The issue isn’t with the 4 week fuel, it’s with the higher level fuels that last longer. They should all be super easy (for new ppl).
I dont know of a MMO that you lose items in either. If you miss content and you’re less powerful than you can be, that’s okay, because you can always play the new content.
You bring up excellent points about the new player experience. Boundless doesnt do well explaining the experience. It only gets worse as you get higher level and see a 12 step process to produce blocks.
They don’t have to wait a month to put stuff in storage, If someone is keen on abusing this system, And the only rule for this system is that the beacon needed to have ran out of fuel on it’s own, Then, What someone can do is set up more then one beacon, for an example, 4 of them, And stagger their fuel end times evenly, This would reduce the wait down to one week. More beacons would further reduce it, Up to the player how much micro management they want to do to abuse the system.
Abuse problems aside, it would be helpful to players to give them a reason to come back, but on the other side of the situation, it destroys the looting/raiding aspect of expired beacons. At this time I feel that player retention is more important then Looting/Raiding. But I am not sure if removing looting is going to cause even more players to quit.
The other thing is, while I do agree there should be some kind of help in this regards, The help shouldn’t be to such a degree that it promotes laziness and letting beacons expire becomes common place because letting it expire is no longer much of a downside.
In EVE online stuff can become permanently destroyed when ships get blown up,
In Darkages, When you die depending on the item one of 3 things can happen to it,
The item remains in your inventory (Not too many items do this)
The item breaks and is destroyed (Not too many items do this either)
The item falls into a „death pile“ on the floor where you died, You have to get back to the pile to pick the items back up if you want them, You have one hour to do so before anyone is allowed to loot the items.
Also any item that reaches 0 durability will be destroyed if you fail to repair the item.
This was an inquiry to the devs not an invitation to be flamed. I asked a simple question. If you all care more about the empty plot next to your build than you do about keeping the game earning enough $ that the servers stay open that is on you. Please leave me out of it cause I dont want to debate it with you.
P.S. If you dont want neighbors you know the solution dont you? Dont build near portals vOv
i mean forums are a public opinion system by nature if you make a thread people will post there opinion for or against the idea if you only wanted a reply form the devs then maybe a DM would have been better?
I do think that something might be thought up to keep new players around longer, and if the beacon expiring is the main reason then we need to come up with a solution for that.
Someone suggested a special new player world. Perhaps beacon rules can be relaxed there so they do not expire. But let the game teach the new players that when they leave this starter world and put a beacon down somewhere else that they will have to fuel their beacons from then on, even the one on the starter world is then subject to the same rules and make it so that they can’t refuel it. Give them 12 weeks or so after placing a beacon on a non-starter world before it regens, should be plenty of time to move to the new world, even allows them to takes little breaks.
And make it so that higher level players can visit but can’t beacon there at all.
Such a change might help quite a bit with new players!
Look, this thread wasnt meant to be a debate on whether these are a good idea or bad idea lol. I have no opinion either way but WAS under the impression it was something the devs do and was simply curious about when. I dont care to debate about it or argue with anyone.
I really like the idea of a starter world. The free weekend brought about 6 or 7 new players around our compound…but they really needed a lot of help, we gave them weapons, took them hunting, answered all questions, took them on tours of HQ Finata…they had no concept of beacons running out of fuel or how to tell where boundaries were. When their beacons ran out I would salvage all their items and keep them in storage with their name attached, sent them messages letting them know to contact me for their items…but they still left, never to be seen again.
It might not be trivial, but I think it’d be worth it to store just the items, not the build. I’d love to have a matrix-like corridor in the sanctum after you return from a break. Storing a list of item ids and quantities won’t take nearly as much space as the whole build.
The reason you got so many responses and reasons for not agreeing is you asked a question. That implies you wanted others to answer it. I know that it was aimed at the developers, but then, to be honest, it should have been a DM to them, not on the public forum, where you will get responses from players and we love to debate ideas and this is one that concerned on free weekends and will help to get new players, which is important to the game and is what you were wanting to happen.
So, the When will it happen ,which is a question format that has us discussing it, and some getting that their suggestion is the best and only way and it naturally goes into the problem of beacons expiring and what should be done with the players items.
Similar aspect, a player was asking questions and I had a temporary base on Angel 1 so went to her base and helped her out. She had no idea of how to get plots and the forum helped her and I put down a couple plots and a beacon and gave her permission on it.
Machines, tools, food, some items to help her, explained that she needed to make her own to get the skill points, cubits that are used to buy plots and coins to spend in the game.
A little bit later contacted her and told her that if she wanted she could have my outpost/base on Angel 1. She showed up, showed her how to use the machines as there was more than just a workbench and extractor and that it had spark and she needed to watch it and added fuel.
Tried several times to get in touch with her, no response, had told her she had three months to get plots for her first base and the new one, I wanted my plots back. Went to her first base and it was gone, she had added to the storage bins in the plot where I had given her items some of her items.
Went she quit, collected them all, deleted the beacon and took back my plots, and same with the outpost.
I have no idea of why she quit, no info from her at all for her reason, wish she had contacted me and let me know why she was leaving. What her problems were.
Your still missing the point. If you guys want to sit here and debate if free weekends are a good idea thats up to you. I was speaking to the 2 people who seemed to think my asking this question made me the international advocate for boundless free weekends and decided to in a rather hostile manner tell me why a free weekend would be the end of the world lol.
of course everyone is free to voice their opinion here all i am saying is i have no opinion either way so dont catch me in the crossfire =p. I was under the impression free weekends were a scheduled periodic thing. I assume now they are not?
As for DMing a dev. I have never played a game before that it was common practice to get a response from a dev if you try to contact them directly. in my experience most dev teams policy is to NEVER respond to private messages. Only forum posts or support tickets. So you can see why that option would not have occured to me.
You got a lot of responses to your post, by several people. You posted in the general category, in a public forum. Yes, if you want to ask the devs a direct question, without input from the public, PM or a support ticket are your best options.
I don’t see a single post here being aggressive or hostile in any way. I see everyone reading your post & responding to it & discussing it in a normal, calm, respectable manner. No one is treating you like you did/said anything wrong - because you didn’t.
Maybe they will do another free weekend soon - only they know. In the meantime, they may be willing to give you a discount code so that your friends will join you (if you contact them directly).
The starting tutorial really does walk through everything.
Perhaps the short mission/quest statements are to short?
Or perhaps people helping aren’t helping all that much, since perhaps the new ones are skipping things by getting the help
Being there is one thing, offering stuff might accidentally skip things somehow.
New guys could just be seeing the ‘get this’ ‘get that’, and not reading the hows and whys
I think the issue with sanctum storage is the sanctum is stored and run on the local machine and not the servers making it subject to hacking. If there is a decision to do anything about expired beacons, I would prefer a conversion to coin versus any other method. A character already has coin stored so making it a larger amount should not affect server storage in a significant way.
The minter values are so low there’s no way you could replace even 25% of what you lost A lot of work to shop for them too. The corridor could be behind a portal so it’s a small server instance I know it’d be lots of work, just thinking out loud my ideal world.
I don’t think anyone has been hostile, a big grumpy, testy type but we have a few who would complain if they got what they wanted, in fact have done so.
If you want to see hostile, check out some closed topics, and I’m not trying to be a smart mouth, just to let you know that so far the posts have been pretty tame compared to some I have read in other topics.
Ad for devs responding, I’ve had them respond to a couple of my DM, not all, but some are more suggestions or a remark about a problem I think they should check out and I don’t expect a answer to that type.
It won’t hurt to ask them if one is planned and they would I think be willing to give a discount to your friends. They are really nice people, and do try their best to help us when we have problems. And are generous at times to players who are having problems.
I would agree the coin cannot be the minter values. They would not allow for more than a fraction of what was lost to be recovered. The developers have access to data on all the items for sale the could find the medium or just set “recover” values. I still do believe that any system like this will get complaints as players will say it is not enough as it does not account for the time spent building but if the alternative is it all goes away then I would argue it is a whole lot better.
A lot of work to shop for them too. The corridor could be behind a portal so it’s a small server instance 
I know it’d be lots of work, just thinking out loud my ideal world.