All I want is to be able to ride a Hopper into battle.
1 Like
In this case I really don’t feel its an issue. This why I saw it and I didn’t plan to join the discussion.
Before the guild update, people lose their settlement identity because of getting force to join the prestige war.
However, after the guild update we won’t have this issue anymore, so i think Devs did good job on this problem.
If you are talking about some people plot near your house and you don’t like it, I really don’t feel its an issue.
- We have so many land for you to rebuild your home.
- Its first come first serve system, so its very fair for everyone.
- Game provide you the way to earn cubit to exchange the plots, we also can pay cash to buy plots if you are lazy to level up . ( I am lazy, so i spend my money to buy plots) You can choose work harder in game or work harder in life to exchange the land you have in game. I choose to work harder in life, so I still get some plots to build huge thing. I think its already good enough.
- If people just build beside you and you don’t like it, you should talk to them to see if they are willing to move, if not then you need to wait for his beacon expire which is pretty fair I think.
- Gleam club cause the ghost town, ghost build issue, or you want that land but never release. About this problem, I really don’t see any issue here. People pay to get their land in game for long time. This how the system work, and its pretty fair. players have right to decide when to play Boundless, and the game is very sweet, providing us the way to arrange our gaming time. I think its more like a feature instead of issue. Also, you can plots it before they came, but you didn’t , then its your problem.
(Trolling not count)
As result, recently we haven’t seen people complain about this land things for long time, its not because all of them are gone, is because most of players they already got enough plots to build huge things also protect the land they need. For starter players, they don’t have that much materials choice for their house either, so i think build a small starter house is not a bad thing either. Or settle in a big guild city, experienced players will protect the land for you. I know a lot of city already done that, so if you don’t want to experience unwelcome neighbor, settle in one of the cities you like. There are so many beautiful cities in the game, I believe its not hard to find one fit your taste and styling.
5 Likes
Still good to have your input.
My favourite suggestions from this thread so far…
Plot Buffering on home beacon only, but off by default
Beacons for specific purposes (eg. Malls, shops, mining)
Settlements are opt in.
Basic fuels for beacons last longer, with account warning when close to expiring.
Ability to use send pms via beacons
Keeping any future system as simple and straightforward as possible
Little bit off topic on some of these but all still relevant hopefully.
I haven’t read the whole thread, skimmed through a lot of it so apologies if I’m just repeating.
To me it seems there are two main issues:
- Random beacons being placed near established builds and causing future expansion problems.
- Prestige hijacking/forced mergers.
I think a majority of no.1 are simply caused by the tutorial instructing new players to do this so the simple solution would be to remove that from the tutorial section and make it part of the journal. With this new buffer system it makes that part of the tutorial extremely difficult to complete anyway now.
For no.2 we already have a system in place to reserve areas around a build. Simply earn or buy plots to protect the area you want to keep. Remove forced mergers and make it an opt in and out system. Beacons and players would need 2 new options, “request to join” and “invitation to join” with at least one of them being a minimum of settlement status. If you are requesting to join someone else then they have naming rights, if others request to join you then you retain naming rights.
There would need to be an incentive to want to join or form a group settlement/city and that can be done by a slight % increase in footfall as well as reduced tax for shops and shoppers, if someone decides to opt out later on then they will receive a polite warning to let them know that the tax will revert to default and footfall % will decrease slightly. All existing city’s etc could start off already opted in. Guilds already give us the option to retain district names too.
1 Like
I appreciate the input but the point of the thread was to come up with ideas whether you agreed that there was a problem or not. Yes this is a different type of thread than we are used to in this forum. In this thread IDEAS are valued not “whether this is a problem or not.”
I thought this might be true as well but after some research and talking to people it is not. There are still plenty of situations where land is being fought over and causing fights.
Due to this there are plenty of complaints and Devs having to be brought in to settle land claims. We’ve even seen comments from James about people demanding things from him regarding land.
I know that I have sworn of engaging with you (and that this is fairly off topic) but to me this stands out as too big a deal if it’s what it sounds like. Given you ‘above-average’ lines of communication directly with the development team, is that something that has actually been acknowledged by Wonderstuck, or is that still just the same supposition that has been going around the forums?
And because I don’t really believe in posting in a thread unless you have something on topic to say:
Personally, I see this as two conflicting points.
Buffer plots are beneficial to players who would rather play their own way, individually.
Buffer plots directly inhibit a collection of people from plotting close together with ease.
As such, I can’t see any one single or set of direct changes to the buffer implementation that would make/keep both play-styles happy. It’s a mutually exclusive solve. Therefore, the obvious answers (to me) are to work on other systems. Either (or both):
Remove the buffer system and instead implement ways for players who’d rather play in isolation to achieve that (such as private planets). It would be unfortunate to make people who wanted to play in isolation pay an additional fee over those that don’t, but logically and in terms of resources required, it makes sense.
or
Leave the buffer system in place and implement functionality to allow more fine-grained control and transfer of beacons and/or plots. This does still leave some difficulties in handling existing plots and reservations of abandoned builds with longer fueling or gleam club.
It’s often struck me that ‘people’ in general are difficult and I’ve become a believer in the idea that, much in the same way that solo focused players are told to just accept that it’ll be harder or more time consuming to do the same things as an individual member of a group, we could also look to groups and point out that if they really want to congregate, perhaps it isn’t so unreasonable to expect them to sort their own stuff out and accept that not all systems will be perfect for their needs either.
For a game trying to cater to so many different play-styles, there has to be some compromise somewhere.
Out of curiosity, why do feel that would be required? Surely building together in a smaller spaces already give the advantage of a much higher likelihood of receiving footfall, so adding additional bonuses on top could just as likely be the thing that pushed people who don’t really want to be part of a community into settling near other people, which seems to be a large cause for the difficulties.
2 Likes
I was just voicing a possible idea, personally it wouldn’t bother me either way as I’m a predominantly independent player. The buffer zones don’t affect me and I’m not bothered about settlement name etc as I’ve just used the guild system to preserve my settlement name as a district. It was just a little thought as a lot of people are always quick to point out this is an MMO etc etc
1 Like
Oh, sorry if that came across as argumentative. Was just curious to see if you’d thought of some side benefits I’d not considered.
1 Like
No you’re question was a good point.
1 Like
It’s actually not the buffers that are causing malls issues.
It’s the mechanic that takes plots away from people if they uplot thing that’s hurting our communities.
Yes we haven’t had the best relationship between us and I do want to try to fix that. I know some people in the forums don’t get along well. We all have our good and bad moments. I also know we don’t know each other very well and there is probably a lack of trust among many of us. I can tell you one thing about me - I am usually pretty good (I do make mistakes) about clarifying something that is my opinion and “guessing” versus something that I have decent data on. Sometimes my data is off or misunderstood but I am the type of person that really does try really hard to check everything before I open my trap… or at least do my best and do at times mix things when have a conversation… Whether people believe it or not I really do have the best intentions for all of us in this game and want to help and use my real life skillsets (around things like this) to help the game.
I will never speak for the Devs, but because you asked me directly I will share some things that I feel I can. Ultimately James is best to explain how they are thinking and what they are doing either via public or a private PM. It is just hard to sometimes get him (for all of us) and I want to help here…
The “in-bred” part is my personal opinion and just when I look at the smaller amount of players we all can kind of feel that it probably just isn’t really enough for a good spectrum of information and ideas to grow the game.
The retention and adoption part is pretty obvious to anyone that looks at numbers. I have had some conversations with James directly about some numbers but not enough to get a feel if they feel things are great or not great. So I have no data there, but we all can see the numbers we do see and make some observations.
We have seen a post that they are looking at things we have in the game. In the recent wipe post James as an example showed how he thinks and is even willing to look at key parts of the game. I have had a quick question directly asked of me that was basically this context - Are the things in the game helping or hurting us in regards to retention and adoption?
I want to be very clear here - this was a “thought experiment” conversation. Not - problem is X and what is the solution Xaldafax?
But, I have VERY limited time and neither of us during those conversations waste any time on things that do not at some root level have importance to keeping this game growing. There are other things in that conversation that I cannot share because James needs to present it. But overall it was that call that made it clear to me that rentention is massively linked to adoption and there is a need to work on that in the near term versus far term. No way am I linking that to “stability” of the game - I have no data either way. I’ve never asked about “financial stability.”
I do not have proof that there is a direct line between this problem and rentention, but I have had a personal PM with James on the buffer stuff and clearly he needs to solve the problem regarding land fights. The reason I did the post was because this land fight does cause problems and we all care about the game and want to help the Devs.
I rarely deal in suppositions unless I am sure to clarify it is that to all involved. Thank you for your other thoughts on the buffer matter… They are appreciated and I basically agree with the direction you state.
3 Likes
Thanks, I appreciate the time and thought put into your response, and the response itself.
I wonder if there’s a way to modify the buffer system then so that it can ‘only’ revert to the a person who removes a plot (if they have other viable plots in proximity).
Probably but that still isn’t stopping the complaint from someone about that land was blocked from me and the land dispute that ensues.
As a response to Majorvex’s concern, I’d suggest that another player would have no right to claim that that land ought to be available to them though. If a player has a plot, then they ‘must’ have either been there first, or given permissions to plot there. In either case, I’d argue they should retain the right to re-plot it at a later date if they wanted, or to disable the boundaries and let others plot there.
1 Like
I like MajorVex’s zoning option idea, very relatable to some other games i played in the past, but would fit a unique way of implementation for this game. Not sure how all the mechanics of the system to full work, but seems worth more of a look into that idea.
2 Likes
That can be a slippery slope. . so I go out with 500 plots and plot an area adjacent to my settlement (Yes I have the plots to do that and more). I unplot it because essentially I can go back at any time no matter who else may have taken some of the plots and build right up to there front door (obviously not sealing them in). Now lets compound this. Another player in my settlement does the same thing and plots the same area then unplots it. So now the system not only has to remember where I am really plotted but where I plotted and when and where the other player plotted and when. Every plot could have an infinite number of players that have a “claim” to the plot. And the poor player that thought they were in an area where they could expand or at least depend on a buffer zone actually cannot.
I really feel like all these solutions are just more complicated ways of dealing with the problem.
If it’s possible, because no one has said if this is feasible at all, a new large plot designed to host cities/malls/ intricate things that need micromanagement at the top level without involving the developers.
Anyone who wants to build with normal plots can do so after doing some form of acceptance with the large plot(or hell it could be a beacon even instead of a plot I guess?) I think they’ve shown this is possible with the surveyor option? Have the mall plot/beacon only allow building as per agreed between the involved parties.
Yes this gives all the power to the main city/mall holder but these are community builds that needs a high level of micromanagement. The potential for abuse is there but reputation gets around quick enough and people that abuse the controls would just not get any business as no one would want to buil/operate a market under those personalities.
This allows the buffer system to remain as is and at the same time gives the city/mall planners /managers the level of micromanagemt they need on a day to day basis.
Before my idea was to make this a large plot to bring in more revenue but since I don’t think that’s an issue if they could just add an option or make a new beacon entirely with a whole new set of privileges specifically for cities/malls then in my mind that would solve a large majority of problems… except for any abuse a city/mall manager may wield but I trust this community overall to police itself honestly. Maybe I’m wildly wrong but this seems like it would lead to a lot less involvement on James behalf of a system like this was possible.
Maybe that’s more complex? I don’t think so though as it let’s more aspiring people take direct hold/leadership and still lets those who don’t want to merge/etc get swallowed up because the new buffer system would be in place for the ‘normal’ beacons.
*if it was a new beacon entirely and because it would require some level of planning you could even make it need some higher tier mats but I’m not sure if that cuts off lower level folks or lower tier folks from doing a mall/city build that maybe they are capable of doing at that level. I don’t know. The whole thing seems like a mess of code. I don’t think there’s any real easy answer, and it’s not for a lack of a lot of brainstorming being thrown at it. There have been a lot of good ideas but every single one seems to have its own downside. It’s like what downside do you think is the least impacting.
3 Likes