New players, give them a supergrid?

[bitza]

i can tell you with certainty, that it's not gonna happen, sorry. for one, jorb and loftar want this to be a pure sandbox world with as few restrictions as possible. in fact, many of the things you "can't" do now, such as walling off an entire island with no room for a ram, wallhacking using crossroads pushed up against a wall, and so on, have only come about as a result of emergent gameplay.

part of the fun of this game is the constant looming danger, and an area with no pvp, no crimes, and no aggressive animals would be boring as balls. this ain't yo momma's farmville, this is a survival game, you're thrown into the harsh wilderness, will you sink or swim?

[MagicManICT]

Here's another reason this won't work:

When a player decides to leave this 'protected' area, he/she won't have a clue about the real dangers out there. When they do get ran over for the first time, the loss will be much greater and we'll see much more whine on the forums. Better to learn the lessons while they don't cost much. It's a harsh world that doesn't coddle players.

Also, I wouldn't have q10 as the cap, but q5, maybe even as low as q1. No risk, no reward, right? This does go with the 'tutorial' idea, though. If/when a player decides to leave, their hearth goes with them to a random location as normal. Heck, this 'newb' area doesn't even have to be on the regular map and the time there could be limited.

[Kaios]

Here's another reason this won't work:

It's a bad idea.

[dra6o0n]

I think certain groups of hacking/programming communities are exploiting this game with high levels of AI alts that griefs people.
Then again, that would make it some sort of conspiracy.

Also, the devs are aware of the problems, just too busy (with other stuff) to deal with them.

[bmjclark]

Or allow noobs to learn the hard way that this game isn't forgiving and people are assholes early in the game. No sense sugar coating the fact that some have nothing better to do than kill noobs.

[TeckXKnight]

I think certain groups of hacking/programming communities are exploiting this game with high levels of AI alts that griefs people.
Then again, that would make it some sort of conspiracy.

No need to go into conspiracy theories. People are not running super intelligent bots who have the sole purpose of griefing newbies. That is entering the realm of absolutely crazy and no one wants to see anyone cross that line.

As for the whole idea of a newbie area, why? What are they gaining there that they would not gain in the real game and what is this protecting them from?
Historically, we'd see the entire area stripped of resources with hideous pavements and constructions everywhere. Even basic necessities would be unavailable after short periods of time as we'd see all the forests reduced to nothing and most terrain types turned into paved stone/grassland.
In terms of griefing: walls, hearthfires, and alt spam are all still present and even more deadly. I can place two hearthfires in-front of your palisade gate and drop a claim nearby so you can't include them in your claim; you can never break them or get around them. Or I can just break your boat while you're on the water and drown you to death. The black skills are only useful when your target has a clue what they're doing in the first place. Otherwise you should never need them.

The place would be a train wreck and people would abuse its mechanics to cause even more suffering than already exists. In the end, we'd see the same amount of calamity just it will be in the form of traps and tricks rather than outright murder. I stand firm when I say that theft will happen regardless.