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. enoughât time to get back from a break and not losing all your progression. i hate games where you lose all your progression if you donât 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 iâll stop playing until it gets more content/updates, but if you know you lost all your stuff before that i wouldnât 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 iâm 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 âmay beâ similar issue: Shroud of the Avatar âŚ
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 donât 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 ânot to harsh to getâ, so for example if I focus on farming the fuel I would want to work an hour for paying at least a week of âbeacon timeâ. 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 âŚ
⌠some more infos from the devs on this topic would be nice ⌠@olliepurkiss ?
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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 cannât 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.
What do you think? @james?
Thank you.
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im all for the fuel system on beacons as long as the resources are reasonable easy to get.
@Okkelinor love the camp fire idea,also handy when you just used your last hammer and just stumbled on a node you really need 
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and as long as the fuel stays long enough so you donât 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 donât play, gladly i havenât encountered a game like that in my life yet. so system like that definitely wouldnât have âreplayabilityâ at all and in a long run it loses its playerbase. visit often or you know the consequenceâs 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).
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Short story: I agree with @Stretchious and @Miige. It must be something like this. With a good amount of time in it.
I donât 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 shouldât 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 âfringesâ 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 canât be afforded which would be an alternative to my âdisappearing plotsâ 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 donât 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.
Oooh, I really like that idea!
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Definitely disappear eventually.
I actually think a combination of options one and three should be in effect. I think option one should persist for one month, so if you donât log in for a month, your stuff is still there and nothing changes. However, after the month passes, then your beacon starts to require fuel. Maybe the beacon has two months of fuel, and if that runs out then it disappears. I also really love the idea that you can hand the keys over to another player or a guildmate to take over your beacon if you know youâre going to be away from a computer for a long while. I think this is a must have option, that way the area is still being used and getting occupied.
I think the beaconâs power should be able to stem off the natural growth of the natural world state if its in prime condition (the player has logged in <= 1 month ago). However, I think as it runs out of fuel in months 2-3, I think it should lose its ability to fight off natural growth, so that it starts to look like an abandoned place. Honestly, I think abandoned places are cool as heck, especially overgrown ones. Would love to see this. So the less fuel it has, the more the natural realm will take hold of it until, poof, beacon vanishes and the buildings are overgrown and finally melted back into the natural world state. This would also allow for a person or even a guild to come in and smash away the extra dirt and shrubbery that might take hold of the personâs abandoned place, so they can preserve it until they finally take over it when the beacon vanishes. Other players shouldnât be able to fuel the beacon, unless the owning player gave them the right to.
My question is, if this were to happen, should everyone be able to see how much fuel the beacon has left (how much time it has left until it disappears)?
Iâm annoyed because there is a guy with a Becon and 6 blocks of wood that clearly logged in once and never came back.
Iâve been playing every night for weeks now and I want to build a master project only that his beacon is right in the way of a perfectly large amount of flat land, right near the only other active player on my sever. This might be petty of me but the beacon persistence thing is and always has been a huge pain in the rear.
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I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE FOR THE NECRO. I was just flagged in the 2017 Features discussion that the current feature I indicated that needs a total rework is in fact the one being discussed here. Here are the thoughts I put down in response to that discussion, so if anyone would like to tag onto or help flesh out this idea, feel free:
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As far as claiming goes, I agree with finding a work around so players that quit the game donât get to hold onto land forever. But as far as being afraid people are going to claim all the resources, I highly doubt that will be a problem when there is a lot more worlds. If you read my suggestion in the new forum you will see I had an idea proposed that could possibly alleviate this problem.
In the long run, probably not so much. However, first impressions often make or break a game. Boundless canât afford a bottleneck problem in which players cram onto starting worlds and canât easily migrate on because they lack access to monopolized crafting resources being dominated by individual players and/or guilds.
And besides resources, prime real estate like extreme mountains or eye-popping landmarks on which to build are the most valuable and limited due to the need for them to be near other active players to reach their full worth. I would sooner race to grab those than crafting materials because while materials can regenerate, prime real estate is not so easy to obtain.
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The plan in the future is to have beacon fuel. If it runs out world regen will reclaim your site in a set amount of time. Three to six months was the favored consensus I think.
I donât think that has been officially decided or confirmed⌠
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If beacons disapear, i would rather it be based on gameplay time, but the game play time should be of a decent amount as it can happen a player have less time to spend on the game.
The better way would be to make a mean gameplay time of a definite period of time, say four weeks.
Players should have a small permanent space to store stuff in the event they donât have time to make the gameplay time. It could also be that you would take âholidayâ demand from players that suspend the need for gameplay time.
I think the idea is cool and would prevent worlds from being corrupted, but care should be taken about how it comes out so:
2 Base on an amount of recent time played
2 I would only make the beacon disapear and world regen/grieving process takes place
For the gameplay time, it depends if players have some sort of permanent item storage even if they donât have a beacon. If players can keep items even when they are off, i think 3 hours of gameplay per week over a month is fair enough so 12 hours per four weeks period. If itâs a permanent wipeout and i lose all items that i dont have on me i would say 1 hour a week for 4 hours per four weeks period.
Gameplay time or login time definitely! I donât think we should be considering fuel any further. Thereâs enough resource sinks in this game without fueling an inanimate object to reclaim your territory!
3 months is a decent period of time I think. Yes we may get a fair few ghost towns around launch but after a few months it will balance out. If someoneâs playing this game for 2 years they shouldnât be worried about about logging in every month or two when they have more important life problems to deal with.
I think it should consider login time of villagers as well, not just the beacon owner.
And the points about storage blocks being the last to disappear is spot on.
Regeneration time should be based on plot size. 8x8 is regenerated in a few days (after the 3 month window). Bigger plots take longer.
Plot size could also shorten the login window, if people are that worries about ghost towns.
For example a 8x8 plot has to be logged into once every two weeks. Bigger plots up to 3 months. We could have a visual indication of the âinactivity windowâ too
1 Like