From what I gather, people have to be allowed in/out of the guild, plots expire and the guild/settlement loses those items, you would still need to plot/defend your beacon/settlement/etcâŚ
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If you set your Guild and forget about it, so much could happen.
I think it needs to be simplified, it also sounds like there is just too much put into Guilds.
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Huge problem with buffer, Now 1 person can take up 1-3x the plots as before.
Example, say player only has 20 plots. As of now, they can only claim 20 plots. After update itll be a stupid amount more. X is claimed O is protected
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youll now see this in crazy amount surrounding cities to stop growth.
So youre causing a problem several times larger then the 1 we have now.
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Exactly. Itâs like weâll automatically lose the ability to plot 10-30% of a planet.
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Not trying to be mean, but i dont think the Devs have played very many games. People will always grief, people will always attempt to create havic on others stuff. Just will. Youre job is to make it where their havic is at the minimalist amount. You are literally making their job 1-3x easier
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So now we additionally have to worry about our own beacons being renamed if we are part of a Guild? 
Only if you give the guild full access to your beacons. From my understanding you can align without turning over control.
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Honestly, you can stop settlements from expanding by plotting every couple of plots now. The protection buffer would just make it easier to prove intent for the developers.
What is needed, and will hopefully come in time, is a streamlined way of dealing with coc and trolling issues.
Edit: typing on a phone is awful.
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True, I just think itll create a whole new, way more magnitude problem then we have now.
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Going off of what I read it should be simple, and someone correct me if im wrong. Once guilds become a thing all you need to do is 1. Join the guild and 2. Go to your beacon to align to the guild of your choice. Thatâs it. The guild would only have control over your beacon if you give the guild control of it, otherwise it acts as it currently does.
Giving the guild control of a beacon just makes things a little easier to manage, like maintaining roads. Your road beacon can be aligned to the guild and permissions given to a certain rank in the guild. Everyone with that rank in the guild would be able to manage the road and any other beacon that is a âguild beaconâ. No one should be able to rename your beacon if you donât âdonateâ that beacon to the guild.
Also any beacon that you âdonateâ to the guild ultimately remains yours. You can unalign that beacon from the guild at any time and it would become yours and yours alone again. Again im a ps4 player so i havent had a chance to test myself but thats what iâve taken from the patch notes so far.
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Things that would help griefing.
Any beacon under a certain prestige/block count will be deleted way faster then month+.
Devs will see griefing beacons then, as they will be blocks of nothings/filled with â â â â .
The original beacon buffer pitch from the devs accounted for this, because buffer is derived by prestige. If you plot every other space as in
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you would have to make each o be its own prestige bomb without any help. As long as we get the prestige rebalance first, this would be a ton of work just to troll. It would be easier to do the traditional
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and consolidate your prestige to one beacon. Yes this still increases the trollâs expressiveness, so the overall complaint still holds. But the gains wonât be as bad as your diagram illustrates.
For the record I voted against the beacon buffer originally and still feel that way. I think by the time the devs release guilds and rebalance prestige it will be clear to everyone that there is some simpler solution to what problems remain than to implement the buffers.
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I donât know. In my opinion designing everything to stop trolls is an effort in futility and comes at the expense of legitimate players. Having a fast response team for tickets, or potentially player moderator triage would probably be a better way to deal with the issue.
That way the developed content focuses more on fun instead of being dumbed down and gutted because of a few players who are going to be problems anyways.
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I like the new changes as I understand them. Sounds like there will be a little bit of a learning curve to get everything lined up and working but I donât think it is going top be as bad a people think. @majorvex I am pretty sure I read that you will be able to build in the buffer zone, if you allow it. I see what you mean about 10-30% loss if no one did, but as the worlds are kind of large I donât see this being a real issue except in some cases where people want to build in the same spot. I certainly get the issue.
My question to @james is: What happens in the current cities/settlements that have all the plots built on and connected when you turn on the buffer zone? The entire place would be in a buffer zone. Until everyone allows the building in the buffer zone, in the cities, there is a paradox (I think right use of the word).
What if the same name canât be used twice on the same planet?
Orâand this takes away individuality, unfortunatelyâhave a list of pre-selected approved names, prefixes and suffixes, ect from a drop down? Then no âpurple monkey buttâ settlements. Though they might get away with âpurple monkey.â
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Yes. Letâs take Blizzard as an example.
Customer: Hi I got hacked/scammed at 7pm (i think) last tuesday
Blizzard rep: Hiya, hold on for one momentâŚ
Blizzard: I can see the problem there, and a game master will return the items shortly turns back time magically
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Why are we still allowing forced merging of any kind? Forced gameplay of any kind drives players away full stop.
Nothing another player should do should be able to change any element of your plotted territory. This is your private space (and in some cases people are actually spending real money on this).
If the plots touch, it should simply present an option. It doesnât matter if it is hidden, no one sees it, or whatever, every single piece of data tied to a plot should be impossible to change without the person(s) with permissions allowing it to happen.
I think the steps listed are a step in the right direction, but due to the number of player complaints, more drastic action should be taken in the short term to prevent the extensive griefing currently happening in game. Iâm in full support of disabling merging of any kind until every step in the list has been adopted.
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Not sure how many people have logged on to the test server and checked it out. People are complaining and having a hard enough time with the current beacon/settlement situationâŚnow guilds/factions/controls/etc are going to be piled on. 
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Sounds like a good plan overall, Iâm sure there will be growing pains- but leaving things as they are is a worse idea, imo. The people who are driven off by this kind of behaviour are generally the people I like playing games with.
Couple thoughts:
I agree GMs/response team, whatever you want to call it would be good. GMs cost money though, this is a kickstarterâd game if I recall? One of the devs said awhile back the staff is tiny for a game of this scope- so hiring a bunch of real people to pay may simply not be in the cards. This isnât Blizzard (not sure if the person who mentioned them was being sarcastic).
Player mods may be an option, but just look how limited in power the forum mods are- the devs would have to give up more power than that and accept any possible headaches that go with it.
Will the new-planet-spawning-system count protective borders as taken plots, when calculating if a new planet should be made?
Anyway, appreciate the work devs have done to try and address this stuff. salute
I think some of you guys are just asking for too much from a small team.
There is always going to be jerks and, sometimes, you are just not going to be able to do anything about it.
You are not going to completely stop blocking or forced merging. As someone mentioned, they are not Blizzard. Blizzard is so big they can afford to hire people to do nothing but deal with complaints. These guys donât have that luxury. Just accept it and move on.
And forced merging is part of the game.
I donât know where this idea that you have a ârightâ to keep your settlement name came from. It was intended, from the beginning, to be a âtake overâ system.
That being said, I appreciate all of these changes and think they are for the good.
I actually think they go too far in places, such as the buffer zones. I donât think someone should have to have permission to join a settlement, despite the fact I will benefit greatly from the buffers. I just donât. Thatâs horrible for new players, especially ones who want to solo.
Iâm not entirely happy with the idea of guilds having so much power. Other than things like buffs, I donât believe guilds should have any effect on gameplay. Guilds have a tendency to have too much of a negative effect on solo players when they are just social. Making them so central to gameplay is going to pretty much force you to participate in the guild system. No way you can take over viceroy without it. (Not something Iâm interested in, but I understand thatâs the main motivation for many players) It also moves too much of the game âofflineâ (into nonsense like discord, which is about as user friendly as theoretical physics, get off my lawn)
If we are going to cripple the idea of the âtake overâ, Iâd be far more in favor of a settlement name and viceroy âlockingâ once the settlement reaches a certain prestige.
But, again, I see nothing here that I canât live with. They are not going to make everyone 100% happy and I think this will keep everyone just a little unhappy, which is the sign of a good compromise.
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