HELP! Give us your opinion on refactoring prestige calculation?

Devlog
84

I think in retrospect the Prestige system was a bad idea from the beginning. It incentivises one group of people to dump as many high value blocks on the ground as possible, and limits the other group of people to a bunch of parameters they might not have wanted to adhere to.

In my opinion, the founder of the city should be the Mayor, and after a set period of inactivity on their part it should pass to the next person in line, and so on - or could be passed on by the Mayors themselves. The size of a settlement should be tied to the number of accounts that have a beacon within the settlement.

Alas, that’s just me daydreaming - because the system is too far along for a huge redesign now, so amendments will have to suffice.

Take away tangible rewards from the Prestige system, and use it merely as a score for those inclined. Remove the negative natural block modifier, and set all natural blocks to a Prestige score of 1 (though I’d perhaps think about making things like Mould, Growth and Sponge higher, as Gleam is worth 6, and isn’t much harder to get)

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85

Im for this also. The founder retains leadership/naming rights until he either becomes inactive or passes it on. If someone doesn’t like the name they can decide to settle elsewhere. Retaining capital status should be the only competition.

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86

This is kind of my point. Players think the settlement system is one thing and devs think it’s another. Settlements are currently a bad way for players to group together. That’s why everyone wants to change it. But as long as settlements are meant by the devs to be a prestige competition they can’t give players what they want.

Could be easier to not allow prestige to affect the general workings of a town beyond footfall levels and world rankings. I mean you could still have player rankings within a town but have it not affect Warden/Viceroy status.

You’ll still run into issues of ugly builds and people prestige vaulting for those rankings but they ultimately don’t impact the gameplay of anyone else like losing the ability to name a town does. My entire community of 20+ active players all had to up and move to a new planet because we not only had a prestige troll but also one willing to dump huge amounts of money into the game to outplot all of us.

I’m pretty certain if that was to happen to us again I would definitely leave the game for an extended period of time (if not permanently) and a good chunk of the player base that plays with me would do the same.

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87

I use a lot of natural blocks in my builds but I wonder if it would have any significant affect on prestige value for those that plot vast swathes of land and all those blocks get calculated into the build. If natural blocks are given any prestige buff then perhaps it should only apply to placed blocks if that’s even possible.

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I have to vote No, because it doesn’t solve the issue. While Gleam Towers is an issue because Gleam Prestige is so high and easy to farm, the issue isn’t actually ‘Gleam Prestige’, or ‘How Prestige is Calculated’.

No, the issue is the Prestige system being tied to other systems, namely Footfall reward, and Warden.

You mention right in your post that Prestige is just meant to be a useless number that goes up as a score, because it helps some people that need that to keep playing a sandbox game. However, as it’s implimented right this second? It’s not just for a show, it’s not something to be ignored. It keeps your status as Warden, and it denotes how much money you get from people visiting your build.

If Prestige really is just meant to be a visual guide to help players, then it needs to be removed from effecting any other system. Use it to compare on a leaderboard, but not have Warden status tied to that leaderboard, nor Footfall to the tiers, or anything else tied to it that we don’t know about.

So no, This suggestion gets a no, cause it doesn’t solve any issues. The players will just find another easy replacement, or with gleam still being so easy to find and mine, just spam even more of it in a bigger area. Either way, the problem is still there.

Not going to happen for another year I bet. They are still balancing the game, and if the Halloween Event was any indication, the Devs can’t, or won’t, put much effort into actual Content.

So I just gave up. I play Starpoint Gemini Warlords instead now. You should play it too. Or a better game, X3 Albion Prelude. Both games more fun than this right now.

Edit:

This post wasn’t off topic, a small section of it was a reply to another post, but the main part and majority of the post was indeed on topic about my opinion with changes to how Prestige Calculations being tweaked.

Don’t flag posts just cause you don’t like them, or the person who created them, flag them for breaking the rules.

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89

I am okay with whatever but I would prefer to have actual real content updates that let me play around with more stuff. If there was RNGed dungeons on newly released worlds that would certain get me playing a lot more.

:man_shrugging:

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90

New content and balance changes toward existing content can be worked on at the same time. Balance changes can be fairly trivial, hence why they are seen often, nearly every patch, but new content, especially content that involves entirely new and expansive systems like RNG dungeons require tremendous amounts of time and effort to develop over many months, even years.

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91

My lack of play time for Boundless isn’t because of the state of the game. It’s because I have a lot going on every single day. I’ve played those games you mentioned and have a multitude of other things I am looking forward to playing along side Boundless.

Oh I know. Just public wishful thinking and hoping. They know they need to get new content pushed out. I am extremely patient with games that I really enjoy playing but avoid trying to get burned out on. Boundless definitely is one of those games. :+1:

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92

For someone who’s given up and moved on to other games, you sure spend a lot of time trying to make other people unhappy here. Perhaps their forums would be better suited for you than ours?

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Don’t know what you mean by spend a lot of time. That post was my first post in… what 4 days? 7?

Either way, not much else to say. This post I saw when I checked back, gave my opinion, and now I’ll be leaving. See you in a few more days, or a week. However long it’s been, I don’t care enough to check.

94

I would rather have the update sooner vs later. As we build more and more changes will have greater impact later. The sooner we can have the re-balance and re-work of the system the better it will be for builders.

Based on other posts by the Dev’s, there is already a plan to prevent merging (outside of prestige) which would allow for removing prestige /naming issues.

Blockquote
This system doesn’t attempt to deal with forced Settlement merging. Retaining a Settlement’s identity will be resolved by features coming in the Guild system.

So the only outstanding issue is should prestige determine Warden/Capital?

I would think that the Capital would be the city with the most beacons connected with the most number of different players. That could be pulled out of the prestige system pretty easily.

yay for balancing! Looking forward to it.

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95

Your opinion on the topic is apreciated. Your edit degrading the devs and telling everyone they should quit the game like you was not apreciated.

I don’t mean this maliciously, but perhaps a ban would be good for your (and our) mental health. If this forum makes you feel so negatively all the time, then you really should try to spend less time here.

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96

I was thinking that it has been a lot nicer on the forums lately. :+1:
let’s try for a month or two this time :smile_cat:

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Well I know one major town on my planet. They were the capital for awhile with over 1 million prestige. They do have some cool buildings and a store. But they gain there prestige from burying hundreds maybe thousands of extractors just under the surface. When you run through the area the game gets laggy and was crashing a lot when they had there portal open. I think its a bit cheesy of a way to gain prestige. But whatever floats your boat I guess.

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98

on topic my only hope is that you guys add districts that have there own distinct names chosen by the community that opt into being a part of it. that and bring the prestige inline with how difficult the block is to make. lower for gleam higher for brick.

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99

I voted Yes - That’s because I believe the system needs to change.
But I don’t agree with the proposed change.
As many stated before me, the problem is not the value of blocks but the prestige system as a whole.

Right now the prestige system is a let down for all of the builders who enjoy:

  • Massive Terra-forming projects
  • Settlements with a theme
  • Using same-planet materials
  • Using “ugly” blocks like sand\gravel\ash for their special colors

The system ranks them as B-type builders and that is not a “fun” rank to be in.

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100

I would like a way for natural looking blocks, maybe refined or decorative versions, to have prestige value, even if they still look the same as the natural ones.

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101

I think James’s question was about prestige. I believe that the issues with settlements being absorbed and renamed will be addressed by the protection zones and the guild system.

So if the settlement being absorbed and renamed are handled by a different mechanic, do we still think the prestige systems needs to be overhauled/tweaked?

I would say yes. I still think the effort needed to gather and produce a block should be factored into the prestige for the block. I also think while variety can also produce some ugly builds that are built purely for prestige, it does reward most builds and I would be good with this. I also like the suggestion that player placed natural blocks should add to prestige. I think if a rock adds prestige so should a tree.

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102

I think the biggest problem here is that people want the settlement name, or capitol city name. Regardless how you balance this, people will build the most efficient block to become a warden or viceroy. This is why people have trouble ignoring prestige.

There will still be some people who build prestege-optimized builds in the top cities, but for everyone else it wouldn’t matter because they would be able to control who is in their settlement.

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103

I like this idea from pseudonumym84. Where the original name is retained unless the person becomes inactive for an extended period of time or the original beacon runs out of fuel and then the next most senior beacon takes over at that point.

It would make more sense, a city name in real life wouldn’t change based on which building was biggest or best, but by the original founder or popular vote.

Since popular vote is not in scope for boundless, then I think settlement name should be allocated to the most senior active beacon and character.

And to be fair if that person settled there first and had an original plan, then others came to settle with that person, then that original builder should retain his naming rights. @james

And of course that original beacon can be renamed by the founder of the settlement, which is fair in my opinion, to suit the needs of the direct community if needed. Which would keep any prestige grinding for settlement name or mayor from occuring.

Edit: Then if someone plots up against an already existing settlement, the person who plotted the plot that joined the two settlements can decide to join the other settlement or they can stay their own settlement, but cannot remove the other person from founder power. Keeping merging issues from happening, and disallowing stealing of names/rights

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