Beacon - Placed Blocks Into Holding Area On Leaving Game

That might be when they offer self hosted servers, but these servers (planets) would not be connected to the public universe.

I do understand the issue you raise. I also appreciate the fact that you at least acknowledge that you did know the game regenerates builds when the beacons run out so it was clear when you played how it worked. But in your case as it was an accident, you would not have known to put your items into a special storage area even if it existed so would your build still not have regenerated? Or are you suggesting that machines get stored during a regen and other blocks would still regen? I think this reduces the value of scavenging but it certainly does not take it down to nothing. I do still worry about the data carrying cost for the developers since they have to carry the data for all machines regened forever in case a player wants them back, but I wonder how much this would reduce it.

Hear is what I suggest I enjoy scavenging as do so many others but some players feel punished for letting their beacons burn out. So to make it work For both sides i Would suggest a way to buy from the cubits shop a beacon box essentially it will have limited storage but enough for what you consider valuable so you tell it what items to look for in the beacon and in what order then when you beacon burns out it will fill the box with the materials until it becomes full so when you come back on all you have to do is set a beacon down and the box will be in your inventory. Place it down like a loaded chest

@james would this be a reasonable feature for returning players.
Could even add a feature that purges out really old in active accounts.

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It is a difficult problem and yes, I was suggesting that only placed building blocks regen and stored resources and perhaps machines automatically enter saved storage.

I did know how the game works and so I fully accept the loss of the build itself. I guess what I was trying to say is that I feel that all the time I played the game was completely wasted time because I lost everything I had worked so hard to build and gather.

My characters are still high level but, as I did expect to be back, I hadn’t bothered storing precious stuff on them. Perhaps I should have. Or perhaps others will also not think to store their stuff on characters and like me feel that their time was wasted and try another game.

I think I will return to Boundless at some point but I do also like different types of games and I when I play a game do tend to get sucked into it completely. I want Boundless to be my go to building game but at the moment it requires too much long term dedication without allowing me the freedom to put that same dedication into other games for a while. Maybe this is not a bad thing but may mean that some Boundless players who quit for a while don’t keep returning.

I really like this idea and would mean that there were things to scavenge if players let their beacons expire. A system like this would make you feel less punished for having a life outside Boundless.

I think the stored resources are an issue. Based on James’ comment on how much data they would have to store for players that are not playing (and may or may not every come back) I worry that is a lot of items. I know I have over a hundred thousand items in storage from machines to resources and I do not have as much as some other players I know. I understand trying to make sure that artificial boundaries are not set up to prevent players from returning, But is it fair to have the developers spend money to store a great deal of data for players that are not playing and therefore are not contributing cash towards the cost of operating and developing the game? If gleam club costs $50 per year and the cost of the game is $40, should they store data no more than 10 months? Can a player repeat this pattern indefinitely? If they do, does that erode the value of gleam club which does contribute to running the game?

Do they give each account one time to store expired beacon items (not each alt, but each account)? Once you use your one time then you either need to plan, log in once a month or 3 months to fuel beacons or pay for gleam club. Does this give players at least a chance if they forget once or have a real life issue occur a chance to recover? But only store the data for 10 months then purge to not create a mountain of data over time that everyone except the player that quit the game permanently has to pay for.

Maybe, a simple solution is a special storage item that can be placed, that what ever is put into is saved from regen and put into a special storage item in the sanctum which people can collect from.

they would have to put items they want to keep in this special storage, so it doesn’t save everything, only the things the player chose to keep safe in their special storage block.

There is a sort of workaround similar to that idea already available, if someone was planning on leaving for a prolonged period it wouldn’t take too long to create all 10 alts and then just load them all up with your most valued items, that’s not too bad an amount of permanent storage space … I think the biggest problem is for people that can’t play for a period of time due to unexpected real life circumstances and then when they are finally able to return obviously all their items have regenerated, I guess this can be a bit of a hurdle for some and becomes a pivot point of whether they decide to start again or walk away.

I agree this is a problem, but how to the developers know if this person actually had a real life reason or just did not pay attention in the game? And how often can a player use this reason? Once, twice, as many times as they want? My fear is this undermines using beacons and gleam club if it happens every time as well as the data storage issue James brought up. How do we make sure the players that really had an issue can be taken care of without allowing a massive exploit of the system.

I totally agree with you, personally I think the system should be left as is. It’s a risk we all face and know what happens if beacons are left to expire whether on purpose, by accident or through unexpected circumstances. I know it might sound a bit harsh to some but in the long run it seems the fairest to me considering it’s a persistent world. I’ve had save game files corrupted on both PC and PS4 with hours and hours of progress lost a few times, nothing I could do about it but start again and chalk it up to one lifes little pokes in the eye.

my opinion would be similar to the way the beacon dleetion works now… i have noticed we can just delete the entire beacon and plots from within the beacon itself now? and it will scoop everything up and give you the plots back in an instant?

Maybe if we added another rule to the beacon which said Store my Stuff or something, but to be able to do this you would need to be a Gleam CLub Member (yes i know… i am against paying for thisd kind of thing but - so it cannot be exploited etc - or even for those people who want to quickly relocate, yeh… join GC and have the added option of Collect/Store my stuff

Then once you come back/replace your beacon it will have its own personal Collection inventory then you can replace things as needed

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Problem still arises for the people who will not do mtx/gc. And there’s plenty of those people around

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Probably a really stupid question, but what’s mtx?

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Edit: I stand corrected. Thank you, @Fallon.

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Ah I see, thanks :slightly_smiling_face::+1:

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Microtransaction

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i was just implying that is one way to do it and would stop people exploiting it etc, but yes… i have always been against MTX myself :wink: