I don’t know about being hit by a car specifically, but in the case of ‘oops, suddenly can no longer afford internet’, if you still care about the game enough for it to be a problem, all it takes is a couple minutes every month of going to some place with free wifi (most coffee places around where I live, for example), logging in, collecting a couple leaves, fueling your beacon, and done, until you sort out your finances again.
A Venti Caramel Macchiato certainly lasts longer than it would take for me to collect leaves and fuel all my beacons.
I never spent any considerable time in a hospital so I have no idea if you’d get wifi there or not. Last time I was hit by a car (technically I hit the car), I spent a lot of time at home with a broken leg, and played a lot of games.
I think players should be able to loot expiring beacons. I also do not think that beacon contents should be saved automatically. While I do not actively partake in this activity, it has been a mechanic in the game since I joined. I think there needs to be some responsibility to maintain your beacons. It is the same as paying for where you live in the real world. There were so many abandoned builds in EA until they put in the system that limited fuel. It was hard to find a decent spot to build that did not have an abandoned early build near by. By the end of EA most of those had regened and I think it made the worlds better as far as resource gathering and finding large clear places to build.
As far as the suggestion to have player storage in Sanctum to allow someone that was not going to play for a while (and knew it) to have a place where they could actually store some items, I have mixed feelings. I can see where I would appreciate the chance to save higher value items like power coils and tools and maybe some of the rarer blocks. Especially if I knew I would not be able to play for over 6 months and was not able to or wanting to use the gleam club. I also know that I as an active player, I would use the sanctum storage for tools and other items I might need wherever I was going. If I needed something all I would have to do is go to sanctum versus going all the way back to my storage in order to get another tool or torch or whatever. I am not sure if this is good or bad, but I think this is how it would be used. It would probably reduce footfall and portal traffic.
This is a video game in a virtual world. Like any video game, things are temporary. Your stuff and everything you do will only last as long as the servers do. If you play video games to build a lasting legacy, you are being unrealistic.
Some people think they’d just get a box they can put stuff in and when they switch alts they can just easily equip stuff between characters.
I vote for Kirinvar’s idea:
““Strip machines + storage items from beacons when they expire and put them in some out of universe storage where they can be reclaimed later but only if the beacon expires naturally (player removing the beacon doesn’t count) and the beacon has been fueled for at least 4 weeks (campfires don’t count). Also the out of universe storage should only be reclaim, not deposit.””
So you expect the living memory card the company to pay for you not playing? Nah Bruv. You should definitely be paying to keep your stuff on here. Normal mmos that is just char data sure, keep em free. But in a game where they would have to keep all your beacons and plots of memory? No way. By doing that they would have to pay to open tons of new planets because of all the beacons that are not going poof.
If you just don’t come back and your stuff is looted, IMO, that’s on you. Getting four weeks in your beacon is easy.
Maybe remove spark and power requirements for higher tier fuel?
IMO, the best way of keeping this from being an exploit is to a) make it an intentional action and b) put in a delay.
First, If you want to “store” your stuff, you can. Anything processed or created goes “ZZZZZIIIIIIP” into storage. But you need to take down ALL of your beacons, for all your alts, not just one.
Secondly, there is a week delay before you can get access to anything you stored again. You can play earlier than that, but you can’t get access to your old stuff until the time limit expires.
As for looting old beacons and beacons running out, this should stay. It’s part of the game loop and, frankly, it’s fun. Most of the beacons that expire are abandoned anyway.
I’m not sure about all the fuel lengths, or aside from GC how far it can go out, but some people have jobs or other responsibilities that can keep them away for more than 4 weeks.
Soilders are deployed for months at a time. People go on mission trips, even corporate jobs can keep people over seas for their companies for months. Some of these examples can be over a year or more.
While I actually like the idea of fueling beacons to clear out those that have abandoned the game, I do believe there should be a system in place to protect the people who cannot get on for “just 5 minutes to refuel.”
16 weeks (4 months) for the top tier advanced beacon fuel (the shadow orb one) I believe.
I do think that if someone wants to leave the game for over 4 months, doesn’t want to pay for GC, and doesn’t want to bother stashing the more valuable items / machines in their characters inventory, then it would be fair to argue that the person probably doesn’t care about the game enough to bother about losing stuff, emergencies aside.
Let’s not forget that one can always give permissions to a trusted friend on their beacons so that the friend can fuel it for them in case of emergencies.
Let me just stop in and say boundless gives you 3 weeks with basic fuel to not have to log back in takes me 3 min to log back in and put fuel on my beacon. Yea I dnt see a problem.
I played ark for a long time I had to log in and fly over all my stuff before 7 days or I would loose it took about 45 min to load and fly around in the game plus o had to feed stuff took a hour just to do that.
So I love boundless 3 min to fuel my beacon I’m sold
Also when a beacon falls it would be cool for a blue meteor to crash into it with all the contents laying there for an hour waiting to be pillaged.
Oh there is such a mechanic,its called gleamclub.
If your compamy sends you away from home and not pay enough to buy a. Gleamclub for that time then quit that company
Here is what’s going to happen to a majority of players. They’ll end up taking several months to a year off or so while they wait for new content, forget to refuel their beacon since they’re not playing the game so it’s the last thing on their mind. Lose everything. Then lose motivation to play again since they lost everything, especially if someone else now owns all their stuff.
The “solutions” people are offering to prevent this from happening. EG farm for hours to get longer beacon fuel or buy gleam club are not things regular people who are just losing motivation to play are going to do. The game is just going to slip away on them while they have nothing in their inventory and everything in their beacon.
I’d say that your home beacon gets saved and if it’s saved you need to place it before placing a new beacon and the rest of your beacons go poof when the time expires.
Also when you’re playing beacons shouldn’t be differentiated between your characters and you shouldn’t need to run to your beacons to refuel them.
Yes players should be able to loot expired beacons and no beacon contents shouldn’t be saved.
If someone is quitting, then they clearly don’t care enough about the stuff they have acquired in the game. I think if someone is going to be absent from the game for a very long period of time then there are far more important things for them to worry about than whether or not pixels in a game are going to be saved that they spend hours gathering up or building.
Just my thoughts on it cause I’ve lost a lot of stuff in this game to world regen cause I spent too much time away from it. I think in the Beta I lost well over 2000 rough gems of each gem. It stings, but I just shrugged it off and got to work on recovering back from the loss.
I am pretty content with what we have right now. So…
Why cant someone take a break from any game without being labeled a quitter, that they dont care, or that they’re not dedicated enough? Not everyone wants to play the same game repeatedly for days/weeks/months straight and breaks inevitably happen.
The biggest joke though is saying that these people dont care. They’re all paying customers. They cared enough to open their wallets/purses.
right
