Beacon Persistence

Devlog
89

maybe save a percent of stuff? I understand what you mean but scavengers would be able to still get all the blocks they used to build with and maybe if u have that skill tree you can get more from their chest then someone without that skill tree.

edit: i am fine with losing all your stuff if you haven’t played for several months, was just trying to better explain the idea i gave previously. There are times in games where I want to come back after not playing for a long time because of new content or w/e but i understand if u do lose the stuff.

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90

I do like your idea, but I think 2 month or 10 weeks instead of 1 month =D

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91

Why so long?

92

Depends on how much stuff you gather really if you fill up a single beacon with chest you can have 511 chest blocks (or shelves) that is quite a lot of material to move otherwise ^.^

I think it will allow people who play it more casually to go away doing other stuff without worrying for their beacon disapearing. Mentioning again helping in poor countries or generally just traveling (On of our families friends went backpacking in africa kinda hard takign your computer with you.)

But this is again why I support the fuel system, people can dedicate a week before traveling to secure their stuff by gathering fuel while normal people will probably only have a decay time of a month or something

Nah only 4 weeks ^.^ and it was an answer for the 1 month proposal.

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93

I knew you were going to reply with the traveling thing so I edited my post right as you were making this haha

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94

We’re pretty lucky to get a day a month. Like insanely lucky.

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95

Yep. Big trips like that take prep time. Saving your Boundless beacons could easily be included in that prep time. If you frequently take extended breaks, invent in the potential skill tree to have access to greater fuel reserves. I want to know what issues new people to this conversation have against that idea.

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96

True, but the 1 month is only the time limit before any petition can be made, and if the petition process then takes 1 month to complete then at the very earliest the person would have 2 months to log in. That’s basically the worst case scenario, you could be gone for 3-4 months without anyone wanting you plot of land (unless it was some really prime location) and you would still be warned almost a month before it is deleted so as long as you check your email it would work out fine.

Not sure how it would work out if say someone petitioned your beacon to be removed and then you logged in, would the petition just be deleted, put on hold or completely not affected. As I said in my previous post my solution (and many others for that matter) still need to be fleshed out a bit more before they could function seamlessly without anybody getting the short end of the stick.

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97

I think this is sort of the problem. People expect no penalties for taking breaks or not taking responsibility for their beacons. But with any sort of upkeep system if you aren’t taking responsibility, you’re going to face consequences. I (and some others) don’t think we should be protecting people from these consequences for multiple months while their beacons cover resources/scenery for the people actually playing he game. But people arguing for 6+ months seem to want to just be able to take a break and come back to their work without taking responsibility for it during that break. Which is a valid opinion. Just not one I agree with.

TLDR: Someone is going to get hurt if we implement non-permanent beacons. The questions are, how long should it take for beacons to deteriorate, how should they deteriorate, should they deteriorate at the same rate for all builds/players?

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98

Well, I have played many online games and I know eventualy I will quit to play another game… But even if i havent played a game for a long time I always return to see how the game has change (updates) or how my old friends are… When I log in again since a while and I see my character and my progress I start to apreciate what i have done and somehow I fall in love with the game again… Now, picture I came back and i realise that all my work and my house is gone… after gathering the best resources i ever found and used them to build the most beautiful pice of art that is my house… start from the beggining because my beacon got expired or worst, other player had taken control of my space with my resources that I suffered to collect… it wont makes me want to play again ever…

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99

I really think blueprints are an important part of games like these. Make it so that you can blueprint w/e you have in your beacon and then be able to recreate it in the future. You would have to invest new material into making it again but at least you wont have to try to remember how you designed it. Empyrion has a system where you drag resources into the blueprint and once you have enough, you can paste it back into the world after a certain amount of “construction” time based on what you are making. Other games like creativerse and SE allow you to place a transparent version and then place the appropriate blocks where they were.

As far as keeping some of the resources from when you last played, I have already been discussing possible ideas of keeping some of the resources but they have possible exploits if transporting resources is something that will be difficult. Maybe if there was some way to limit how many stacks get saved or maybe you have to respawn the chest in the same general area that it was destroyed in.

edit: if you can respawn it in same general area, it would have to be large enough to still leave space in case others have put beacons in the area.

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100

That brings up a good topic as I was not even thinking about different rates of deterioration. Maybe there should be a function that allows you to upgrade a beacon so that it lasts longer, say it has a starting lifespan of 1 week and then as you upgrade it the lifespan increases.

Whatever happens I just don’t want to run into the same situation as many Minecraft servers find themselves in when people claim land and then never play, so you run looking for land and you can’t find any because some guy who hasn’t played for months has already claimed it.

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101

I got another Idea:

Since we all want to keep our house, it doesn’t matter with fuel or whatever is true that we don’t want to have a graveyard of abandoned houses. So what if when someone loses his beacon (then we can talk about how) all his stuff are sent to a kind of personal bank or by mail or something and then the beacon space is filled how it was before ( back to the initial world state.) and this way if the player came back in the future he or she can rebuild his/her house but will need to find a new place to place the new beacon… sorry for my english gosh…

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102

This is part of what we have been talking about. This would allow someone to take one of their beaconed outpost with resources and paste it next to their main base after it has expired. I proposed a similar idea of keeping the chest. That is why i suggest being forced to put it within close proximity to where it was previously.

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103

Point out a single multiplayer game that has non-instanced player housing with no upkeep. None, zero, they don’t exist. Why? Because that defeats the purpose of an MMO. It isn’t a single player game you can hop in and out whenever you want with several month breaks in between, and expect everything to be the same. Things change, other people exist, you aren’t the center of the universe in a multiplayer game.
No one wants their stuff to be deleted, but most people recognize the fact that other people play the game too and it is unfair to them if everything gets locked up by people who don’t even bother to play anymore.

You worried about your stuff being gone if you take a couple month break? Either have some friends who upkeep it for you, join a guild, or let someone else live there with the expectation that they don’t tear it down. You can’t go on vacation for a year and expect your house to still be yours without paying rent, same thing here.

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104

I am rather exited for tomorrow when @Zouls get in and see this alst time we discussed this he had some pretty hefty arguments against beacom decay and the fuel system especially. That should put out some good perspective on the debate at least ^.^

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105

Agree, but not deleted at all, thats why i am proposing some solutions: [quote=“Skeeto, post:101, topic:4285”]
Since we all want to keep our house, it doesn’t matter with fuel or whatever is true that we don’t want to have a graveyard of abandoned houses.
[/quote]

lets keep bringing ideas.

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106

A lot of people so far have been in favour of having a fuel source to power beacons - stipulating that the fuel source should be very easy to find and collect.

The only way I can realistically see that working would be to either have a single ‘block’ of fuel last at least 4 weeks, or if you want it to last less time, have every spare area of land littered with said fuel (ok may be a bit over the top, but you get the idea). If you want it super easy to find and collect, which will have to tie in with resource regeneration, you’d need to have the fuel be very efficient otherwise you would need to have a lot of the fuel blocks be visible to aways give you that easy part.

For me personally, fuelling a beacon is sounding very much like a job (and it will be a job no matter how quick you think it will be to achieve refuelling your beacon)… I already have a job… I want to play a game to not do a job, but to enjoy myself.

Others are questioning why should you want a beacon to last a long time not and not expire… personally I think an occasional player or even a new player would be put off by having a short time on beacons…

Example time:

You’re new to the game, you’ve progressed far enough to learn how to make a beacon to protect a plot of land, you collect all the required materials you need and build one, you built a small but comfortable dwelling and store a bunch of your stuff there - personal sense of achievement unlocked!

Now, the real world kicks in … you go away for 2-3 weeks (for whatever reason), without realising you need to fuel your beacon (if a max fuel capability is tied into progression, as some have suggested, fuelling a beacons for a new player could possibly be limited to only 1 week anyway)… you come back, decide to play B< only to find everything you’ve built (no matter how small) is now gone (or worse, someone else is squatting exactly where you left your dwelling… that previous sense of achievement is now dead for that player.

The probability that they will want to play the game right away and build/collect everything again…? Not very high. In my opinion, this sort of scenario is more likely to push people away from the game and onto something else. It would certainly frustrate me, I know that much!

I’m still deeply in favour of not having a fuel source … as I don’t want to have to do a weekly (or whatever interval) grind getting it. Having to do a continual grind is one of the reasons I stopped playing games like WoW. I would much rather have a notification either by email (for PC players) or whatever notification system is easiest for PS4, to tell me my beacon is due to expire in X days/weeks, and then just log in to refresh my claim(s).

I also think arguments over the aesthetics of a beacon where someone hasn’t visited for some time, is negligible… there are many self-confessed non-builders on these forums, who by all accounts may well have ugly buildings (sorry, but it’s a possibility - unless you hire a builder :wink: ). You’re not always going to like the things that other people build - it’s what makes everyone unique - we all have different views and ideas (both on forums and in game!).

Personally I think that, whatever happens, Boundless needs to be as accessible to as many players as possible, for as long as possible. If that means not regen’ing a shack that someone built up to 3 months ago, in the hope that they will come back and continue to play again, I seriously do not have a problem with that - the more the merrier!

… and my apologies for the massive brain dump post! Happy Friday :smiley:

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107

Or it could spawn in such large amounts that the market vallue is so low that you can basically buy it for anything.

This is basicallly why I go for measuring it in months. And we need a tutorrial, because of stuff like that. (Same could happen for decay based on activity) Also first beacon should spawn with full fuel probably.

This is why I don’t see the 6 month ideas as completely insane and think that 6 month timers i completely reasonable as in ingame goal. As lon as the houses disapear within a year without use, the worlds will self clean themselves over time. And it just need to keep the ugly build count a bit down.

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108

Meh well either way I’m going to be making a metropolis so peasants can do whatever they want outside the render range of my walls :stuck_out_tongue:

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