Warp Conduit Price

If we are trying to push people to use the black warp conduits more often over Sanctum or even perm portals, then I suggest we do the following:

  1. Set the price for transport to 0 coin for a jump to the same planet. (spot on planet to another spot on planet)
  2. Set the price for transport to 0 coin for a jump of 1 hop.
  3. Scale the prices for a jump of 2 hops or greater like you currently do. 100, then 200, etc.
  4. Set a special inventory slot (no skill point required) that only holds warp conduits for all characters so they can always have warp conduits on their person.
10 Likes

Please, something like these. I think I mentioned similar in one of my ‘explorer’ posts some time ago. Though then I’d meant specifically an Explorer skill, but yeah, really this would be better to convince people to use them more :slight_smile:

number one
0 cost is kinda wrong i belief they told that its not intended to be used alot as they prefer people exploring

ill make an example

moving home should be a ingame experience
visiting a friend should be walking nice roads to him

they just need to remove the warp option in sanctum
in my opinion (ill hate it to for the record :smile: )
kinda hard thing to explain i want more ingame ways off transport

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I know when I started and for a long time I avoided using them because I did not know of a reliable way of getting coins. I only got them for completing objectives or going up levels which is sporadic.
Even footfall varies a lot. And for selling, you don’t have any control over people buying stuff.

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I agree with the premise, but I feel like making warps cost less/no coin might make other transportation methods pointless or lead to an over use of warps. Building roads between settlements for example may be less common. I feel like the best way to incentivize people to use warps more than portals is to instead make the benefits of placing warps greater than traveling to the sanctum. Give warps temporary buffs when used perhaps? Shielding, health regen, or even move speed bonuses would synergize with exploration well, while also justifying the cost in coin.

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I was focusing on cost since it is a big factor in the game. Not everyone has the ability to make footfall traffic and there is not always a way to generate cash. So if you are a new person you cannot afford 100 coin all the time to travel places. You would have a zero balance quickly. Remember based on current rewards you only have 7500 coin at level 15.

So in most cases you just run the whole planet instead of warping because of the issue around generating cash. I don’t mind it costing something but maybe 25 coin or something.

I like the buffs comment Havok said but again that doesn’t handle the coin issue. From my perspective I took the time to MAKE the warp conduit why should I even pay for it at least on the same planet. Case in point when you do the Journal Quest to portal to a saved location it costs you 100 coin but you only get 60 reward. So I lost coin there.

And we need the Sanctum one to stay because you might get stuck and need a warp out.

2 Likes

I agree with no warps from Sanctum: My suggestion is that the warp in the Sanctum should go only to your Home location, and setting a location as your Home location should have a cost associated with it. I personally now use warps almost exclusively as my means of travel, but bear in mind I am a level 50+ character with hundreds of hours invested. It’s appropriate that warps should be a little difficult to use I think, though I agree and have felt for a while that tying them to coin is a little clumsy and maybe we should be able to use something else (Oort Shards perhaps?) to be able to open them. Any additional warp or portal options would certainly be welcome as I feel like they are probably the coolest and most unique feature of Boundless. I always carry a stack of conduits with me just in case I meet someone and want to take them on an adventure

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Sorry bro but I have to disagree with everything you said except the fact that I carry around warp conduits as well. it is much faster to use warps than travel through the sanctum, but we need that portal there. make it cost more, fine, but we NEED the sanctum portal(s the way they are).

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The saved location list is too short to save all the places I want to go to. It’s only about 20? Can it be bigger?
Maybe Oort shards could pay for warps? Since even low level characters can raid a dormant meteorite.

2 Likes

Totally agree. Thing about warp costs is that low income players (ie low level noobs) end up paying proportionally more for a warp. Still, at lvl 15, 7500 coin is potentially 75 warps. That’s assuming they have not completed other objectives for coin rewards along the way, which they likely will.

I think a cost balance could be struck to encourage the use of warps among low level players, but at the same time it’s good for gameplay to have some meaningful choices between risk/reward, or in the case of warps, cost/security.

So, with the current warp cost of 100c, a player is presented the delima to make a risky run home to save 100c, or spend 100c to safely warp home. If you lower that cost to warp, you’re reducing the weight of that decision. If the cost of warping is too steep, and the risk of walking is too high, then maybe we should look at the other parts of the equation? We could raise base income. We could reduce the risks of walking home. We could even make warps more worth the coin cost, or reduce the cost to produce warps? What if warps cost no materials, and instead are reuseable on a cool down along with the coin costs?

Edit: warps also play an important economic job as a coin sink. So, by removing coins from warping you are potentially making coins worth less by contributing to inflation. You might spend fewer coins, but they could be worth less than before.

What if warps could be opened with something else of limited value? My own head cannon has always been that coins are like oortian battery cells that, when combined, generate enough power to open a warp (hence why warps cost coin!). So, what if you could gather depleted coins as an alternative to open portals, but can’t trade or spend them with other players? Depleted coins could drop from slain creatures, be discovered in ruins, or occasionally discovered when mining or digging. This would limit the economic impact on lower level players, and could have its “drop” chance scaled inversely to a players level to grant economic relief to new players while not burdening high level players with thousands of nearly worthless drops.

2 Likes

Maybe the incentive of walking home over warping, should come from the new style events we’ve got coming? Walk home, maybe get a meteor or two, perhaps something else random?
Warp, get nothing but speed, which sometimes you might purely want.

Not discounting cost, just talking about incentives :slight_smile:

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Remember we have to use coins to buy things and we still do not have enough data to even prove how the boundless economy will work since there are not enough people to validate data. Also home is no longer safe with meteors falling close.

Ultimately the issue is people can very easily run out of coin in this game if they don’t sell stuff or get good foot traffic. So warps immediately become a non-viable option. If warps were linked to a resource or something instead of coin that has more of an ability to be found then that removes the coin issue which is why I brought it up.

Maybe warps come from the meteor parts… so you have to mine them. Then for farther jumps you need some other resource added to the mix.

Basically there is local planet warp versus off world warp. I am more focus on local planet warp since that is what beginning people deal with the most. I am less worried about farther jumps beyond 1 hop too. If you are going farther than that in this game design then you are going to be more advanced and different dynamics play out.

All I know is I am on test and there is going to be no income and I have to run everywhere because I would never have going to fund a warp. I see this playing out in many places in production once we have 50+ planets. Income will NOT be guaranteed and warp portals are key versus actual perm portals on a “need” level.

Outside of all other factors… warp costs at low levels especially for 0 and 1 hop are a regressive type situation for players instead of a empowering situation.

A bit like I said over here?

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I remember devs saying that they want to encourage using warps by adding buffs when going through.

I was only referring to usage of warp conduits that I have seen dev comments on trying to get people to use them over sanctum. The buffs comment came from Havok only that I am aware of.

I think that cost should be proportional to distance on planet, so if whole planet is 100c than for 10th it would cost 10c. Planets are 4000-something big iirc, so you could go 400 blocks for a cost of 10c, which is most of your travels I guess.

2 Likes

What about keeping the cost and adding something similar to the totem augment that is slightly more costly and make it an either pay coin or carry two items and one free inventory space for destination binding to warp. Then you can have varying types depending on warp distance strength with increasing costs to handle the added jumps.

Really love this idea. Right now I do not use the current black warp conduits. If even 1/2 of what you suggest is implemented I absolutly would use it much more often.

Do you not use the warp system because you rather explore or is it the cost? I am curious :sweat_smile:

I personally think warp conduits mechanic is working fine. It is the Sanctum portal that needs re-evaluation as it’s too convenient that it makes the warp conduits obsolete.

I really like this suggestion. Any change that would limit the available destinations in Sanctum would solve this issue. If I remember correctly, the original purpose of the portal in Sanctum is to get you out if your stuck AND choose other server if the ones you previously were is down. It’s not meant to be as additional convenience to us.

Edit: Though this will be quite convenient, I think it would be cool for portals in Sanctum to only transport you to the capital of that planet. This adds more incentive to be the capital and we could see more people frequently on these busy streets. hehe

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