I think in order to balance it out, reward plots also. Cubits and straight up plots per every level and a little bit for big endeavors.
Also the option to buy them with cubits, because i also have plans that now will be halted and re planned, grrrr. Maybe even the coin machine could have the option to give plots also.
Thanks for the response james! You guys are very very good at soliciting feedback from the player base and being responsive to questions. …Thankyou.
This is part of where the builder game “rubber” meets the MMORPG “road”.
I have enough oort right now to fuel my current portals past the end of my gleam club membership, and part of me would love to just throw it in there and forget it for a while. But I also know that if this were the case Ultima and Portal Seekers would be unassailable game infrastructure for the next 5 years or something. An actual number isn’t important to the point.
My build is literally “useful” because another player couldn’t stack two years of oort into his portals when he basically walked away. I’m sure he has the oort. Then when and if he decided he was interested enough to step back into the game to try out some new content or something he would have a few hundred k in footfall on hand to do it with, too.
Few people are going to ever bother changing habits or patterns, researching alternate routes, etcetera… when they know their favorite portals are standing there gleam clubbed and fueled for the next two years anyways.
This is several kinds of problem for a game like boundless IMO and as I’ve stated before, both the challenge, and the opportunity created by the limited portal fueling are important, and should largely stay in the game.
My opinion of course.
You stop gaining footfall after a certain point of not visiting the town it’s in. I don’t remember exact amount of days but I think it’s around two weeks
The change to rock xp from 2 to 0 seems more like a reaction to things rather than a well thought out idea. Some people in here have made some good points on the real issues here with it.
What I don’t understand is if the xp is 2 per rock, why not just reduce it to 1? You would still have to work at it, but then it would be on par anyway with many other ways to level up fast.
Also, there will always be a fastest way to level up and no matter how many “holes” you plug, there will always be another way found, especially given that there will be updates for years to come.
What if the teaching pies were capped to a max amount of xp instead of a time limit? Kind of like a reverse death penalty. So double XP for your next 25,000 XP.
Caps the rock exploit by making it too tedious to actually exploit. But doesn’t punish ppl doing it for other reasons.
And rock->stone is lowered to 1xp.
Combo of those two offers a balance stance somewhere between 1 and 0 xp.
Yes. This has been suggested before. I know I have as well.
Getting rid of the timer and putting a max bonus xp gained buff on instead would be a great change.
This is honestly why I’ve only tried pies once. Once. I have a few, but I feel like I need to go HAM once I nom one and that just makes me cringe, thinking of all the wasted time.
A set bonus xp gain, however? Yes! I’d certainly nom more pies. Because there’s no waste.
Chefs might even make more sales.
I know that feeling well, haha. I typically try to save them for times when I’m planning a TON of mass crafts like refining stone, baking bricks or making decorative rock. I’ll pop one and either call it a night or switch to an alt and work on something else while the crafts finish. Making them cap at XP gained could work, but then the recipe should probably be adjusted accordingly.
I feel like I am pounding the rubble after it has already been said by plenty. Oh well. Sorry everybody but here comes yet another long post.
I also do not agree with this change because I feel it hurts the new players a lot more then it would hurt the people who will „abuse“ the situation.
I see you made some buffs to other exp gains, none of which will compensate for the new player and I will go over each one below.
New players can not compact coal as it requires power to do, therefore it requires gems to make the power coils. Most new players are no longer new if they are mining gems.
Please do not try to use the rebuttal of „Well they can just go out and buy the coils“ because a games normal low and mid level Progression should not require things from other players.
Most new players wouldn’t know what to do with this and this also requires power. See above statement
Something that doesn’t require power. However it doses require Glowing Lamella which new players are not going to be able to collect themselves very well, unless they know what they are doing, and if they know what they are doing, then I don’t consider them new.
While this is something I can see a new player making. the buff to this is fairly small. and the amount of this a new player makes is also fairly small.
Requires power and again something a new player wouldn’t know what to do with in most cases.
My concern is how this might impact the rate new players will level up. I understand that in a perfect world there should be some grind for an „MMO“ Style game. However the situation is far from perfect. We need more new players. New players that are willing to stick around. And while this change doesn’t help the situation, I am just not sure how much it will hurt the situation.
Turning rock into stone is a very fundamental action that every new player will do and gives them a modest amount of exp from doing it.
I feel you should buff the exp gained by mining rock to compensate for this change. As this would remove the potential to transfer it over to an alt and level up the alts if that is what you are trying to stamp out.
Maybe it means we are going to see rough oortstone seams?
There will be so much there needs to be another oort sink?
Just speculating!
Check the distances between all the T5/6 planets, you can’t get around them with 2x2 portals many need bigger ones to get anywhere so not this is not an option.
Just allowing to put in more shards with more conduit blocks has been suggested many times before. On the other hand if there’s already something like compact oort why not let the portal accept that as fuel as well. Either change is fine by me…
Your number 3 is asking a lot of some solo players out there, would be nice if you could fuel them for 2 weeks at least all by yourself without having to rely on others.
But that nerfs the teaching pie! It’s not like people only use it for rock->stone XP…
I rather they go with 0 XP + instant crafting times but keep the teaching foods as is, putting those bricks down in my build will still give me nice XP with a teaching pie !
I rarely do rocks for XP anymore, but I also oppose this change on the grounds it hurts newer players.
Absolutely in favour of this. I get “stressed” (not really stressed, gaming stressed) by short timer buffs. I seem to recall James also saying he doesn’t like time based effects at one point. Either this or a cap on XP per day from single activities would be better.
I think, that a player should be able to go on a two week vacation and be able to fuel their portal I do not think they should have to have a friend do it or be restricted to a 1x2 portal. As has been stated by James in the past, every player should be able to maintain a portal with SOME effort. He did not say it should be impossible, or require multiple players. Should a hub with dozens of portals require more players? Sure.
Allowing whatever the developers have in mind for longer lasting portal fuel, is a step in the right direction. The new fuel will still require effort to get the materials and make the fuel, so it is not free and effortless. I do not think portals should require no maintenance. I think that goes to far.
At least this change is going to make it easier for the casual player to actually play the game.
Kal, y you up so early 
I despise large portals due to the need to constantly refuel manually. It isn’t a “fun” task, it’s a chore. I don’t mind the cost, it’s the task of refueling and being unable to take a week off I have a problem with.
Also I think the rock XP change is a bad idea, or at least it warrants revisiting the death penalty. See my other thread for voting and discussion on the death penalty.
Stone Crafting XP
Honestly, I support the change. Here is what I posted some time last year and I still stand by it:
People in here were arguing over whether or not it is an exploit, or even the definition of “exploit”. From a developer’s perspective I would definitely consider it an exploit.
I don’t think you could argue that the developers intended for players to maximize the duration of teaching pies by logging out and only logging in to press the same button a couple of hundreds or thousands of times and for them to get hundreds of thousands of XP that way. Inaction or tolerance so far should not be confused with acceptance or intent.
I think at the very least we could settle on “exploity”.
Others also bring up the concern of people wanting to use their time efficiently since they have a limited amount of time to play, jobs, families to support, etc. So I have to ask, specifically if that is the case, why would you want to spend a large amount of time just mining rocks and pressing workbench buttons? I get that plots are precious, but personally I’d rather do things in the game that are fun to do to earn XP, or to support the devs.
I might be a minority in this, but I deliberately didn’t eat any rock pies on my main character for that very reason, because I wanted to actually enjoy leveling up while playing the game instead of just getting there as fast as possible. And yeah, my crafter and hunter both overtook him a long time ago, but I have no regrets regardless.
Anyway, all that said, I’m not saying this change is perfect, but it is a step in the right direction in my opinion. How much people have been relying on it and don’t want to see it changed simply highlights the imbalance of XP gain distribution across the different activities to begin with.
My main suggestion is to remedy that imbalance, ideally along with the stone crafting XP removal or reduction. Hunting was already buffed to oblivion in my opinion and I imagine might even become one of the next big powerlevel strategies if this change goes through. What I would like to see:
Forging Changes
Devs in the thread already pointed out that the change to gem item efficiency is not intended, and I am actually glad to see that the new tier of items were changed to all have the same flexibility. Forging difficulty aside for now, this brings me to another thing I would like to see changed while we are at it: why do all the different gem items have different flexibility values to begin with?
Prestige Changes
Looking really interesting so far, for anyone interested I made a spreadsheet which shows the changes to all the blocks’ base prestige values. Here are some highlights:
| Block | Old | New |
|---|---|---|
| Decorative Gems | 140 | 22 |
| Machined Titanium Alloy | 80 | 24 |
| Machined Iron | 60 | 19 |
| Deco Marble/Gravel/Wicker/Mosaic | 50 | 19 |
| Dark Glass | 12 | 13 |
| Ornate Gleam Door | 12 | 20 |
| Decorative Wood/Stone | 12 | 12 |
| Brick | 10 | 9 |
| Refined Gleam | 10 | 5 |
| Gleam | 6 | 3 |
From what I tested in game so far, the bonuses can be several times higher to compensate for the new low base values. Along with the, I guess you could call it “normalization” of the blocks, it will definitely be interesting to see the impact to player behavior on prod.
I do think there could maybe be a few more tweaks, for instance the new decorative blocks are still only on par with machined iron, despite being way more effort if you ask me.
When it comes to the bonuses, I really wish there was a way to see a breakdown, or at least some more information. I do hope that showing at least some more information in game (not the debug menu) is planned for the future.
I tested a few plot configurations in an empty 8x8x8 space. Beacon Control adds 5 base prestige and Refined Gold Alloy adds 20. So, with only one of each placed it appears that it was applying a whopping 500% bonus?
Total prestige:
What seemed odd is that chiseling any of the alloy blocks didn’t change total prestige at all, but I didn’t do any further testing yet.
Exo Worlds
Huh? Oh yeah, that is also a thing, almost forgot. 
Not much I can comment on that yet, but I do think it’s fascinating how much impact small changes can have, even propelling them to the forefront of the debate.
Developers: “New types of worlds, new items, new blocks, new end game content!”
Community: “Yeah, but that one small change to a single value, though…”
Tl;dr:
Because stone is the basis for a large number of building materials so you need it if you are going to build. You cannot buy everything at some point you have to have something to sell. If you are a builder then plots are important. Maybe not to every role in game (hunter, miner, shopkeeper, explorer) but they matter to builders. I think an argument can be made that without building most of the things that are crafted are unnecessary (no need for decorative or refined materials, bricks, posts, chairs, tables, etc…) all you have at that point is an economy game where I guess the point would be to get the most coin possible.
I do not enjoy mining, but at least I was getting something for the effort to turn the rock into something that
was needed for other recipes or could be used to build. Now I get zippo. So getting the skills I need to chisel or increased damage to make mining easier are made more time consuming.
Edit: I guess what I do not understand was how was this hurting any other players to keep this in the game? If you choose not to do it fine. But why take it away from all players?
Hmm, seems I will be taking a large hit due to building with mostly machined iron and titanium!
Seems like quite a few big drops in prestige, you come across anything that is taking a big bump upwards?