On a planet that will remain nameless, the capital city is just a dead empty rectangular project with huge prestige because it’s made with high value blocks. It doesn’t look like there are any plans for a city around it, nobody lives there, no real shops or anything. I’m all for great builds in the game, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder however i believe a capital city should be just that, a city not a monument.
I’m sure the prestige system has been discuss ad-nauseum (its something that if you do it right everyone will be a little upset with it).
My 2c:I think the game has almost nailed it from a calculation perspective, however i think there needs a player based vote/point system on top of the current calculation and maybe even a footfall based multiplier/factor as well.
Personally i’m a heavy heavy chiseler and am a little frustrated with the bonus cap at the current % of blocks as i put 90% of my effort in to detailing my blocks - but i can live with that if a footfall or player vote/point system is implemented!
ie. Just a rough idea: Give players a list of x builds or x builds / planet they can put a vote on based on their current prestige on that planet. The # of votes for the capital applies a multiplier based on the current # of players with a beacon on that planet. May need to put deeper thought into how it can be gamed (maybe limit them to non-friend list people and non-alts). Alternatively give pple x points / week to “pump” into other settlements if they choose to and have it decay over time.
Some variation of the above would give some great incentive to really work on towns together between players and discourage solo big builds taking over a planet…
The issue is cities with large player bases would benefit from such an action if you make it a vote system like that.
Unless another city took over your settlement, something being worked on, does it really matter as you cannot really control who builds near your city right now without plotting the entire thing and preventing anyone from doing that?
Without some kind on enforcement system in place that really wont happen to prevent “ugly buildings” or prestige buildings it will happen and when you get past a certain size and random people build in the city it can be an issue.
Plus with how gleam club works it can mean people who have stopped playing months ago can still keep their buildings around even if it no longer works in the area or if people wanted to have a layout but cannot because of that.
Prestige is separated from any aesthetic judgement. To allow everyone to aim for Capital status.
The value of this title is like the value of coins. People will give some importance to it, others doesn’t care.
The downside about a game who is sandboxed to the extreme… is many people end not caring about anything (playing the game included).
That would totally discourage players like me. I’m primarily a solo builder, and am currently 7th on Antar VI. My village is spread out over around 640 plots and is just under 640k prestige. There are no gleam towers or vaults, there are natural spaces and I make heavy use of the chisel and all available blocks. I think it’s aesthetically pleasing and creative and I’ve had quite a few compliments on it. If city status was tied to the number of account based beacons in the city I’d be an outpost with no chance of growing my status. I’d seriously be disinclined to continue playing.
Great point. I have a small town myself that was built entirely by me, though being on the leaderboard wasn’t really something I was interested in - I was more interested in simply building an aesthetically pleasing place to visit.
That said, the settlement features are already well underway, and given the development stance on reducing the amount of game changing balancing fixes, I’m sure the way settlements are handled are pretty much going to stay the way they are - so no worries!
A vote system will kill the game imo.
I mean guilds will soooooo take advantage of this its not even fun thinking about. Let the toxcicity of the «like» effect just stay in the social media cesspool.
Dont.
Bring.
It.
Here.
I mean seriously its so unhealthy.
Im all for a way to award bueatifull builds more reward and that especially refined gleam needs a fix.
Would love it if chiseling and some of the awsome builders out there got something in return for their efforts.
The only way i feel would not ruin it for solo players like myself and force guilds and communites into «like» wars. Is if there was a ingame build competition each 6months or something. Were you could add your build to a list for visits and give people 2-3 votes and the winner for each planet gets a prize.
In other words just an ingame interface for the kind of community events we’ve made ourselves.
Just please dont make capitol/viceroy into a popularity contest…
I like it how its now a testament to hard work (except for gleem and some obvious blockdumpers) but these can me fixed by changes to the algorhitm.
I agree with not allowing voting into the boundless universe for this or for anything else. It is too easily manipulated and really does put the solo player at a disadvantage.
One one side, I would prefer people who leave the game for an extended period of time to have their prestige taken out of ratings (possibly if there are no +/- to their prestige value it would just be taken out of the rankings until someone in the settlement logs in to cause an adjustment. Maybe 5 days absence?) That way their beacon isn’t a factor to other competitive portions of the game if they choose to move to another planet or leave the game while their gleam club membership auto fuels their beacons.
The other side of the discussion on voting… some people aren’t about being super social or popular other than their personal achievements or close knit group. It doesn’t seem fair to remove a competitive portion of the game just because they are super active in building but not meeting friends.
One time I got lost on Besevrona as a new player and used what I thought was a guaranteed way back to civilization - walk towards the capital mark on the compass. Surely the capital has portals. Nope, there was some underwater fortress with no way in and no portals. Not even a 1x2 to the nearest hub.
Since then I’ve learned capital designation means nothing but highest prestige and ignore the distinction. I bookmark PS hubs on new planets and warp back from Sanctum. As far as I’m concerned, the capital of the planet is wherever the PS hub is.
I support a more complex capital calculation because of that experience on Bes but I have no idea what to ask for or how to do it. Seems like anything you add to it will create a new edge case for another type of player.
I suppose the terms “capital” and “settlement” are ultimately the wrong terms because they imply society when really they are awarded solely on prestige and confer no power to their “leader”.
It has always played on my mind that there is an objective and trophy for becoming viceroy, and with such massive capital builds there was effectively no chance of me ever getting these.
Recently I noticed a planet that had relatively low prestige capital.
I had a whole bunch of high prestige blocks, so I recruited a friend (who already has the trophy) and we went and dumped enough down to get me the viceroy the planet.
It was not pretty, but we stripped it all away before removing plots and disappearing like we were never there. I don’t even know if the capital realised what happened.
But if there was some sort voting system there would be no way for anyone to be able to do this.
Not really a comment on the right or wrong of the system, more if it changes there has to be a way for everyone to be able to get trophies/objectives, however small that may be.
I cannot believe this is not being supported. I think the LACK of human input is killing the game.
We should be encouraged to build things that others want to see.
I sympathize with @a13o. Capitals mean NOTHING but the biggest prestige vault.
This really discourages me to be involved with anything other than my own build. Doesn’t make me want to explore (except for brand new planets) and especially be part of a settlement. (Except when my house has over 10k prestige.)
I assume that OP is talking about Delta Cancret, which recently switched capitals from Teotequan to some large castle made of brick. I believe the reason the change happened was because a large pyramid in Teotequan recently had its beacon expire and the pyramid rotted away.
The large castle doesn’t have portals, or stores, or anything worth seeing really. But still, that thing is made entirely from brick which is pretty impressive. And I’m not gonna lie, when I saw that chiseled wall, I thought, “oh I like that.” It looks like it’s being made by one person, which is also impressive.
Honestly, I don’t see the problem here.
Edit: or is the problem that the capital wasn’t finished and op wanted to use someone else’s portal which wasn’t there yet?
And? Isn’t that the point? Settlements with high player bases are de-facto better capital cities than a monument. Prestige by definition, widespread respect. People using the city, as a city, is by definition earning prestige.
The fact that blocks count more than people is an oversight.
Prestige in this game, is a set value (plus multipliers) allowing builders to have an objective value to work towards when building. This is based on the difficulty of obtaining or producing the block. (we all know this needs a bit of tweeking)
If you make it a vote then it changes to purely subjective, which doesn’t seem right to me.
I have the current capital on one of the new planets but it is just a personal build and honestly I’m surprised I’ve retained capital for so long. I was in no way building with the intent of being capital.
I want to bring back up an old argument I made when prestige calculations were being looked at. I think it’s still relevant today. Especially the bit about players and devs having a different understanding of what settlements should do. I edited it a bit to match the current convo.
This comes up every couple months. If they changed prestige to have votes, then the folks who are upset will just complain that its unfair other people are more popular than them instead of just having more free play time.
Best idea I have seen for the vote system is to make a seperate list for community landmarks. That way the natural block builds that are amazing can get some recognition.
