Beacon fueling should be „reworked“

A little less then a week ago, I saw what looked to be a new player, building quite close to my facility, I was a bit busy at the time and only shortly observed from a distance, I forgot the name of the player as I did not give it any more thought at the time.

Today I had suddenly remembered about the new player and I go to see what he had built, only to find it 1/2 eaten by world regen. While I am not 100% sure, I have a bad feeling this may be yet another victim of someone who failed to fully understand how the fuel system works.


And it honestly makes me angry (with 127% more salt) if we are losing new players due this kind of thing.


I feel like there should be some changes to how the fuel system works, to cater to new players.

I feel the campfire only creates an extra step, and the campfires purpose should be reworked into something else, The Control Beacon and all fuel types should be allowed to be handcrafted. I feel having the campfire as a starting point only serves to offer an extra point of failure, should the player fail to place a control beacon because he and/or she though the campfire was enough, or became interrupted.

I feel the NPE needs to put extra stress in explaining how the fueling system works and how it needs to be done.

I also feel that how the game handles low fuel should be much much more obvious and obnoxious to make it clear to a new player there is something wrong and what is wrong. There are quite a few UI things that could be done to do this, so I won’t get into a list of that at this time.

Or anything else that might reduce the chances of a new player being punished by the fuel system is fine by me

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How do you know they quit because of the beacon fuel system specifically? Did they tell you?

I agree it needs to be clear to people how important it is. I had thought the campfire was removed from the new characters now…

As I said, I don’t, I only have a very strong gut feeling.

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Sorry I should have clarified if you had received any feedback from any players, not them specifically.

emphasis on this!
I even ran into this problem when i was a noob… I was like I thought I made a floor? it is now grass! (replace grass with rock again, next day grass again, repeat twice before figuring it out)
So for me it wasn’t a big deal but many other players have lost entire sections of their building.

[edit] to be clear, this should be the case with beacons that are not only low on fuel but also if the build has been expanded but not the beacon plots. (player-placed block detection outside the protected beacon) as this is specifically what happened in my case.

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Me? I have not personally received that type of feedback from players, but I have been told by other players who had gotten that type of feedback from a player.

Typically If I have enough interaction with a player for them to want to give me feedback of any kind, I world have made damn sure they understand how the fuel system works in my prior interactions with that player, if I thought they were new or did not understand.

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For this, I kind of think that blocks that are placed by a player in the „Wild“ as the game marks them, should be tinted a different color, or have some other type of aspect changed about them that makes them look different then the same block that was placed inside a beacon. maybe the block will look slightly decayed with cracks or something.

I do not think the little tiny popup message that sometimes shows, trying to warn about regen, is enough in some cases.

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for sure, I’m thinking like a pulsating red tint maybe would work.

but I’m also thinking this may be annoying to others placing random blocks in the wild and flashing… for example hunting pillars…
Maybe have this occur only when in proximity of a beacon of lets say 2-3 chunks away or so

Reminds me of dropped items in RO that will decay if not picked up. They flash red real quick every few seconds

I don’t even understand what’s the function of a campfire, I’ve never used one after the tutorial.

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The function of a campfire is similar to that of a beacon, however it haves no ACL and it can not be fueled,

with out a campfire it is impossible for a new player to create a Control Beacon as that can only be built in crafting table, which can not be placed in the wild.

Therefore all new players are more or less forced to make a campfire, which only lasts for 4? hours before it expires.

It is an extra step that can lead to some players losing their stuff, (even if it isn’t a whole lot, it is still a very bad experience for a new player.), if they fail to create a control beacon in time for whatever reason. or they thought the campfire was good enough.

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So it’s only function is to be able to craft a beacon control? Seems unnecessary tbh. Just watched melaniesims2000 play the game for the first time and I see she had the same issue with the campfire expiring cause she didn’t play for long enough during the first session.

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ultimately yes, it is the only way for a new player to get a area where they can place a crafting table., which is why i feel Control Beacons should be allowed to be handcrafted so the campfire part can just be skipped.

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Back when I was a fresh noob, I thought the beacons reached to the skybox, to the bottom because of the lines that go up and down from the plot. The next morning my sweet mineshaft had disappeared and I was quite confused, and Leper helped me understand the 8x8x8 better.

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I don’t feel the system needs any kind of change tbh.
There are games out there with way way harsher systems, where you can literally lose months or years of work if you take a 2 week vacation.
I mean don’t get me wrong, the hole idea of getting a mail or similar, as talked about previously, once a beacon is running low, would be fantastic, but it’s nice to have, not need to have, and a “rework” is definitely not needed imo.

As for the new player experience, i expect that it’s only very very few that end up losing some of their stuff, and while that is indeed a bad experience, it’s also a valuable lesson in decay in survival games. Something most gamers have a grasp on.
Understanding the beacon system in Boundless really isn’t rocket science, and i personally feel that the hole tutorial in Boundless is way better than many other games, both in the same and in different genres.

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As someone who came from EVE Online and played it for 8 years, I know very well just how harsh some games can be. but this is not EVE online, not anything close to it, and since the boundless player population is already very low as it is, anything that punishes a new player to the point of quitting the game is really not good at all, even if it is a low % of new players that fail in that way.

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I built for 40 minutes the other day before realizing I was building outside my plotted areas… eventually noticed the orange outline instead of green and was like, ??? I plotted this already. Turns out I hadn’t :joy:

And there have been rare occasions where I return the next day and something I was building is half eaten lol.

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If you show the tip for “World Regeneration” it will pop up the hint box whenever you place something out of a beaconed area :smile:

image

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I tend to just build with plot view on for specifically this reason. I don’t know what I’ve plotted and I can’t be trusted. :joy:

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Yeah I watched my sister play and she didn’t make a beacon because she liked the look of the campfire I had to tell her the difference, if I didn’t she would have moved along and been confused next time she played

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