The Refinery And How It Hurts The Game

Show me where I said grinding was faster than using the refinery?

 

I die quite often because I'm terrible at judging jumps, and I'm sitting at just under 30k pixels without having even jumped past the first tier. 1000 pixels isn't that valuable of a resource unless all you do is planet hop, scrounging the surfaces looking for easy loot.

Or maybe I'll launch into millionaire status when I get a refinery.

 

You did not. You were, however, advocating grinding mobs for Pixels. In an effort to prove to you just how imbalanced the Refinery is, I asked you to compare the two.

But you stuck your figurative fingers in your figurative ears with that whole spiel about not needing Pixels.

 

No, I was responding to someone, somehow I guess you thought i was making a comment to you? No, if you noticed, I quoted the person and gave him a tip to get some easy pixels OTHER than the refinery, good god, take a chill pill agent. If I need to use the refinery I will, but so far, I haven't NEEDED to, I've gotten ALL my pixel needs from killing enemies and breaking things.

 

There really is no economy in this game, and once you attain the equipment you want, there is no use for resources either. You inevitably end up stocking masses of ingots and pixels, compressed or not.

Once they square away merchants, and the idea for using materials for ammunition or fueling other objects in game - it might be prudent to stock up.

 

*sigh* this again? Attacking someones counter argument in a confrontational manner is not a good way to make your argument seem valid, period.
Remember Armor Penetration? Kriptini made good points regarding it but it was over shadowed by his confrontational attitude when others disagreed. Where is AP now? Gone.
If you want change or the refinery to be removed, Minikong, you get better results by working with those who disagree with you rather than saying and I quote:

I see your point but I also see it (refinery) as a tool to move some relevance back to ores. Yes the game could use more formulas that use lower tier ores but their is only so much a player would want to craft so how do you make more relevant items that are desirable to the player?

I have no direct answer but looking at food, light, homes/housing, the ship. These are all good places for those early ores to be sunk into.
Hopefully you can steer this conversation back on track before it becomes a flame war and gets locked.

Best of luck.

 

I feel now that pixels are used to create blocks, no I don't find the refinery game breaking or ruining of the game in any way shape or form. It is a choice to use it, if you don't want to use it, don't.

 

Sure, it would be nice if every ore was useful entire game long, but as they are right now, they're simply loot from mining that you can "sell" to the refinery, just like random trash mobs drop in just about any other game with a currency system.

The refinery is not really imbalanced. You could easily farm pixels from mobs and take about as long to do it, as it takes you to tunnel into the earth in search of ores and then wait for all of it to refine. In mid-level planets, regardless of your gear, you can get around 350 pixels per mob and you can find and kill them in packs of 2-6, while ores give between 5 (copper) and 50 (diamond) pixels each. Keep in mind that mining requires you to venture into dark areas, expending torches and bandages, while fighting on unfavorable ground against more powerful monsters then on the surface and having to navigate hazards, such as massive falls and natural spikes. The only pro to refining mined ores, instead of fighting mobs, is that you get all the pixels in bulk, so you don't have to worry as much about losing it on death or having to convert it to voxels.

I don't know if you've reached the current end-game yet, but the diamond drill costs over 100'000 pixels to acquire, portable printer building materials cost 50 pixels each, with printable doors and decorative items being between 150 and 20'000 pixels each to print. While I'm sure that prices will be adjusted, an average base that I build requires 14 thousand blocks and 25 doors. Assuming the cost of the doors would be 150 each, my average base costs 703'750 pixels to build.

 

My thoughts exactly. The refinery helps tie things into late game. Even so, Other than the refinery what are you going to do with the ore? Sure you can use it for repairs or make equipments for friends, but I would hardly call it broken. Thanks for the concise explanation, VakarisJ.

 

But as you get higher the monsters also drop many many many more pixels, while gold is always just gonna be 25 pixels per. At most you're getting 100 per diamond. Meanwhile killing a single enemy can drop a couple hundred pixels.

It probably SEEMS faster to mine, but that's only because you're not losing any of your ores when you die, you do the mining over a large period of time, and all the refining at once, so you don't notice how long you spent mining. Only how long you spent refining.

However, I'd be willing to bet, given the relative scarcity of ores beyond gold, even on late game planets, in comparison to the scarcity of monsters, and the fact that monsters drop a few multiples of what you can get from a single piece of ore. . . that killing enemies is much much much faster.

Assuming you don't get killed.

. . . Really, even if you do.

 

I agree that the refinery really starts breaking the pixel balance at around the robotic boss. From this point I could rush through everything in no time, going underground to farm pixel is super ineffective compared to the refinery.
After playing for about 10-15 hours I'm now at impervium armor and have about 200-500 metal bars of each kind which means, that I possess such wealth I couldn't even spend if I wanted.

But sure, endgame is endgame.

I think the much bigger problem is, that the refinery eliminates every reason to use the compressor.
Because if you want to play safe you just need to have a refinery and ore with you which you can transform as soon as needed and else just carry 0-100 pixels with you.

Same thing if you want to give pixels to another player, just give him ore. And everything without the 60% loss.

 

I can't imagine why people would not want to trivialize pixels.

 

Because then what's the point of having them in the first place?

 

A lot about them make no sense in the first place, so I really prefer to trivialize them until those are sorted out.

 

I kind of wonder if the refinery is a placeholder until they can add selling.

If not, then it is a bit much. Besides, weren't there plans to add furniture one can craft from ores?

I'm also somewhat convinced the 3d printer is a mistake, but not completely. At the very least, it may a mistake when paired with the refinery. What's the point of adventuring or crafting when you can just print out loads of furniture?

 

The refinery makes lesser ores not useless.
That's a great thing.

 

This guy friggin' gets it.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with the refinery. This IS a non-issue.

If you're sitting on a giant stack of pixels, that's not the game's fault, that's your fault for being uninteresting. There's tons of things you could be wasting them on already, in the form of the 3D printer, and that pool of items will only increase as time goes on. If more items that directly use ore are introduced, the refinery becomes even more a non-issue.

 

yea but it makes (this amount of) pixels itself, the compressor, (pixel) loot from monsters, loot from destructables, etc. useless.

 

I don't really see the problem with the refinery or having a lot of pixels in the end-game. By the time you're swimming in excess ores to chunk into the refinery, you're beyond the point of needing pixels to upgrade anything important. The only major expenditure left is upgrading the drill, which seems to have its pixel price balanced around having the refinery. Beyond the drill, the only use of pixels in the end-game is using the 3D printer to create objects to decorate a base....and those objects tend to be very expensive, also seemingly balanced around having the refinery. Even common objects can have prices in the thousands.... so being able to pull in 20k from a mining trip just means you can decorate another room of your base, which I feel is fair.

Granted, the end-game balance seems completely accidental. From my subjective experience, all of tier 5-10 seems to be effectively a placeholder for future content and the object prices all seem thrown in haphazardly.

 

I believe the refinery is fine. I understand where you're coming from, but with some of the stuff getting as expensive as it does and the fact that they can always scale the amount of pixels that drop from all of the things you mentioned, the refinery serves its purpose perfectly. I mean, 3D printing is NOT a cheap endeavor. That stuff adds up quickly if you're planning to build or decorate.