a bit of an exaggeration, you had to press a button thousands of times and take time to collect the rocks and manage inventories and handle the resulting items etc.
I personally don’t see the stone xp as an exploit, it was put there by the devs and was simply a way that the game was set up, but the now realize that the stone is a bit op so in terms they are removing it. Idk how I’ma level up my alts on the time limits that I have…
If someone is spawning into the game for the first time, asking how to level and people are advising them to “level until you get the mass craft epic and spam tables full of rock,” it looks bad for the game.
If they successfully use the mechanic past level 20, the players won’t have the opportunity to discover the benefits of the skills themselves and they lose out on trying multiple specs for free. They get to level 5 and then they’re level 40 from rock crafting without much of a clue on how the rest of the game works, and they are still lost on how to truly progress.
Then we’re back at square 1, example 1, coming up on one of the biggest progression hurdles in the current meta:
“How do I get machine coils? I have 8 points in vitality and 8 points in zeal with [insert bad spec here] and I’m ready to take on the world.”
“Oh, you have to go mine x y and z items. Respec to miner.” Already a costly mistake, using a free page respec.
I think having to learn too many things the hard way tends to leave players feeling more dissatisfied with a game very quickly, and the easy access to this cheese mechanic can catapult them into dangerous territory
Just want to chime in here again to explain a little more of how this upcoming stone nerf effects me.
First of all. I want to say that shortly after I realised how much I was going to be impacted by this as a solo, casual and legitimate player, I started using the “Exploit” to my advantage. I had never done it before but After realising what I was about to lose, I felt I needed a boost before it happened. I gained 2 levels and earned 600 cubits. I stopped! Why? Because I just didn’t feel right doing it.
With that out of the way, here’s where I am at the moment. First of all, for context and perspective, here’s what I’m working on…
This is PROJECT: R3DF1RE. I’m moving my entire build from Gellis and starting again. Each of those 4 small buildings you see is the start and the base of a Max High tower. There’ll be 8 of them in total. 4 on Each side of the river. Between those are going to be my new Shops and Workshop/Storage areas. Workshops and Storage on one riverside and Shops on the other. These builds will be at least 2 plots tall. The workshop and storage will be HUGE and will be situated on the side where I’ve yet to build the tower bases.
That’s the project. It’s going to need a TON of BRICKS. It’s going to need a TON of PLOTS. As a legitimate, solo player, who doesn’t even use teaching pies when crafting, I stand to lose a hell of a lot of the plots that I’ll be needing, due to the 0xp that I’ll be getting from the stones that I’ll need to make, while crafting the bricks. We’re talking tens of thousands of bricks here! That’s a hell of a lot of XP from that stone that’ll be lost. That’s a hell of a lot of plots that’ll be lost.
This project is going to be near impossible to complete within a reasonable amount of time now. I might have to scale back. Make the towers smaller. I shouldn’t have to do that. There’s other projects I want to eventually get to. I have plans for Greek style builds built into cliffs like they were ancient ruins. I have plans for Tomorrow Land style mega-structures. When will I ever get around to those builds if I’m losing out when merely crafting my bricks to use in said builds?
So, that’s a little more perspective from my point of view and how I’ll be effected by this.
I recommend/request that the nerf be postponed until an alternative method for earning plots can be implemented.
Seems that it did get buried enough that I didn’t notice this. I think the base idea is good, but the xp gains between activities need to be fixed as well. Based on my tests (XP Curves of different activities) even a 3x boost would bring some activities on par with the base xp gains of the top ones.
I’m also already starved for skillpoints especially when the T7 worlds hit
[sorry, haven’t been here in a couple days, lots of replies, long post warning heh.]
dude, same here exactly. I’m going to build limit and the build is already 576 plots with just the bottom floor installed (not even all of it actually, its only plotted and cleared) and that’s ignoring all the floating foliage plots and 5+ radius protection plots surrounding the build.
I need a LOT of plots. 13k not including landscaping and protection plots.
same here. I don’t like killing things. I only keep a fist to defend myself. and a grapple to get away preferably.
I do it for the loot not for the fun or the challenge. (since I can’t get xp that way anymore)
umm yeah this is the ONLY way it could work. ONE item each please! not 8 or more for a single craft. thank you.
no, thank you, please do. they need to know how much and how many people dislike this idea.
heh. this is what I’ve done. and this is why I am always so completely broke. but it goes deeper than that. I also can’t afford the 20k hammers to get the amount of gems I would need to make the coils… (I could go on but I don’t want to go too off-topic.)
100%.
xp for uncovering an entire planet is EXTREMELY low. going on one hunt is like uncovering 3000 planets. (if you’re the one doing the damage)
it doesn’t make sense for MOST of them when an inferior material (Titanium) performs better in a lot of areas! gems should be better than titanium in every way. and without changing Titanium. that 40/40/40 grapple is a good balance.
then please, give us A LOT MORE for doing them.
100 xp for circumnavigating an entire planet regardless of terrain/difficulty, is WAY too low. it should be like 5k for level 1 planets and like 25k for t6. scale the planet tiers around that and that would feel appropriate. but of course this is just one example.
omg TOTALLY!! share the wealth!! what is so bad about letting the players have what they want?! why choke and limit everything??
you’re not looking at all the cases though. if i had a portal, whether or not I go on vacation, I don’t want it to close because it costs extra shards to reopen it. sometimes that may be more than the cost of keeping it open for 2 weeks. either way, I am all about efficiency. if my portal closes for any reason other than i am done with it, I am wasting shards.
but the changes you made are doing the opposite…
since launch, the game has become less and less fun.
sorry but these conflict with each other. and I strongly disagree with both.
yeah, like transform chiselling
BOOM!!
they actually said this?!? It definitely doesn’t show.
excellent post. I agree, this is very troubling.
totally! and some not at all! (like transform chiselling)
me too man.
me too.
so many builds would have been finished already then i could focus on helping others. but nope. gotta grind levels to get plots to claim one more layer of plots for my build. (one layer down, 23 to go.)
oh oh I was SOOO looking forward to this one too. it’s too bad. I may never see them. (depends on future updates… but mostly because of the cost of getting to them.)
I even have several accounts with backer bonuses and I still need way more plots.
me too.
if it wasn’t for my guild I probably would have deleted my beacon controls and made a forum post with coordinates. at least someone on my list has permissions so they can keep it fuelled if they want.
quoting at least some of your post because this is a REALLY GOOD IDEA!!
I think the reward should be leaving it in the game ;D
ok fine 1xp at least.
this is the biggest problem here, to me. every decision that has made the game less fun was done to appease or balance out these hardcore players and has always been detrimental to me, the casual player.
I think you mean diminishing
reminiscing is like remembering/discussing the good old days
Yes, Ctrl, they did. It was in one of those Oortian 1-on-1 backer meetings. I am kind of friends with one of the Oortian backers and they mentioned it to me. Stuff like this makes me very worried about the future of this game.
They worried about levelling to fast when it doesnt have an effect on other players. Worried about people getting to many plots, a person with a big enough wallet could do the same, by plots and block off a huge area and only be level 1. It makes no sense.
Anyone actually done the math on how much a single plot costs in real money (this me just thinking out loud cos I’m not really sure I’m for or against right now) my quick math on my break at work is (UK sterling) 15.6p per plot, (based if you were to buy the £79.99 cubit box) so each level gained over lvl50 is £1.56 in cubits. Sounds very reasonable at first but if you were to jump into the game now as a new starter and find yourself on pinata looking up in Ultima thinking wow so I need to go big or go home, best get some plots and realising 1000 plot is £156 or months and months of grinding tiny xp I’d be giving up because I wouldn’t put that much into a game on top of its shelf price and I want to feel rewarded for my efforts. In writing this out I think I feel 2xp is probably generous, 1xp is the safer better, 0xp is going to stagnate things. Personally I can’t see myself spending £156 but I could see myself spending £50 so maybe to keep the income flowing look at cubits prices and make that more appealing, I don’t know all I can say is I choose the wrong time to think up a plan that requires 900 plots on top of what I own already ( which will double my total plots across 3 chars)
1000 plots are 100 level ups at 50+.
That’s 20 000 000 XP.
That’s 10 000 000 XP with a pie.
That’s 100 000 mass crafts. Yes, that’s over 100 000 stupid mouse clicks.
This requires 1 800 000 rocks.
That’s 2000 smart stacks of rocks.
During the duration of a 30 minutes pie I can start and grab the XP of about 3500 mass crafts.
That’s about 30 hours of stupid, boring clicking.
I’m not sure that sounds so much better for a new player. He just has to realize that he doesn’t need 1000 plots before he even has an AE tool to collect the material to build with.
This made me think, so it’s ok for the character that mined the resources to get xp from the crafts? I think of my alts more like skillpages, and actually I was going to get skillpages instead of alts before I read that they draw from the same pool of points. So if I did stick with one character that had a miner spec too and gathered and crafted the rocks with that character, it’s not an exploit? This doesn’t compute, leveling alts (essentially skillpages) isn’t ok, but leveling a skillpage is? It’s an acceptable way for vets with a high lvl character that can afford to level an extra miner skillpage, but not for new players that didn’t spec in to mining?
