an alternative way could have been to bump up the amount of rock required to make stone.
x5 or x10 the current amount of rock to produce the same amount of stone.
it wouldnt negate the ‘exploit’, but it would reduce the effectiveness severly, and maybe even out the xp flow.
PS, just wanted to say I am not against the rock to stone 0xp, but just thought I would chip in with a possible alternative
I love to build with bricks. I already have to gather clay, mud and ash. I don’t want to gather 10 times as much stones in addition to that. If you change the amount of stones you get from rock, please also decrease the amount of stone used in each and every other recipe that uses stone.
haha JR is my go to also 
love his podcasts
This basically says to players: there is only 1 hyper efficient way to progress.
We don’t want to tell players that there is a single cheesy way if progressing their characters. We want them to progress for any and all actions they want to take.
Promoting exploits instead of fixing them don’t lead to a better game.
This is exactly what we’re trying to do.
Consider this from the perspective of players not abusing the exploit.
It’s bizarre to want a game riddled with exploits.
I think this just shows that there is not a solution that will please everyone!
(All credit to those in this and other threads for above ideas - not all mine.)
People go to XP stones because the progression curve is out of whack for other activities. Also because we’re human & game any system to maximum efficiency. This thread & many others have gone into this, I don’t believe the dev team can be ignorant of it. How many players reach cap before they quit?
Think about where you can give while you take away. Buffing silver and coal doesn’t cut it.
It’s not an exploit. 
Perhaps it’s not just fear of missing out that makes people feel forced. Perhaps the game progression is far too slow. I don’t see any acknowledgement of that, let alone an attempt to address it.
A long time ago you asked, perhaps sarcastically, how long it should take to level an alt to cap in a similar thread. Some of us answered you, then again the topic died until a balance pass appears.
//
I don’t believe this is about cubit sales but that’s how it’s going to look. Take with one hand, don’t give with the other.
I know that when I started to play I never looked at what I got in xp for what I was doing, I was just playing for the fun of it. I needed stone for my build, I went and gathered the rocks and turned them into stone. Needed sand or gravel for walkways, collected what I needed. Needed wood for floors and steps, collected that.
Was always wondering why others were advancing faster than I was but was going, I’m just running around exploring, having fun, seeing what is on the planets.
What did frustrate me was some things seem to give more xp when doing something that seemed similar gave very little. Why did it take so long to craft some items and did they need so much to make something. Seems like it was created to make a time waster, busy work, which no one likes. If you want to make player happy, cut back the amount of items needed, which for some is no fun in gathering, give more experience for doing the gathering to make it more desirable, give more experience for doing the work of crafting other items of needed stuff, require a wider variety of items in that you don’t have just one time for a lot of items you craft but can substitute. My broken record of not use shimmering orbs for a lot of recipes as they are so hard to get but use others in place of them that are easier to get but need more of them.
Make the hard to get items a bit more available so player will want to go and collect them. Same with bitter beans, they are hard to get and few plants have them. So, make it easier to get them so players will get out and hunt them up. provide more plants that have these items, something new to look for and more experience in finding them. Have more fruit on the trees that have seeds we get and use them in recipes, and they can only be found on level 3 and higher planets and rare on level 2, none on level 1, more experience for finding them.
If I have to spend a hour to get 30 shimmering orbs and not use the brews, food, and expensive hammers, shouldn’t I get more experience than the ones who can afford these items that lets them get hundreds of orbs? Encourage players to get out and I’m not saying make them as easy to get or as many as you would in say collect starberries, but a 10% increase would get more players out gathering them? Increase the points in making refined wood so more players will use wood?
Builders want rocks to turn to stone but hate mining, so make more veins of ores so they will feel it is worthwhile and encourages others to mine. And I’m not going high amounts, but a 2% increase will help to get players to mine more and more experience from mining will help them to feel it is worthwhile.
Players need experience to get points to earn cubits to buy the plots for the large builds, give them experience in other areas if you are going to take it away from one area, and just drop it by a point, not take it all away. You will be driving away new players and getting the mid level ones and even some of the older ones to quit playing, not stopping the “exploiting”.
Then we would just port away, log out, log back in next day, eat pie, warp home.
I really don’t get it, why the game will break, if you not be able to gain brainless XP anymore.
Opposite is the thing, finally people can start to gain XP in the way the game was intended.
If i hunt with a group, i get 1-2 Level, if i chisel roads, i get 1-2 Level, if i am exploring, if i am building, if…
And also i want to unhide a secret, Stones are not the only building material.
About what you guys complain now, is same as Woodworker had whole time. 
However, there was plenty good suggestions about balancing XP System for Crafting.
And i am sure, people will find a way to get their XP they need. Even without Stones.
Sorry I don’t understand - how would this help? (It’s not my favoured solution, I think it’s a fudge, but any ideas other than the implemented idea are what I’m listing.)
//
As a tangent, I think this thread is a reminder that the team would be wise to fill that vacant community moderator/manager post.
But what you’re doing is having an opposite effect. We’re going from “Yay, I can get more plots! REWARD!” to “Oh geez, it’s taking forever. When will I be able to afford more plots”.
I AM a player who was not abusing the Exploit! lol. So, you’re getting that perspective! (I’m using it now though. Now that I know what’s coming)
EDIT: Okay, here’s another solution. It’s already been suggested by others above but here goes anyway. My personal issue with this nerf is the ability to get plots. So, Give us more ways to earn either plots or Cubits in the game! Come up with that and I’ll shut up lol.
Just some ideas off the top of my head
Option 1: Change xp for rock to stone crafting to 1. Cut craft time in half to compensate or keep it the same as it is in live. Whatever makes more sense. Make teaching food not apply to stone crafting
Option 2: only give xp for stone crafting to the character that mined it. This would cut down on the ability to level an alt without them mining the rock themselves. You also couldnt power level a newbie using the stone crafting method
Option 3: change the xp rewarded or xp required to level to 50.
Option 4: increase cubits received when leveling or reduce cubits required to buy plots. Part of what makes the game so amazing is the giant builds people can create. Most people won’t be able to afford cubits at the rate we currently get them for big projects
I think they were meaning switch on the crafts, then get away from the machines before logging back on at a later time.
eating an xp food, then returning to the machine with the buff active.
this would be to prevent the xp gain until after you have eaten the pie.
Ah I see. It doesn’t really help then unless you’re prepared to set up hundreds of machines, because the food would expire during the craft time/time elsewhere/logged off, right?
not if you only eat the pie just before returning to the machines, ie:
turn on crafts
port away
log out
day later
log in
eat pie
return to machines to scoop up massive xp!
this is how i understand the xp buff to work, dont need it active when initiating the crafts, only when crafts complete (if im wrong, apologies and ignore eveything ive said)
this is already happening for the current technique
Ah yes I see now. Apologies was having trouble wrapping my brain around that for some reason. They could alter the way the craft rewards XP too but then this starts to feel like a messy solution. Cheers!
no worries.
like i said above, i dont think there is a non-messy solution!
@james
Just a message directly to you.
Slowing down leveling is probably the opposite of what you want to do for player retention. It pretty much makes nothing else in these patch notes worth looking at if you’re going to continue to nerf things.
Typically MMOs make leveling faster if they’re using one instead of slower. I don’t understand the purpose behind taking away the XP from crafting basic stuff but if this is going to be a trend of nerfs attached to major patches, then I’ll probably just make my hiatus from the game permanent. At this point I don’t even care if this game gets pvp, titans, player made dungeons, farming, more mobs, more stuff to craft, etc. if the trend to nerfing things in the game that achieves the opposite of keeping people in the game continues.
At this point in time I am already looking at other games that are coming out, revisiting old ones, and thinking less and less about this one. In fact, the fact you guys think it’s a great idea to nerf XP gain from one specific part of the game is completely 100% stupid. James, your dev team collectively has enough experience in this industry to know better. You’ve even told someone in one of those 1-on-1 meetings that you spoke with the team and want to make things less grindy. If people want to have XP farms with crafting tables, so be it, but the real solution would be to rework how much XP you need to hit 50 and then each level after 50. Lower cubit rewards if you need to. But honestly, making leveling harder for a new player is just going to irritate them more. Think of it from their perspective for a second, they craft rocks into stones and realize it gives them no XP. They are going to call BS on that when everything else they craft gives XP.
If you’re going to continue to allow nerfs like this to go through, then people are just going to start heading towards other games instead of digging deep in Boundless and continuing to make awesome stuff. This is more of a matter of making a product that is going to appeal to a lot of people instead of whatever you guys personally want to make. Make what people want and they will spend money on it. That’s business 101. Take a lesson from some of the shop owners in this game. They sell items to players that players want. The same needs to be done in the direction of this game’s development. I am actually pretty disappointed.
Personally I’ve made the decision that if things don’t dramatically improve by the end of the year, I am done with this game and moving on. I won’t ever bring it up with anyone I know either. However, I will say that Exoworlds are nice and all along with the three new special resources that you can craft and build with, however, this is novelty at this point.
Quit nerfing stuff and best of luck to future patches and content updates! 
maybe it should have been a PM then?
No. This is a discussion. I want it public. I am just not going to reply to people who cut up my post is all.