Beacon Protection system v2

General
1
  1. Overview
    1.1 System without a beacon fuel
    1.2 How it works
    1.3 Judge’s Marker
  2. Beacon states
    2.1 Actively protected stage
    2.2 Protected stage
    2.3 Discharging stage
    2.4 Guardian’s Marker
    2.5 Vanishing stage
    2.6 Energy Sucker
  3. Questions and Answers

1.1 System without a beacon fuel

So, we do we want plots to disappear?
We don’t want them to disappear at all. We want to keep our progress.

But we don’t like abandoned, ugly plots that looks just bad in our town right?
Yes. We would like to get rid of them.

Do we want to get rid of beautiful homes in the middle of our city?
No, why? They look nice and even when the player is not playing anymore it’s okay to keep them.

So we would like only the ugly plots to disappear from our town, right?
Basically yes.

And what about those ugly plots in the middle of nowhere?
As long as they don’t bother us they can stay. Why we would even want to remove a building 2000 blocks away from our city?

That’s how i think about the beacon problem. There is really no reason for a nice building to disappear. I want to keep them in our town because they just look nice. I just want to get rid of these ugly buildings, which owners left several months ago and left them unfinished.

There was an idea to keep beacons alive with beacon fuel, but several thoughts come to my mind.

- I’m building a huge temple, 640 plots from donations. If beacon fuel was introduced it would mean that my temple will be unprotected. Even if there was a way of interacting with other players beacons i would have to fuel like 40 beacons at once to keep the protection.
- What factor would determine if player’s building should be removed or not? AI will remove that one beacon, when everybody wants it to stay.

System i invented fix all of these problems.

1.2 How it works?

in short.
There are 4 states of a beacon. Mentioned in section 2
3 New totem upgrades.
Player can judge beacons to stay or not.

There is no beacon fuel. Player’s beacon stays active let’s say for 8 months.

1.3 Judge’s Marker

Single use Token upgrade item crafted with 10 titanium. (to prevent trolls from crafting tons of markers to remove other plots, explained later)

You want to remove that ugly beacon in your town. Combining forces with other players you can craft Judge’s Markers to vote certain beacon to be removed.

Stay inside a beacon and charge your single use marker to vote.
Beacon requires certain amount of votes from different players to be removed.
1-3 plots beacon - 1 vote small plots of players who don’t play from the start
3-10 plots beacon - 3 votes
11-20 plots beacon - 4 votes
21-30 plots beacon - 5 votes and so on.

Beacon can only be judged if it’s in “Protected stage” (look at Beacon states).
After succesful voting beacon turns into Discharging stage. Player have 6 weeks to log in and restore beacon back to “Actively Protected Stage”.

2.1 Actively Protected State

The player plays every day and is very active, he plays like every day. This means that player’s beacon can’t be judged for the next 2 weeks, because after each login all his beacons gets refilled and gain Actively Protected status (for the next 2 weeks).

2.2 Protected State

Lasts for another 8 months. If player’s beacon looks nice it won’t be changed in any way.

When player’s beacons enter protected state he gets notified via email that his beacon is in Protected state and the Actively Protected state has ended. He also gets notified 7,6,4,2,1 months before the protection ends and like 4,3,2,1 weeks before the protection ends.

However, some players may want to get rid of that ugly beacon in the middle of the city. They can vote to remove it as it was mentioned above in 1.3 section.

After succesful voting beacon turns into Discharging stage. Player have 6 weeks to log in and restore beacon back to “Actively Protected Stage”.

2.3 Discharging State

When player’s beacon enters this state it’s still protected for the next 6 weeks. Player gets notified every week that he has to log in to restore his beacon.

2.4 Guardian’s Marker

However, someone may want to save his beacon from pesky trolls who voted to remove that certain plot. (btw trolls lost 30+ titanium on making Judge’s Markers). Community has to agree that they want to remove that ugly beacon.

Single use Token upgrade item crafted with 5 titanium. (30 titanium to vote, only 5 to save. Trolls have already lost their wicked jobs).

The player may use that Guardnian’s Marker inside player’s plot - it will be saved and restored back to "Actively protected state with Guardnian’s Tool.

2.5 Vanishing state

After 6 weeks player’s plot enter vanishing stage. The plot is still protected but it’s slowly loosing energy.
The plot has 6 energy. It will now disappear in 6 months, loosing 1 energy per month (8 months - 2 weeks of actively protected state - 6 weeks of discharging state). It’s a long time ofc, player can still log in to claim his plot and turn it into actively protected state and is still being informed via email, but it’s up to him now.

Other players can speed up this process with.

2.6 Energy Sucker

Single use Totem Upgrade crafted with 1 titanium. Drains 1 energy per use from beacon in Vanishing state.

If all the energy is gone beacon disappears leaving the plot unprotected. Finally.

  1. Questions and Answers

Why such system?
It’s fair for all the players. It solves the problem with inactive players which plots should be removed and active players having a break from the game.

Why titanium as a crafting material?
Simple answer. Me and Dzchan have found like 70 titanium during combined 290+370 hours of building, mining, exploring etc. It’s rare. It’s hard to grief other players when a grief tool is that pricey.

If that still doesn’t convince you, then why would you even want to remove someone’s plot when it does not bother you? I see only one reason to do so. To troll others.

I will add more Q&A later as the thread continues.

@edit1

  • the only griefing method that come to my mind is griefing by placing 20 beacons in random locations around the city. That would be basically impossible to remove them all at launch:/

Share your opinion guys, what do you think about that system?

11 Likes
2

I disagree on only one part here. The idea that isolated plots far from cities are of no concern. I say, nay! Imagine when dozens of small, semi-isolated plots start to litter the landscape. At this point, the majority of these plots have been abandoned for years, but as the world continues to develop, they prevent the founding of new cities in the area. Nobody wants to build around these plots, and removing them one by one is expensive. The worst part is, the longer the game goes on, the more that these abandoned plots start to choke out free space. They may even become a sort of abandoned slums or wasteland blocking large projects from entering the area.

Tl:Dr I like the idea, but I think there will still be a need for abandoned plots to expire eventually. Even if they aren’t in the way today, they probably will some day.

8 Likes
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I agree here, we have seen enough of those abandoned buildings in games like ARK and Conan Exiles and so on.

1 Like
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This system needs some good scaling. However as i mentioned, plots may disappear after 8 months by themselves. I see many really small plots and that should not be a deal for players to remove them. That could be achieved with lower cost for small plots.

Pixelgate was founded with like 7, 1 to 3 plots beacons in 100 blocks distance and we found no problem building a big city.

plots.png1242×606 1.05 MB

5

Pixel Gate was also founded in early access, I’m speaking of 2, 3 years after 1.0 at the peak of boundless’s popularity. That being said, sure it is always possible to simply build around them. But that shouldn’t be an obstacle if it doesn’t have to be.

In your picture, I wonder how many of those plots appeared because of pixel-gate’s popularity? This could give rise to a new problem. What to do if a city’s expansion gets choked out by numerous small abandoned plots that pop up early in its development?

Another scenario, what chance does a small plot holder have of stopping a determined group from using a sort of imminent domain strategy to force them out? One person can’t hope to accumulate enough titanium (or other resources, let’s say) to guard themselves against a determined guild that is willing to spend massive sums of resources for a territory.

Not to mention, this opens the doors for large scale plot take-overs in general. Imagine if an entity like Reddit or 4Chan decided to put their efforts toward wiping the capital city from a particular planet?

4 Likes
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Just this one in the left down corner.

Anyway, founding a city should not be a problem for rich people. And a city should not be founded if you can’t keep it strong and alive. If you can’t afford removing abandoned plots you should rather make a settlement like this than a City.

plots.png1225×646 1.09 MB

1 Like
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A fair point. I just want to clarify, I like the idea, I’m just pointing out possible problem scenarios :slight_smile:

I made a few edits to the previous post after your reply.

3 Likes
8

there are some good ideas here. I like. :sunglasses:

9

I feel like the core concept of the idea is really good, and to my opinion the best idea proposed at this moment.

The specifics can be worked out and balanced, say the time it takes for a plot to be removed, the materials required, etc.

With the suggested model, there would need to be 8 weeks minimum since the player last played (2 months), for a plot to disappear. 2 weeks for the actively protected state to end, and 6 weeks for the discharging state, and the use of titanium to vote and to suck the energy out in the vanishing state. That’s the minimun, now consider the maximun time it will not vanish, considering no one interferes, it would be 14 months (1 year and 2 months), tell me who can be upset if there plot is no longer there after 14 months of not playing or logging in the game?

What wasn’t mentioned and what I have to clarify, is that we don’t want the things inside the beacon to disappear, we just want the place to be empty for the use of others. All the items inside will return to their owner.

What ways are there to prevent to be voted down or for the beacon to disappear? Well, there’s to log in every two weeks and get 8 weeks worth of protection or for someone to use a guardian’s marker, that also gives you 8 more weeks of protection. I believe 2 months is plenty, log in every two months and you’re protecting your place, considering that someone else really wants to get you out of there.

And now on the topic of trolls, sadly they will always come and troll, what we can do is to implement ways to mitigate it, like the guardian marker, which gives time, and the cost of trolling.

1 Like
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That’s actually my settlement (obviously other people, I’m just the one most active on the forums)

We have issues with abandoned plots as well. I have one directly above a tunnel that’s only not replaced because of player persitance. So while this would be a partial solution to abandoned cities, just having builds next to each other, instead of on a city layout, but even we have issues

11

My only problem with this is; who decides what is ugly and what is not. Even if several people find it ugly it can still be someone’s pride. Although I think somehow city/guild founders should be able to set a theme if they want on which people should obey. Maybe what materials to use and what not…

However if it is obvious unfinished/abandoned or like just pillars of dirt or something I agree fully.

6 Likes
12

very interesting ideas… i like most of them… but griefing goes both ways… just imagine a grieffer that builds using a beacon for each plot? now to get rid the ugly thing you have to spend resources on each beacon to try and clean it up… at which point he/she just logs on and undoes all that work! You could code it so that beacons can be lumped together if they are from the same person… at which point they only have to leave spaces (making even more land unusable!)

This is such a complex issue it would be nice if there was a simple answer… i think a fuel / activity system may be the most viable…

This really leaves your temple high and dry BUT that issue i think would be better solved with the up coming guild system and guild plots ^^

2 Likes
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You’ve got my vote! Some brilliant concepts in here, could definitely use some tweaking but player moderation for beacons with a very long inactive expiry time is my favourite solution.

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True, the issues always being the bad traits in people lol.

The only problem with an activity based system, would be players logging in and just been afk. And with the fuel system, people complaining all the time, about how expensive it is to keep their beacons up, there will always be complaints.

You don’t know how much I’m waiting for guilds…

2 Likes
15

This can be solved with a some code that groups beacons within an area (just for this moderation purpose, as long as they’re low prestige/empty)

Edit: oops sorry pretty much copied what you said

16

im not sure if fuel system would work any better against griefer who decides to block your beacon at all cost. he just fuels hes beacon what blocks yours and now there’s no other solution for this than wait and hope that he give up first. with karokendo’s idea there would be ways to get rid off hem, get some help from friend and vote. but what prevent hem doing it again after you got the beacon out? at that point the only solution would be report system for trolls (after he got voted/reported due to trolling it would timeout hem/her to place beacons again for a certain time, if he does it again next timeout would be longer.

17

My concern is the price, I have 3 abandoned beacons, 2 are a single plot and one has 2 plots to get rid of right in the middle of my area - and I’ve found 2 titanium in my 250 hours, and I mine a lot on all planets.

So I can either wait 8 months for the beacons to disappear themselves, do they even disappear themselves?

Or it might take me 2000 + hours to find the titanium myself?

Or if its a bigger plot to remove of 3-10 I have to talk 3 of my friends into spending their titanium? I don’t think this benefits solo players.

I know the concerns are when a large number of people get together to build a large structure and a few of them might leave - but in 1.0 people will be in your guild - so you’ll have 1 single guild beacon to fuel and you’ll use guild plots for something like that. I am guessing any guild members you allocate will be able to fuel guild beacons.

Guild beacons it won’t matter who joins or leaves your guild or goes inactive as long as there’s a leadership team to fuel. As far as I know you can join as many guilds as you want so a project like the Oort temple could be done with us all donating plots to the Oort Temple guild - You would then have 1 huge project connected to only 1 guild beacon.

18

I think a better form of beacon “fuel” would be decaying prestige.

If we go with player moderation and eventual expiration times, the expiration could be shorter for beacons with low prestige.

If the required amount of “votes” and expiration time is relative to prestige, those little abandoned plots can be removed much quicker.

I’m not sure about the requirement of titanium, there could be a couple of different recipes with varying costs if you want to use gold or gems instead.

1 Like
19

I completely agree with you here! To clarify I really like the concepts behind Karokendo’s system… I also like “parts” of an activity / fuel system… (a hybrid system would also be interesting (as in activity protects for weeks/months but fuel could be added for longer effect))

at any rate some way to deal with grifing needs to be in place AS WELL AS a system that allows for long forgotten plots to be returned to the wild

It would be poetic if there were one system that solved both of these issues BUT the problem may be solved better by 2 independent systems?

I also feel its important for a way for unrelated players to to help maintain plots they like and even the portals they frequent… i have already been stranded on a planet due to the portal not being maintained >< Lesson Learned there O.o lol

As others have said here and elsewhere: ANY system will have its pro and cons and unfortunately not everyone will like the implemented system no matter what it is =(

Also try and imagine that you are enjoying your game… playing with others in a community… and then you get an email that basically says your neighbors hate your creations and want them removed?

its kinda a cold way to find out that you don’t fit in the community as well as you might have thought. =/[quote=“Wichall, post:18, topic:6835”]
I think a better form of beacon “fuel” would be decaying prestige.
[/quote]

Interesting idea ^^
makes me wander what the “secret equation” for prestige is and how easily it could be gamed / exploited

1 Like
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It’s hard to say to someone that you don’t like what they’re building and not hurt their feelings, but as hard as it is, it holds some truth.

As any community game, differences arise, how we find a way to be civil about it and accept that sometimes your ideas are not in accordance to someone else is important.

That’s why something as powerful as the beacon has to be balanced, and what you’re suggesting seems like a good idea. I don’t think we can make a simple system for this, it has to be somewhat complex