Voxel Banking, Why the Theft?

Note: Tiy's math is wrong in the Reddit, it's actually a 51% loss after 2 deaths.

I need to do that already to get back to my ship where I could store it. Why should I do it for eternity?

 

What I foresee happening here is that pixels won't be the default currency between players. Instead, people will bank in something else that has a better return. While I'm too new to cite many examples, I see copper and gold ingots being a staple to use in the refinery when pixels are needed, as opposed to farming actual pixels. I also envision people messing around with the merchants and the 3D printer to discover other ways to 'bank' pixels and dodge the 40% loss from the refinery.

A few possible suggestions I could think of off the top of my head:

1) Have a 'bank' structure that may appear on a planet. The bank vault is immobile and depends on the 'banker' NPC being around, so it needs to be protected. The banker takes a very low percentage (10% or so), but has the downside of being immobile - If you want to use the bank, you'll have to find a bank and protect the banker or you'll lose it, and you'll need to go there every time you want to bank.

2) Insurance. Insurance costs a percentage of the pixels you have now, but removes the pixel loss on death. The up-front percentage is much larger (say, 50-60%) but by removing the penalty you gamble that you can make back what you paid before dying and having to repurchase it.

3) Tie pixel loss to planet threat level or sector. The more difficult the area you're in, the more you lose when you die. This would discourage 'banking' initially and ease the burden on newer players in Alpha Threat 1, but make the refinery very attractive to people on a max-threat Delta planet who would potentially risk an enormous loss of pixels when they die.

 

You don't have to do it for eternity. Only until you spend it on your next upgrade or whatever. When you do that, the pixels you spent are 100% safe for eternity.

 

So if I have 10000 pixels, I lose 4000 upon banking, but then that 6000 is safe until I use them? As opposed to have 10000, dying once, losing 3000, and dying again and losing another 2100. So If I'm going to die 2 or more times, it makes sense to just bank my pixels. That's a fair gamble to keep my pixels safe. I'm all for the change.

 

Then why have the 40% loss? Why should we go through such a hassle for that?

True, but one doesn't always have an appropriately leveled village.

 

The problem here for me is that I'm gambling possibly the most important thing in the game constantly. Why can't I just have a challenge to get back to the surface/out alive and keep my newfound pixels without also needing to constantly gamble them until I get my next upgrade. At which point I'm still gambling with whatever I have left! I don't want to play poker every moment online!

 

Actually, old games rarely had an exact , to the smallest amount of individual coins, banking system.

The old Dragon Quest series of RPG, back in it's NES days would see you lose half of your gold everytime you died.
And it was only in DQ3 that you saw a bank for the first time.... and even then you could only deposit or retrieve gold in increments of 1000... so if you only had 800 you couldn't deposit.

And if you had 1400, you still had a 400 that was "vulnerable" until you made enough gold to have another 1000 to deposit.... assuming you did not die first.

Should they be removed? I don't know, I don't exactly dislike the idea of the bank making you completely and utterly bulletproof when it comes to your pixels' safety.

Personally, I'm not entirely against a banking mechanic. Or even the idea that not "all" of your pixels would be safe. Could the limitations be tweaked? Sure.
For example, I wouldn't be against a system like Dragon Quest's. There is no loss in what you deposit.... but having to deposit and retrive it only in specific increments prevent the system from nonetheless becoming a bulletproof vest for your every single pixel while still leaving you able to save very large amount of it safely until needed.

 

If there was no fee then there would be an optimal strategy, that strategy would completely negate the death penalty and would obviously be a very poor design decision as a result.

 

No it would not. Even if the banking fee was only 25%, you still can gamble all you want that you won't die, I'm just going to take my reasonable safe route. Besides, the death penalty is still serious - I need to get home before I can compress anything, and there's the risk/reward of venturing further as well!

 

Never seen an episode in my life but my intuition tells me that the Star Trek crew weren't going around getting mugged for 30% of their net worth by fearsome alien thugs

 

Thing is, if there isn't a price for storing the pixels, there would be absolutely no reason NOT to store them at every possibility. I like the 40% compression loss rate the bank has going, it makes things an actual choice. And it's not like pixels are super duper ultra rare mega awesome items, so it's completely possible to just ignore the bank system entirely. It's not like things are completely unaffordable now without it.

 

You must have skimmed the OP - I'm not asking for it to have no loss. I'm asking for something a tad less drastic.

 

The Ferengi would like to have a word with you and your pocketbook.

 

Okay so it doesn't completely negate it but it seriously reduces any meaning to it. If you leave home after having deposited all your money you can suicide run anything. The game should not be structured in a way to allow that.

 

Getting pixels is easy and losing them is just as easy. I'm not thrilled about the way they handle money in this game at all, but having a way to not lose all of it is infinitely useful.

 

Truthfully, the big problem I see with this is that either way, you still end up losing a good amount of your Pixels. As far as I can tell, this new storage system just gives you another option of losing all your Pixels.

On the other hand, it would be better to store your Pixels, rather than going on a Multiplayer server and getting killed 5 times because some griefer stuck a bunch of saws, tesla spikes, and/or propellers on the spawn planet.

 

There are set increments, although you're right in that what you're risking is currently under 1400 pixels. It still has meaning, but it also means that I don't have to constantly gamble my earnings. You guys may love this, but I would like a secure, consistent and feasible way to have my pixels.

 

You do, just deposit everything you got when you can. It only costs you 40%, anytime, every time.

 

I have a very large issue with the word "only." That's almost half of my work gone to who-knows-where!

 

Isn't that better than most of it lost to deaths?