Synopsis: Guild members DO NOT generate coin in other guild members beacons, this is a HUGE problem!
PLEASE PUSH DEVS TO THIS THREAD
Please read more for clarification and how I have come to this conclusion through extensive tests.
I am an active player and love to test the limits of the boundless empire, I recently wanted to run some tests to better learn how the prestige, footfall, and coin generation systems work in the game. I started to run several tests with a couple of my friends in the game, seeing what type of character (friend, stranger, guild member, with/without permissions in the beacon) would generate coin. We realized very quickly after running through several builds, waiting for a footfall increase to show up in the beacon, that we as a group were not generating ANY coin… so we got to work figuring out why. After cycling through a few different alts between the three of us we decided to remove a few of our alts from the guild we shared. As soon as we removed the guild alignment on the character coin was generated when entering the beacon. We proceeded to work backwards starting from having a stranger (alt: no friends - no guild) enter…
Beacon - Unaligned
Stranger = Coin
Friend = Coin
Guild/friend = NO
Guild = NO
Beacon - Aligned
Same results
We ran these tests SEVERAL times across multiple characters owning the beacon and running through the beacon. Each time the results were the same. If either of the players shared a guild then footfall WOULD NOT BE PRODUCED and NO COIN would be generated.
We personally believe that this is a flaw in the system and have the benefit of the doubt that this is a mistake… We believe, however, that this needs to be fixed asap and may help explain why some footfall really has seemed significantly lower from before the guild update…
Please discuss and PLEASE PUSH DEVS TO THIS THREAD
Because they are guild members which is different then just someone on your friends list. Also the moment you give that friend some kind of permission in your beacon, they stop generating coin, as far as i am aware.
This is true, and also precisely why there’s no reason for guild members to not generate footfall, unless they, too, are given permissions there. I am curious if this was intended or not.
It is expected that people who you have given permissions to work in your beacon, are going to be in your beacon often.
It is also most likely expected that Guild Members are going to be in guild beacons very often as well. Especially if there are guild meeting halls and the like.
Friends on the other hand. Yes it is expected that some friends might be visiting your beacon often. But some people have alot of people on the friends list more for tracking reasons then people who are actively building in the area. Any hunt leader for example most likely has his and/or her friend list flooded with friends.
I am not saying this is the reason for it, it could very well be something else or just a bug. But if I was forced to cook up something. This would be it.
People who are good friends in the game tend to align themselves to the same guild. The moment they do so, they no longer generate foot fall for each other. Imagine large guilds of 100 members (portal hubs, malls, etc) losing footfall from that many players (decent percentage of current population). For our small guild it promotes disbanding of alts (at a minimum) since our group of friends visiting each other was our footfall. I am curious if it was intended, if so we shall adapt and overcome!
I am not surprised by this personally. We have seen this in other parts of the game because people try to use every technique to generate footfall and abuse the system. So I would be surprised to see this change since footfall is already being taken advantage of.
Did you all try across Guild Factions? I think that would be helpful to understand the results.
Interesting. So we join a group (the Guild) and do not get footfall from the members of the group we joined?
I certainly think for an aligned beacon you should not get footfall from guild members. An aligned beacon is where I would expect guild members to congregate so you could argue this creates almost a footfall machine for the guild.
For an unaligned beacon I am not sure how I feel. I do understand not wanting a group to be entering a members beacon and generating footfall for each other, simply for the purpose of generating coin for its members. So does a guild surround its settlement with unaligned beacons of its members to act as a footfall machine? Is this maybe why the developers took this step?
Maybe this is why the developers felt comfortable with the 100 player limit for guilds. At a certain point, it would be a drag on the guilds resources to eliminate too many players from the potential footfall pool. Should the people participating in a mall get footfall from each other? I thought the point was to draw customers and not just the store owners? Same with portal hubs. I agree it takes a decent sized community to run a portal hub like PS. The need to collect Oort, keep everything fueled and maintain the user portals seems like a pretty daunting task to me. But in theory should it be gaining footfall merely from its own members using the portals or should it require other players to use the portals? Interesting question and it will be interesting to see if this is intended behavior or not.
This isn’t always true. Case in point: I have my shop in Gyosha Mall aligned with the mall guild. I do this partially to avoid the annoying settlement notification when people enter my shop, but also to contribute my prestige toward helping ensuring MajorVex maintains control of the mall. It’s a very loose affiliation I have with the guild.
As far as I know guild members do not congregate in my shop. And as an aligned beacon, I get 100% of footfall earnings for myself, and there is no expectation for me to donate any of it.
Now, if my beacon was guild controlled, then I can see an argument for disallowing guild members to generate footfall. But it doesn’t make sense to me for guild aligned.
Not all guilds are organized around building together and sharing footfall. In my opinion the guild system shouldn’t punish us for creating guilds by disallowing footfall for guild members. There are other controls in place already for preventing abuse.
That is something I hadn’t thought about. When I go to check my shop at the G. Mall (The Making of Greatness,selling ingredients for making food) and see how much footfall I get between 300 to 500 sometimes more (seldom more) I have always wondered, was it from other shop owners passing my shop or players checking to see what I am selling; or both.
If it wasn’t for the footfall I wouldn’t make much, which I hate. I want sales, not handouts. But I take it as I need it to buy items.
I’m not sure how I feel about it, If I am understanding the OP right, if you have a player who is a friend and they enter the guild and aren’t a member you get footfall. If they are a friend and a guild member you won’t get footfall. To me that would be a safety mechanism, if not then you could have your guild members who are also friends come in often just to get footfall and that isn’t right in my opinion. It isn’t meant to be a coin vending machine where you have someone walk by and coins drop out, which seems to be what would happen. Perhaps I am understanding this wrong and so not getting it.
Fair enough on your example, but do you error on the side of creating more coin or less coin? Do you use your example as the way to code or mine? I think the developers may have made a choice on how they thought guilds would be used versus how they are being used by some groups of players. What I mean is did the developers expect a group of shop owners to form a guild in order to avoid settlement notifications or to contribute prestige to make sure the guild director can maintain the malls identity? Maybe they expect guild membership to be more of a commitment of players to be part to a group than how it is being used. If this is the case, then we either adapt or convince the developers to make a change.
I think if the devs intended guilds to always be a major commitment, then they wouldn’t have given us the option to create and join as many guilds as we like. It seems to be structured to encourage players to join lots of guilds, but that is really undercut if guild members never contribute footfall to your beacons.
Well they did not make it truly unlimited. They limited guild membership to 10 which you could argue seems unlimited but I would say it is. They also limited the players that could be part of a guild to 100 so they did not want all the players in the same guild, so it appears they did have some limits in mind. Edit: They also limit buffs to a primary guild and will not let you switch and immediately get the buffs from another guild or faction. They stated when asked that they wanted guild membership to be more of a commitment.
We will have to disagree on your last point. But without hearing from the developers, we are both speculating.
Further Edit: If players think this is a bug they should create a post to Support so they are more certain the developers will see it. At least they will hopefully get an answer.
I don’t care if this opinion means it would open some sort of exploit.
What I find really stupid is how anyone, including those with beacon permissions, aren’t generating footfall. Everyone that walks over your beacon should generate something, even if that means those with beacon permissions only generate a certain amount every 24 hours and is less than others. The point is, it needs to be normalized across the board to at least award something from anyone that walks over your plotted area.
Simple is better, then again there are devs that disagree with this and I strongly believe they’re 100% wrong. Just cause they’re a dev doesn’t mean they actually know better but I’d still buy 'em a beer cause they do deserve that.
