Informations about the OLD Beacon-System

[Heurazio]

Hi all,

now, that we have the survey about the new beacon system I thought to myself, that it is time to take a close look at the old system. therefore i analysed the data which are provided by the old beacon request thread.

Overall there are 284 Beacons (requested in the thread, i have no informations about request via PM) on 49 Worlds.

For my statistics a assumed that the radius of a beacon is 25 if there is no other dimension requested (@ben can you confirm this value ?)

For a better comparability you can find the current plot sizes in table 1.

As you can see in the second table, the smallest requested beacon has a radius of only 15 blocks (remember, old beacons have a full 255 Blocks hight) and therefor would require 113 plots in the new system. Assuming that only ~the half of an old beacon is build it would still require 56 plots.
This values escalate quickly for the average beacon size (84 radius) and for the larges beacons (600 radius) that have been requested. You can also see that the deviation is really high with a value of 114 radius.

In figure 1 you can see the numbers of each beacon size (intervall) that have been requested. you can see that the peak is between 25 and 200 where also the average beacon size (84 radius) can be found. you can also see that there is a noteworthy amount of beacons with a radius of over 300.

in figure 2 you can find some informations about the number of collaborators for the single beacons. you can plainly see that most of the beacons don’t have any collaborators (single player) but there are also a lot of beacons with 1 or 2 collaborators (2 or 3 players). The biggest cooperative beacon has 19 mentioned players.
(Please note that i was not able to track collaborator changes over time)

Last but not least i created a map of the positions of all beacons within their worlds.

As you can see in figure 3 most of the beacons are relativ close to the center of the worlds (capital) while bigger beacons tend to be in the wild.
(If you like the original in 8192x8192 write a PM)

EDIT: In response to @Stretchious i splited up the graph for the single servers.

As you can see in table 3 11 of the 12 most populous worlds are EU worlds. EU West leads with 62 beacons over all followed by EU East with 44 beacons and EU Central with 33 beacons. The lesses pupulated worlds are in Australia (Veedle) with only 8 beacons. It is an interesting side-node that not one US world made it under the top 12 worlds while in fact the most forum visits (~40%) come from the US.

Ruchs, Xewell, Agabab, Lapas

Folva, Selta, Meezan, Gortnen

Cshmire, Veedle, Vadvy, Lepker

As you can see in figure 4, 5 and 6 the beacon placement is mostly random but over all - as shown in figure 3 - there is a focus on the worlds center (capitol).

I hope i can help you with your answers for the new beacon poll and can help the devs shaping the new beacon system to a better one

[Thorbjorn42gbf]

As most of the beacons I have seen maybe use somewhere around a quarter of the height and especially the large beacons would use considerably less space as the beacon system we use right now is flexible enough to not need to fill out all the space inbetween the heigher buildings

[Heurazio]

@Thorbjorn42gbf

not need to fill out all the space inbetween the heigher buildings

that’s a thing i’m not sure about at the moment. in my opinion it is a problem that the new system creates more “free” / unprotected space because i think, it might be a griefing problem if someone cann build “around” your buildings and mess up the environment around you. imagine someone places lava and water over your tower … you get a huge mess with granite …

[Stretchious]

Admittedly, the potential for griefing with the new beacon system, has been one of my concerns as well… I keep envisioning building a house on top of a hill, then not being able to come online for a couple of days, only to come back and find that someone has excavated the entire hill and my lonely house is floating somewhere up in the sky… unreachable

[dwarvenname]

/r/theydidthemath. Cool post though. Interesting to see all this information laid out in graphs.

[dwarvenname]

Then again, this can be fixed by the world regeneration system. Apparently the systems are already in-place, but would need new worlds to actually work.

[Thorbjorn42gbf]

People can alway do that kind of thing, only real way to hinder it is to disalow people from building/destroying all together.

[Stretchious]

I was wondering if the world regeneration would handle that sort of thing. For some reason I had it in my head that it would just deal with things like mineable resources and trees etc.

In that case I can sleep more easily knowing I don’t need a grappling hook to get home

@Heurazio - apologies, I went slightly off topic on your post there! Loving the graphs you’ve produced though… are you able break it down into specific server locations, so EU Central, US West etc? I think it would be interesting to see build patterns for different regions.

[Saint-X]

@Stretchious

Admittedly, the potential for griefing with the new beacon system, has been one of my concerns as well… I keep envisioning building a house on top of a hill, then not being able to come online for a couple of days, only to come back and find that someone has excavated the entire hill and my lonely house is floating somewhere up in the sky… unreachable

yes. i think full high beacons like the old beacons much more better. i don`t like the new beacons.

this is one of my first buildings, the skybuilding in the front is from me, in the background the second skybuilding is from Heurazio. This buildings not small.

They are protected from one of our old beacons. but how should we protect this with the new beacon system ? ^^
We have nearly fully built here from the ground up to the sky

i love to build in the sky, but with the new beacons it is hard to protect skybuildings. i think it was a radius about 30-40 (calc. size r=32)

64x64x255 fields =>8832=2048 → i need 2048 plots to safe this building, now the question, how should i setup the plots in the sky ? and how long it will need ?

i think beacons should be full high, its easier to setup, and griefing is not so easy because you cant build around it.

original the buildings were build with the old blue gleam ^^ not pink XD

[Thorbjorn42gbf]

I think that the problem with the high beacons (as noted by othr people as well) is that they force the player to make high builds. Or they give insane amounts of possible space (Very much depending on the amount of beacons we get)

[FeralLoneWolf]

@Thorbjorn42gbf

I think that the problem with the high beacons (as noted by othr people as well) is that they force the player to make high builds. Or they give insane amounts of possible space (Very much depending on the amount of beacons we get)

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I don’t like the idea of full height (bedrock to sky) beacons because I like my “Mine” to be below my “Base”… and therefore would like the resources below to regenerate… tho I would like to have some height to protect builds… or even just to keep my entry to the caves below from regenerating.

Questions arise… How fast is the regen?.. Will a well traveled path/road/stair not regen even if no beacon is present?

[Saint-X]

@Thorbjorn42gbf

I think that the problem with the high beacons (as noted by othr people as well) is that they force the player to make high builds

Why you forced to make high buildings ? you don`t need to build a high building but it is possible. if the beacon still 8 field hight you need to much beacon plots for a high building.

AND you can say the same argument again it. if we have no full high beacon we forced to build no high buildings and only at the ground.

@FeralLoneWolf you don`t need to write nearly the full text bold ^^

@FeralLoneWolf

I don’t like the idea of full height (bedrock to sky) beacons because I like my “Mine” to be below my “Base”… and therefore would like the resources below to regenerate… tho I would like to have some height to protect builds… or even just to keep my entry to the caves below from regenerating.

the question is how regenerations works. is regeneration active in a beacon or not ? is it possible to set up a special block or area to force regeneration?

my question to you is, do you like full high beacon not only because the regeneration or dou you have some other reasons ?

[Thorbjorn42gbf]

@Saint_X

Why you forced to make high buildings ? you don`t need to build a high building but it is possible. if the beacon still 8 field hight you need to much beacon plots for a high building.

Because of effectivity, if beacons is a limmited resource building large 1 story building will be much less feasable than building 3232200 towers.

[Vastar]

@Saint_X

64x64x255 fields =>8832=2048 -> i need 2048 plots to safe this building,

There is no need to beacon the whole height of the world if you want to protect the structure in the sky and the building on the ground, you can just beacon each creation separately. So you would effectively only need 64 (+ a few for the sphere in the middle) beacons for the gleam structure in the sky and another few for the structure on the ground. There is no need to connect those plots.

@Saint_X

Why you forced to make high buildings ?

Forced might be the wrong word but I think the devs nailed it when they posted the patchnotes for the beacon patch:

@ben

Cubes vs Columns
As mentioned, the plot size is cubic, not a full height column (as the old Beacons were). This was a decision we debated about at length. In the end we made the decision for cubic Beacons because we didn’t want to add incentive or disincentive to the shape of players builds.

For example: in a full-height model we’d have to give players a much smaller amount of plots because columns are much, much bigger. This would put a massive incentive on tower building, and make building things like roads or other flatter structures really expensive. Ultimately it would force a cost onto the shape of player builds and creativity. For that reason, plots are cubic. Claim space for the shape of the build you’re making, and don’t worry about cost.

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@Saint_X

AND you can say the same argument again it. if we have no full high beacon we forced to build no high buildings and only at the ground.

This isn´t true. The current beacon system makes it as easy to expand upwards/downwards as to expand outwards. So it is as encouraging for high builds as it is for wide builds.

[Stretchious]

@ben

in a full-height model we’d have to give players a much smaller amount of plots

@ben

and make building things like roads or other flatter structures really expensive.

I’d say that these 2 statements are probably the most important here… with less plots, as we would already have so much space height-wise, we would never build areas to play together as a community. No one would want to spend a plot allocation making a road if the allocations are a much scarcer resource.

Whilst I’m not a fan of the current fixed-grid beacon system, I do feel that it is headed in the right direction with regards to overall balance and gameplay. My only real quibble with the system is the fixed-grid aspect of it. If we were able to change the physical positioning of the allocation in relation to an adjoining plot, I think most people would be not just satisfied, but actually happy with it.

[james]

Hey - really cool post. It’s interesting to see the distribution of beacons. I’d never considered visualising it like this before.

Btw - if you want the real beacon data it would be quite simple for me to share it with you. But your data is probably ~90% correct.

@Stretchious

Admittedly, the potential for griefing with the new beacon system, has been one of my concerns as well… I keep envisioning building a house on top of a hill, then not being able to come online for a couple of days, only to come back and find that someone has excavated the entire hill and my lonely house is floating somewhere up in the sky… unreachable

A couple of things to remember:

1. The Worlds will regenerate - so if someone does excavate underneath your beacon it will recover. (Maybe the world closest to a beacon should recover faster?)

2. Players have a finite # of beacons - so if a player does use the beacons to grief people they’ll soon run out. (I’m not suggesting that this means they’ll be no beacon griefing. But it does mean that griefing isn’t an unlimited fuel.)

3. We clearly need to consider anti-griefing features.

@Stretchious

In that case I can sleep more easily knowing I don’t need a grappling hook to get home

Just wasted my time posting the above… Still going to post to make is more official.

@Saint_X

yes. i think full high beacons like the old beacons much more better. i don`t like the new beacons.

A couple of considerations for full height beacons:

1. I was a major proponent of full height beacons - but the more and more I thought about it - the more I realised that it isn’t the most optimal solution.

2. What happens if a player is wandering through a cave under your house and falls in a hole. They can’t dig themselves out. We would need an ‘teleport / eject / hara-kiri’ solution.

3. We have / are considering the following tweak: if you place a cube beacon, all the plots in the column are automatically reserved for you to claim. No one else can claim them.

4. Why would we favour building vertically over building horizontally? Building towers is cool. Building towns, bridges, roads, flat things is also cool.

5. What is a player wants to build on a floating island or in a cave? They’re blocking the space below the island or on the surface for other players.

@FeralLoneWolf

Questions arise… How fast is the regen?.. Will a well traveled path/road/stair not regen even if no beacon is present?

The plan is for the world to regenerate as originally generated but for the resources to be redistributed. So you can’t camp on a known spot of bounty.

@Saint_X

the question is how regenerations works. is regeneration active in a beacon or not ? is it possible to set up a special block or area to force regeneration?

Regeneration will not happen within a beacon.

Allowing player control to trigger the regen is something we can consider.

A cool feature of the regen is that it’s more like decay, the world will gradually return to the original state. Holes will fill, poles will shrink, etc. This is better because it means that it can happen whilst players are in the area. Rather than an instant switch that flips the world back to it’s original state - which has all sorts of problems: can it happen whilst players are near by? what if they’re looking? does it mean regen doesn’t happen often near beacons? etc.

[KuroKuma]

Could you give a rough estimate how fast the regeneration is?

[james]

How fast do you think the regeneration should be?
What rules do you think it should follow?

[Thorbjorn42gbf]

@james

What rules do you think it should follow?

I feel it should regenerate rather slowly taking at least half a day for a full regen of an area (That would be the abselute minimum for me)

Area traveled by players should note regen (Is it possible to do this in beacon sized areas? So we don’t hinder regen from top to bottom)

Nearby beacon owners should be able to activate regen withing a distance of their becaon (depending on the size of the beacon collection) So very traversed areas around town can be kept cleans if the owners wish.

[dwarvenname]

Hey James, I PM’d you a couple days back. Might wanna check on that