I logged in this morning to find a warning that three beacons owned by one of my characters have expired. I still have 9 weeks of gleam club, so not sure how this happened.
Now the area around where I had my beacons is reserved and I can’t replot.
Please help.
This can happen if the beacons were removed by an admin.
I removed quite a few beacons this morning in response to player reports. Ideally the message would be clearer that it was removed because of moderation and a reason rather than just expiring.
I just checked my logs and we did remove 2 of your beacons in response to a player report. I can discuss more by PM if required.
I say this with the kindest possible spirit.
If this is going to become even somewhat common place, I feel you do need to add a system into the game that allows for admin to communicate with players theses kinds of things, So you can leave a message to the player, explaining why the beacon was removed, and that allows that player to try explain the situation to you if need be. Not everyone uses the forums or understands how to contact the right people about such a thing,
And even if the message was updated to say „Removed by moderation“, I personally feel that isn’t good enough if you expect player reform to happen, as that player needs to clearly understand why the beacon was removed, and not left to guess. somewhere an area needs to be created for a message to be left explaining what and why it was wrong.
I would be absolutely livid if I woke up one day, and suddenly without warning, without explanation, without error on my own part, a beacon of mine, was missing and it caused me to lose assets and/or work as a result.
Obviously none of us know the circumstances as to why these beacons were removed but isn’t the owner of any beacons in dispute contacted first before any action is taken?
Clearly not, I was not contacted in any manner. There is heavy favoritism going on.
I agree and posted above that we should improve the notification so that players aren’t confused.
The beacons were empty, hence had 0 prestige, hence generated 0 footfall.
So does that mean a player would only be informed after their beacon is removed rather than before so both sides can be heard?
I think in a game where space is limited and you can pay for plots, even an empty beacon in a desired area is consideres an asset. My beacons were in a high foot traffic area and I had no time to start my builds yet as I was focused on other projects.
Moderation is dealt with on a case by case basis. We regularly contact players before taking action to discover the history and give them the opportunity to amicably resolve an issue. We also regularly encourage parties to resolve issues themselves. It’s only in certain cases that we take action directly.
Certain cases like the complaining party is on your favourites list and the affected party is not? Because I see no clear reason why I was not contacted. I am not unreachable and have never been uncooperative with others.
So until I get some sort of explanation I am chalking this one up as a personal attack.
While I feel for anyone that loses beacons in this way, I’m going to play devil’s advocate here and say that an empty beacon in a “high foot traffic” area is very likely to be nothing more than a footfall grab soaking from nearby established beacons that actually pull in the traffic. As a member of PS and owning a gateway myself, I can tell you that every single one of our gateways has at some point been partially or fully surrounded by “empty” plots for this purpose.
I guess going forward, just throw down a few blocks after plotting.
You don’t collect footfall unless you have over 10k prestige, so an empty beacon generates no coin. I intentionally did not put blocks down so that it would not appear as I was leeching footfall, it was just a future project.
We defonately need some sort of system where you get notification when your beacon gets reported and why…
Also wheb admin is going to entirely remove the beacon it should get notified for the owner with pop up window or so… otherwise he might not even know hes beacon has taken away from him… and in this case i believe @darkartz wouldnt even know it without gleam club being on.
This beacon system is created by you devs… i can see you are trying to be like law or something here but the fact is that rules for this game is like cheese with holes.
I have been an advocate from day 1 that there needs to be gms in this game. Many people have left for reasons that could have been easily handled had there been a place (other then the forums) to get resolutions in game.
Iff the beacons were empty, they were not generating footfall, so no leeching is going on. The owner of the beacon needs to be contacted first, and then allowed time to respond (24 hours seems reasonable).
And then sit down with the person reporting and owner of the beacon to mediate the dispute.
To summarily remove a beacon just because it was reported, without the chance to dispute, speaks of a totalitarian regime.
“I want what you have, so I’ll report it and get it.” That’s sums it up…
We don’t know if there were screenshots of in game chats or discord that were supplied to the devs. We only have one side of the dispute here. With that said, there does need to be some sort of notification that action is being taken.
And if it is simply an issue of empty plots in someone’s way then we need a clear rule for how long we have to develop an area before it is considered for elimination.
If game allows me to plot X then there should not be any kind of misunderstanding “what i can plot”.
I agree, but if there is going to be a rule that plots you place can be deleted if no clear trolling is involved then that rule needs to be made clear.
I absolutely agree. Unless someone is surrounding other people’s area I don’t see why it would be removed. No matter what was said in any chats or discord. Where is the line that should not be crossed when talking to someone, very arbitrary. I might be teasing someone or whatever, but my plots are mine.
I’m completely against devs doing this kind of moderation except in surrounding case. As someone said one of the major assets in this game is land, nice areas and whatnot. If people are allowed to block out resources such as diamonds (and what’s more it’s encouraged on game site), then plotting just to get footfall (satisfying minimum 10k prestige) should be consider another resource that is captured.
There should be a strict line between moderation of what players say and what players own. If player is offensive in chat then ban him from chatting. If he is very offensive delete his account altogether.
@james I’m really interested to know what conditions would make a dev delete someone’s beacon, and those should be very, very public and all over the place, crystal clear explained. This kind of threads scare me to death.
Where can I apply?