I think on deletion of a character you could incorporate both options in aspects. On attempt of deletion you would be given a warning about not having enough plots on the remaining characters to cover the current placed plot count, ‘Are you sure you wish to delete? This will place you in a negative plot count, you will not be able to plot again until you have earned enough plots to recover your debt.’
With showing how many plots you will be in debt and all plots costing 30cubits each, there could be an option to use cubits to negate this debt at point of deletion for those who may have cubits saved up.
I will agree that to have the ability to have account wide plot balance instead of character based would be a huge QoL change for some who have played as 1 character and since moved on with random useless amounts of plots that now sit wasted.
I would say that to have it as account wide plot balance would be better as an option rather than a guaranteed thing, for families where the parents don’t necessarily want their children running round randomly spamming their plot count everywhere. This would keep some control and maybe avoid unnecessary reports about people mass plotting against people causing issues and taking up valuable dev time resolving these if they can’t be handled between players.
All in all I feel this would be a good idea as an optional setting.
This doesn’t really help when your plots are all over the alts. Mine are distributed pretty equally on 7 alts for example, since I do a lot of different activities.
It is cheating to allow a person to create an ALT and gain plots and then transfer them over to another character so they can delete the ALT and repeat the process. It does not matter if the plot gain is 1 or 1000 in whatever time frame. Time has no relevance.
In a game where you can just cash up and buy the plots, playing the game is what you consider cheating?
But I’m always for ensuring that the most efficient way is actually a fun way. If recreating alts produces more plots then e.g. mining, this would be bad. You should never feel forced to play a way you don’t enjoy.
Here is topic from last year about transferring entire beaconed areas to other character (who has enough plots to take it). To me that would be nice feature to have safe and secure way to do it.
Much opinions on that topic better to check it out what players did think back then
The system should be able to track which character earned x amount of your total allowance, which in turn would be able to tell how many you would lose on deletion if you had account set to account wide plot count. I myself have max character limit and multiple random plot counts on a few which are useless amounts. i could go 20/30 into plot debt by deleting one and it wouldn’t matter which character i used to recoup these just that they are recovered in some way.
This could in turn allow for an account set to merged plot count to potentially do the same with cubits as these are the currency for them.
I think the intent of Mayumichi’s statement was to discuss if an exploit would be enticing over normal leveling techniques on a main. I highly doubt there was an intent to advocate for an exploit.
I would say Fun is the most relevant discussion in any game regardless of topic. The Devs obviously have control of this particular issue. Discussion would likely be more productive talking about how best to institute an account wide plot program versus debating minutia in comments.
I have already stated my position on account plots. A beacon transfer would be very complimentary for a system that removed an alts plots. This would allow full transfer to either a main or another alt (with sufficient plots) without the risk of deploting a build.
Personally, I think that the alt/plot system in Boundless functions just fine as it is. It allows for several roleplaying opportunities that I feel are largely ignored. In my opinion, althought perhaps a bit complicated to master at first, it is a well thought out and implemented feature.
With that being said, I’d agree that it can be daunting further down the road for those perhaps less familiar with the system. Maybe a player got in a little over their head raising alts for different game roles and has now since consolidated those roles thru multiple skill pages. Perhaps several family members shared an account and now one has moved on or quit playing indefinitely, leaving a multi-beacon personal settlement in chaos. Alternatively, one just gets tired of juggling multiple characters and would like to permanently set their focus to one character’s efforts…
Instead of changing the existing system, perhaps a “once per account” or paid service could be offered to transfer all beacons, plots and cubits from all characters to a single character on one individual account? Not sure how much work that would be, but perhaps it could be an option with strict limitations. This could also help for those who invested a lot of time on either version of Boundless and wanted to jump to the other platform given the current character restrictions.
Either way, as discussed before, I do think a method of transfering beacons/builds between players (if both characters have the required plots) is a much needed feature. Even if only on a singlular account level, it would still be a highly beneficial feature.
I don’t think anyone here is trying to focus the conversation into a discussion on minutia. But, bringing up irrelevant points as backing or proof on why a system needs to change helps no one and does nothing to move the conversation forward.
I think James clearly stated why the design was the way it was in regards to plot distribution among accounts versus Alts. I don’t see a huge demand for people requiring all their plots to be on 1 character. If they did then it seems the answer is to remove Alts from the game. But there are many of us out there that do enjoy having Alts and actually do enjoy having our plots separated among characters.
It doesn’t seem to be a huge issue to fuel up a few beacons across a couple characters versus requiring huge game changes to the current plot/character design. People can easily stop using their Alts and stick to using all the plots from a single character only. The devs did not force anyone to use multiple characters to plot builds… so why are they expect to fix the problem that was created by the users trying to manage plots across multiple people?
It seems like people are between a rock and a hard place. They used the system to get a bunch of characters with easier plots because of low XP requirements to plot their builds and are now not happy with that. Instead of expecting a solution be created - fix the root issue - players put builds on 1 character and stop using Alts.
I understand your point of view. I personally do not have an issue with the current state of plot management. However, we are players and not the player base. Let the Devs determine what their time is worth. Ideas should not be stifled simply because we disagree with the premise.
Edit: a second point is that managing plot connections between alts on PS4 can be tricky as we do not have access to debug. Having an account wide plot management system would resolve that issue.
If the amount of time and/or XP needed to get xx plots is the same on a newly created character as on a level 600 character I would not see it as cheating. You put in the time, you did the things to get the XP why not allow them to remain even after an alt is deleted?
But I have no idea if currently you can get plots faster on a hi level char than on a new char or if it’s about the same…
as far as “lets only have 1 character” THAT ship has sailed… you could make that a restriction on new players (but that creates yet set of another issues). Alot of us have paid for alts and have designed our personal characters for different roles…
I even allow my five year old grandson to play one of my alts as his own whenever he visits us… its HIS character and has his own stuff… but yet it is under my account and gleam club.
This can be slowed down by putting a Cooldown on the parameters involving deleting a character, It is not normal for someone to need to mass delete characters, unless they are trying to do something funny, have rage quit, or it is someone trying to ruin someone else’s account,
I personally like how EVE online handles this aspect thou I am sure most people here would not, When you try to delete a character in EVE, it starts a timer (about a day or so) that must expire before you can get to the confirmation dialog to delete it, the timer can be canceled at any time. It helps prevent abuse, mistakes, and hackers destroying the characters themselves.
I do not like this idea, as I can see this creating a large problem for someone who makes a mistake or is not paying attention or is drunk or otherwise intoxicated.
I also feel this should also be a function that needs to be manually enabled to help prevent confusion about what is happening when character starts to take plots from an alt, or the situation needs to be otherwise clearly explained if it will be the default behavior.
I would like to see some way of having account wide plots, As I do have cubits and plots on my alts that will otherwise never be used, because I would prefer to have all my plots on or used by a single character in most cases.
I think this is the major stopping point for account wide plots.
It’s incredibly easy for a new alt to level up to get 10-20 plots very quickly, just by acquiring things. Essentially things that your main character can easily make and share with your account. Wash-rinse-repeat. Too exploitable.
I think the best bet would be to have the beacon transfer system that was discussed a while ago. Allow beaconed plots to be exchanged with a character that has enough spare plots to acquire the whole beacon - whether that be your alt or another player.
I don’t feel this resolves the problem, of some people wanting ways to transfer the plot count themselves to their own alts as well, not just the builds. As some of us do have plots that will never see use otherwise.
As I am not a PC player, so, this is a bit of assumption on my part. I assume that having all the plots available to manipulate on one character would help in resolving bridging issues and plot disconnects. Which would gap fill where PS4 players are unable to use debug to identify issues.
For example, I have a build that incorporates plots from 2 characters and it is a nightmare because I built it organically when I first started. Because of that, my new build only uses plots from one of my three characters (my crafting/builder alt) and will likely stay that way.
