CRAZY IDEA : Favorite Badge ❤

Suggestions
1

There’s been quite some talk about removing/revamping the whole Prestige / Viceroy / Settlement system, and I thought I could give my little grain of salt with this suggestion.

Salt-Bae-001.jpg800×450

The whole Prestige & Viceroy has been something I called unhealthy as soon as I started playing a year ago. Already then, I was disturbed by how the game rewarded players for stacking blocks instead of rewarding players for being liked.
So here’s the idea :

The “Favorite” Badge :heart:

What is it?

It would be like a currency. By default, each player-account (not individual player) would have
1 Favorite Badge per world.
By player-account, I’m referring to all the characters / alts a player owns on his account.
The number is up for debate, it could also be 5 or 10…

What to do with it?

When going to a beacon, a player could interact with it and spend a Favorite Badge by giving it away to the beacon.
The beacon would have to be owned by someone else than the player-account who’s giving a Favorite Badge.
In case the number of Favorite Badges per player-account is more than 1, then maybe there would have to be a limit on how many Favorite Badges can be given per settlements by one player-account.
At any point, a player would be able to remove his Favorite Badge from a beacon, either by accessing said beacon, or through some new tab in the Escape menu?

What would it accomplish?

It would simply be the new way to decide which build is the capital of a world. The build which received the most endorcements.
Now sure, some people will find ways to give themselves Favorite Badge, by using secondary Steam accounts, by asking all their guild-mates and friends. But in the long run, I would expect this to not matter as much.
It would still be better than the current system, as it wouldn’t rely on an algorythm calculating how your stacked your blocks, but on how much people find your build creative, cool to visit, or useful.
Let the Prestige calculate if your settlement is an outpost or a town or a great city, but let the player’s vote define what is a Capital!
As for the whole “Viceroy” title, then, it could go away, I would personally not miss it.
Any reward would have to only be bragging rights, and NOT translate to a buff, otherwise it would create some unhealthy competition.

What do you think?

  • I like this idea!
  • I don’t like this idea!
  • I have a better idea! (comment below)
  • Restrain the Gob so he can’t suggest anymore!
  • Ftaghn! :space_invader:

0 voters

What should the Favorite Badges do?

  • Replace the Prestige system to define a world’s Capital.
  • Give the owner of the build the Viceroy title.
  • Assign a new title to the build (comment below)
  • Give some buff (comment below)
  • Call down James to hand out a gold medal

0 voters

How many Favorite Badges per Player-account should there be?

  • 1
  • 5
  • 10
  • Another number… (comment)

0 voters

2

So… whos got the biggest fanboys wins this?
Or biggest guild. Lol sry popped first in my mind

8 Likes
3

Well, both seem better to me than “biggest stack of prestigious blocks”.
Maybe it could be a mix of the two systems?

2 Likes
4

I do not like this idea.

I prefer a prestige system based on their own effort: you build more in the game = you have more prestige = you have greater reward (A meritocracy); than a system based on popularity: more time in the forums doing politics and advertising = greater visibility and greater popularity = greater reward (popularity contest and politic).

3 Likes
5

Which is why it could be interesting to mix Prestige with Favorite badge.
Maybe the Capital title could be reached with both?

Currently, we have builds which can be Capitals and still be ghost-towns because their players are inactive. I have seen this happen, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was at least one world where that’s still the case.

Currently, it’s also already important to “do politics on the forums” if you can call it that.
It’s important to get customers in your shops, and visitors in your beacons to get footfall.

The main difference would be that it would be harder to game the system with Popularity than with the current Prestige system.

2 Likes
6

I don’t see a problem with prestige as a value for the materials used in your build. It wouldn’t be fair for a 1 plot build with a single block of mud to be the capitol. I like the idea of a parallel system to prestige where people can “like” a build, so long as it doesn’t become yet another wall to overcome.

3 Likes
7

But why would people give their favorite badges to a mud house, compared to another place, then?

As suggested via the polls, the reward could be something different than the Capital title.

1 Like
8

I do not agree, a programming code that marks a value for a block, and is the same value for you as for me as long as it is the same type of block, it is much less exploitable than a popularity contest where you involve politics. Just look at the real world and its governments. I can already imagine how power groups would be formed that would dominate the entire universe through much talk, false promises and / or bribes. A person with many coins could literally pay for these likes. Very exploitable, a horror …

9

I could return that same point to your idea, though.
People could pay other players to come and build on their world so it becomes the capital of the Universe.
People already pay others to come build in their settlements to build things which only increases their prestige.

Everything is exploitable, everything can become an horror-show.

2 Likes
10

And if you could deliver 1 cubit ?, in the form of a like, with some limitations of a vote for a planet and per week, for example. If you could deliver a cubit to the owner of a beacon that you liked as a show of support, If you put some together, you could buy plots. I think this type of rewards could be good, but the elbow would have to come out of the player who votes, to avoid abuse.

1 Like
11

The big difference is that in the first case you are paying for the plot and constructions.

In one case you are buying or selling a property, in the other case you are manipulating a vote.

I don’t see the resemblance.

Just as it is not similar to paying a baker for his bread than paying a hitman to kill another person, of course, you are paying in both cases but they are not at all similar, so they are not. Is not the same.

Edit: my comparison is because both cases are real-life crimes, it has become clear: Killing and manipulating elections are crimes xD

12

Personally i see prestige as “whatever” for some its super important but for me its not.

That being said the best thing would be to just turn the clean page and remove prestige / footfall and other mumbojambo from the game.

I cannot tell specific stats but i can just guess that over half of the complaining here is cause of these.

4 Likes
13

I would see it well if it is replaced by something that fulfills its function: Encourage to build and reward for doing so. Many players need some reason or achievement of the game to continue playing, in all games you have a goal, a purpose. I think this was the function of the viceroy in an origin and therefore its importance in the publicity of the game.

14

I’m quite sure that in Boundless, people who would buy to manipulate votes wouldn’t get away with it.
It would be known. The people doing that would be hated. Not sure many people would allow their Favorite Badge to be bought so easily.

If the end result is just a title (not necessarily the Capital title, but maybe another new title), it’s not an issue anyway.
But if the title rewards something solid such as a reduction to beacon/portal fuel, that’s gonna be a real problem, because people will have an actual incentive to cheat any system.

I would personally be fine to say “Hey, I got this title because I got the most prestige” and another say “Well I got THIS title because more people came to endorse my build”. Someone could have both.

Maybe the whole Favorite Badge idea could instead be many others things.
When going to a beacon, you could vote for the beacon to be “the most useful”, “the best shop”, “the most beautiful” and other such things, and each would grant a difference title, which could then be tracked.

15

Lol… gimme 200k and i vote wildstock for president.

1 Like
16

I wouldn’t mind at all to have your builds’ like levels translate to some kinda descriptive word…

My outpost gets a like? It becomes , lesser spotted outpost (or some such). The bigger your settlement, the more likes needed within it to raise the title. Also, different titles for different sizes: so an outpost would be “adored outpost” after 5 likes, but a hamlet would need 20 to get the title “cozy hamlet”. You’d need all the likes in the world to be “most revered great city” etc.

3 Likes
17

This is what worries me most about this system. Everything I do not like about the game, the forum and its internal struggles, would become a game mechanic. What would prevent a group of people from getting together and starting to lie and destroy the image of a player in the forums? Why is this a good thing for the game?

I would prefer a classification of the most visited beacons to a classification of the beacons with more likes

18

No thank you, not a fan of popularity contests.

Also, all this talk about beacon this, beacon that, footfall there, prestige changes, etc., etc. all nice and dandy but it all would change so much of the current systems and it will all still create conflicts am sure of it, people are people after all. And all this dev time spent on something that does not add new stuff to do seems a tad waste of time at this point.

Sure overhaul certain systems, in a year from now…

2 Likes
19

I understand the point that we need to have new things that draw players in, but I would argue that we also need to recognize that the game has a player retention problem and maybe some of the mechanics need to change in order to keep players before adding content. New content is great for those of us still playing so maybe we are a little biased?

I personally think some of the comments from the developers that they are looking at how the game stands to make sure it works as intended and remove the fat is probably good for the game long term, even if it does not necessarily mean new content.

3 Likes
20

Of course I totally agree with this, but there have been quite a few changes already done to footfall, prestige, beacons, etc., etc. in the past year and so far it hasn’t solved any of the conflicts.

If they can do this all the while still adding new stuff, and I don’t mean a few blocks, actual big new stuff then I’m ok with it. Am also more then fine if they are trying out ways already in between new content additions to make some changes, but right now I do feel we need one big content update at least before thinking of overhauling major systems…

1 Like