Beacon Persistence

Haha. No worries! Everyone here seems pretty friendly, and there is a great community building even more around this game. Thank you for the links! I will go check those out.

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You have some very good points, and I think that setup would work very well.:grinning:

Only one thing concerns me:
How do you solve the problem of players making a starter house, placing a beacon, and then moving on to make a better house elsewhere, and forgetting about the first beacon? :confused: In this case fuel may be a better option.
(Have the fuel be stack-able to a point where it could last around 3-6 months)

:shard:

I think it has been said that players will have a max amount of beacons available to them.
(Please correct me if im wrong)
If this is the case, then a player moving on to a better base will later need to destroy the old beacon, in order to place more.

Oh, I didn’t even think about that! Silly me. :smile:

It probably wouldn’t be uncommon for new players to build structures and then venture out in search of more exotic lands.
I totally see how fuel makes the most sense for such circumstances. Good point!

I think you answered your question with your next post already :wink:

Beacons will be a valuable resource for players. I would imagine most people wouldn’t just leave them laying around without them having a purpose. Additionally, the number of beacons you have will be tied to progression, and I don’t think you’ll start out with that many, making them extremely valuable to a player in the early game.

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Is there a way we can vote on some of these permanent areas of the map? Hear me out in this I believe small-medium size built areas should be destroyed or reclaimed back from the generator but huge projects like a giant castle should have some sort of option like maybe a voting poll for the players to decide whether or not it should stay or go. There are some great monuments built by players and it’s sad to see some of those gone only just to be remembered by youtube videos or images on google search. It will be great for players too to be inspired by other people’s creations to see it first hand in person(as the player character). Plus it will be great reference points to use in the game to get to a location just by having those structures stand out in open (the village is near the pac-man eating the glowing orbs not by the ghosts chasing the pac man, got it john?)

The problem with that idea really is that it could be abused by large guild to make their builds permant.

We have talked about making a voting system and then alowing the devs to decide on which ones to keep though.

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That’s why I suggested allowing players to place a beacon next to an existing one to link them together. If players do have a limited amount (which I heard would be the case) then rhey would be careful about only saving areas that are worth it.
They should, of course, only be allowed to link beacons that are about to expire. There’s no need to link a beacon that is healthy. That’s what the friend tokens are for.

As someone who has high anticipation for the fully released game but who’s interest pre-release has dwindled a bit, I like the idea of permanent beacons. I like knowing that I’ll be able to find some familiarity when I log in even when it’s been a few months since I’ve last decided to check out the progress.

I believe one of Ben’s GUI reveals showed a screen where you can check different points of interest and see their coordinates. With this, it’d be very difficult to not be able to find old beacons.

@Larfleece, make sure to vote on the poll thread (2nd post on that thread) and check up on some of the pros and cons people have given for that idea.

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I agree it would be abused but wouldn’t the guilds be limited to only one area of the map? May I suggest that if a guild starts building another area it will have a number next to it so the first place they built will be permanent(the beacons have to be connected and not separated but if separated it will only protect the first one but not the second one and after). Also the leader and the other high ranks as well as the lower ranks(adventure) need a certain amount of people to maintain their clan(to make it permanent) so if a guild has 200 people (including the higher ranks) using the beacons, 100 people are needed to be in clan at least at all times so the guilds can’t branch out too much because of the required people needed to stay in the guild. It should scale more depending how many people can join a guild at once.

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But im not gaming to afterwards have them “left to rot” INEVITABLY. Im gaming to create, to achieve, to grow. Its entirely IMPOSSIBLE to have this positive gaming experience if in the end it is ALWAYS going to rot, one way or another!!

So why still play around with these ideas of rotting, noone likes it, just let them go, im sure the people that are now saying “Yeah id be willed to do that” if youd decide to just keep the things people build while they dont have time to play (for whatever reason it REALLY is none of anyones business!) they would be equally or even more happy with no changes be made to their stuff while they are offline!

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Result of the last dev-issued backer survey

I wouldn´t call that noone :smile:

:

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Dear Devs, and Boundless Online community,

Perhaps the problem we all face is this: there is a mixture of people using beacons to their advantage. I believe these two people cannot be looking at the beacon for an allround solution. Not the way it functions now. The people using beacons currently consist of two main playergroups (and some minor experimentalists):

  1. protecting the structures and buildings, which are necessary for the game to develop.
  2. claiming resources which is necessary for the player to develop.

I’d like to rather see these two different players get two different types of fuel to upkeep the beacons. Adding different beacon stats and characteristics to suit the needs of the player.

The field-type:

  • is cheaper to construct,
  • is smaller in size
  • can (with proper training) be constructed on multiple locations
  • is weaker, so it lasts about a day or two (does not allow fuel-stacking to pay in advance)
  • still allows others to take actions inside it, giving them a time-delay that is significant
  • is attackable with special siege equipment that allows other players to strip block by block
  • it’s fuel is transferable to other players (using currency // blocks).

The barrier-type:

  • is relatively expensive to construct, cheaper per block if they are larger
  • can be huge relative to the field-type,
  • is stronger, so it lasts about a month without fuel (allows fuel stacking to ‘pay in advance’)
  • prevents the other player from deconstructing inside it
  • is not attackable (unless fuel reaches 0), at fuel 0 it will become attackable with special siege equipment that allows players to strip block by block
  • it’s fuel is transferable to other players (using currency // blocks).

I know that what you asked is not another tool to use, but in the end the world is 'possible with white and black, life and death. Creation and Destruction.

I’m curious to hear what you people think of this idea.
Regards,

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I like it :grin::grin::grin:

I’d like to give you a dislike. This forum is living from constructive discussions and evaluations.

I’m by the way with the 70%

@endymion nice to see kind of new perspective. worth to consider

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While I do understand the position you are coming from, I completely disagree. The reason I disagree is simple: entropy. Entropy is the gradual decline into disorder. Chaos. Voxel games are particularly vulnerable to entropy, and exponentially more so for every single additional player that shares that voxel space.
As a former host of a minecraft server that went from 5 to 3000 players, I’ve seen the effects of entropy on a voxel space first hand. It’s simple, really. As players come and go, they often tend to spread out. Everybody is looking for that piece of beautiful virgin territory to claim as their own, and the resources to build it. Since you can only support so many people in a given area, people spread out further and further each time. In an “infinite” generating server this is a huge problem - the world size swells for every new chunk rendered, and players are generating them by the thousands daily. So to prevent that, you set max limits on the world size, right? Only now you have more players in a confined area than the land can support. What’s worse is that vast amounts of land is now completely unusable since players that don’t play anymore have their protected claims on land that they don’t play at anymore.
When the server hits that point, the only choice is to either 1, meticulously identify and restore unused plots (something that the brilliant world regeneration and beacon decay that is being discussed here does automatically) or 2, do a world wipe and have everyone start from the beginning again. Choice 1 keeps your continuous regular players happy, but may dissapoint your occasional player who comes back after an extended period for one reason or another. As a host, I had pleanty of such instances. Choice 2 has its own problems and is considerably less favorable than choice 1, but since we’re not discussing regular world wipes, it’s not worth addressing further.
So, from that experience, it is plain to see why a system of beacon decay is necessary. The cost of entropy alone mandates it. Nobody here is saying everything has to rot, we’re just discussing how to best preserve the things that people most care about. If somebody never comes around to maintain their gameplay, it’s best for everyone if that space is freed up for the next player.
In short, it is impossible to support a positive gaming experience without allowing things to rot.

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@Lady-Rosetta: In addition to @Vastar i like to say that there is a current pending community made vote here. Maybe you like to read through the first two post in the topic and add your opinions or improvement proposal (make sure you vote in the second post). The current status is that 87% of the players are for vanishing beacons (this is a clear majority and not “noone” btw).

@endymion: Maybe you like to add your opinions the the above mentioned topic too. It’s a collection of “ideas” according to the beacon persistence. All ideas are welcome.

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I understand @Lady-Rosetta 's point of view and hereby I want to fully support her opinion.
I can’t remember for what I have voted. But If you have created sth. into the world, you would not want to have it destroyed at some time. It is like if your have maxed out a char in WoW and stop playing for a year, you would not want to come back only to find it downgraded to a low level char. And in a game like BL it would be worse even more so.

Could not have said it better myself.

That’s a false equivalent. It would be more like if in WoW every enemy you killed and every item you looted was permanent and nobody else could get those items or kill those mobs. Eventually, there might not be any more enemies to kill or items to loot anymore. Your comparison to BL does not work here and is unsustainable.

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