This is the same as passively fueling your beacons or simply extending your game time by playing. It’s an ok concept, except it does not force interaction with beacons you have placed across the planets and biomes. The core issues will arise from lonely beacons who have not had visits or regular uses from their owners for extended periods of time. These beacons block land that could otherwise be used by players who wish to actually develop and utilize the vacated space. By being forced to at least interact with the beacon periodically, you have to make a conscious decision to preserve and maintain your land.
I have a possible issue with this … learned from planet jumping in the latest releases.
I have a single beacon on every planet I have visited … nothing fancy - just 1 beacon, with a small ‘safe’ room for me to warp to, if and when the need arises. They allow me to know, without a shadow of doubt, that when I pay a lot of coin to open a warp, the place I am going is safe to warp to - no matter what.
Now, firstly, if I didn’t have those beacons placed as a safe place to warp to, what happens when someone decides that my saved location is a great place to build their fantastic mega-build? Am I still able to warp there? If so, what happens if I warp into a room with locked doors (without knowing it’s locked before I warp in)? Yes I could probably get back to the sanctum, at a cost, but then what about my saved location? Considering it could probably be the only location I have for that particular planet?
Secondly, it would be a massive coin sink to have to physically visit each and every one of those beacons to keep them alive. I’m sure that is something that would put a lot of players off.
Something like beacon fuel, with a physical visit to to the beacon to keep it alive is something that would certainly be in favour of people who are set up in multiple planetary markets, as they would need to visit their plinths every once in a while anyway, but I don’t see that solution benefiting may other play styles at all.
Personally, I’m still in favour of just logging in to renew your claims - something that doesn’t have to be a chore to do, for a game that is supposed to be fun to play. Simple is better in this case IMHO. I also think that people should not be punished for having real lives and needing to take a break from playing for a while, for whatever reason that may be. Being able to just log in, even for a few seconds, would allow them to continue playing at a later date.
One thing that keeps bringing me back to games like WoW, is that no matter how long a break I take, all my stuff will still be there in 12 months time, ready for me to pick back up and get back into the game and enjoy whatever new content has been released. Admittedly WoW is not a persistent world where other people can physically see what stuff I have accumulated, but that’s not the comparison here… being able to get back into a game where you have spent countless hours is. Going back to practically nothing and effectively needing to start the game again, would be enough to put off even the most stalwart returning player. It needs to have a mechanism where players can get back into the game where they left off, otherwise you will lose people … probably for good, and that IMO is not a good thing. What that mechanism would be, I do not know.
5 Likes
Agreed. None of these beacon fuel ideas are appealing.
We have plot limits already, the way people play this game they can’t afford to leave stray beacons around other than for the purposes of warp locations as above.
Requiring a player to simply log on every few weeks/months to keep their beacons alive is all we need.
If you want to avoid one (active!!) player having a few abandoned/annoying beacons hanging around, all that needs to be done is make beacons decay over time and regenerate as soon they are visited.
But they ONLY decay whilst the player is active in-game.
Easy. Stops abandoned beacons from both active and inactive players and encourages players not to be greedy placing beacons. Doesn’t require worrying about yet another fuel or resource in game and it’s pretty simple.
anything that forces you to play the game is a bad thing and majority will avoid that, if i know that i have to log in monthly to keep everything, it kind of make me not even want to start anything because i know that i don’t always have time to log in. there is better ways to do this example: report system or you can’t place a beacon too close to other beacons. also report system can be faster and more effective to remove someones beacon that blocks your creation intentionally than just waiting month(s) to it fade away, actually if someone really wants to ruin your creation he can just log in or fuel it and you cant do anything about it. it will be big world and surely not everything will appeal your eyes but it would need so much limitation to avoid every bad thing.
Report system would definitely be better but it requires more intervention from the devs unfortunately.
It’s also open to abuse, for example what if a group of player or guild decides to try and report someone’s beacon just because they want the plot even though the beacon is actively in use?
Could make the report system automated if it was combined with a decay/inactivity time.
So using my above proposal, instead of beacons automatically disappearing you can only report a decayed/inactive beacon.
well, i dont think there will be that much people reporting everyone’s beacon that 1 developer or someone hired for the job would not be able to do it in a week or so. checking when that beacon was placed and where, did he place it before the other one and is it blocking the other players creation etc. not hard to investigate. also warning mail to propose removing hes beacon in certain time would be sent before deleting that beacon. there could be its own section for beacon reports and player reports. if its automated then people will definitely abuse it, i have seen games where this happens and its totally unfair. also if you are inactive 2 years and you happened to build your beacon in a nice place where others want to build as well, they will report that beacon and due to inactivity and automated removing its as bad as the fueling system.
The details of how we will deal with this subject are still up in the air, but this is where we currently are:
- Long abandoned beacons will definitely disappear after some amount of time.
- The timing of when this happens is a very difficult balancing act, we want to clean up dead things as quickly as possible, but we don’t want to unfairly penalise players who are away for a while, but intend to come back.
- The system is unlikely to be based purely on “time since last logged on”, nor purely on in-game fuel, but will most likely be some hybrid of the two.
- At some point we will come up with a proposal, using the ideas in this thread as the basis for that, and post it on the forums for you to digest and dissect.
7 Likes
A good point that we thought of but I did not want to bring up because I am already bringing up so many points. Now is a great time to address this, though.
First, you are absolutely right in that money - coins - are an extra cost that is unnecessary. The cost of porting yourself to any of your homes should be very minimal if nothing at all. In any case, why not take advantage of a group portal or a semi (if not permanent) portal system to worlds.
Secondly, if you aren’t visiting your reserved locations on other worlds, then give them up to people who would like to maintain and utilize them. Hanging onto them as a “safe port” location is kinda greedy, don’t you think?
And I’m totally not blaming you for wanting to do this!
Because if the system is set up in such a way that you can’t tag onto at least one of several static warping points on a planet in order to farm or explore or whatever, then the system needs to be tweaked in order to discourage players from engaging in behavior that inhibits fun for all.
I tried to read it all 
don’t kill me.
Fuel and Rent concept are ok but also have big downsides all it takes is for someone to forgot and then lose all there stuff.
personally i think it should be based off active time so i made this !!! to give idea of what im thinking the days i have listed in the photo are just idea’s
I also feel if anyone is gone for 2 months aka 60 days its there Obligation to make sure someone can assist in taking over until they get back or fully understand the risk of loss or someone else claiming ownership.
3 Likes
I really like the idea but again there’s downsides to it like 60 days is pretty huge to have abandoned plots and beacons about. I have 2 abandoned plots right in the middle of my land and I wouldn’t want to be waiting that long in 1.0.
My biggest fear with this just based on logging in is with alt characters if you wanted to troll someone you could just place beacons right in their way and only log in once every 60 days. At least make trolls work for it and gather fuel if they want to block others.
I much prefer the fuel system myself, if you don’t log in once every 2 weeks and gather fuel (or however long it will be) it will give someone else the chance to build on your area. It’s not as if there are limited building plots in Boundless, the entire world is open to build.
You can add friends to your beacon to fuel it for you if you plan to go AFK for 60 days I believe. Taxes in most games with open world property are every 2 weeks.
In Archeage when prime plots of land were about to expire it was a pretty big competitive event for loads of people to go and claim the land or take any resources they could before someone else placed a plot on it, I imagine a prime market slot in the middle of a big town would be the same in Boundless. This is how a real estate agent would make his money on grabbing expiring prime slots, especially if he grabs a spot in the middle of a guilds land and they have to buy it from him. If every plot goes pretty much to the guild or a friend on claiming rights there wouldn’t be much rush for prime land spots.
Edited to add: also in Archeage you got a warning sent to your in game mailbox telling you your taxes were due, and then again once you ran out of taxes a warning mail telling you your property plot would be up for grabs - I’m not sure if we’re getting in game mail boxes, I hope so but in case not how about a coloured warning system when the beacon gets down to a certain amount of fuel?
1 Like
When you want to get involved into a topic tha startet 10 months ago and got more to read than the bible xD.
Well with just reading the opening post 
I wan’t to leave my idea and yeah i could be that someone else already brought something like this up and its already deamed not so good but i just try it.
My opinion is to keep it generaly simple.
When a certain amount of time has passed the beacon changes into an unsafe state.
This can be prevented when the owner or villagers of the beacon log in.
Should their be a treatment when the actual owner never comes back only the villagers? Maybe, doesn’T matter right now
The Unsafe state is also active for a certain amount of time after that the beacon disappears and the area is open. But what happens during the unsafe state is the interesting part and i explain it now.
First of all in the unsafe state the beaconed area is only protected from world regeneration. People can build and mine everything except the beacon. But what they can do in this state is interact with the beacon and give 5 days for example until the beacon becomes unsafe again. Good neighbors could help you out this way or people who just think this deserves to stay. Think of this kinda like people trying to restore meaningfull buildings, you will understand why i make this comparison. Should their be a treatment when the owner never comes back and a beacon got restored a certain amount of time? Certainly but that doesn’t matter right now.
Now coming from the option that the belongings of the player should slowly decay how about implementing a script that lets the beaconed area slowly become overwhelmed by nature. This means buildings crumble, losing blocks; tree, plants, flowers growing, along the walls of the structure, moss growing on stones, etc.
This could even introduce “destroyed blocks” that exchange the current ones and can’T be obtained otherwise. So in otherword haven the whole area looking it realisticly turned into ancient ruins. Most storages also disappear other might stay becoming treasure for those who get to this in time. After the unsafe state the beacon could become somewhat of a natural beacon protecting the ruins from getting refreshed, but people could just destroy it and thus make the ruins disappear, which you need to do to claim the area. This way player who really really stay away like forever got a little chance that maybe when they come back the ruins of their structure are still there so they can reactivate the beacon at least getting the plots back and getting the option to rebuild everything. (if you get really crazy here you can make everything turn back to normal when the beacon gets reactivated but thats just an optional thought :D)
I know this will probaly nothing easy to implement, would require a lot of testing to make sure the it doesn’T end up looking really stupid, but how cool would this look like. Just imagine this happending to a whole city. I could think of even a lot of more crazy stuff you could to with this :D.
The advantages are that there won’t be ugly half finished building standing arround. That great building that might face this loss maybe get remembered for all eternity this way :D. People could turn into real archeologists trying to keep these ruins alive. The owner of said places at least will always have a slight chance to get their places back but if not with the “destroyed blocks” unique to this cause people could even run arround trying to collect these and clearing the lands from the ruins so everything stays clean :D.
Yeah thats pretty much it.
1 Like
As of right now Boundless has no ruling on how one can place there claim block other then you cant overlap, i said this in discord a few days ago that boundless needed a plot permission hierarchy system that would work something like this.
Lets assume the Beacon has 5 Area’s to add a player “Co-Owner, Friend, Guild, And Resident, Neighbor”
---------------------------------------------------VERY RAW EXAMPLE -------------------------------------
Player A Has Town with over 500+ plots claimed
Player B wants to join
Player A add Player B to Beacon
Player A and B walk over to the area Player B wishes to Build
Player A whips out his Tool (We will call this Tool Bam Stick) and select the area
Player B Place his Beacon there now claiming it and Giving a land plot point back to player A
Player B is restricted to those plots horizontally but not vertically and because Player B is added to Player A beacon is registers him as ok to claim plots vertically as the 500m restriction does not apply to him.
Now Player C comes by we will call him a Troll and thinks hes smart and tries to place a block down but cant because you cant build with in 500m of someone else plot unless Registered with Player A as a Friend or Neighbor.
----------------------------------------------------PERMISSIONS---------------------------------------------------------------
Co-Owner : Someone you Trust with all access and to take care of things if needed this person had free build anywhere on your plots also would have first claim to your beacon if you where offline for more then XXdays
Friend: Friends would have access to free build in your plots but locked out of chest and machines this person would gain access to claim your beacon is Owner and Co-Owner not are on for XXdays
Guildies: Are not Restricted to the 500m and can build close to your plots or be given access with your BAM stick in a plotted area of your choosing.
Resident: Same rules apply here as Guildies
Neighbor: Are not Restricted to the 500m and can build closer to you
----------------------------------------------------FUNCTIONS and RULING------------------------------------
<Co-Owner, Friend, Guild, And Resident, Neighbor>
Co-Owner: Can only be a Co-Owner of a limited amount of Beacons - 
To limit Stress
Friend: this person can be added to multiple beacons.
Guild Creator: Can only Create 1 guild and can not be added to other guild beacon as a Guildie or Co-Owner but can be added as Friend or Resident, Neighbor
Guildies: Can only be added to 1 Guild Beacon (The one they joined) but can be added to non guild beacons.
Resident: Can only be added to Town Beacons
Neighbor: Player C can build with in 50m of Player A but cant build with in 50m of player B without being added to there Beacon to. in case Player B does not want Player C next to him with his Mud house
This is very Very RAW 
Like i said before fuel is ok but lets say 2x Fuel = 1 day and they stack in 99 like everything else and we round it to 50x = 25days so 900x is like 450days most people will farm or buy it then jam it in there beacon and forget about it. but lets say you only put a weeks worth of that the casual player will more or less forget about it and one day log on and everything would be gone just leading him to the forums to complain.
I only say this out of experiences from an administrator position in open world games server iv hosted or helped host over the years, Like Arma Exile, Ark, 7Days, Rust, Minecraft we added an upkeep in the form of Rent or Fuel with multiple warning given to the player before a deadline and end up not logging in and losing everything or logging in and just forgetting because they are busy doing other things.
Again this is all from past experiences from games plus some Personal Theorycrafting
2 Likes
what if people log in just to fuel they’re beacons and log off for next 3 months just to maintain theyr game progress but still wont play the game?
2 Likes
It’s enough to put a limit on fuel you can put in beacon so you have to come back and put in next portion every week or so.
what about people who cant play/log in every week or so? it should be much longer time so people don’t have to keep coming back so intensely but then we get back to my first question.
people who genuinely need time off for RL reasons can have an option to refuel for longer however at greater cost; kind of “holiday time” request via beacon menu (available if you have enough log-ins over last months, so players logging in rarely wouldnt be able to use it) - so lets say 1 week is typical maximum period of time one can stock fuel for and it costs 100 of whatever resources; going beyond that would cost you 50% more for first week, 100% more for the second week etc. giving you this kind of costs for you “holiday time from game”:
1 normal cost week stock up - 100 units
+1 holiday week - 150 units
+1 holiday week - 200 units
+1 holiday week - 250 units
+1 holiday week - 300 units
Maximum possible holiday time would be set at 4 weeks what would give you a chance to be out of game for 5 weeks. Depending on you log-in history you would be able to apply for less or more holiday weeks (giving maximum 4 weeks period to players with daily log-ins or close enough to it).
BTW - whats the general idea on relation between number of plots attached to a beacon and cost of fueling the beacon? If any?
1 Like
I think that almost irrespective of how beacon persistence is handled (and more specifically, removal of abandoned beacons), there’s something that only seems to have been mentioned in passing and not really considered that weighs on my mind based on how I know I’ll end up playing.
I can imagine that I’ll play a lot for when the game is launched, and really enjoy it. At some point however, it will start to feel like a chore, or some other exciting new game will come out that I want to try, or [insert other reason here] will make me put Boundless down for an unspecified and not entirely foreseeable amount of time. Given that Boundless is going check most of my boxes for fun gameplay, I don’t think I’ll ever just stop playing with no intention of coming back. However, if I knew for certain that without constant* upkeep I will lose everything I’ve collected, it will be a real turn off and disincentive to come back to the game in the future.
I’m very much in agreement that unattended beacons deteriorate over time (or without some from of upkeep) as a method to keep the land clear of abandoned beacons. However, without some functionality to save your belongings over a longer (potentially indefinite) period of time, I’d suggest that it will be VERY difficult to bring past players who take an extended break back into the game, which would be a great loss.
It’s not a fully formed idea, but I feel we could really do with some method to essentially ‘pack up’ a beacon (collecting all the blocks that you’ve added or modified) and putting it into an escrow somewhere that won’t disappear over time. Then, when you know you’re finished playing for the foreseeable future, you can pack up your beacon and release the land back into the game for someone else to claim. The important point, is that you’ll know that when you do come back, you won’t be starting from scratch (Yes, except coins and experience).
This should be of benefit both because it will provide an improved avenue for taking longer breaks (and people WILL want these at some point), but also that in doing so, you can apply stricter/harsher time limits on how quickly it takes for unattended beacons to degrade, for the very reason that there IS a way to circumvent losing all your belongings if you’re willing to look for a new home later. And lets face it, if I’ve been off for 6 months, I’ll barely remember or care about my previous beacons, and will want to build something new anyway.
*Constant upkeep, in this case, could actually mean anything. I feel that when I play a game, it’s because it’s my free time and I want it to be fun. If it starts to become a chore just to maintain my property, then the game has lost it’s ability to simply be fun. If it isn’t any real chore to maintain property, then whatever IS set up as the requirements (be it log in recency, or inexpensive fuel) will be something that people can do without much thought, and it fails to be a deterrent or preventative for grabbing land and not using it for all but the completely inactive.
3 Likes
a fuel based Beacon with item input and upkeep as for example as @boundmore stated with units becomes a job something that is forced a pond a player to do to maintain in there beacon, even if the fuel in question is cheap or super easy to get its something you have to stop everything to do.
Active Beacon time does not count down when your actively online and only starts when you log out but resets when you log back in the idea around this is just to have you log in by logging in there is a 50/50 chance you will stay logged in and play but are not forced to upkeep or keep an eagle eye on your beacon fuel supply
Both systems have there pro’s and con’s and each one can be abused or forgotten about .
as for how long each ones should last or XX days i only use numbers my other post as references and believe that should be left up to the dev’s and only trying to point out the system i personally think would be the best fit for all and easiest to implement without having creating extra items or making it a chore for players.
This is an old and VEEERY long topic, so I can totally understand skimming this topic. That said, I’ll repost a suggestion that I think answers a lot of the debate about fuel based beacon systems. In short, it’s a work based charge that fills beacons to a max capacity, then can be stored in “batteries” for additional charge or can be traded to other players to power a beacon without having to sink a few hours of work into it. I’d be interested to see what our newest forum members think of the idea since it was so well received before.
3 Likes
theres people who get upset because beacon blocks a nice building area where they would like to build and see that the beacon owner is not even active but active enough to maintain the building. people get upset because someone build hes beacon too close to your’s and block your’s so you cant increase the size of the beacon, he is active player. in both cases the fueling or login to keep your beacon wont work at all, how ever the fueling or login work strongly against “empty” and abandoned beacons so it keeps maps “mostly” clean. so how to prevent trolls and inactive players? Be more forgiving, dont be too greedy (you wont always get what you want, not even every time). report the trolls. reporting is the strongest and maybe the only way against people who intentionally block your areas. Beacon should not be permanent to keep abandoned or empty beacons away but not too hard or time taking to maintaining yours. login would be enough, maybe every 2-3 month’s, fueling to take 15-30min of your time for next 2months or playing 2-4hours to charge your battery for 1-2 week’s. with report and fueling/powering system it should keep everything in order, not too forcing and not too incompetent.