To clarify: I don’t actually ‘love’ it and still think it could do with tweaking, but I do think it’s overall better than not, and it seemed like the most appropriate of the choices available.
I think it needs more than tweaking. In its current form it needs removing as its a complete headache.
We unplotted an area so it could be transferred to another guild member and it reserved the land and buildings for a random person who was plotted up one side of it. Had to wait until James could come over and he seemed to think it fair the other guy had a say in the land despite our wishes to transfer from one guild member to another. In the end James spoke to the other the player who got the reservations and he graciously gave them back. Now we cannot afford to move any plots around between members or alts for fear of this happening again. Every time we need something done we will need to call on James to ‘fix it’. I forsee his call out rate becoming vastly greater than it ever was for boundary disputes!
I’d recommend changing it so that if you remove a plot but still have other plots within range, the boundary reverts to your control in preference to the oldest-plot-first system.
Well this would be a step in the right direction, I grant you that much.
But as I originally stated, in its current form scrapping would be the best option as from this experience alone and seeing the chaos at Majorvex’s mall, its quite apparent this system is far from being a helpful tool. Adding to this the fact that under this reservation system, its quite possible for inactive players to end up in control of reserved plots. Again this would require James intervention as no chance of getting them back otherwise.
I also forgot to mention another issue which is a knock on from this too. With these plots falling into the hands of other players as reserved we have lost chunks of our builds that were on them. So its not just only about getting the plots back, its also the hours of work lost and the materials too
How about this. There is an existing mechanic to flag plots as reserved. This can be applied horizontally as well as vertically as we have seen with the buffer zones. If the problem to be solved is forced merges then my idea might work. If it is to keep players building next to each other then it will not work and my only suggestion is to plot it. It is a twist on opt in/opt out. If the developers can flag plots on the edge of a player build as reserved and plotted or just plotted then this might work.
OK so you add one setting to the beacon and opt in opt out setting.
Opt in - If your beacon is set to opt in then if ANY player build touches yours and they also have their beacon set to opt in, then your settlements will merge. This is really what is happening now so no change. Your plots on the edge of your build are flagged as plotted only.
Opt Out - If you beacon is set to Opt Out then any player build that touches yours while the setting is set to opt out will not merge. The plots on the edge of the player build are marked as reserved and plotted. The game could use the reserved setting to prevent the merge since reserved plots do not currently merge but use the plotted setting to avoid things like regen.
Once you are part of a settlement you cannot opt out. The effects only work for new builds that touch your build and would have no effect on existing settlements. If a group of players wanted to they could create their city while all set to opt in then once they had it done set it to opt out so they would still be a city but not be able to be absorbed into another city.
This system work not.
I remove plots for a guild member , and i remove 1 plot the resverd now for a ohter player, But my land ourond, this land/beacon is the oldest in the planet, game was realase and 16 minutes later i set the beacon, and the beacon as 8.6Millionen Prestige, the ohter player 26 000 and he set for 4weeks .
Maybe it just needs to be stripped back and reapplied with the default being set as buffers being turned off for all current beacons and a message for players to turn them on if they require them… then any newly created beacons can be on as default (I say new ones on as default as it’s better to be safe than sorry).
Dare I say, it may require another interface (or easy to craft tool?) so players can see where they are in the plot hierarchy. No idea how that would work though!
I presume the footfall fix is a no brainer here and will be in whatever update comes. Without that fix defaulting buffers to off will cause an outcry that puts this week’s drama to shame IMO, and just based on reactions to past footfall issues.
The fact that the buffers can consume non-adjacent plots is MAJOR as well.
The trolling potential here for active community builds is still huge, an update that just sets this existing system to “default to off” is not a solution.
