I guess this question is mainly for the devs, but everyone please feel free to chime in.
I like that the landscape & resources regen. I think that’s genius.
What if things placed/built by players didn’t regen after their beacon went out… and stayed around for other players & newbies to find, resettle, use, etc? Why? I don’t think we have enough game-generated ruins & there are no treasures in them.
As the game goes on, we see that there are more and more player made “ruins”. These alone could be considered content: ruins, surprises, pre-fab builds, etc. Imagine being a lucky noob that comes across part of an old city that was abandoned & plotting some of it. Then exploring it for any treasures that were left behind. Without a time limit.
If it happened near your build and you consider it an eyesore - or have different plans for that area - toss a regen bomb on it and voilà, fresh landscape.
Why don’t abandoned builds stick around until we, the players, either reuse them or regen the area?
I really like your idea. I always get excited seeing premade stuff in the wilderness, or refined blocks just sitting out.
I love running around exploring, but after you’ve checked out that one planet there is never another reason to run across it again unless you have a specific reason.
Love the idea! The worlds are pretty empty if you’re not in player territory.
How would the game decide what to regen? How long would a beaconed area have to be empty to be considered for “ruin” status? Should it be partially regened, to further the “ruin” aspect? How much? And how long of a time should that take/go on?
Curious minds want to know
Personally I remember all the abandoned half builds in EA. It was difficult to find a place where someone had not started the game or started a build or in some cases had a half active half abandoned city (PixelGate). When all of that finally did regen, it opened up space to build and expand and let players know when they started that if they started near a city it was not abandoned but had active players.
I can understand now how parts of the planets can feel empty, but why is that a bad thing? Do we want a new player or one that wants to move to have to buy regen bombs to erase a bunch of builds that have been empty and probably picked through for anything valuable? Some players do not want to be near other players or want to start their own settlement. If all these builds are left around, how will they know what has been abandoned for months and what has not? If the player base grows, I think this would be a decision that most would regret. Lets look at Steam. Over 20,000 players have bought the game. If we say that only 5000 were since launch then the planets could be covered with thousands of abandoned builds. And this ignores all the ps4 players and free weekend players.
I do not feel it is the new players responsibility to erase maybe a 400 plot build because someone else quit the game.
I would imagine new players would love to see/use/discover the ruins. I would assume regulars/vets would be the ones that would regen things, or let them be. People can walk right past the ruins and ignore them, loot them, use them, or regen them…just like they do now.
That is totally cool. I am kinda in that bucket myself.
I personally think it would be fun to explore these. Some are amazing & hold some good treasures.
How so? Building & regen aren’t exclusive to PC players.
It’s not, but they can if they want to. Kinda like now, just without the 4 hour regen time frame.
I’ve recently been thinking about how if I died, eventually everything I did in the game would be gone. And it made me feel a touch sad.
I also like the idea of a build having a slight deterioration over time that could add an aged look to places. Perhaps some cracks in bricks or moss growing over surfaces. Weeds poking up through paths, et cetera. A feature that could be controlled, as per preference, via your beacon.
I was trying to estimate how many abandoned builds we might have since I have no idea of the number of licenses bought by ps4 players or how many different players that played during the free weekend, the number of abandoned builds would probably be higher.
Yes but now it costs them time for it to regen if it is even still there. In the proposal, it can cost active time to tear down a build or regen it and/or coin to buy the bombs. So it is not the same.
Maybe it is hard to imagine without seeing what is was in EA. It was not a bunch of interesting builds. It was a lot of starter homes, half finished structures, and dead stores. It was not as interesting as I think players want it to be. Using Pixelgate as an example, I found most of the settlement was just empty 2x2 plot stores. Not all that interesting and nothing left of much value. Currently when a player moves on from a starter to a new build or from their first workshop they might decide to join a guild or settlement, whatever they do not take regens. Under the proposal I have now left at least two spots cluttered with stuff that someone else now has to expend time and effort to remove. I prefer the game remove abandoned builds instead of other players.
Edit: The other thing to remember is that this is a persistent universe so how long will it take until the planets are a bunch of ruins in between pockets of builds instead of forests and fields? And also all that land that is not regening does not allow for the regen of resources for gathering or mining.
I don’t know why this isn’t a thing already, since the last regen update happened months ago, any building regen under couples hours. If you don’t get it right when the beacon goes out it just “poof” right away.
I think it would be more exciting for explorers, help new players by reusing a building or even gathering the material that is left.
It would just need something that would show it’s abandoned, wild.
I feel like this is okay though. A ruin is a ruin. Those useless refined meta blocks might make a noob’s day. And if they came across part of cute little house that they want to reuse or holy cow batman…an abandoned store with lots of goodies
Okie, but I think it would be more fun & interesting if we did it.
How so? Once a player tosses a regen bomb on it, it’s fresh again.
From what I remember this is because all regen is using the same methodology so on the gem planets the resources were not regening fast enough and due to continued player presence looking for gems they never did regen. So they decreased the regen time. So one thing that would be necessary is for a plotted area/build once its beacon has expired to somehow be marked to not automatically regen or to use a different regen system. So if I plotted a large area underground that was a diamond spawning region and then let my beacon expire, would none of the area respawn diamonds until someone used regen bombs?
I agree once a player uses a regen bomb which erases the ruin anyway. So will we really end up with a lot of ruins or will we have them until the higher level players who have the bombs come by, take what they want and regen the rest? Kind of like they do now when a build is being left to regen. I guess having seen how players act in game I think this is more likely then a lot of interesting ruins, but that is my opinion and until it happens no one will really know.
nope just a lot of empty sales stands and whatever the store was built with is what I saw.
Only downside I can see is the self-righteous walking around with bags of regen bombs making sure everything is sanitary and fresh. They can’t be everywhere, though, and it’s not really any different than we have now except there a chance they might miss something and I could still stumble across something interesting.
I love this idea. Maybe not to stick around forever but even a slower…much slower Regen timer on crafted blocks. Perhaps the higher the quality of block the longer it takes.
They don’t have two different regen systems. We had a topic on this before about slowing down player placed blocks over natural ones and it messed with regen. So not an option unless they take time to look at redesigning regen which probably isn’t worth the time.
I think the issue is you are looking in the wrong area for this type of content. It is not the player responsibility to provide ruins and treasures and things to explore. That is the development team and they need to spend time providing these things in the game.
Let’s be clear what would really happen. The only ruins you would have are non-important blocks. Any metal or more valuable stuff would be cleaned up quickly by anyone that found the blocks. So really the ruins would be big holes in the ground or floating things here and there – that would just be an eye sore.
I don’t think all people will regen everything to clean up the space and I don’t want to be the group that has to use regen bombs all the time to clean up trashed ruins to get us back to the beautiful landscape.
This does not include the other camp of people that have huge issues with impermanence and cannot let any city or build go… We likely would have a 20% or more increase in cities locations and things everywhere because someone would want to put that build so they could get 10c in footfall over the next month… And I am not even getting into the reality of dead cities everywhere and no place in certain areas to build… The regen forces people to let some land go and actually makes the game feel more alive because there are less places around… We need some of these 2nd, 3rd, 4th builds people have in a dead area to be let go.
While I love to find old builds and have picked up a lot of stuff from them I can’t support a perm deployment of them because I think it causes more issues. We just need real developer content and if anything the ability for people to make ruins, dungeons and have it as an asset that just shows up from time to time, lets people get treasure, and then goes away…
People can walk right past the ruins and ignore them, loot them, use them, or regen them…just like they do now.
I think it’s all amazing. Big & small. New & old.