I’ll answer these questions briefly in the order you asked them.
yes, my server was a moded survival server with emphasis on economy (pre-emeralds update) and private land protection (res protection , anti-grief, anti-cheat, etc). The idea was turning SSP mc into MMO Survival mc. We were only one of many thousands of similar servers, but we were one of the more moderately popular at the time (I base that statement on data from various server list sites at the time)
yes, our server was not what everyone was looking for, and in fact many players were turned away for various reasons. We had a certain “crowd” we catered to. Players with less than 30 minutes log in time were not included in my data.
for handling res (beacon) questions or concerns, we utilized a forum tab for players to contact staff 24-7. We did have occasional petitions to undo a res-deletion, tho not many. Unfortunately, we did not utilize a void storage to save a res’ contents. Players that petition a res restoration were instead gifted a compensation pack of building materials, spawn eggs, tools, food, etc to Jumpstart their return. This typically retained 1/3 of those return players.
unlike boundless, I had a near permanent presence online for my MC server. I was logging 8-12 hours daily in game, with my forums pretty much burned into my second monitor. (Real social type, I tell ya!) I made a point of introducing myself to every new player that joined my server, as well as observing them passively (invisibly) throughout the day constantly watching for griefers or d-bags. I also utilized our forums to gain emails for many of my players and used them to contact them prior to res-removal when necessary. I keep in touch with a small handful of my former members to this day
my policy on griefers was an outright permanent ban on the first offense, with the option to petition a ban on the forums. With millions of potential players to replace them, I was never concerned about where they went after. That likely won’t be the case in b< though, so I’m not sure how that will affect the game in the long run.
Let me rephrase. Do you believe that the knowledge you gained from running a specialized server on a very broad game are directly applicable to boundless main server with a very focused core audience?
I’m trying to explain it in simpler words without sounding condescending. But its hard. But lets try anyways.
Since i am only familliar with MC on a “stranger” level i want to explain it using something i know more about. which would be warcraft 3.
WC3 was an RTS in its normal game. Base building, kill enemy base. that sort of thing. BUT it had a massive variety of “custom mods” which completely changed the playstyle and created new genres, DOTA, Hero liner, Tower defense. ETC. Now even though some people played the normal mode there were also people only playing mods and some only played SPECIFIC mods which meant that there was a big part who might jump into the normal mode but not WANT to be there and a percentage bought the game for OTHER reasons than the normal mode. Now if we use another RTS. lets say Red Alert which works kind of like the normal mode of WC3 there wouldnt be all of these mods and it would draw a much more concentrated crowd which would NOT include the “mod players”.
TL;DR: People bought minecraft for many reasons since it has many options which might eventually try out some of the options they don’t like. Boundless has severely less choice of options and as such would cater to a CERTAIN playstyle. They are also vastly different in the approach they take in the fact that MC was made around modding and Boundless appears to focus more on a “preset” path.
Damn, i cant phrase it easily without sounding offensive. To put it simple. i appreciate @Havok40k imput of experience but i question whether or not it can be applied as much as it seems at first due to a massive array of variables and differences in the two games.
No offense taken, but to answer your question bluntly, absolutely yes. The server I ran, though it may be a small sample size and took different approaches to many if the same fundamental problems faced by boundless, was essentially the same game that boundless is aiming for minus the rpg elements (which my server fulfilled with player made dungeons and clever use of mob spawn devices). So, as for questions about beacons (res), automatic world regeneration (manual world edit), and player habits and populations in an mmo sandbox voxel with RPG elements, I’d argue that my experience is about as close as you can get to traveling into the future and playing boundless yourself as you can get.
The similarities between Oort Online and my old server, Zero-craft, are what led me to invest all of the time and money into it that I have.
Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but won’t Boundless be moddable (dated link, but still applicable, I think)? The modded worlds won’t hook up to the main worlds but I believe providing a wide variety of niches will still be possible.
Minecraft, TES and Fall out are also modable and has an active modding community and a reputation for its mods.
But then again. So are Fable anniversary. Mass effect 3. Darkest dungeon. Far cry 3 and the Batman series. (to mention a few)
I have never once heard anybody say “im gonna buy batman for the modding”. So the fact that it CAN be modded does not mean that is the main selling point. To be noticed though is that you are right to some degree. Some people will go to boundless for private servers and maybe mods. But to the same scale as MC? i don’t think its going to be even remotely close. MC Is also very much a “do EVERYTHING you want sandbox” while B< is a bit more restricted.
I’ll reserve my judgement for when the APIs are released and we see what the community comes up with. Hard to say that one is definitively better than the other when one has yet to see 1.0 and the other has seen many many updates (at least imo).
maybe a complex system that remembers what someone broke and placed, what they killed etc, to be remembered and restored upon 3 months of not logging in.
6-7 months to regenerate if not logged in. enough’t time to get back from a break and not losing all your progression. i hate games where you lose all your progression if you don’t visit there all the time. i usually play games till i get to the point i wanted from the game and if it wont give new content for me i’ll stop playing until it gets more content/updates, but if you know you lost all your stuff before that i wouldn’t come back. for me 6 months is not too long time and not too fast either. (fueling your beacons is basically the same as logging in ones in a while but just a pain in the *** to do so, so i’m strongly against it) (it keeps servers clean better but i think there is better ways to do it and less annoying)
I think it would be nice to have a sort of voting system. if a user has been offline for an allocated amount of time(say a month) than you can vote. if 10 people vote to end that beacon after the beacons owner has been offline for the time, the beacon could be taken away(but the structures built on it should remain, i think).
Ok, to throw in some numbers I have here an axample of another game with a “may be” similar issue: Shroud of the Avatar …
I SotA players can have a lot where they can place a house or some farming areas. If you have one you have to pay a daily fee, but you can pay in advance. The longest period is 4 months (120 days) to do this. Some players don’t have to pay taxes and get up to 120 days on login, but those are limited to the early backers of the game.
So for B< I would also like to have the ability to make my beacons safe for a similar time (120 days sounds great) and am also eager to invest some fuel to this process. The payment should be bound to the size of the beaconed area, but shoud still be “not to harsh to get”, so for example if I focus on farming the fuel I would want to work an hour for paying at least a week of “beacon time”. Since we have A LOT of space in the game there is no need to artificialy raise the costs cuz there is no need to get places free for active players again.(of cause to have no costs would also be ok for me, even if I would like to see an immersive way like fueling a beacon )
and yes …
… some more infos from the devs on this topic would be nice … @olliepurkiss ?
wait, the taxes you pay would be in game resources right? could there be a plinth that you give your taxes to in the capitol and that plinth could sell you taxes? just to create more market and all.
I want to say a couple words about beacon system in actual form.
Now players can place machines only in a beacon area. It create some troubles for world explorers and pathfinders: players cann’t place makeshift camp for refreshment. I think, we need a prop like campfire: that prop will be a temporary public beacon with 1 plot only, without possibility for advance to settlement. This campfire require a fuel, and if fuel is over, beacon plot are disappeared.
and as long as the fuel stays long enough so you don’t lose everything you acquired in under half year or longer. i personally play games till i hit its endgame and keep playing till i get bored and i change to another game and repeat. if its the game i already played i play till i get bored again. so basically i jump from game to game and the average time i get back to the last game i played is half year or longer, rarely less. and a game what is heavily dependable for your crafted items and buildings you basically lose everything if the fuel wears off and it would be incredible stupid system that you lose everything if you don’t play, gladly i haven’t encountered a game like that in my life yet. so system like that definitely wouldn’t have “replayability” at all and in a long run it loses its playerbase. visit often or you know the consequence’s is not a valid excuse for such system because people cant always come back even if they wanted to, example. bad injury, work etc… and game should not force you to keep playing in a first place, its not our job its purely entertainment. i recommend not using time limit in a game and success using a different approach for the non used beacon issue if any at all. maybe report system for non used beacon plots where is nothing more than a beacon it self and 1 or 2 crafting benches. X amount of reports and it would eventually get removed even if the player is still playing (he get announced before it).
I don’t have time to read the whole thread so it might have been mentioned, but I do like the idea of a fuel and larger areas should be more expensive then smaller areas, but not by a constant for extra plots. Something very logarithmic should occur, but not sure what the upper bound should be. Then this formula should apply to all new beacons.
There should also be a limit on the maximum number of beacons one can control and this will stop big players from growing overly big. It should’t be just build and build and build just because you can afford the fuel costs. Extra plots should be earned. Another thing with the fuel idea it might be possible to implement where a large plot with no fuel will decay the outside plots first, starting with the tallest or “fringes” of the property and then slowly over time you will lose all of your plots until your last beacon. This will reduce fuel costs for you and might help save the central plot with the beacon that much longer. So for instance an 5x5 plot will slowly lose one plot in a given amount of time until it is 4x4 and then 3x3 and so on and so forth until just the beacon plot is left and then that last plot could be activated just by logging in otherwise is on an extended timer so players can sort of horde crucial items in that area. Just some quick thoughts and needs some revision.
I like the idea of exploring skill being needed to possibly search or purchase abandoned plots if they can’t be afforded which would be an alternative to my “disappearing plots” idea. I also read a post on plots going up for auction. I think this helps with the problem of permanent or not. After set time the plot goes up for auction and much like buying a storage unit after it has been abandoned, you get to keep what is inside without really knowing what is in the crates. This also means someone has to actually want the land and purchase it before it would disappear meaning the player very well could leave for an extended time and come back and it might be there unless competition in the area is fierce. Otherwise when the player logs back in he/she will have a very nice paycheck to get a boost in starting new.
I personally favor the goes up for sale, but the real question will be for how much. The computer could poll all buying and selling plinths within a distance and average the prices out and price out everything within the beacon plots then use that to determine value. This would make popular areas with competitive markets more interesting.
The market and fuel is tough as this game has both geographical distinct markets as well as major markets in the capitals. I could see certain locations that don’t have access to certain resources being stuck. So either there has to be multiple fuel types that can be implemented or it has to be a resource that every area will for sure have and so far that is only coin. I could see it being a lot like spark or coal or wood with each lasting a different amount of time. This can give crafters a way to extend their duration or efficiency, then builders can build things that store more fuel. If you have a guild or community you would be able to take advantage of both aspects making social interaction lucrative and more efficient. I would expect the absolute max for a fully maxed out building to decay in 6 months. As for the improvements I think they can range anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months being the average time frame. This would mean a new players starts and builds something that stores fuel for an additional two weeks. Then that player meets another that can make more efficient fuel (such as compact coal) and that now makes the fuel 1.5x more efficient meaning that 1 month time is now 1.5 months due to buying better fuel as well as installing that upgrade. This would of course mean the player bought it or spent a reasonable amount of time in game gaining the skills or building and deserves that extra time to decay out of respect. Not a new player that started and stopped after a few hours.
Please respond back and I may be able to elaborate on my ideas. This was just a throw it out there kind of thing.
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