Beacons are for the people, against community's

General
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Hello all, as stated in the topic I’d like to have a talk about beacons, mainly in large citys.

We all know protecting our things with beacons and keeping them fueled is how we can feel secure offline or on vacation to another game with the use of gleamclub.

I live in Kindred bay, we are doing very well but are constantly having issues with trolls, land grabbers, and pirates.

We have had a player start, pop down a beacon, a crafting table, and disappear. This is all well and fine until it’s been a year and his crippled plot is in the way of progress. Contacting a PC player is impossible, messages and signs are all but ineffective. These players knew they plotted in a large city and left holes for people to fall and die or drown in. If they had a build with workshop and a house on top, we dont mind as much unless its 20x20 plots of unfilled lands allowing mobs to roam the streets. We cannot build walls around it because that’s a breach of our agreement.

In the end after countless months of avoiding bugging James or any other Dev, trying to spend our time struggling around this build(or lack of) trying to contact the player through discord, forums, in game, ps4 account, or wait for beacons to run dry but always get refilled last minute. We have players get discouraged, feel they are spending too much time hoping, of just flat out never get that end result in the city and move on. For the players of Kindred Bay and all other progressive citys, I ask the players here on the forum… “When should your terms and conditions be more important then a community of many active people who are discouraged and disgruntled by your 2x2 death hole that has endless fuel?”

So I think something more drastic needs to be done, community leaders made that can decide what’s hampering the city and weigh options to remedy it. Like how every leader has the red phone to call that higher up, we should have people to be ambassadors for James and the other dev’s so they are bugged less by the little things. A planetary warden who can weed out the real problems to report, stomp out the little disputes, and get the game back on pace.

… but that’s just me.

Anyone else having similar problems, something to add, or think I need to chillax? Totally want to hear anything good or bad. Thankyou.

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Build a nice wall/fence with a couple access points. I’m sure the people over can make something pretty nice to hide it. Make a fake building around. WITH ACCESS! If they truly aren’t playing it won’t matter anyways. And if they come back they might think sweet all I have to do is build the inside of this awesome house. Good luck.

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We all have to put up with each other :crazy_face: but I think the issue is everyone trying to openly and freely plot where ever they please. People won’t always agree or do things the way others wish they would. In your situation, all you can do is use what you can…put up foliage or walls around it with a door(so they technically have “access” & so you don’t break C.o.C.) and a sign or two stating why - incl a way for them to contact you.

All games have people that play for a few hours, then never come back. Some people have a huge steam list of games and forget that some exist. There’s no way to force a person to play a game or come back to one before they want to.

Sounds like the person you are dealing might have GC. Even if they never come back, it will keep autofueling itself for the duration of their GC. Or maybe the person is really busy irl and is planning to come back and do something with that plot, but has other priorities?

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Think the main problem is we wait forever. Guild hall was being built, guy came in and put 2 plots down a year ago(yes before guilds, preplanning)when we were not around, never back, no way to contact, and he just left a citizen deathtrap. This was in the middle of the city, and we were ok till it was still there 6 months later after the city was a bustling metropolis.

I guess the main question here was “was this little guy with 20c worth of build, 10 mins of playtime, and 2 plots, worth more then the 25 active players dealing with it for a year”

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I get your point & I agree it’s a pain, but where do you draw the line :woman_shrugging:t3: What if someone thinks you are taking too long to build or they don’t like what you build? What if you have GC? Would it be okay for them to kick you out :thinking:

We don’t know that the guy/gal/kid/dev/whomever didn’t buy $5000 worth of GC.

I think we need a different plotting/beacon/permission/guild system. I dunno what it should be though - a lot of people have posted some great suggestions.

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If the guy paid 5000 to put a damn hole we can give him 3 freaking holes in any other planet if he ever come backs and complain.

I mean a whole year with nothing new on a beacon? That is clearly beyond the line of some one planing a future build

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What if it’s prime real estate that they really wanted? We don’t know why they plotted it. I’ve plotted a few random areas in some busy places and haven’t used them yet. I’d be upset if someone decided to remove them without my permission.

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I get ya vex, would be different if it didn’t kill people or get in the way, however if there was a house on it, I wouldn’t have worried about it. Trying mainly to find a more long term solution then build around or ignore it. We ignored it for a year, we had it remedied recently, but it’s an ongoing battle. Had one guy that locked off the city on 1 side, told us flat out “switching to xbox, never be back, have 9 months of gleamclub, lol” and we waited it out.

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Did you make a hole on each one of them?

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:joy: lol nope. I try to be respectful of neighbors and other players

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I remember someone bringing this up a while back. People plotting and never building anything while the city develops around their empty space. I think regarding a bunch of empty plots in the middle of ultima on finata. While I believe we should have some system to purge these beacons less than X prestige with some type of voting system, there’s also the chance people do have a plan to use it and have gone away for work/military/etc.

The sticky part is if it is gleam club people are using to keep the beacons fueled then people buy gleam club under the belief that their stuff is protected as long as it’s paid. If we start taking these beacons away it might go beyond a game issue and become a legal issue since real money is exchanged.

As majorvex said, the beacon/plot system would need some rework. But I definitely know the hole you’re talkin about lol

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That’s my point lol.

One thing is having a ploted space with nothing but the original terrain or maybe a little house, and then there is OP case where they have a murderous hole.

I also have some ploted areas around worlds, but I try to plot on the sky to keep the resources available in the meanwhile.

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Many points there venom, I dont mind the gleamclub lock or anything, i do hate empty land with deathtraps or someone intentionally leaving the game for good knowing they are not looking out for their friends, community, or just having no respect at all.

Biggest one of all has to do with nothing of worth on the plots, being a detrimental force causing the too many players unrest and millions of minus exp in death tickets combined. If they got gleam club, we understand and wait, and we wait much longer then we should for almost nothing but 2 plots and a crafting bench with torches just to cover a hole.

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I always bring FFXIV up when it comes to beacons. When you buy a house in FFXIV you have to log in and physically walk through your door at least once every 2 months if I remember correctly. The game will email you after 30 days or so if you haven’t walked through. After the 2 months or however long is up, you lose your house and they put all furniture in storage accessible through an npc. I think they give u a month to claim it from the npc before it’s lost forever.

Boundless needs

  1. Auto Storage on important items for when you run out of fuel.
  2. A way to email players when their beacon is expiring
  3. On beacons less than X prestige a player can “flag” a beacon. With enough weight to flags (many players or trusted players) will trigger something that will first notify said player in game. As time passes it will email the player telling them to log in by a certain time period to verify they still want the beacon.

In regards to point 3- if you’re an active player in the planning stage this should be no issue. If you aren’t active maybe you just need to bite the bullet and find some new land when/if you want to play again. Obviously high prestige builds won’t be able to be flagged at all, this is mainly for those campfire builds of players that either forgot or quit boundless.

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You call me venom like you don’t know me as Mag in game. Just like that time in discord :roll_eyes::joy:

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Oh wut? Actually I forgot… I am no good with stuff! That and I ignore you constantly.

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I will be very against any option of feature that gives a player power over another player. We already have way too many control in this area and don’t need more.

But, I do agree in trying to solve ways to help both city owners and those that have beacons there in a better way to communicate. I also would support this feature to change the way Cities actually work:

Cities should be a group of people that OPT-IN not a server layer that tries to create it. This will solve one side of the problem for sure.

For the other problem regarding land and people “in the way” – unfortunately I am more and more thinking that Boundless needs a complete redesign to create player or shared worlds for groups to build on and worlds where you can only explore and not build on. Basically a way to move us more toward private planets and share planets for groups. This “any person can plot beside you” or take over the planet for their own reasons and ■■■■ others off or build whatever they want obscuring your views has to go away in my view. The MMO design for building and plotting and sharing a planet just is not working. We need a ground-breaking change to remove the conflict. A move towards more NMS unlimited planets with some way to ensure people do build together without pissing each other off.

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giving a few specific players power wouldn’t solve the problem, it just moves it away from those people, and closer to other people. Getting issues resolved becomes more about brown-nosing with the people in power, and less about doing the right thing.

Bottom line is that the problem is subjective, and everyone involved has a different perspective of what is right and wrong to do in these beacon situations. Giving a random community person the power to enforce their own subjective opinion will only make people angry.

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This is why I started to keep the perms until people build their shop at Nova Golda Market, if they are not serious the plots are still mine, I give them quite a few weeks before I take them back. Even sometimes happened they started building and then stopped for more than a month to never be seen again. Broke it down, stuffed it in a storage block next to it with an advanced lock for them to pick up if they ever came around but usually somehow never happens.

I remember one time at my old market someone wanted plots and didn’t do anything at all for 4 months! Just an empty space in the middle of the market. Took some trouble to chase them down and then they are kinda upset I make such a huge deal out of it, “it’s just a game!” they usually proclaim. Ehmm, yeah, but I want to have something nice here, not too difficult to understand!

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Always thought it would be a good idea for devs to be able to grant temp builders rights on empty plots in middle of city’s, like if there’s nothing built at all, give the city say a week of building rights to patch it up then release it back to the original owner cos if there’s nothing built at all I’m sure if the plot owner returns there not going to be annoyed at someone giving them a free starter on it if ya get what I mean?

2 Likes