HELP! Give us your opinion on protecting settlement identity?

What if the same name can’t be used twice on the same planet?

Or–and this takes away individuality, unfortunately–have a list of pre-selected approved names, prefixes and suffixes, ect from a drop down? Then no “purple monkey butt” settlements. Though they might get away with “purple monkey.”

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Yes. Let’s take Blizzard as an example.

Customer: Hi I got hacked/scammed at 7pm (i think) last tuesday

Blizzard rep: Hiya, hold on for one moment…

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 doesn’t 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. I’m 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 situation…now guilds/factions/controls/etc are going to be piled on. :confused:

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Sounds like a good plan overall, I’m 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 kickstarter’d 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 isn’t 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 don’t have that luxury. Just accept it and move on.

And forced merging is part of the game.

I don’t know where this idea that you have a “right” to keep your settlement name came from. It was intended, from the beginning, to be a “take over” 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 don’t think someone should have to have permission to join a settlement, despite the fact I will benefit greatly from the buffers. I just don’t. That’s horrible for new players, especially ones who want to solo.

I’m not entirely happy with the idea of guilds having so much power. Other than things like buffs, I don’t 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 I’m interested in, but I understand that’s the main motivation for many players) It also moves too much of the game “offline” (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 “take over”, I’d be far more in favor of a settlement name and viceroy “locking” once the settlement reaches a certain prestige.

But, again, I see nothing here that I can’t 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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A certain percentage of any group of people are going to be jerks,

Hard to believe the number of grown up people who are willing to ruin the game for others only to chase a meaningless title.

This morning, an individual on this forum (a pace for camaraderie) was asked to stop nicely. He declared that he was going to keep annexing settlements against the wishes of the players. Really???

IMO, there is no easy solution.

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Buffer zone problems:
@james

  1. You can no longer just walk up to a settlement, start building and join the settlement. You have to physically PM someone and get permission to build close enough to their plots to join their settlement because Buffer Zones :frowning:

  2. You can accidentally “lose” part of your build. Scenario - you intentionally or accidentally unplot a plot on your shop. That plot is now wild. You go to re-plot but can’t because you don’t have permission from SirPwnz to plot within their “buffer zone.” You scramble to get ahold of them but they’ve been gleam clubbed AFK for 3 months and may never return. You may never get that plot back.

  3. Dead zones everywhere. If every build is surrounded by a No Man’s Land, then there will be ugly dead unclaimed wild zones between every build moving forward. Cities are going to be soooo ugly :frowning:

  4. Corn row griefing. xoxxoxxoxxox where o are beaconed rows and x are No Man’s Land. 12 plots for the price of 4 multiplied by the length of rows and determined by prestige. 120 plots for the price of 40.

  5. The game just becomes and feels less… boundless. A whole new layer of politics is added to, “Hey I’d like to start building in those unclaimed plots!”

Maybe… let this guild system play out and don’t do buffer zones just yet? I’m seeing so many unforeseen problems with them. Do we really want to affect 100% of the players for a problem maybe 2% experience?

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Ideas for how to do buffer zones right:

  1. Buffer zones are NOT permanent. Buffer zones temporarily surround builds until the build is either finalized or the time limit expires… say, 4 weeks? That should give you plenty of time to figure out what you’re doing with that build.

-or-

  1. A new plot automatically buffer zones the surrounding 8 plots. Once your build size contains 9 plots the buffer zone goes away.

-or-

  1. Buffer zones have to be physically placed; they aren’t automatic. Or the default for buffer zones is set to Off and must be turned on.
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This sounds decent for the most part, however, it would be nice if the names remained nonetheless. A settlement could still be absorbed and their prestige adding to the larger settlement, but it could be a nice touch to still allow every beacon owner to have the name of their place show up upon entry.

Also I would like to suggest an option to put leans on other player’s beacons. This would allow the actual taking over of someone’s beacon. This may raise a few hairs on some peoples necks but it would also allow for much cleaner looking cities, since players who have left the game can still have active beacons for months. A lean could be placed against another beacon under the following conditions: both beacons must be touching, the beacon being leaned must have been fueled for two weeks, and the leaning player’s beacon must have a higher prestige level. The defending player would have two weeks to respond and keep their land. A defended beacon would be safe from further inspection until it is fueled again and two weeks have passed.

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Opt in only agreement that’s a setting on the beaconed settlements. Other wise they don’t merge.

So if people want to merge they have to do it manually. Still won’t stop others from plotting next to you. Shouldn’t have to be in a guild just to protect your settlement’s identity.

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I cant see to figured this out.

Are the buffer zone meant to be around beacon only?
Or around plots?

Why do leaves give a negative prestige value a zero value is fine but a negative value doesn’t make sense can we get it changed to at least a zero value I shouldn’t loose points for creating a hedge sculpture. Or putting leaves on a custom built tree. “ BTW we need saplings so I dnt have to build another tree”

I am not sure if this idea is possible,
when every settlement connect each others, the warden (highest prestige one) still get the settlement name at first time. Add the settlement connect list on every player’s beacon, allow the beacon owner to cancel or connect settlements on the list.

I don’t think people will care if their settlement got force-merged so long as “their” settlement name is the only one that ever displays onscreen without opening the menu tab. Maybe some will still complain, "But if I dig 8 menus deep, we are still part of the Happy Happy Good Times settlement and not just Carl’s Settlement :frowning: " but in real cities a gas station can’t simply not become part of the city.

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as long as you keep to individual seperation promise i am fine with that, but it confuses me the way you explain it…

  • will i myself (as a solo player) for example be able to find a corner of a planet and build/claim as much as i like, Mr.Joe comes along and tries to place next to me, then because the plot diameter rule, they won’t be able to place the final plot (which will actually touch mine) unless i give them permission to do so? (remove the claim lock so they can connect etc???)

  • guilds do not effect me currently (and i think they never will effect the individual until that individual says ok i am now ready to join a guild??)

the only issue i see with the guild plots is that DragonStrom Hobos (made up guild name) can fully plot Desaryn 1 (made up planet name) because they have strength in numbers, which will in turn say a ton of expleetive to the solo player

So as long as there is

  1. Plot individuality (the solo guy can still plot where, how and when) does not get less focus than the guild plot mentality

  2. A fair way of doing it (the plot lock system i touch on is a good way of doing it (MR. Joe has a plot that i will eventually touch, would we still be allowed to *touch, but not join (until we BOTH decide to remove the plot/reservation lock?)

  3. or are guilds going to have their own entire planet (as was touched on a month or so ago?)

Other than that its fine, i see no issue pleasew do not forget us soloists!!!

I will have to I disagree. Why should another player get to use my prestige to become viceroy without any permission or agreement? Maybe I want to help another player become viceroy and want to merge with them instead of the player that forcibly merged with me. In the real world, at least where I live, you cannot be merged into a city without a vote. There is a difference between starting in a city and wanting to separate and being separate and then being forced to join a city. So I am not sure your gas station is a good example.

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Huge plus is now you can guild-align with the person you want to boost to Viceroy!

I believe that to be true. But it assumes you want to be in the guild and since you are limited to 5 guilds, you may not be able to do this in every instance. I could not find where James said the 5 guild limit so I might be wrong on the numbers.

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This needs to be a guild. :laughing:

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