We’re considering a system where Beacons can be easily transferred from one player to another, and in the future from a player into their guild. Naturally this could also be expanded to include selling your Beacon for Coin.
We’re keen to allow players to be able to easily and safely sell their builds but it could create new dynamics within the Beacon system - namely:-
Land Speculation - Plotting areas for no other reason other than to speculate on it being worth something in the future.
Extortion - Intentionally plotting in a way that blocks another player with the intention of forcing that player to buy the plots off you.
There are already terms in the Code of Conduct to limit players from plotting with the sole intention of blocking other players.
We want to open this up to the community to see if functionality for easily selling Beacons is something that is desired? Please feel free to let us know what you think and answer these quick questions which will hopefully help us define an appropriate design:
Q1. Do you feel Land Speculation is a legitimate tactic?
Yes - Land Speculation is a legitimate and fun tactic for earning Coin.
No - Land Speculation would negatively affect my enjoyment of Boundless.
0voters
Q2. Do you feel Land Speculation is pay2win?
Yes - Allowing beacons with no prestige to gain value by their location makes buying Plots pay2win!
No - As Plots can be earned. Everyone can speculate!
0voters
Q3. Would you like to see a system in place where you can easily and safely transfer Beacons for Coin?
Yes - Sell - I want to be able to easily sell Beacons for Coin.
Yes - Transfer Only - I should only be able to transfer Beacons for free.
No - Transferring Beacons will cause to many problems. Run away!
I’d really love to take this further and allow for ownership of individual subplots of a larger beacon to be able to take place. It would allow for people to build actual malls and apartments for others, especially with vertical builds.
Regarding beacon transfers: I hate the idea, but I can see one use for myself. I play with my wife and kids. If I find a nice area where we might want to set up, I could grab a sufficient number of plots for us and then transfer the plots to them when I show them the area when they’re all playing.
In that regard, maybe beacon transfer could be limited to guild members only? (I can see setting up a guild of just the family).
For a game that is supposed to be PvE, I think this makes it more PvP with out guns. Now what I need to do it grab all the land I can around portal hubs with as many beacons as I can, and hold it until someone wants to buy them. No need to build anything other than walls with a few doors so the land outside of mine has less value.
Why? One of the “roles” they marketed was an explorer who scouts on beautiful locations on planets, beacons it up, and sells it off. Currently you’d have to be paid, unclaim all of your plots, and then break your beacon. So much easier to just have a built-in mechanic for this.
I would thoroughly enjoy the ability to sale/trade/deed beacons and/or property. This was one of my favorite aspects of ultima online.
As long as you guys guarantee new worlds as has been stated, land value will never be insane. Only near hubs/massive markets. Everything else in the game is intended to drive player markets, I don’t see how land speculation shouldn’t either.
If you guys do decide to do this, I don’t think you should announce it. It should just be applied in an update. Giving people warning will allow a massive land grab to happen in anticipation of selling the plots. That would be horrendous.
As it currently stands however people have plenty of planet space on every existing planet to grab plots currently.
I think the biggest factor currently is you need to make building on high tier planets worth it. Some sort of build bonus like 20% power/spark/material reduction in crafting. This would encourage higher tiered players to leave the lower tiered planets for their sprawling builds.
I have a lot of thoughts on the plot/housing system and am anxious to see what you guys do with this aspect of the game. It’s definitely an untapped game area that I am looking forward to seeing grow over the next year as I check back in off and on.
Edit:
Please look to add a land tax system based on horizontal plot claims, not vertical claims as once you plot it’s reserved up and down regardless.
Have the tax system scale based on say 9x9 and then 12x12 etc until the tax hits a predicted max cap on any build past yy x yy. That’s a good general idea I think to start a basic idea off of. We desperately need a few decent money sinks. This would be a great starter imo.
If you own the portal hub and people value it enough to buy beacon space from you, then you’ve just made money.
If you own the portal hub and people don’t value it enough to buy beacon space from you, they’ll simply go elsewhere, leading you to either lower the price or make the space available for free.
If you do not own the portal hub and claim around it, you’re breaking the code of conduct.
Rules that are examined on a case-by-case basis. I think a case could be made that claiming every block surrounding a portal hub except for one plot is harassment.
We will have to disagree, I am not preventing them from expanding they have a path to expand. I am claiming now valuable property that I can sell. It is like claiming any resource which is specifically mentioned on the website as being ok. Even if you are right, then all it takes is another player to grab a few plots. But to the points raised this is going to create more conflict among players. If everyone is good with that, then they should vote that way. Anyone that says this will not create conflict has not read the forums.
Selling beaconed plots would be great addition to game and would bring new kind of possibilities to game. If this is added to game it would be great to have add same time suggested rent options, where owner can sell some rights for certain time frame to other players (and ability to rent just certain plot on whole beacon other words allow renting apartments from skyscraper).
As long as plots are still needed to unlock plots with cubits selling beaconed plots would be awesome thing for builders.
Cases of ninja plotting for fast coins when seeing someone else is just plotting area for own building would most likely increase.
Here’s how the current mechanic works.
Player A has claimed plots. Player B comes along and wants to purchase the plots. Player A and B would hand trade coin and then B has to wait for A to unplot everything. B has to beacon and quickly plot everything to regain protection.
With the new mechanic, regardless of if a sale or a transfers for no coin, it’d make the transfer instantaneous with the plots not losing protection and being vulnerable to someone coming along and snatching a plot as the manual transfer was taking place.
The scenario you describe of the portal hub could already happen with or without the beacon transfer mechanic being in game. This wouldn’t create any new possibilities that i’m aware of.
James explicitly stated that extortion is against the CoC:
Also the Code of Conduct itself has a point mentioned by Steggs:
It seems a game specific definition of what griefing or stopping expansion actually is but if you feel your expansion is being hindered, the simple solution is to simply a.) talk to the other player and, should that fail, b.) talk to Steggs.
And as @DonBab just mentioned, this isn’t changing any big mechanics, just makes selling of beacons easier.
@james, you don’t know how excited it makes me to think on a system where I’m able to build houses and sell them to people.
Some people don’t like building, but want a nice house. Players like me love building, but I don’t make money from it (I actually turn out in the severe negatives in both coin and time, but that’s not why I do it)
It’s something I absolutely want in the game, so I can go on building for a living both in-game and out.
Land speculation is already a thing. With this system it’s going to become more prolific… Which in my opinion is going to be quite annoying. I feel like there needs to be some sort of risk / cost for plotting close to other people to discourage excessive plotting. Maybe a coin tax for each plot that increases the closer you are to other people and gradually tapers off as you get further away from other beacons.
I think land speculation is in direct contrast to the CoC … the way I see it, you can’t really have both. On one hand, you’re encouraging people to grab land near others with the sole purpose of speculating that land is going to be worth something - most likely to the person that is already building there. On the other hand, you’re saying you can’t grab that land as it would prevent that player from expanding
I think it needs to be taken into consideration that as you can purchase plots for real money, it would be considered by many to be pay2win, as you don’t need to do anything specifically to earn from those plots (such as building on them for prestige).
Personally I would only want to see a transfer of a beacon and it’s collective plots if the purchasing player has enough plots to essentially swap with the seller. The buyer gets the claimed land and the seller gets plots from the buyer so everything balances out - whether that also involves a transfer of coin, I’d leave up to the seller - but i wouldn’t tie it in with the transfer.
That all said - to cut down on the cases of land speculation and extortion, maybe only allow the sale of a beacon / transfer of ownership, if the prestige level (per plot for sale) is at a certain to be determined level?
That way you don’t just get people plotting great swathes of land in the hope that someone wants them.
I have wanted to be able to transfer beacons to friends for a while but I don’t like the idea of it being done for coin in a way that would cause others to go around grabbing up every good plot they could find to sell. I think that would make it really hard for new people coming into the game to find places to set up.
