Will private servers diminish the current experience?

General
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I am interpreting this as the renter cannot prevent people from going to a rented planet and mining or gathering. If this is what you mean then I disagree. One of the reasons to rent is to avoid the kind of destruction that now occurs around major hubs and builds on public planets. Now if you are saying anyone can visit, I can support that. Visiting and exploring a planet does no harm to the renter. It might encourage people to ask to build on the rented planet.

I personally would never take random selection, I might end up with a pink planet and that is not what I want. The key to renting is to be able to make the planet your vision and that includes the colors (not the resources those have to follow rules). I think if you restrict people renting too much, the end result is they create a separate universe and then there is no interaction with the public universe. As the developers have the ability to create any colors they want on new planets they have the ability to counter any colors that are picked that do not already exist, if this creates a problem.

At a certain point it is. . If I do multiple builds it can get very real world expensive to buy all the plots to do this more than once. It also is very time consuming. I realize the rented planet is an ongoing expense, but spending the time actually building versus plotting trees probably makes it worth it.

To your last point, other than access restrictions there has not been a lot of information from the developers so I am not sure how much Admin power they will let the renter have. IN particular if the planet is connected to the public universe.

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My point was that if you want to be able to restrict mining and gathering you would have to be restricted to choose your materials (with specified colors) from what can already be found in the public universe, else you would have exclusive access to something that might be hard or impossible to get from somewhere else which would be an unfair advantage in the market.

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I can see your point and I think there is a possible issue. There is a new forum thread that shows the colors now available (finding Rock Colours!). There is so much repetition of exact colors on exactly the same rock or tree or clay across the planets. One reason I want the rented planet is to have more color choices. If I cannot do that and stay connected then I probably will rent a disconnected planet or planets. A group can rent a few planets have the colors and resources they want since the rules can be changed and leave the public universe. This is where I think the game can be hurt on the otherside.

I am really in the game to be able to build and I am feeling pretty constrained by the existing color choices that do not seem to be expanding even as new planets are added. This may not be important to you (and that is fine), but it is to me.

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I like more options to colors and such as well, but that colors avialable wouldn’t be an issue if mining and gathering can’t be restricted. If you still have the possibility of restricting plotting then any damage to the environment would be temporary so plotting more than the immediate surroundings wouldn’t really be necessary to keep your build in the environment you want it while allowing for the choices you want. And if it’s not acceptable that people sometimes might dig a bit near to you then being completely cut off would be the option for you. :slight_smile:

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Another option might be to mark such resources as mined on private worlds and not possible to sell, trade or place on another world.

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If the developers will restrict color choices then you are correct, they do allow another option. I just hope if they do place the color restrictions you have outlined that the player base does not migrate too much to a separate universe. I will also say, if I cannot pick white to stay connected and then white appears on a planet in the public universe, I will not be a happy camper.

I wonder how complex this would be. The true resources are ok to sell gleam, iron, copper etc. because they exist in the same form in the public universe. So it is the color of rock, dirt, timber and foliage. Colors and blocks have a tag or tags that are used in stacking. Every time you tried to place, trade or sell a rock it would have to query based on the tag(s) to see if the color existed for that particular block. I like the idea but worry about implementation. However, it would solve the problem.

Edit: Can I restrict mining and gathering to a certain portion of the rented planet? say and area of 20 x 20 plots? Edit2 and not water has to be land

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Honestly, if the suggestions ‘To make it fair’ that have been made in this thread were to actually happen, there’s absolutely no way I’d pay for a rented server. Almost all of the reason’s I’d want to spend real money on a private server have been relegated to the scrap heap by the people suggesting that it would be bad for the game.

I want to control my surroundings, and I’d like to pick colours that I actually like. If I can’t do those things, the sole advantage of renting a planet would be determining who can and can’t plot. Unless it’s around £2-3 a month (and I don’t expect that it will be that cheap), I wouldn’t find that dubious privilege to be worth the money.

I’d either end up removing myself from the game entirely and going private (and then I could play it as a creative mode too when I feel like it), or just choose not to put and money back into the game by renting a planet.

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The issue though isn’t wether you can pick colors or not it’s if you can pay to get access to resource (stone of a certain color being a resource) that isn’t otherwise accessible as easily or at all in the public universe and thus gain an advantage in the marketplace. As long as that issue is solved then I wouldn’t really have a problem with it.

Really simple solution would be to tag everything mined in the world as private and just not allow it’s use or transfer to the public world in any shape or form.

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What about moving it from one rented planet to another? this should be allowed. And ever resource? If I cannot mine iron to make a tool and then not bring the tool with me, that seems unfair. Iron can be mined anywhere so why restrict it? You might be right from a programming standpoint that might be a simple solution. But I would feel it is too punitive and I might as well go off to a separate universe with Marrash.

While I suggested the tagging I have a feeling the overhead it would produce is too much. Do we want to add more overhead to a game that already has lags? But I am not the developers so this is not backed by any fact.

What about a reserve on a rented planet that anyone can mine/gather in? No plotting in the reserve. If you have something unique then anyone can get it if they go to reserve on the planet. People can warp there if they want to

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Having an area where everyone can mine/gather is another possibility but it would have to be large enough so that everything can be found there (gleam for instance since that might be a unique color). My guess is something like 50% of the surface and volume of the planet maybe, then there is probably no issue.

Regarding the tagging idea, why would you need to mine for resources on your planet if you want to bring the tools off world? Just get iron on a public planet. Having one tag isn’t really a lot of processing, having to look stuff up against a database is more expensive (but might still be possible I guess). The one tag idea though also solves the issue with some resources being scarce in the public universe and thus renting a planet to have an advantage in gathering them would not be an issue.

Moving between rented planets does have the possible drawback that it might lead to the creation of what is basically a payed universe (people renting worlds and creating a cluster) but not sure if I feel that is a problem or not :slight_smile:

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Maybe we could get some use out of regions, being able to tag an entire region as protected or able to be mined.

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Then I think you and I are just unlikely to see eye to eye on this. That’s cool. After all, this is just a friendly discussion that the devs will probably read and (hopefully) use to inform their implementation to do what they think is best for the most people.

Personally, I won’t pretend that opening up a world with a colour of resource that nobody has won’t give the player that is willing to pay real world money an advantage. If they zealously guard their unique colours of those materials and charge over the top prices for it, in theory they could make more money than someone who does not. However, there are things to note:

1: The person only has the monopoly on that colour while it is unique to their world. As soon as someone else rents a planet with that colour or it turns up as a colour on a public planet, they largely loose their power over the market. If they have a monopoly and are greedy with a popular colour, this will happen. Hell, if one of the greedier shop owners rented a planet with unique colours and started charging 10c for rock, if it was in my budget range I would consider renting a server and opening it to the whole public with matching colours just to spite their greed.

2: While some people may be greedy, not everyone will be. If I can pick the colours when I rent a planet and those resources are like any other, I would intend to use the colours in my build, and have extras to trade. I’d do 1:1 for other colours of the same materials that I wanted in hand trades, or price them at a price I would find acceptable to be buying blocks (probably ~2c per block for rock etc) for my own use from others.

The important point for me, (and from what I can tell, others in this thread) is that we’re not after renting planets for the advantages you’re trying to prevent against. If I can be in control of taking requests from other people who want to mine rocks on my rented planet (and trust that they’re actually going to listen), I can show/tell them places that I’m happy about mining happening without ruining the landscape. Everybody wins.

I think what I’m trying to say is that I respect that P2W is a label all developers want to steer clear of. That being said, I think that and advantages that ‘could’ be gained by renting a server as I’d want to are lesser negatives than introducing the system that would result from the point of view that renting a server cannot in even the smallest way have the vaguest possibility of non-standard gain.

If renting was set up as such, I’d hazard a guess that the financial return to Wonderstruck wouldn’t be worth having implementing the system in the first place for, and I think the number of players who would leave to play on truly private servers would have a larger negative impact on a player-drive game.

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Another thing that might solve the potential (tho in my opinion, minor) issue of certain resources of a certain color being available only on rented planets would be the addition of the system that was proposed (I believe by the devs, but I could be misremembering) back in the beta where you could extract the pigment of a certain resource (let’s say slate cerulean rocks), destroying the item, and then applying those pigments to another set of blocks (let’s say green leaves) to change its color (to slate cerulean leaves, in this example).

That would have the simple effect of making every item + color combination become possible in the public universe regardless of a specific resource only existing in that color with a private planet. The planet renter then would no longer have a monopoly on the market of that particular block and color combination, regardless of rules of access.

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I would not give up 50% (150,000+ plots, given that each planet has over 311,000 plots) but there might be a reasonable in between that everyone could live with.

I think on issue is lets say I rent a t1 planet, I will get a few iron and lots of copper and coal when I mine rocks. Now I have to keep that segmented somehow from the copper and iron I get on public planets in order to craft from it or I am prohibited from taking it off planet. That seems like a high burden that is only going to be frustrating and might keep me from wanting to be integrated with the public universe.

It might, until it happens I know we cannot say for sure. I have been in discussions with people that want to have more than one rented planet and connect them up. I think if the burden (perceived or actual) is too high to link them to the public universe, the number might be higher than we would think. Then we have a paid universe and a public. If the public is not keeping players then new planets are not going to spawn and that can stagnate the public universe. As long as people are willing to pay for it, the paid universe can add planets as players see fit. That might make the paid universe more attractive to some players.

I forgot about this. I think this is still in the works, but that is a very good point and would solve the problem.

edited for typo

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Here’s my thoughts again:

Either A) you control who can build, mine and gather. Great. You don’t get to bring that stuff to the public universe. And vice versa. It is it’s own unique ecosystem.

Or B) you can design specific elements of the world but aside from that it’s the same as all the public worlds where you must plot, create portals, etc. Then that should be part of the public universe.

But if there is any reservation of land, gathering rights, etc then keep that on its own private server, purely. No creating a T5 world that only you and your buddys can mine Diamonds on and then come control the public universes markets because you rent a world. I’m out the second that occurs.

If you want to build these mega, amazing structures: great. Rent a Creative private world and go ham and post some rad YouTube videos.

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I don’t see how build permissions lead to diamond monopoly. Are you saying that in order for you to mine diamonds on my t5 planet so that I don’t have a monopoly I must be forced to permit you (or anyone) to build a giant Companion Cube from the portal game made entirely out of gleam eight steps from the entrance to my Aztec Ruins megabuild?

I don’t see how one thing logically follows from the other.

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ok I do want to make sure I am not missing something. I rent a T5 with diamonds a rubies. They have the same distribution as any T5 in the public universe. I find and mine them and put them up against the very same diamonds from the public universe for sale. I have to spend the same amount of time finding them and mining them. Once I have mined them they do not regenerate in the same place so I cannot mark locations and find diamonds in the same place (if I could this would be a problem), I have to find them again just like in the public universe. How is this going to upset the market? If it is because there would only be two planets with diamonds, I would think as the player base expands additional levels with gems and/or more t5 will be created just like the new t3’s yesterday.

If I am missing your point, please let me know.

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If I may venture a guess, I think the issue is that with an entire planet at your disposal, and your disposal alone, you don’t have your mining yields reduced by having to compete with every other player to mine there.

I think it is a somewhat valid point, as far as mining rights only (not building rights) because you would always know which areas of your own planet that only you can mine on, have been completely mined out, and then you can move on to another diamond-spawning area that will be completely filled, etc. So in theory, by not having to share that land with other miners, you can get a larger quantity quicker, while other people have to find locations that no one has mined recently.

You would have the entire planet at your disposal to mine as you see fit, while other people have to spend time (sometimes a long time) finding a suitable location that hasn’t been completely mined out by bombers in the last 48 hours or so (or more, if the area sees heavy traffic).

It’ll be less of a thing once another planned feature kicks in (the atlas lighting up / going dark according to how much of the area has been mined and didn’t regen yet) but even after, it would indeed make rare material collection faster for a greedy planet owner.

Now, is that enough to upset the global economy on the materials? I think the impact would be minimal, as in the long run you’re still limited by how much time you alone (or a small group of friends) can spend actually mining vs. how much time the entire rest of the universe combined can spend mining for the same thing elsewhere.

Even if a small group, lets say 5 people, were to spend 10 hours a day doing nothing but mining, that would be 50 hours of diamond mining a day, vs a couple thousand people mining daily on the universe at large. The bulk of diamond production would still come from the thousand, rather than the five, I would think, so I don’t think it would impact the economy as catastrophically as people seem to think, but the point is still valid in the current state of the game.

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OK I get this. . How upset do you think renters would be if they could not rent a particular tier of a planet until at least two already existed in the public universe? This would mean multiple sources of any resource before a rented planet could be added to the mix.

Since I was thinking a t2 or a t3 and there are already plenty of those, I cannot offer any real perspective on this.

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Obviously as more and more planets are added to the public universe carrying those resources, the less of an impact a rented planet would have, to the point that the concern may become negligible eventually.

So I don’t think this particular concern will remain a concern when the planet rentals get implemented, as we’re pretty likely to have a lot more planets added to the public universe, of all tiers, well before that.

Edit: I actually believe that to a planet owner it might be way more attractive to rent a resource-heavy planet, develop a nice little hub, and collect footfall from opening it up for mining to the public, rather than trying to mine it themselves. :slight_smile: