The last couple of requests for Help! have been super helpful. (Here and here). We ask for input when we’re talking about ideas within the team and want to get the communities opinion. Instead of assuming we know what everyone would think, why not just ask? The threads contained some healthy debate and I hope everyone enjoyed contributing. It’s a process that we plan to continue using given the responses we’ve received so far.
One area @olliepurkiss, @lucadeltodecso and I would like to address is the Prestige calculation - and the purpose of this thread is to gauge community support for reworking the system. We would need community support for changes to the prestige system because it could result in dramatic changes to beacon and settlement prestige scores, and hence the Warden and Viceroy labels.
A few players can likely already imagine where this is going, as there have been some similar threads recently. (Here, here and here.)
Prestige can often be a little misunderstood, so let me start by defining what I think Prestige is:
Prestige is XP for your build. Some players enter a sandbox game and want to be left alone to explore, build and be creative. Others enter the sandbox and think “now what?” Prestige is a way for the game to help these players understand that they’re making progress with their build. Some players get sufficient satisfaction from the creative process whilst others like a score ticking along helping acknowledge every step they take. Additionally prestige helps create a progression system for beacons, either by the labels a beacon and settlement receive or by comparison between beacons within a settlement, settlements within a world, or between the worlds themselves.
Prestige isn’t about beauty, it’s about cost. Prestige doesn’t attempt to evaluate anything aesthetic. It does reward a degree of chiselling and using blocks from other worlds. The majority of the score is supposed to reflect the resource and time investment that went into the blocks used. Cheap blocks return little prestige, where as expensive refined and decorative blocks much more. High prestige should mean high investment.
Players are free to totally ignore prestige, and I’m genuinely glad some do. It is a system that can give you direction, or can be ignored if you have plenty direction already.
What are the problems?
Block prestige needs to be normalised. The prestige a block returns should be directly proportional to the cost it took to create. At the moment some blocks return significantly more prestige than others given how easily they can be made. Refined Gleam is the most well know outlier. We need to rebalance all the block’s prestige scores so that independent of your preference for materials the cost of gathering + crafting them is consistently counted across all builds.
Variety should be rewarded. Again the algorithm says nothing of aesthetics, but I think the algorithm should reward players for using a diverse variety and value of blocks.
Given the extensive threads that we’ve already had here about prestige, refined gleam, and towers - maybe we can get straight into a simple poll.
Q. Do you think that we should rebalance and normalise the prestige system:
I kind of feel, that when you add the settlement protection area around plots that you mentioned somewhere else, the need to tamper with presitge will be gone, as it will be no longer possible to over take someone else’s settlement as they will no longer be able to plot right up against you any longer.
so i don’t really think this needs to be changed.
However if you do change this system. Do not also make this based on footfall, a vote system or anything else that can cause someone who is “popular” for whatever reason, to automatically have an advantage just because they were lucky enough to become that popular. I saw a few suggestions for this somewhere else at some point. Any solo player should have the fighting chance to build super high prestige builds if they put in the work to do so.
Edit
On 2nd thought. I do feel that natural blocks that are placed by players should be worth more. I don’t think anything should be nerfed, Only the blocks that are lacking should be buffed.
I thought it was/did?
This I feel is the only way to design the system in such a way it can be objective and remain reasonable, and it needs to remain this way since “Beauty” is extremely subjective.
Personally, I think the only prestige tweak we need is gleam. Though I see no reason there couldn’t be a third, decorative or compact, level of gleam to compensate.
I also think decorative blocks could use a boost now that they require wax.
IMO 2 blocks need balanced atm refined gleam and machined blocks.
Machined blocks give an obscene amount of prestige atm and doesn’t seem to be proportional to the cost at all.
Same with refined gleam
I think whatever the measure is… it really needs to have more diminishing returns on blocks repeated, because if it’s just a reduction people will just do the next highest thing as many people have already said in other posts. I like gleam, I use gleam because I like the light source… but I still wouldn’t want an entire tower made out of it
I must second that. While an experienced player with a rich resource base can produce lots of machined blocks in a quick run, they still require multiple resources and steps to be manufactured.
I can see why they have a problem with it, the natural blocks are really easy to get… so they can’t make them worth too much… I think the only way to make it work would be if you could convert blocks to another one like turn gleam to look like grass or wood or whatever and have it have the value of the block you use to make it… that way you can put in blocks that have value at the same time as making it look nice
Thank you for the insight into what prestige is meant to represent. I fully agree with the definition and think a rebalancing with that in mind is a good idea.
I do hope you can find a way to properly reward aesthetics at some point though, maybe through a separate ‘like’ system with it’s own rankings
for sure not saying they need to be worth alot if anything but right now the way the system reads them is they are worth negative prestige so your prestige goes down with the more natual blocks you have so even makeing them worth only 1 per would be a massive boost
I think the prestige system could be balanced at a later date (or incrementally!), so that other content isn’t pushed back due to development resources being eaten up.
Normalization would be fantastic, effort to get blocks directly equal to value in the algorithm. the modifiers is where things get tricky, because punishing people who like natural blocks isn’t a great thing. and rewarding people who make several block thick walls of gleam with chiseled interiors just to up their number is also not great. so that is where i think you will need to be careful.
though i’m very glad you guys are taking a look at it, you could postpone any intense work since i would prefer patching and content to this particular balance (since new content could imbalance it as well).
It makes no difference to me what you do with this system. I couldnt be less interested in building anything pleasing as i literally operate out of a hole in the ground lol. But gleam banks are a problem, gleam should not have so much value as its very ugly when used as a main block opposed to accenting other things
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