Except allowing a compacted oort or something similar could work like long term beacon fuel that requires far more resources. I’m guessing that’s where this is heading and based on your previous comments you should be more happy with this solution than the one quotes here. We’d burn less oort/hour to power a portal for 1 week, but possibly double or triple that rate to power the portal for longer.
This.
You built a base with 108 crafting tables, you either crafted a Teaching Pie or tracked one down, and you gathered… 58,320 rocks, by my calculation? I might call your approach one-sided, but I couldn’t accuse you of not putting in some work there.
And let’s say you were a starting player, and you had to do that with an Iron Hammer at about 1 swing/sec on the rocks… That’s 972 minutes, 16.2 hours of gathering. Enjoy your 5.8 levels - you earned them.
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No, it was players. I half-remember the thread. I think it’d be a stretch to misread that as a dev/publisher comment but I see where you’re coming from.
@schasm Yep, you’ve also been in the trenches here for a long time. My issue is that this was said by a mod and a rather outspoken go-between within the community, and has never been refuted - twice now.
Looking back, they were important voices bridging the gap between the devs and the community, in a forum that still resembles an untamed wilderness most days… but was what they said inaccurate? In practical terms, I can’t argue with them - I can only be disappointed that they were right.
It wouldn’t be developers, there are enough toxic players here to drive anyone away. I’m posting on this thread because it is so important. I have posted in threads about things that I think need changes and have been told this game isn’t for me, I should go play something else, I’m just a whinny person, the game is fine as it is, if players aren’t buying the game or leaving good riddance to them, put downs on new players, constant negative remarks to anyone who seems to disagree with some here.
I’m not quitting the game yet, and to be honest, if there isn’t more content, and not for building (although the changes has destroyed a large part of that), but actually something different, the only thing that will keep me from leaving the game is the loyalty to the guild I am part of. Not this game for sure.
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This is a real problem that needs to be addressed.
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A real community manager would be an enormous help - not just to babysit all of the angry people in threads, but also to clarify and unify any message coming out about the game and establish some clear authority about who “speaks for” the game. Can’t tell you how many times I or someone else addressed a specific question toward the devs and got a whole bunch of answers from people who had no idea what they were talking about and none from an actual staff member.
And @james is here a lot, but… No offense, boss, but having the CEO of your company sorting forum replies all day is almost equivalent to me having my sales director clean toilets while he’s in the office. Things looked like they might take a good turn when Steggs was here; it might do well to hire a replacement.
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I disagree with this since a beginner absolutely wants to gain XP faster, I know I did! And there’s more teaching foods than just the pie, the lower ones are much easier to make!
NO!
That nerfs XP food. I’m sorry I rather have 0XP from rock->stone than nerfing teaching foods. Also letting them expire whilst logged off is a seriously bad idea and is not going to help, then I just go away very far, a portal hop perhaps, can even make a 1x2 portal to other side of planet where I have a stash of teaching pies so when logging back in I can eat one and step thru the portal and still get the same effect ALL THE WHILE it forces people to use up the teaching foods before logging off in all other situations! Nah uh.
Talk about making the game un-fun.
Not a fan of this one either.
There is a reason why even a high level player would want to use rock->stone and it’s simply because they might need some more plots for something they want to make while not spending money. If they don’t have it or are not willing to spend it for plots then they won’t suddenly start doing it after the nerf either but will be severely limited all of a sudden with what they can do.
Besides, like R3D I use a heck of a lot of brick in my builds and the normal gain in XP is going to be lower PLUS I can’t use it on purpose either to get a few more plots quickly.
And all the other suggestions trying to mess with teaching food will make matters actually even worse for how I use them. I always am in need of more plots which means I do many activities with one active so I gain XP faster.
Any solution that is going to make sure I will be able to gain less plots in the end is a bad solution in my book.
And of all the possible ones I rather have 0xp from making stones than any of the others.
That’s not what he’s saying tho.
If I decide to spend the whole day mining with teaching pies on and I gain 1000’s of cubits a day with that is it an exploit? Crafting items gives XP, is it an exploit if you do so? Why is this then an exploit? I don’t see it as one, it’s just smart use of the game mechanics.
Making this change will give players less plots to play with if they are doing mass rock->stones on purpose for gaining plots or not and am not sure that is the right way to go.
Do I have a better solution? Not really…
So is using a forged gem hammer to mine also something where we have to consider players still using iron ones or is it ok that we have the knowledge (or coin) to acquire a forged gem hammer?
Players learn quickly enough they get XP from crafting, once they become higher level and can gather more rocks it is only normal to then think it might give the same XP still but with larger chunks due to having more rocks.
I really do not see it as a problem.
Would you explain why it is a problem that needs to be solved?
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Right, and we’re not talking about 20+ level 50 coffers in one shot here, that’s basically an order of magnitude off. Having tried to follow some of the earlier conversation on this in a thread i can’t find right now, there’s a lot of things the devs could be doing rather than try to take advantage of this and turn against years of their own balancing.
I deleted the rest of my post to quote a couple of people that have posted while I’m typing:
100% QFT. I don’t always agree with you on particular points but it’s VERY hard to have a discussion here if it’s not in line with “the party view”. It doesn’t help if what passes for a “community team” swing directions with the bandwagon.
I guess I’ve got a lot to add but it’s unwanted opinion/advice and I don’t feel like getting brigaded on the forum again. I’m not just walking away because I have a few weeks of gleam club left, and anything could happen. I’ve also got an addiction level boundless habit that’s probably going to be a taper-off but, that’s already started.
Absolutely zero to do with game content. It seems literally impossible to have a clear discussion about the game here, or the affiliated “community” activities.
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Agreed. Among the many benefits, this kind of discussion about XP is worth moving out to another “official” thread so people can still talk about all the other content here.
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But why do people do this then on an alt? Thought about that?
Because levelling an alt the normal way is absolutely un-fun to do!
Perhaps it’s an idea to think of a way so higher level players can level an alt more quickly, sell those XP Loafs (from testing) for coin or cubits or both. Heck give 1 every X levels gained on a character, etc. Am sure you guys can think of a nice way to do this.
But what you’re missing with this comment is that many people are also doing it on their main character (or use the XP gained from normal rock to stones crafting) to get more plots. Perhaps the amount of plots we can buy with 300 cubits is too low? Or find other ways to give players plots not just thru cubits.
Because these 2 are the main reasons people tend to use this on purpose, find other ways to level and to gain plots and am sure people would stop using this in a heart beat!
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Raise the level cap so we dont need so many characters, normal mmos by this time lvl cap is 80.
That way we can have one character instead of the silly idea of alts, and the plot machine to recycle the large numbers of rock or what have you, not because its an expoit but a consequence of repetitive tasks, this game is full of them.
At the end of all this, content or not. Building and creating something people from around the world can see and play with is the catch here, work with it i say.
Encourage it, advertise it, make it easier more interactive, thats all anyone ever wanted from any game.
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New characters aren’t power-leveling thru the rock+pie technique unless they’re alts, or friends of existing characters. It takes a fair amount of game knowledge to understand why the technique is so good. New players through normal play do not stumble upon it until probably the gem wall. My opinion is that this nerf isn’t really impacting new players’ ability to level up. But it is impacting established players’ ability to power-level their alts, their friends, or themselves; and theoretical new players are being used to add an emotional appeal to their argument. So far zero new players have appeared in this thread to say how they can no longer finally reach lvl 20 like they dreamed, because the rock XP is gone. Chances are they’re leveling just fine off the starter quests like all of us did.
I figured ppl would start questioning that XP image so here’s another one posted publicly to the official discord.
People have been sharing their “high scores” on discord and forums for months. (Some to highlight the absurdity.) At 200k xp/lvl this is a screenshot showing the rock+pie technique used to gain 21+ levels on a max level character. It took 360 SS of stone, which using standard T6 mining techniques I estimate would take 12 hours to gather. That’s 12 hours of mining where the player received gems, ore, coal, tech, and XP for each seam they busted open while they were mining. That’s plenty of reward.
I don’t get why people are defending the right to take this rock home, queue it up, then log off and return to yet another 21 levels of reward. What does that have to do with the original reason this player was mining? It’s just exploit XP because the devs didn’t realize that AoE hammers and the lust for gems would lead to rock entering the economy at a rate of 7.27 rock/sec (diamond hammer averaging 4 rock per swing.) With each rock being worth nearly 15xp in crafting reward, that’s 109 XP second, for mining rock, in a game where there’s infinite rock in all directions all the time. Close your eyes, W+M1, 109 XP/second. Think about that number next time you do literally any other activity and see whether you think the effort:reward ratio is in alignment with the rest of the game. Even aiming at a sleeping cuttletrunk takes more effort and they don’t sleep in perfectly dense cubes. It would be cute if they did but I digress.
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Folks do that, so they can get the skills that should be available to their original character, and plots because who wants to spend real money on something you can earn in game? I don’t sorry.
There is no pvp, can a developer please decently explain why in a none competitive game with multiple characters does a lvl even matter?
How does it create inbalance to others with no friendly fire to speak of? A low level character with enough skills in one area alone can hold the strongest weapon, max level not required i dont understand how it effects other players, it just creates more micro management for others.
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Well that’s an incredibly misleading and twisted take on what we had to say about the topic presented, and entirely out of context- especially in my case. I’m disappointed.
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Yes this is also well under half that other amount, and lines up well with my experience, except for the sheer volume.
The only way I can think of to achieve this in one shot, even if you are moving at 150% of my speed, would be to plot the workshop so that you are too far from the first tables to receive the experience from them as they start finishing rocks. I guess if you’re willing to invest in that sort of space and setup you could do it indefinitely.
Still looks like hours and hours of mindless grind to me. and (for me and many others) it will get physically troublesome in a relatively short time.
Anyways I’m not trying to >morally< judge the activity. The mechanic was presented, I intended to use it. I finally tried it, but all I’ve really found is that the people saying its just as easy and more fun to level with the pie and hammer are probably correct.
It’s less profitable since the rocks are free as grass seed but it’s still profitable, too.
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Your tldr summary that you cant do this (apparantly implying that im suggesting that you’re just not good enough??) is where I take issue. The context of your post was why this is impossible for a solo player to build just a few weeks after launch due to plot restrictions, and I pointed out that it was done as a game promotion by a build team in free mode. You complained that it would take a solo player a year of dedication to do, and yeah that’s probably accurate! We were not saying you cant- we were saying that a team could with time and collective effort.
Look at the colossal cities scattered around the universe now. Your original premise was wrong then, and it’s wrong now. So how about you stop twisting what I’m saying?
The build example for those who want context.
Also- fun fact (not really) those buildings are 70% hollow facades just made to look pretty in a screen shot, totally non functional.
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Soooo… You’re saying that I can’t do that within what I’d consider a reasonable timeframe? Say, 6 months? That it’s… not for me? “TLDR: That’s not for you.”
The colossal cities are a hodgepodge of random people glued together, with little clear overarching design philosophy in mind. I don’t know how to say it without being disrespectful, so I’ll just come out and say that your own looks like a ■■■■ in comparison. My point, again, is that doing something that I actually wanted to look at and live in would not only require a lot of people with a lot of resources at their disposal, but also that they agree with my design choices - which makes the odds astronomically low.
If you want to show me pics of cities with a similar plot footprint - yes, you win the game. If you want to show me pics of something with a similar footprint that’s also got anything resembling a theme…
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Woah, woah, woah.
That is incredibly unfair to say. I am also surprised to hear this from you, as you’ve stated you’ve worked in the game industry.
Of course new players aren’t going to know. Most gamers don’t come to forums like this.
I’ve personally had the gathering and wood nerf sucker punch me and I didn’t know why. I didn’t voice it because I wasn’t here.
Those easy crafting bench xp tasks were huge to me as a lowbie. I loved mining or cutting down trees, then throwing them in the bench for extra xp because being a lowbie with no ties to established players was hard. I had to really convince myself to keep playing to see if it gets better. Many dont.
The “theoretical players” and “emotional appeal” part is insulting.
I, personally, am thinking of those “theoretical players.” Because I remember what it was like.
I have only once tried this rock/pie method to see what all the hub bub was about. Just dug out our new base, decided to try it with what we had, which was just under an inventory of smart stacks, and yes, it got me a few levels (4ish, if I remember). Not significant. I was just trying it. Kinda fun, but I’d rather do other things. So, no, I have to say, as an under lvl50 player with no alts, I’m not crying for myself.
Also, if I want the plots, I’ve flat out bought them. Between my husband and i, we have probably shelled out an additional $500 into this game, excluding the premium game purchase.
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