Beacon Persistence

I agree on 4 weeks, but anything over that and you really should be asking yourself why you chose to play a competitive building MMO, and not something single player where you can log in when you like and always keep your buildings.

I know well about things that take you away for 6 months at a time having just retired from the Military after 22 years, I still don’t think I would deserve to take up prime space over and above someone who played activity every day if I was away for months at a time.

I don’t think 100’s of people in a guild should be reaping the rewards of people who log in once every 2 months. MMOs tend to work on much higher benefits for being active every day. So I don’t think capital cities should benefit from having people away for long periods if capitals bring in so many benefits, Once you go inactive your stats shouldn’t count towards any capital city stats. This would mean new guilds have a better chance of gaining capital city status as long as they remain active - one of the worst things in MMOs is never being able to compete once you join late.

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i have never seen or played MMo’s which removes all your progression if you wont log in for long time. that will be the issue with boundless with no permanent beacons since they are the only things that protect everything you have in this game, but if the beacons are permanent it creates much more harm than good so it sure needs to be there in some form. basically it all comes to balancing the time so everyone can keep playing and have fun no matter if you cant log in every week or monthly. if the time is too harsh the game wont be for casual players but it sure is now and i hope it will when released.

I’m the opposite, I’ve never played an MMO with housing that doesn’t require activity & taxes. You don’t lose progress as in personal levels - but in:

ARK your building degrades and vanishes in PvE if you don’t log in (or is destroyed on PvP),
Archeage you lose your plot of land if you cannot pay your taxes regularly,
Everquest 2 you will lose your instanced house if you cannot pay your tax regularly.
Wurm Online your builidings decay if you do not pay your upkeep regularly
Mortal Online heavy PvP, your buildings can be destroyed
Black Desert - if you don’t pay your taxes you are evicted from your instanced housing

I do have 100% faith that the devs will come out with a good system using a combination of activity, plots and fuel. if an active player has 100 plots down and a huge build then for sure it should take much longer to degrade than 1 beacon plot.

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One of the aims of Boundless is to encourage players to work together and being a member of a community. Even in Early Access, players dip in and out from time to time and others play constantly. We love both and want both to play the game whether it is in short bursts every few weeks or months, or consistently logging in and playing. But it needs to be a fair system for both.

We are hoping players who are more casual will be a member of a guild or will have a number of friends playing the game when they aren’t, and those players can fuel the missing player’s beacon until they return.

We might need a longer term solution that caters to both. But for now we feel the fueling system and allowing friends and guild members to assist with powering your beacon is enough.

Remember, you can power you beacon up, so if you think you’re going to take an extended period off you can power it up before you go away. Also, we’re considering e-mailing players about their beacon status so they are aware that their beacon is about to go away.

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Since when is this a competitive building game? I am really curious where that came into the game, cause I always thought this was suppose to be a community game. Where people work together to achieve goals, not compete.

I think that is a good compromise for people that travel a lot and can be in positions where they have no access to internet for extended periods of time, or steam decides to tell them they aren’t their account holder (both have happened to me a lot more than I care to admit). However I think that in itself can cause other problems, mostly in the cost area. I understand that a lot of this comes from the aspect that we all want any beacon that is placed to actually be used, but I feel the system is just being made overly complicated. Using this for now however is a great short-term solution. And obviously cost needs to be seen to take a more educated approach at the matter, but I just feel that in a way this is going to put a damper on a a group of people, mostly the ones that like to play more solo.

I thought one of the main aims is for people to build the biggest city so it is called as the Capital of that planet and brings in bonuses (and more visitors), with cities each having some sort of ranking based on the amount/value of materials used. Each city will get a ranking then - if that’s not competitive building with guilds vying against each other in a rankings board then I don’t know what is?

That’s why I don’t think inactive people should be counting towards the rankings, otherwise new guilds will never get the chance to compete for the capital.

Important thing to remember is a player can achieve this themselves without a guild but it will be tougher to keep the capital rating without other people to help you out.

edit: love auto-correct

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Great idea! Both for the players, and as a business move (to keep people coming back, just in case they forget!)

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I feel that this is an easy problem to solve. If for some reason a player stops playing for an extended period of time this is what should happen.

  1. After a few months the player is emailed a warning that his items\base\plots are about to decay.

  2. If they choose not to log in then all their items, and I mean ALL their items including every block used to create their entire base is returned to the player in some form. Perhaps placed in a one use sack or chest. By doing it this way when the player returns at a later time he wont have to start over from scratch. In fact, depending on how big their base was, they will have everything they worked so hard for available to them so they can start fresh without starting over.

I personally have seen this implemented in other MMORPG styled games and to my delight I had all of my stuff in a chest when I finally logged back in which gave me the encouragement to continue playing again. If my stuff wasn’t returned I would have never started playing again. Games like Boundless have people coming and going all the time. The key is to provide replayability for those who have strayed an then returned.

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Its an interesting idea, like you say it would be an incentive to pick up the game after a break, but not have to start back from scratch.

It would also promote further growth and world development. Imagine a hand full of players returning after a 6 month break. Not only are they returning with everything they previously owned but now (depending on how much they had) they have the goods to build something big and fresh. Maybe they can build something they wished they would’ve built the first time. Granted the goal here is to encourage players NOT to leave, and to give the more dedicated players a chance to reclaim to prime plots. But by doing it this way you would be sky rocketing your replayability through the roof and giving a huge incentive to players whose circumstances have changed, either from another game, or maybe their grandma got hit by a car and they had to sell their computer to pay for her hospital bill and it took them 6 months to get another computer and when they finally do and log in for the first time in half a year they still have every single item and block from their previous base right there at their fingertips. Praise to the Boundless Devs for implementing such an amazing feature!!!

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Personally I’m still not really onboard with the idea of fueling, would much prefer something based on time spent active in beacon, with a super slow beacon life decay rate (months).

The decay rate could be accelerated by other players “reporting” the beacon as abandoned.

And once your beacon decays, you should definitely be returned all materials as above, i don’t think anything should be up for grabs.

This is quite an important part of the game for my playing style and I’ve been holding my breath for months, as i may permanently abandon boundless based on the Devs decision (this is not some sort of threat, I’m just being honest).

I’m not totally against fueling to the point where I’ll leave the game if fueling is brought in. I’m just saying it’s a very delicate mechanic to play with and I’ll either love or hate the outcome, you can’t please everyone!

I feel the main reason beacon persistence is brought up is because said player inactive beacon interferes with others players ability to build, and get their desired results.

Say a city or guild, you’re building, and decide that you want to further expand your place, but the beacon next to you, is empty and blocking your way, or it’s in the way of a new city landmark or common area, it would bother 1 or more people. But that wouldn’t always be the case. Say your beacon is in a stranded area, no beacon to see in the horizon, no one would have anything to hold against you. So why should your beacon be removed?

True that with the guild system, there should be less problems inside a guild or city with unwanted beacons, as most would be the guilds disposition, or whatever, guild system is still being worked, so we never know.

Just as @Cookviper mentioned, I don’t feel the player should lose progress, just because they stopped playing. But there should be a way for the beacon to be removed from it’s place, with everything inside it, returning to it’s owner. And maybe, just maybe, keep it the same way as it was, I don’t know how hard it will be to program and code, so if it’s gonna be a pain in the ass, please don’t consider it for 1.0 release. As I know you have your hands full with so much stuff already.

And about the time playing protecting your beacon from being removed, the only gripe I have against it, and it’s because I’ve seen it happen in other games is, players logging in, and been afk, to generate “play time”. Again nullifying the purpose of the system.

I’m all in favor of players not losing progress, as well as I’m in favor of removing beacons that are in the way of others plans. Let’s be honest, no one likes to see a dead beacon in the vicinity of the city or guild you’re in, and if the player isn’t active anymore, it will be removed, with the items inside, returning to it’s owner. But if you have a beacon somewhere no one frequents, then who’s there to complain?, who’s affected by it? Let it stay there, peacefully and quietly.

So @Karokendo mentioned this idea to me, and I took the liberty to make some “upgrades or changes” to it

Have a voting system be implemented. Instead of making the fueling system harder.

  • Beacons will only have the option to vote up a beacon for removal, after the beacon is not longer active (has no more fuel) and it’s voted by players after crafting a special voting tool (tool will be hard to make (rare materials), and it stops trolls from trolling that easily).

  • Beacon will be removed after the player hasn’t responded to the issue and it’s reached enough votes (maybe 5?), or it hasn’t been protected by another players votes to keep it.

  • Everything inside a beacon, gets returned to the player it belongs. Only the empty plot will remain, for other players to take.

  • That way, only inactive players beacons, that disturb others, will be removed, and the ones who’re affecting nobody, even though it’s not fueled, will remain as they were left.

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I’m making a thread about it :slight_smile:

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Yeah, this is how it worked in Archeage and it was a nice system, everything was returned to you via your mail box if you failed to pay your taxes if you took a break.

Only problem I had with it was bag space, I had to create an alt army of level 1’s and purchase extra bag slots from the store to regain all my goods since all mail in that game had a 6 month timer before it was auto deleted, I assume to keep the servers clean. Your single chest idea would sort this out.

Of all the proposed systems I like this one best. Its simple and effective.
I also like the idea of time spent to fule your beckon with physical fule for exstended leaves. Simple

Would just like to make it clear for my own peace of mind - when I say I am against “beacon fuel”, I am simply against the idea of spending game time gathering “beacon fuel”.and having another responsibility to worry about.

I am NOT against non-permanent beacons and I do not want infinite Beacon Persistence (permanent beacons).

This seems to be a point that gets lost in the discussions I’ve had, so I want to make that clear. @Skippy0330

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Would some people be less opposed if the beacon “fuel” was coins? So you could earn it however you enjoyed playing in the course of the game?

I am getting the distinct impression people think it will just be hundreds of extra hours of coal mining?

We don’t know what the fuel will be yet.

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My biggest peeve with MMOs is over-use of currency then just sticking sinks on mechanics. It’s like the easy way out but just feels like economics when you’re playing.

My vote will always be for player/community moderation, especially something to provoke a direct discussion with the person who’s beacon you want to remove. (Because there is a person behind that ugly abandoned house)

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Perhaps the objectives could be used here. Since they intend to cover nearly every aspect of the game, their completion could add beacon time as well as xp and coin.

Additionally, since objectives are completed from the very beginning of the game, it would be a resource easily obtained by both new and veteran players passively, rather than actively

I’d also still like to see the use of beacon batteries of some sort to store extra beacon power to use before extended leaves of absence. Could even be stored, traded or sold by players who have maxed their own beacons power.

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