I think it’s made pretty clear when we buy the game how the plot system works and the need to fuel beacons because of world regen etc.
If I was planning to leave the game for a very long time then I would either:
A: Renew gleam club.
B: Invest in some advanced beacon fuel.
C: Create ten alts and load them up with as much valuable items as I can fit into their inventories.
If I just rage quit the game and throw all my toys out of the pram then that’s my fault and I’d just need to wait until I’m mentally older than my shoe size.
If I didn’t have gleam club and ignored the flashing red warning signs for a week that my beacons are about to expire then I’d have to kick myself for that and try and blame everyone else for it happening.
If I couldn’t log in for an extended period of time due to real life stuff then I guess digital artefacts in a virtual world would be the least of my worries …
But if or when I did come back then it would certainly help to take some of the sting out of the loss of everything I had spent so much time accumulating if I could return to find I still have all the mesh based objects as well as ores, gems, mob/plant drops etc.
I could probably easily live with having to rebuild a new place and the loss of building blocks but I’m not sure if I could face getting all the advanced power coils and certain mob drops and resources that I have at the moment. Without those then I honestly don’t know if i would return.
I have lost count of how many game files I lost because of some reason. Ones that weren’t a few hours but days and days of work.
Sure, I was unhappy, but went that is life, ____ (fill in dirty word here) happens. You either learn to deal with it and go or quit the game if you can’t take the pressure.
IT IS JUST A FRIGGING GAME, PEOPLE! ! ! ! NOT THE END OF THE WORLD
yeah, caps were meant, get over you lost your stuff, you knew it would happen when you started to play the game. I’m not responding to any more post, Or so called justification of why they see it should be done. No, plain and simple No
If the devs want to have a separate planet where they can rent a storage building, like you can in real life, let them start that,. Then, when they forget to make their monthly payment, like in real life, it can be sold off.
I think as unfortunate as this is, how will the developers know this is what happened versus a player just forgot to refuel? Do we put the developers into the position to save every expiring beacon and then having to determine if the beacon expired for a good reason, or do we as a community try to help players trying to return after such a circumstance. My experience is the community seems very willing to help new and experienced players. Maybe this is the best way under the current game mechanics.
At the end of the day if it did happen to me then I would just have to chalk it up to life and then make the decision to either take a deep breath and jump back in knowing all my alts are still leveled up and I have my plots to find somewhere new plus the amazing community or a sigh of loss and just move on to pastures new.
I bought Sims 3 several years ago. My old computer died. My fault totally for not backing the files up. I had three years of builds, that is what I did most, take a house and remodel it, make it a mansion, a castle, various types. Did have some families.
Had World Adventure, where I traveled to France, Egypt and China and searched for artifacts, gems, decorative items, could take the rough gems and have them polished and shaped into various shapes. Three years, Millions of dollars worth of items, homes, properties, houseboats.
Families that I created who did seven generations, kept the remains and had their ghosts in the family cemetery beside the house, Great-Great-Great Grandpa could come and play with the babies and keep them amused.
Geek Squad was supposed to make a back up file for me, switch it all to my new computer. They didn’t. they also didn’t save the info in their files. It was all gone.
Lost, three years of families, various careers, you have no idea of what I lost.
I couldn’t replace it, or even the game, my new computer, for some reason, won’t play the Sims 3 games. Did I pitch a fit, sorta, at Geek Squad because I paid them money to transfer it.
But, I still would have started the game up, redone my families, George and Adrianna had such beautiful children, Loved my family that was from a last member of a royal family from Italy; seven generations from them and then I picked one of the adults from that and started a new generation from town hopping. My alien babies, lost them.
That it life, it happens, was sad, angry at GS, but would have still played the game.
Guess my maturity level is definitely higher than my shoe size. Especially since I wear a size 5. I can’t help it I have small feet. 4 ft 11 inches tall. Finding clothes and shoes is a royal pain in the rear.
As someone who has very recently gone through this its really not as bad as you might think, I stopped playing over the Christmas period and forgot to refuel my beacons, everything I had built/gathered since release was gone! I thought that it would take me months to get caught up again but I was wrong, Im now back 2 weeks and have exceeded what I had before and built a nicer home that’s already in the top 10 on Alnitans, I really cant stress how much easier and faster everything is starting from scratch but with all your skills still in place. progressing to iron tools can be done in an hour when you have the skills and everything from then on is a breeze.
If anything Im kind of glad it happened now as I was able to move somewhere new but had hundreds of plots waiting for when I found the perfect spot.
In Trove, you can build a one plot mobile workshop/house that you can store as many items as you want. The blocks/items are coded to your player ID. You can place/open this workshop in any world until the world expires. When you go to a new world, you can place it there. It stays with/follows the player. The worlds do expire, unless you are in a club world.
I would like to point out that in Trove, if you own a club/planet and don’t log in for 30-45 days, the system picks another club member as the leader. That leader can then kick you out of your club and take everything. You lose everything. No amount of crying will get it back. They do this so that there are no stagnant/ghost club worlds. The members have to be somewhat active. You can have a club world with no other members, but almost no one does that. I find this feature horrifying because a lot of people spend irl $ on their clubs.
Trove does allow you to make a vault world which looks just like the sanctum. You can’t edit anything, you can’t build anything, etc. You have a couple of chests there that you can use to save a limited number of items. It’s not connected to any world.
I am not saying BL should copy Trove. Just providing some data/info, from my experience.
In BL, I don’t know how you allow beacons to expire, people to loot the items, then add the ability for these items to be saved in case a player returns one day. Seems like saving items would conflict with the current BL model of expiring beacons. Not to mention server/Db space to save all of these items.
If you save items to a player ID that are looted in live, then you’d end up with duplicates. Especially if there were shops stands with items they forged. The universe would end up with duplicates of those. Also, how do you return workshops full of items, storage, a million blocks, a million gathered items etc to a player? There’s no where for them to accept/place them.
Returning player here after a few month break, lag issues have beeb mostly resolved so the game is playable finally 
To be honest i lost a lot of stuff, big build, huge storage, machines, shops you name it. The one thing i was extremely happy with coming back is that my character remained the same level and i had all my skills.
Building back is a breeze and i dont miss my stuff, if it was returned somehow instantly i think i would be put off. Its as if my absence had no impact on the world or community, coming back with experience and a ‘fresh’ set up is actually fun, and adapting to the changes feels fresh.
its not if its on your computer its editable no matter how well you encrypt it given i dont know if anyone would be willing to spend the time to try to crack what ever encryption the devs would use but there would be a risk of people bringing in colossal gem builds
The “cloud storage” idea would be best for sure. Make it accessible for only 3-7 days while filling it and for only 3-7 days when returning. Mandatory 3 month wait at least before you can use the service again (meaning storing and taking out of storage again) but it would store everything for up to a year or so.
Charge $10 or so for this service and maybe even a one time offer of a $5 purchase to get a bunch of storage cubes to take everything out of your “cloud storage”.
These prices are not backed by knowledge of how much it would cost to keep that info stored but it seems like it would be worth it to keep people that like the game interested and willing to come back when more content that they are waiting for has been added.
I started to take a break a few weeks ago and realized I could either continue paying a sub for a game I’m not playing or spend 15-20 minutes running around fueling all of my beacons every few months (which was very frustrating considering I was wanting to take a break). The only other option at that point would be to lose everything.
Personally, I know the next time I feel like taking a break it will probably have to be the end of me playing the game because there is not an option that works for me at the moment.
Saving large builds does seem unreasonable, but a small storage space just large enough to store more valuable items like machines, trophies, or seasonal items would be very nice to return to instead of the empty bucket.
i bet all the plots that return to ya pocket feel good to 
i would have a field-day if it was me lol
If this option was available I’d probably pack everything up, take a break for a few days, get bored, start a new build on another planet and wait for the timer to countdown until I could unpack everything. It would save so much time not having to run back and forth between beacons and worlds.
I put up a portal right to where my new place was so I just had to walk they it instead of using hubs etc.
I’ve always thought minimal storage in the sanctum wouldn’t be a terrible idea. Think it should be limited tho because no one would build bases otherwise maybe just tools and player consumables so it’s no abused whilst mining ie fill inventory, dump in sanctum, jump back in but the ability to go grab some more hammers quick or food (2 things I usually forgot to check my stacks of)
My newest build is on Norkyna. I wish I could open a portal to move everything. The free home beacon warp helps, but I don’t think I would have the patience to move my workshop there. I’ll probably use it for farming when that comes out.
The problem with charging for it would still put some people off. They people that left and didn’t come back could have easily spent $10 on gleam club as it is but didn’t want to or could afford to. So it’s still really would only be helping a certain group of people opposed to anyone wanting to take a break. And you’d also have the people saying i already spent $xx and now I have to spend $xx so I can take a break and come back with my stuff. You think the “mtx” hate is a problem now just try and throw something like that in.
Ahh yea that would be a hard move.
Hmmm, I have sooo much stuff, dunno what to do with it…
Ahh! Wait, that new unplotter thing! cool, I have a couple 100 of plots, place all the blocks inside and then unplot.
Sure, I can’t use them for 2 to 4 weeks but that’s ok
4 weeks pass…
Ahh yes, my lovely storage chest that contains millions of blocks to grab whenever I want, doesn’t take much space either! Lovely!
Besides the block type there’s also block colour, at the very least we’re talking about 2 bytes per blocks but am sure it’s actually more otherwise there would be a max limit of 256 block types and I doubt they used such a low maximum.
And a number written out as text takes up more space, byte wise, then just writing the actual byte.
And where do you want to save it? On the player’s device? Not gonna happen on the PS4…
So it probably needs to be saved in the database. In fact, it has to be, because if it’s not and it’s a local file on your device am sure PC players will love to edit the data… Especially easy if it’s indeed a text file 