To clarify I was thinking more plot density as in plots touching each other and/or prestige density as a comparator.
There is another issue that can happen however, and Is when a mayor of a city decides he needs a break for like 8 months, and your town DIES before your eyes. Since there is no real answer to human unpredictability and time and unforeseen circumstances ,the only answer is the ability to out prestige someone for Mayor. Maybe a timer of inactivity before the prestige war of mayor happens. Then someone who canāt play for a long time will not hurt the town.
A lot of this was discussed back in January but now that 1.0 is imminent with a large influx of players it will probably be pretty relevant again as they go through settlement take overs that many of us have experienced.
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Thnx @GreyArt247 for the reminder. I knew it was a hot topic for a while when many of us experienced this stuff already. This helps everyone to see it was talked about and they are going to address it. When they have a decent solution.
Has there been talk of more changes after the road patch other than this thread here right now?
This is a complex issue. I think there are two ways you can look at settlements: as identifying a community, or simply as identifying an area of prestige density.
From the community perspective, it makes a lot of sense to make membership opt-in; I think we all would want the freedom to choose our community membership.
But I think Boundless settlements historically have been more about identifying areas of prestige density. The problem is that settlements need names, and I donāt think most of us would be satisfied with auto-generated names like the regions have. So the current solution is to designate the highest prestige player as the Warden, and allow them to choose the name. But of course this leads to problems where trolls can try to take over a settlement and name it something inappropriate.
I donāt know a good solution. On the one hand, treating settlements as opt-in communities could solve some problems, but it could also lead to issues where the settlement boundaries donāt really make sense because someone doesnāt want to join the settlement they would naturally be part of.
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Not that Iām aware of which is why I said it is probably pretty relevant again.
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Nope. The road patch fixed for the most part the merging of towns just by making a 40 mile road and touching you with it.
As for building a community far enough away that it can be called a town, but close enough it grows and merges with yours and who gets to keep the name, that has no real answer than itās how the game is written atm. Prestige wins. So The devās read threads like this one and watch it to see what the community is looking for.
So share the thoughts.
It will seem hard for some us myself included to see new players come in and simply ādogā how the game is set up, that we all had part in influencing, and they demand change. That will be hard to hear. So have to keep open minds. None of us here is having a problem now, just saying for future reference.
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I think that the problem, until now as been people building their cities wherever and expanding into other settlements. The road patch has reduced the effective footprint of settlements, but settlements can still merge if they are close. I think this in-and-of itself is fine.
My concern is more if someone decides to straight up build giant cubes of gleam right beside my city with the sole intention of maliciously taking over. Again maybe we should wait for it to actually happen before worrying about it but, I feel like streamer/website groups could easily do something like this to a large city just for fun. It would make me sad if someone did that to troll me.
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I would agree you have to opt in to be become part of another personās settlement. The reason is real life. Cities annex non-incorporated land. However, if a community is already incorporated then normally the big city has to talk them into voting to join. An example is in Spokane, Washington there is a community known as The Valley for many years. It originally was a group of small towns and unincorporated places. People agreed to be annexed by Spokane to have better services. Eventually The Valley became pretty congested. People didnāt like the choices the city government kept making for The Valley and didnāt like the city of Spokane extracting much more in taxes than they were spending on things within The Valley. So, even though connected, The Valley opted out by voting to no longer be part of the City of Spokane and incorporating instead as their own city. In Boundless, we should be able to opt in if desired and at the same time we should be able to opt out without having to tear down our properties. Just have a control on the beacon you can opt in to a larger community if you wish and may at any time opt back out and either join different neighbors or be your own community. You shouldnāt be stuck in a community you do not wish to be a part of or helping someone you may not even like have the prestige to be the capitol.
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I think that the Devs mentioned something about this during the āroads eating up all plotsā thing. They mentioned they wanted to figure out a solution. I donāt remember if they landed on a fix they liked.
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I second @ElfMarine. If you look at San Antonio, TX you can see entire small towns that are encased within its city limits. If opt in was added, our first greatcity would probably look like it.
Iām personally for opt-in, but can see reasons against it, too.
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We had this happen on Berlyn with Critonia and their attempt to take over Eden (followed by the rest of the planet to be Capital). We shut that down with the help of @Havok40k and @Kal-El. Basically getting them to understand that in a prestige war those that have the most plots win. We had the most plots and the people / community that would support the time to add prestige to those plots to keep us as Mayors.
The problem with this is it really settled nothing and turned the game into no fun of trying to keep up in the prestige war. In this case the threat was able to get us to make an agreement to stop the actions. In the future, some other way would be better.
So I think you are on point that even if it hasnāt happened, something like it will. In the end people and the game lose because of no features or anything to help us better control our town, mayorship, or little community. Whatever those features are and how they work, Iām not sure. But sooner or later we really need to take time to develop a more robust system around this stuff. Starting the discussion now is helpfulā¦
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Simply have a type of beacon w/ plots canāt have machines, benches etc in it? Used solely for aesthetic builds like roads, monuments and fluffy stuff. Could be considered a safe zone where you have a sort of shadow effect, Promoting roads and aesthetic buildings as safer spots.
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Maybe if the one that place the last plot to merge lose their name in favor to the one they are merging to.
A warning could appear that tell you are loosing your name if you mergeā¦ continue yes/no.
i think it was @james or one of the team said a few months backā¦
we are trying to work on a system that will allow it so you can choose whether to be part of th city or settlement personally ā¦ and also about haveing a plot space between other people, so no one can troll a build
unless this was actually a community request at some pointā¦ cant remember the full details
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That could also mean that large cities on planets in the night sky look like a cluster of stars with the totem, rather than just a single star in the corner somewhere.
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I feel like we really need thisā¦ There has been some drama recently on Biitula and I hate that people are feeling targeted and insulted by this game mechanic, and are blaming it on specific people or groups of people. I think without some kind of fix here, large groups of the community will quickly become hostile towards eachother
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I agree. Would be nice for something to get done about this sooner than later.
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I agree a fix is needed for this and am very happy to see you feel this way. We should be developing a game where the āgame playā creates collaboration and friendly competition. Not one that drives people to disagreements.
Since you feel this is an issue, are you calling out the members of your guild who are intentionally renaming the city and adding the Portal Seekers tag to the name? Since that person is part of Portal Seekers it is a clear message from a guild trying to fight with another guild.
Whether the game mechanic exists or not, people need to do their best to hold people accountable especially those that are members of our guild.
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