Pretty big topic we have going on here.
I am with people who want a fast disappearing of beacons and lootability of their former property.
My points are pretty much like @Heurazio :
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I like to think of running around raiding other / inactive people property to faster collect ressources. Sounds like a fun way to play Boundless and a good alternative to mining and dealing to get ressources… Supporting this aspect with a possibility to skill an explorer tree, to be able to faster enter vanishing beacons sounds amazing.
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city developement is indeed an important point. Abandoned city centers but active border areas sounds horrible to me. Of course if someone gets inactive I want to take the nice place in the most active shopping street in the city center, to sell my goods there!
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environment should come back to it’s natural state somewhen. Of course it would be nice to see great artefacts players built somewhere (as @Zouls ) mentioned. But most of stuff will probably just look like garbage and incomplete ruins… “social” builds as bridges or tunnels are of course handy and nice to keep. But if a person who built it, gets inactive and the build is still in need… someone else will maintain and keep it working. I don’t see any problem here. PLAYER BUILDS SHOULD SIGNALIZE ACTIVITY AND POSSIBILITY OF INTERACTION.
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One of the worst arguments of slow decay was the inability of entering the game. this could be solved in another way because usually people here called occasional reasons. If you have exam time for several month, if a tornado blew away your house or you move to another place… people could have the ability to individual “freeze” their game state for a certain time. Means: you get an email because due to your inactivity your beacons disappear soon. Then there could be the possibility to answer this email and freeze the property for an appropriate amount of time (3 - 6month). As soon as you enter the game meanwhile this individual freeze will be canceled, so noone would be able to freeze property just because of lazyness to maintain with fuel.
I by the way very much like the system @Havok40k mentioned. Kinetic force you collect by “doing stuff” with your tools (mining, crafting, dealing, hunting,…). Like this we distance from “fuel” that has to be collected and transported to your beacons. That would be an unnecessary way…