Thank you to everyone who filled in the Beacon Survey, it’s been really informative. Here are the results:
Question 1
(with five points given for “Agree Most”, one point for “Agree Least” etc)
Beacons protect my possessions: 223 points
Beacons protect my creations: 248 points
Beacons are a social space for me and my friends: 130 points
Beacons give me more space, and space is how I progress: 120 points
Beacons allow me to reserve resources that I find: 134 points
Question 2
I find it easy to see what is inside my beacon and what is outside: 72% Agree
I find it easy to add and remove beacon plots: 81% Agree
Question 3
It is most important that groups of players can build together easily: 44%
It is most important that individual players can place beacon plots precisely: 56%
Question 4
Average number of Beacon plots expected after…
…1 hour of play: 5 plots
…10 hours of play: 20 plots
…100 hours of play: 111 plots
Question 5
Overall the Beacons prototype is…
…headed in the right direction: 88%
…headed in the wrong direction: 12%
I’ve read all the comments and there is some good food for thought in there. There are also a couple of areas of confusion that I’ll try and clear up here:
You can have as many separate beacons as you want, each with as many plots as you want (assuming you have enough plots available).
Your plot amount is spread across all worlds, so if you have 20 plots you could have 10 on one world, 6 on another and 4 on another.
The plan for Guilds is that they can have their own beacons which members can build collaboratively within. The plots for the Guild’s beacons are donated by the members, so in this way groups of people can pool their resources.
Extra beacon plots are gained through gaining experience and going up levels, not just based on time played.
We have not settled on exactly how many beacons people will get based on the package they bought, but we will ensure that everyone gets a fair amount of beacons based on their level of support.
1 hour → 16x16x8 fields => i need 2-3 hours and the beacon is full
10 hours → 24x24x16 fields => i need 4-5 hour and the beacon is full
100 hours → 40x40x32 fields => i build slowly i need 1 day and the beacon is full
i think the most person dont know that the beacons/plot counter is for all server not for every.
I think these are too few plots
i have now round about 300 hour play time, with 111 plots i can save maybe a max. of 5% of my building
I think the survey is not very meaningful when 57 people have just voted and it probably are just 10-20 active players who have built anything (1 building with 10x10x10 blocks is nothing) and have some game time, that they get a feeling for the size of the beacons
The average beacon size so far is 84 in range which would require (with 1/4 hight) 886 plots. If i do a lazy extrapolate this would require ~800 hours of game time (assuming that you don’t need significant longer to get bigger amounts of plots). i’m quite sure this is far to less if i see what players build at the moment.
The old Beacons previously given simply wouldn’t be scalable to millions of players (I hope we can make a game that successful) – I understand why you’d want to compare though.
I would be great to have had more responders, but any responses from a core of engaged players is still great feedback. Everyone who filled out the survey has actually used the new beacon system, so we know that these people have some basis for their answers.
In design it’s often good to start with the end goal and work back. From what you’re saying @Saint_X and @Heurazio you want to be able to build large and impressive structures in the game. We (as game developers) also want you guys to be able to do that – amazing builds are a core part of our game, and the ability for our players to see awesome player made structures as they move around the world(s) is a key part of what makes our game unique. The question then becomes how do we enable players to build these awesome structures? That it something we are working on, and this survey is part of that process. I don’t yet know the answer, but as it becomes clear we will let you know. One thing I’m pretty convinced of though is that giving all players lots of plots easily is not the way to get awesome looking builds in the game. If we did that the world(s) would be littered with dead space and rubbish builds, which overall would take away from the effect we are all trying to achieve.
yeah you are totally right at this. i hope you find a good compromise for this. If you need ~800h for average space you don’t have time for bulding that’s what i liked to say.
while we have no real infos about the endgame (boss-fights, crafting eg.) i need to make assumtions about the current game (which is bulding)
Maybe at a later point if you reveal more informations i don’t longer give a **** about building because the end-game contents are that interesting we’ll see
Now I don’t rally think that you are going to build constructions that is going to be 32 blocks high all over, also that would only be 64 you still have 47 plots left to work with after that.
i love to build big awesome structures, thats the only ground why i buy the pioneer and atm will upgrade to chieftain.
the question is “50% more beacon claims” from the main page mean a beacon has 12x12x12 fields instead the 8x8x8 atm or we get more plots ?
I think Heurazio raises a very valid question on this …
I think if the allocation didn’t go back to the player, it would be very wrong (and potentially open to abuse) … but, then you would need to know which of the guild placed donated beacon allocations belonged to which members. So that if someone leaves a guild, their specific allocation is returned.
Ok, the abuse part I mentioned … if the allocations don’t go back to the player on leaving the guild, you’re just going to get guilds that will want to add as many random players as they can and state that to join their guild you need to donate a beacon allocation (I keep wanting to type bacon!) … then when you’ve donated, they can just give you the boot!
I would prefer to see a system which gives additional allocations, specifically for guilds, based on the number of members within the guild, so as the guild grows, so does the allocation (I guess this could be open to abuse too, but would ultimately be dependent on the members actually staying in the guild). Actually, now I think about it further … maybe a combination of the two, so you have the guild allocated beacons based on number of members, which can then be supplemented with player donated ones so you can make larger builds.
If the guild specific beacons are not an option, and you can only have player donated ones, maybe have some “guild magic” which increases the size of the allocation from 8x8x8 to 12x12x12 or something.
Another idea would be to grant additional guild beacon allocations based upon some form of guild achievement system.
Maybe if after a player leaves the guild they get a 7 days warning period and if the amount of beacons have not bee cut down to what the guild is a llowed to have they will be cut away from the outer layers of the guilds beacons.
This would need to go from 8 to 16 or something like that becasu eelse the beacons leave the grid.
Yeah that would be a good idea, I like that. I guess they could just remove the last placed beacon(s) after 7 days (if that information is stored anywhere).
Yeah I realised that the 12x12x12 was the wrong size after I posted. 16x16x16 would be better and would allow for more communal guild areas.
I love the idea behind the grid, but maybe they could get the same results with snapping based on the origin beacon. Basically, I free place my beacon, then any plots attached to it line up on a grid based on the beacon. If somebody else comes along and adds to my plots, they line up to the grid dictated by my beacon.
Not sure if you meant that too.
But if someone wants to add a beacon/plot to an existing beacon/plot. Then the default should be snapping to the relative grid and you should have the option to unsnap the plot and move it freely.
we’ll see 