How "regenerative" should worlds be?

General
81

if it is a straight road, not so much, if it is a curvy road, quite a bit, but the same thing would go for the suggested infinite beacons for now

82

yeaah… no. but nice try Kim Davis.

Hmm… lemme see how many i can mention of the top of my head

  1. this would mean that if you go into a cave that have already been mined, you will reset the timer for the regeneration of stone, so with very little efford you could consequtively stop the regeneration of stone

  2. you force players to be very careful with where they move, because every step they take would stop the regen of that area of the world.

  3. if you want to argue ‘‘only the blocks you step on’’ what if the road is 5 blocks wide? does that mean that if one person travels it at a few times enough to stop regen, they have to step on all blocks?

  4. it would mean that roads that are not travelled constantly, daily or weekly (depending on how you imagine the regen taken) would get removed and you couldnt do anything about it, even if it was a road which was important but only needed to be used once every 2 or 3 weeks (for massive mining runs for example)

that is literally what i have been saying, if you build a road you should be able to keep it, even if it only you who use it, by beaconing it.

5 on the top of my head, five

now let me turn it around.

Riddle me this: How would it personally affect you that someone made a road which they beaconed even though it is rarely used, why are you so against letting roads stay?

83

Well, also we can discuss another way. Suppose, every block has stability factor (SF). SF may be calculated by nearest blocks SFs with weight coefficients.
Look at scheme:

Black - is a ground for example. Top picture is a view from side, bottom picture is a view from top. Red square - is our target. SF for air is zero, but all other block will had positive SF according to nearest blocks or it’s absence. When SF is lower, then more possibility to get block vanishing.

1 Like
84

I’m not see problem here. You want wait for regeneration of some world’s sector? Why? It’s a munchkin. Think about world so it’s never regen for you. Not finding digged materials again. Go find in another place.
But if you leave some place or building, it would be broken by natural way as a roads overgrowing and an ownerless building ruining IRL.

Well, player influence can cover not only one block under his legs, but some blocks around in minor part.

85

I think we’re focusing too much on niche uses for beacons and not looking at the broad, universal uses. I have a few opinions on how beacons should work, and I think the most simple, universal rules would work best of all. Let me start with some general expectations. Beacon laws if you will:

  1. A beacon’s protection is absolute.
  2. The Original Placer (OP) of the beacon is responsible for everything in that beacon.
  3. Only OP may give others permission to alter space within a beacon.
  4. OP never loses control of a beacon unless they end it.

After those 4 laws, I have a few personal opinions that I think would catch any edge case uses, including a different class of beacon that I will call Territory.

  1. Players should only receive one beacon, however it should be expandable via upgrading. This should be your permanent home. You should be able to keep it forever or disable and move it at your own will.
  2. Territories should act as temp beacons. As the name implies, you control this area like a beacon. Beacon laws 1,2, and 3 applied to it. However, you must pay monetary upkeep based on time and area protected. The greater the territory owned, the greater the personal cost.
  3. Expired territories should not immediately disapear! 1-7 days after expiration, anybody able to pay the upkeep cost should be able to claim ownership of the territory.

This has multiple implications.

  1. The more territory a player tries to claim, the more work required to maintain it. This would deter most grief cases itself, as the cost of maintaining a vast useless territory would quickly bankrupt any player not generating income to support it.
  2. Territory can be passed down to other players if the OP abandones it’s upkeep.
  3. Players willing to put forth extra effort to maintain large territories can do so. Players who aren’t willing, dont.
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86

This would encourage players to go further away from the capital/their home for new ressources and therefore encourage exploration. I think thats rather a point for the idea rather than against it.

I don´t quite get that point. Why would someone care if he resets the regeneration timer somewhere out in the wild?

I don´t want to.

Well for one you could visit it if you really care that much about that route, or use your own beacon to protect it. Otherwise the natural decay of abandoned builds would be quite realistic.

I don´t see that one as an argument against @Okkelinor s idea.

In no way, that’s why I wrote the paragraph you quoted.I´m completely fine with roads that someone build using his own beacons I just wanted to suggest an additional way of “naturally” occurring public roads.

1 Like
87

Quite a good idea but I think many people would be pretty upset with the limitation of 1 permanently protected beacon.
I´d suggest that a beacon is just significantly more expensive to set up that a territory and that you are not restricted to one upgradeable beacon but rather to a total area of beaconed space (meaning that you could also have plenty of small beaconed spaces rather than one big beaconed home).

The rest of the idea is quite awesome.

2 Likes
88

Alright, i apologize for getting provoked again, lets try to go to complete basic like havok did, since i think it is an endless cycle of 25% disagreement and 75% miscommunication. using a statement to explain the throught process which will start with ‘‘I think’’ i will start.

''I think that everything in the world which is not beaconed should be affected by the world regeneration, with almost no exceptions, either at a stable rate for every block or a specific time depending on the block type (for example stone takes longer than grass) there shall only be 1 exception to the rule, the world will pause the regeneration of blocks within a 3x3 area of the player (for blocks to not spawn in you) and continue with the remaining time when you move out.

To follow this beacons should have an initial cost and no extra incomes after that, to eternity, meaning that it will stay. Forever even when not used at a constant rate, the only exception to this rule should be beacons protecting something agains the games rules of conduct (for example statues of genitalia, nazi crosses or in any other way extremely racist and/or inappropriate

If the ‘‘normal’’ beacon have infinite height there should be a specific beacon for infrastructure which will have an initial cost depending on how many blocks it covers meaning that a 10x10 will cost as much as a 50x2 since they both cover 100 blocks, these beacons, like normal beacons, should stay forever unless they are extremely racist and/or Inappropiate, these will be more expensive on a per block ratio so people dont just use that as a way to get a huge building area’’

lets see what other peoples thought process is. the clearer it is the easier it is to argue (and yes i know some of you disagree with me, which is why i put it up so you can see precisely what you disagree with me about)

PS: the one problem i see with this is implications of infrastructure beacons vs ‘‘home beacons’’ in the sense of how would they react if you placed a home beacon on top of an infrastructure beacon.

89

Beacons

I agree that beacons, when placed, should last forever until they are removed. Inappropriate content inside these beacons should always be removed by moderators and the owner of the beacon should be given a warning (3-strike rule, then banned or something like that). Also, inappropriate content placed outside of beacons should also be immediately remove. I don’t know if moderators can determine which player placed certain blocks, but somehow the people responsible for inappropriate content should also be given punitive consequences.

Degradation of Blocks

I also agree that, outside of beacons, all blocks placed should degrade at a rate that is dependent on the type of block in question (dirt = fast, stone = slower, gleam = very slow, etc.) In other words, all blocks should have a “Time to Degrade” timer attribute maybe expressed in units of time until degradation. For example, when a dirt block is placed, it’s “Time to Degrade” timer should be set to 1000 (whatever). When a stone block is placed, it’s timer is set to 10,000 (or something like that).

Something additional here that was discussed above a bit. The presence of a player should reset this “Time to Degrade” timer so that frequently visited player-placed blocks outside of beacons should persist longer than those that are not visited frequently. Once a structure outside of a beacon stops getting visitors, it will degrade naturally. This would simulate the presence of visitors as player “upkeep” without actually having to repair structure, etc.

I am a firm believer that structures placed outside of beacons should be fair game for anyone on the server. After all, protecting structures is the point of personal beacons. “Griefing” in public areas should be self-regulating. I think this is also the point of an MMO - a thriving community should emerge and create ways and means to regulate negative activity.

Regeneration of Blocks

I think that all original world blocks removed should regenerate at a rate, again, dependent on the type of block in question (see above) – a “Time to Regen” timer attribute. I also agree that blocks within some proximity of the user should not be regenerated until after the user has moved out of range (3x3, 5x5, whatever). This doesn’t mean resetting their “Time to Regen” timer, this would just pause the timer until the user has moved out of range.

Taken to the extreme (to exemplify): if I were to dig (outside my beacon) a ton of dirt, move away from the area and then return a day later, the holes would have filled themselves in. However, if do the same but dig several stone blocks, when I return a day later the stone holes would still be there. It wouldn’t be until a week later that the stone holes would be filled in (for example).

3 Likes
90

Thank you, very, very important detail which we completely overlooked, the seperation of:

Degeneration of player placed blocks vs Regeneration of player removed blocks.

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91

Fisrt of all, 3x3 player’s reserved area is a very, very, very little. I think, all what player see must be reserved from natural regeneration.
Secondly, every player must have one and only one beacon. In other way we will collide with beacon’s griefing, when griefers will appropriate all what they can. I think, road’s beaconing is a false way. It’s not… economically vindicated, if you understand what I mean.

And I update my post about road’s degradation with illustration of this process.

1 Like
92

Well, if one (upkeep) free beacon is granted per world that should be enough. If someone wants more then they should pay the bill. The upkeep costs should not be to great and the time window for paying should be casual friendly, so that having more then one beacon don’t drive you into grinding gameplay.

But to have the option of temporal smaller beacons (for short lived outposts for example) is a good idea :wink:

But for the basic idea of beacons: I don’t like the idea that beacons are never expiring, cuz what if a player is stopping to play the game and he leaves houses or even greater fields in a crowded area beaconed? I think that would be quite awful after a while, so there should be a mechanic to make such beacons disappear after a long while. For example a player should have to click onto the beacon at least once in three month so that it continues. If you don’t (and ignore the messages reporting your beacons final weeks/days) your beacon vanishes.

4 Likes
93

Well, this is an excellent example of an edge case that would not be addressed in the simplified rules I posted before. In this case, we can look at how other games handle hording cases.

In many MMO’s, name hording is a very real issue. Games like WoW which have Millions of unique players, many with several characters per server, unique names can be difficult to come by. This can be equated directly to free land in Oort. Players with unused beacons or players who have quit the game eventually crowd out all new incoming players from finding that perfect spot to set their private home. How does WoW prevent all of the possible names from being used up by earlier players? Well, for starters there is a cap to how many characters you can have on any one server. In Oort’s case, you only really need one permanent home, so I suggest each player only gets one permanent beacon. But that still does not solve the question of what to do with beacons attached to abandoned accounts. What WoW does is they have annual or semi-annual name purges. Players who have not logged into their WoW account and do not have an active paid subscription may find their lowest level characters erased and the name freed up for other players. This would translate to beacons in Oort in much the same way. There is no need to occasionally go and “click” a beacon, or pay upkeep for your permanent beacon, because a beacon’s activity is simply attached to the account’s activity. Occasionally logging in or possibly even making any real money purchase on your Oort account (whether it be server rental, in game items, what ever) refreshes your account’s active status. On an annual or semi-annual basis (what ever is needed) accounts that have not been active after x months / years simply have any remaining beacons rolled back and everything within them restored at once.

I do NOT believe permanent beacons should be made available for others to purchase, since this is, or was, a players primary home, all manner of abandoned treasure troves could be suddenly dumped back into the game’s economy. An occasional abandoned territory is one thing, but hundreds of beacon’s worth of wealth suddenly popping back up into the economy could have disastrous results. Best to simply wipe it fresh and leave a clean slate.

No need for in game reminders or scheduling when to manually “refresh” your permanent beacon, as long as you are even slightly active on your account, you have nothing to worry about.

I quite agree, that would offer much more utility.

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94

and so what? what if he stops playing for a period, maybe the real world calls, how long should the experiation period be then? a week? too short, a month? too short, a year? too short. imagine you played the game, build a huge town or mansion or whatever where you collected a ton of materials and gold, and real life called so you might not have time for gaming in maybe a whole year, imagine yourself coming back to see everything destroyed and all of your things missing, would you like that? is that fair?

that is one thing that bothers me about all the ‘‘let beacons expire’’ because it is build on a me me me principle ‘‘i think they should expire because I might not like them being there and if there is no player using it it should be removed’’ there are, atm, 603 billion square meters of land, would it really matter, if a person was allowed to keep his beacon so even after a long break he can come back and continue where he left off?

with this is stand by my opinion ‘‘all beacons should stay forever unless they break the rules of the game (offensive)’’ and there shouldnt be a limitation on permanent beacons since it would discourage making permanent roads, shortcuts or even monuments around the world the players might see. however i think if they kept the beacons like now where they cover a set area i think it is fair that there is a scaling, so forexample if it takes 2 hours to farm 10 beacon shards (lets assume) then you would get your first beacon for free, the next would cost 20 beacon shards, the one after that would cost 80, the one after that would cost 240, so it goes up by 4x each time which means if you are willing to collect enough beacon shards you can have an infinite amount of beacons but it would be insanely expensive, i would personally much rather see this than the proposed ‘‘1 beacon per world’’ thing since it would encourage making a home on one world rather than making one on each, but at the same time it would allow you to make multiple beacons if you want to which can be used either on your home world or on another completely different world.

I can see that quite a bit of people think that removing beacons are necessary, could you please try to sum it up in very clear and concise points because i am curious but they just seem a bit odd atm, the ones i have seen so far is:

  1. i want to have the spot which the offline player claimed a long time ago
  2. i might not agree to how he build his house so i think i should be able to remove it if it havent been used in a long time
  3. there might be a lot of claims no longer used around

Number 3 is the one i find the most legit, however that should only apply to games with limited space, considering just how massive oort online (ben revealed way back that we had 603 billion square meters of land, ben mentioned it somewhere but i cant find it again, so it might be wrong) is i think we could have 1 000 000 beacons and there would still be way more space.to do the math

if we say a beacon is 50x50 and we have 1 million beacons, we would cover 2.5 billion square meters of land, meaning that if we made 1 million beacons right now, with the amount of worlds and space we have now (which is limited compared to the launch amount) we would only used up 0.4% of the space which the worlds offers, 0.4% for a million beacons this puts it quite a bit into perspective doesnt it?

1 Like
95

The last backer survey clearly showed that most of the players would prefer it if beacons of inactive players would expire.

Pasted image698×58 22.8 KB

So there is definitely a desire for such a system, for whatever reasons it might be.

And I think that no matter how busy your real life is, managing to log in for one minute in a time span of 3-6 months is always manageable.

3 Likes
96

Fair argument, i would completely support it if you just needed to be online 1 min and not actual go to the beacons to keep them up.

also gj digging that up.

I think the biggest problem in this discussion is that the subject is like a coin, it has 2 sides, and many of you want to focus exclusively on one side which means i have to focus on the other.

the sides in this case is

You guys side) Beacons placed by people who are no longer playing will just be a bother for those around them, either because it has a house which is not fitting, if it have semi done structures which makes the area look ugly or maybe it is just in the most ideal place and it is unfair that the person gets to keep his perfect spot even when not playing

My side) Knowing that your beacon will stay there forever and not being limited to 1 puny beacon will allow for great community things to show up, things such as monuments, hidden temples, passages that people can use and created puzzles which a person might one day find hidden deep in a mountain, if people are forced to pay constant upkeep or know that their beacon and thus their work will disappear anyways you effectively discourage people from making these things, since they rightfully dont want to pay constantly just for trying to improve the game. the same thing with limiting the amount of beacons, if you can only have a certain amount of beacons for no reason at all, then people will obviously only use beacons for things they think are extremely important such as a house (which is precisely what some of people in the discussion wants so beacons are not used freely, but only on very important things)

Both sides are reality, both sides matter, picking one will destroy the other, so now its a matter of which side do you think gives the best ‘‘bonuses’’ so to say.

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97

What if you have a “free upkeep” value per world, enough for having one mega beacon or two large ones or four normal ones and so on. This is used to “pay” the upkeep for the largest ones you have and the others are then free to you to chose if you want to keep them or not (also paying if not online for at least three month of inactivity). So if you want to have more you can still have and pay them, but the main pool is enough to satisfy most people.

And yes, to just log in to show the servers you still live should be enough to keep them ingame (for a long period of time).

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98

Another thing that is also important is also how blocks regen.

i can think of 3 different ways

for the examples i will use a block with a 10 hour regen time

  1. Snap Regen

after removing the block it will be gone for 10 hours, when those 10 hours are up they will snap into place, meaning a sec before they wont be there, a sec after they will. to prevent weird bugs this would go into the whole ‘‘when you are within a 3x3x3 of a block the timer will stop while you are there but not reset, this would be to avoid getting stuck in spawning blocks’’

  1. Visual Regen

After the 10 hours are gone a ‘‘portal’’ or ‘‘shine’’ wil appear

it will stay for 10 secs which after that the block will appear,

would require same rules as first one, but this might be more Lore friendly.

  1. Procedural Generation (personal favorite)

When the time is at 90% in this case 9 hours the block will spawn with 1% ‘‘Durabilty’’ or ‘‘1% completion’’ which means that it will spawn a broken block, over the next hour the blocks will gain completion, if you choose to destroy the block you only get that percentage of materials from it, so a 50% completion block will only give 50% of the drop, this would mean that if you just want to get past then you can destroy it, but if you want materials you have to decide do you want to get it now so you can continue? do you want to wait so you can get more materials? do you want to keep going and come back later, knowing that someone else might have taken it, I personally think this might add an interesting element to the game :smiley:

there might be others that i havent considered, feel free to post them.

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99

Well, @ben, how world’s regen will work as a matter of fact? Kuma said it’s already making.

100

How do you know when a block is e.g. at 78% or at 23%?