Being one of those hippie builder types that more dedicated players here would probably classify as “lazy” for not wanting to mine all of my own stuff… I can 100% promise that I would sell my Favorite Badge to the highest bidder.
I would also accept Decorative Oortstone in place of coins, IN CASE IMPORTANT PEOPLE ARE READING THIS…
How many alts do you have? Have you configured family sharing on your steam account yet?
I have a mud hut that I would like to be the capitol of Raxxa ASAP.
I don’t know how much that would be reliable, though.
One could totally remove his Favorite badge at one point.
I never mentioned that there would be a way to know who gave you a Favorite Badge. In my mind, it would be anonymous by default (unless you come to the person to say “hey, I gave you a fav’!”.
So if you paid someone to fav’ you, if further down the road you lose a fav’, you wouldn’t be able to tell who removed it.
For that, I wouldn’t pay anyone to fav’ me.
I don’t see reason to shift from clear prestige system/building xp system that has metering of time used to game to some voting like one.
But you also seem to have gone into this discussion with no malicious intent and a lot of faith in how people would use this system…
To your credit, you must be a pretty nice person, because it seems like maybe you can’t fathom the weirdness/desperation/depravity of some other corners of the Interweb.
… But I can assure you that it’s real. 
Oh you have no idea how depraved I am. 
But I do have a lot of faith in the fact that such a system could potentially work better than what we currently have, depending on how it’s implemented.
Sadly, it may have been an error to put the poll “do you like this idea” because (aside from the results being depressing ^^) I don’t think it encourages people to read the full thread where the idea mutates into something different.
Point is, if someone wants to pay someone else for a fav’, honestly, I’d say it will be their loss.
Depending on how the system would be implemented, you could need A LOT of favz’ to win the ‘popularity contest’, and I wonder who can actually afford to pay large sums of coins to everybody who gives them a fav’ while knowing they would have no control over their ability to keep said favz’.
I don’t see what the big deal is personally. Make sure the favorite stuff isn’t really linked to anything and who cares if someone pays for the “like.” I agree anonymous is best.
All these things should be a vanity leaderboard anyway and not linked to key systems.
See? Amateur. Hahaha
I used to have friends in the scamming community in EVE Online (yes, it had its own community), and if you aren’t already familiar with the episode, I’d recommend you read up about the player “Erotica1” and this old stunt known as “The Bonus Room”… Truly one of the darker periods in Interwebz history.
But in regard to this Favorite Badge… It would be a valuable commodity to some people and not to others, and I could definitely see people treating it like a currency over time. Even if they weren’t outright trading it for money and goods in-game, at the very least there would be political concerns as others here have pointed out.
As it stands right now, anyone can try to become the capital of a world if they put in enough effort to do so, and this should remain as is,
What your suggestion will do, is make it impossible for most people to ever become capital of a world even if they put in alot of effort as you are turning it in to a popularity contest.
I am 100% against popularity contests being coded into the game that are then allowed to effect the game in such a way that it can prevent other people from getting something.
100% do not approve.
Sorry mate, but really bad idea .
Beautiful and popular aren’t necessarily the same.
While I’m not opposed to your suggestions, I do think that this would only really benefit those of us who frequent the forums (plus the hubs and malls) And are well known to others.
What about the recluses who are quietly building sheer masterpieces and not even sharing screen shots on here… I can think of a particular friend who’s place is absolutely unreal and epic and yet I’ve never seen him post a single screen shot of the place or try to get footfall over there.
His ranking shouldn’t be lowered just because he’s not all over the forums…
This is true. As imperfect as the system may be, and as much as some people might debase themselves in pursuit of the goal, it’s still pretty egalitarian by comparison.
I still think it’s not very different either.
Is there a single solo player who doesn’t use Discord or the forum and yet still manages to be Viceroy?
On paper, it’s possible, SURE. But does it actually happens?
To my knowledge, all the Viceroys are leaders of big guilds or people who annexed other places.
I would believe that you could be popular by mouth-to-ear without using Discord or the forum.
Someone could stumble on your place and essentially do your publicity for you. But everybody immediately jumps to “it’s gonna be like politics with bribery” and junk… 
I was viceroy of Alcyon, post-launch. Although, I was there before anyone had even build a portal hub connection, so all I had to do was throw down my machines. Maybe not the best example, especially this far along in the timeline…
But I think the current rankings may have more to do with “last person standing” than “Miss Boundless 2020”.
Yeah, I’m sorry, but that obviously doesn’t count. 
As far as I’m concerned, I’m never gonna be Viceroy of Raxxa unless the other people suddenly stop playing. Everytime I make a million prestige, some other guild makes 2 millions. 
What doses discord and/or the forum have to do with becoming Viceroy?
It is possible yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is extremely unlikely and it is now based on a Subjective metric, not everybody haves the social skills to become popular, in fact very few i would dare say, but most people can find the effort to build and build and build if they wanted to, or at the very least the game isn’t flat out saying „no, not going to happen, you lost the genetic lottery“ due to a subjective metric.
Well, networking.
Every single big guild has Discord for hunts, recruitment, sales, etc.
I’m pretty sure every viceroy has a post to showcase their place to make sure people come to generate footfall.
Again, I can’t stress this enough, I never said the point of the Fav’ badge would be to given to a person but to a build.
One wouldn’t have to even be seen to get a Fav’. You don’t need any other skills than building skills.
If this is all leads to another stats which goes alongside the “Most visited”, “Most sales”, “Most prestige”, there shouldn’t be a problem.
Then I guess I am the only exception, as I am pretty sure I have not made a single post about my build.
Based off of my experience in other games that have a player subjective voting system, realistically people will be influenced to vote for the build of someone they like or see as popular, rather then judging the build its self.
But let us assume for a moment we live in a perfect world and everyone doses indeed hold their biases back and look past that, It is still subjective because art and what is visually pleasing is subjective to each person, everyone haves different tastes, So why should someone who puts alot of effort in an unpopular style of building/art be punished? As the current system doses not punish such things.
I would say that “prestige effort” is subjective as well. The current system punishes any players that cannot play a ton of hours or spam the highest prestige blocks down. In fact anyone can go spam stone, iron, or whatever. This doesn’t really feel like a good system to define the important area of a capital and viceroy. If those are expected to stay they should be behind a much harder accomplishment than a simple time/block design.
People can put effort into being more “popular” or at least not being rude and mean that cause people to not like them. We should remember that many people don’t like people in the game for annexation, gleam towers, and other conflict based stuff. That also pushes over into the forum and causes more problems. If we remove some of that conflict those issues might clear up some.
As the OP suggests, a “favorite” build is for the “build” and not the “person.” We could easily hide “who owns plots” and then that would quickly solve those type of things.
Personally, as I posted in another thread, that I feel the easiest solution is to remove it all and based the capital on the most visited/utility location and viceroy to be removed.
Most any system will punish a player who can not play a ton of hours, That is how pretty much every game I have played works, The more time you put into it, the more you are going to get out of it. There are only a handful of games that are not like this, as they punish you for playing for too long to try to counter act „Gaming Addiction“.
Other then the fact that we both know that it doesn’t really work. You either need to have the talent to cause other people to want to emulate you, or you need to have a Steller personality, or in rarer cases, Right place, Right Time.
All 3 things are extremely hard to do if you don’t already have them.
Being a good person doesn’t necessarily translate into being popular. And I would hazard that in most cases, that alone is not enough.
Not being rude is not enough to make one „popular“. and in some cases, it is unfortunate but extremely rude and toxic people with talent, or right place/right time, have became rather popular.
But with how many people scream to the high heavens the moment their settlement name is changed, wouldn’t this be another jab at that same sensitive spot?