This is something that happened in October of 2019. I had honestly forgotten about it until I was recently (last night) reminded about it.
See, the first guild I was in, RINO Neighborinos, was a small guild with people doing simple builds. The two guild leaders eventually left, promoting 2 others to guild leaders.
And then we had someone join who had big ideas about big builds. They built a huge elaborate place. And then they started nagging the rest of us to use higher prestige blocks. They wanted us to build big and fancy and eventually turn our little settlement into a capital city.
The problem was that most of use were satisfied with simple builds. This constant nagging caused most of guild to quit and move on to other guilds. I stuck around, but did move out of the settlement to get away from this abuse.
They continued to build bigger, more elaborate. And then they left the guild, creating their own guild. I left RINO and joined this new guild.
And for a time, things were good. But there came a point when I noticed that one of the neighboring builds was running out of fuel (smoking). This was before reclaim.
I notified the person that their beacon would shut down on October 31st, at around 10 p.m.
Now, I was gonna be gone, as I was partying with friends. But when I did get home at 4 a.m. the next day, I did check on the build. 1/3 of it was gone, with all the gems and most of the gleam missing. I did take the time to plot it, so that I could hand it off the next day. Went to sleep. Woke up the next day to frantic messages, demanding the building back.
Logged in, sent the message to come get it, and then deleted the beacon.
Several hours later, I was pulled aside and kicked from the guild for stealing from a guild member. Even though they had let their beacon expire, my act of trying to save what was left was obviously not seen as the right thing to do.
If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t have even bothered. Let the world have it back…
I can sympathize with this some. I have on occasion had someone just jump to conclusions in regards to plots and portals. I mean I have always found it wise to educate yourself before just assuming someone was intentionally trying to be malicious. In games taking a screenshot or two to CYA (cover your ass). which shouldn’t be necessary, could help clear things up some.
You are better off without a guild that would just kick you without some form of proof.
I wouldn’t of met HSE or ULT the way that I did if I wasn’t Saving Builds like I was at the beginning despite the hatred I got for helping certain others boop
Let’s hope this experience doesn’t stop you from saving some other builds.
BUT I also tend to think that the game could do better to smooth out what happens when a beacon dies.
I already said once that a beacon should give its owner the option to check “anyone can see the fuel timer and can put more fuel into my beacon”, which would create a dynamic where people could basically keep fueling beacons of places they love even if the owner has left.
This alone would have allowed you to “save” the beacon before it was too late AND would’ve avoided the stupidly frustrating situation you found yourself in.
I was immediately met with people saying “but maybe the owner doesn’t want people to fuel their beacon” (before, I hadn’t indicated what seemed incredibly obvious to me that it could be an option and not a feature enabled for all), AND other people saying “but then that means more ghost-beacons will stay around forever and pollute our worlds”…
I look at the way your builds can poof away over-night if you miss a fuel-deadline (for which I think you should have the option to get a warning through PSN/Steam/Email), the way the game seems to have issues with player-retention, and I look at where the game is, currently, and think “well, there’s one reason”.
I too have had guild drama on the world Raxxa. Too bad, Neighborinoville was a great and active place on the planet last time I checked. Keep “saving” builds for our community! <3 this city and wish you all the support. I will send the most stern letter to the RINO guild so you can come back. If they deny, I know exactly what to do.
Sending a letter to RINO would be pointless. There are only 2 people still in the guild and both quit the game 2 years ago. Unless one of them comes back, that guild will be forever dead.
Edit: Just in case some might wonder why I would bring this up after 2 years? It was brought up to me in a discord voice chat. Fresh accusations were made by the person from the first story, with person from the 2nd story agreeing with the first.
So I figured a post to set the record straight was in order.
Bossy players always end up shooting themselves in the foot, and seems like their bossiness is divided evenly between the amount of people they feel they have some measure of control over. So as more people leave them, they get worse. Then when they run out of people who will listen to them, they throw a fit and leave themselves. Best to identify them early lol
This is a bummer to read though. Sucks how one person can tamper with and try to own something that more than one person preferred.
I understand your sentiment, anyone should be able to fuel any beacon if desired. I do feel that the way the post reads, for someone who doesn’t know better it may seem as if there is NO way to do this.
So for those folks, you have to “friend” the person. Then you also have to give them perms to interact with machines/beacons. Thats a step that many don’t trust to take, understably. So I fully agree that it should be a seperate setting/mechanic for beacon fuel
It’d also be nice if builds didn’t automatically expire when their timer runs out. Instead, once a beacon has no more fuel left they could stay in place until someone comes along with a tool like a beacon unplotter* and uses it on any plot within the beacons space. That could then be the trigger that start the reclaim process for unfueled beacons, instead of happening as soon as a beacon’s fuel expires.
It’d put more control over how the landscape is cleared (or not) into the player’s hands, and give people who forgot by a few days more of a chance to keep their builds etc.
I’d though about it working with a beacon control interaction, but then you’d just have to make it inaccessible to guests and have a permanent beacon.
A little ;). Got to get my inspiration from somewhere…
It’s just less dev work, because everything stays the same except for the thing that triggers the reclaim process (not that I see Boundless getting any significant development time in the near future, so I suppose it’s moot).
Seeing the current state of the game, I think it would’ve helped with its health if the issue of people leaving after they lost their builds was solved in a better way than with reclaim.
Of course. The suggestion thread I linked was from way before the reclaim (or the farming update for that matter), and you can see in my OP from then how I was worried about not having anything left in case of a fuel mishap.
But sadly, reclaim does nothing for the time spent actually building and chiseling, all the tools broken, etc.
