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image
Except that it has induced weirdness like this.
A lot of settlements are now duplicated in lists such as this.

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Guessing that’s a pic of a settlement and a guild with the same name.

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  1. The next update will automatically tag Guild Settlements with their guild tag.

  2. Additionally we’re looking at excluding the following from the leaderboards:

  • unnamed settlements and
  • guild settlements that have the same name as their greater settlement

This would remove the items you’re highlighting.

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Sounds good.

@Krollbar it’s a guild settlement within a regular settlement, both of which have the same name, but #1 is almost entirely made up of #2, meaning all those beacons are being counted twice for leaderboard purposes etc.

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Sounds good! Is it eventually possible to list guilds and settlements separately? Or get a longer settlement list when viewing a world? Because it’ll still double-display if the settlement and guild names don’t match.

I want people to get credit for their work, but I also want useful lists.

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I wonder if it would be too complex to add a little “+” off to the side of the leaderboard that would expand the larger leaderboard settlement to show its top 5 sub-settlements/beacons under them or something.

Like:

#1 - Awesome Settlement [+]

to

  • #1 - Awesome Settlement - 99999999 [-]
    – #1 - [AG] Awesome Guild - X
    – #2 - Semi Awesome Guild - Y
    – #3 - Crazy Hermit - Z

and so on?

Or perhaps as a popup when you click the large settlement name on the leaderboard.
That way the list remains meaningful but the people and guilds involved also get credit.

Or would that add unnecessary complexity?

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That’s a good idea.

And the proposal to split Guild Settlements and Greater Settlements into 2 leaderboard also makes sense.

…however…

They would both break one of the driving aims of the system. The purpose of listing Guild aligned Settlements alongside all other Settlements is to make sure that a Settlement which is force-merged with another continues to have it’s own identity if desired by alignment.

This was a reoccurring issue with players who didn’t want to lose the identity of their settlement. If they retain their identity but get bumped into a different leaderboard, or presented under the larger settlement - would they be satisfied? I concluded not. So we’ve worked towards presenting all settlements independent of their origin within a single list. (We are planning to expand the list. Can’t remember if this is already on Testing.)

Community members often championed an opt-in & opt-out approach to forming settlements. But settlements have always been emergent. Guilds on the other hand and the guild alignment system we’ve created does allow for opt-in & opt-out.

IMO the Guild alignment system does work alongside the dynamic settlement system - but there are clearly some rough edges and areas of presentation that can be improved.

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Very interesting, and good points.
Since I personally don’t really get into the whole competitive side of prestige, it wouldn’t affect me either way.

However, if I may offer up a suggestion, the quoted part sounds like a great opportunity for another of those ‘help the devs’ posts with a poll to see how the people that would actually care / be affected by this would feel about the various opitons. :slight_smile:

I always thought that people cared more about the big in-game vignette display of the name of the settlement when people walk into it than how it is categorized in leaderboards, but I have no real evidence for thinking that. :stuck_out_tongue:

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The only problem with forum polls is, well, not everyone uses the forum. If the devs were to go the route of using polls to make decisions, they’d have to create an in-game poll system to really cover the playerbase.

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But they do use polls to make decisions. The last few have had an 80% majority vote, which does give them a good indicator of what the players want.
Every player has the opportunity to take part in the forum, however a good number don’t care, so adding another new system to get their opinion is unnecessary.

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But are you working on ways to subtract the aligned beacons? So that prestige doesnt get dublicated? Like now your prestige counts towards the greater settlement and the guild settlement. making it you are able to stand twice in the list.

Subtracting the prestige also prevents that people still merge their cities for the prestige points.

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Well, one of my fears with the new system was subtraction of prestige by those who do not wish to be part of the settlement. I’m glad it doesn’t work like that - I want to see more great cities! Also, this new system gives guilds a powerful tool to rightfully claim their title as Warden… instead of having 12 beacons spit among members with 800,000 prestige each they can now get credit for their full combined 9,600,000.

My biggest gripe was why can RandomGuy plop down 1,000,000 prestige to out-do 12 guys with 800,000.

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I get that no matter what they do, there will be people who love/hate the changes. Personally, so far I am not a fan of the changes.

I find walking through some cities annoying because each different beacon wants to hold their identity, so there’s constantly a settlement name popping up on screen and playing that sound.

Also, I just got rid of 3 beacons I had on Seginiaki because of the lack of footfall due to the new system. it was around 250 plots worth of beacons. Surely that couldn’t have been the intent of the new system.

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Well the issue on segi was probably more the fact that some many people quit or moved out of anvil because it’s dead that you had roads that connected to a person who didn’t actually connect to anvil. I had a building I had to add more plots to in order for it to be connected to anvil. But again anvil is pretty much dead. There’s maybe 5 people who live there that still play.

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That is exactly what part of the update was targeting. 1 build should be 1 beacon, for simplicity’s sake. They don’t want 1 build split into a bunch of mini-beacons just for footfall’s sake.

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Oh I get that Anvil is pretty much dead. My point though was that now that roads that bridge two settlements don’t generate footfall, theres really no point in me having them. This made me get rid of them, and now Anvil is more dead than it already was.

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I may can help you on that one, fixed mine on Grovidias TE if you still have these roads.

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@Ark Well they weren’t one build. They were two separate roads, on two different sides of town, connecting different settlements to Anvil. If that’s the intent of the update, then so be it. I wasn’t trying to game the system. I was trying to provide a service of infrastructure which cost me a couple hundred plots. I don’t see why that shouldn’t be rewarded with some footfall.

@Gorillastomp I appreciate the offer, but it’s already done. I’m going to do a new build on Gravidias with the plots. I’d actually like to talk with you about getting a 10x10 area whenever you got a minute.

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Well here’s the thing; it’s quite difficult, especially within the scope (and coding) of this game, for an AI system to differentiate between an honest attempt at infrastructure and griefing. So its reasonable enough that the devs are going to code on the side of caution.

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I get it. I’m not complaining. Or at least not trying to. It is what it is. Now it’s time to help build up PSHQ!