Poll: Are you tired of reading about Footfall and if it broke or not?

I am. Footfall is a social program to make sure every single player no matter how casual can participate in the economy. It’s paid for by the coin sinks in the game: currently the global tax rate, warp costs, and guild buffs.

As long as the footfall collected by the active playerbase exceeds the coin leaving the system from taxes, warps, and helixes, footfall isn’t broken.

If the footfall handed out to someone isn’t enough for their playstyle, they’re going to have to go out into the world and figure out how to take someone else’s footfall. Usually by finding a buyer and selling them something at a fair price. But an entire prisoner’s dilemma of options are available.

I think we have a lot of the following behaviors:

  1. Players who mistakenly thought they were in a lower class, expecting larger handouts then they received.
  2. Players focusing on day-to-day trends instead of taking time to observe a system that is built as a function of days. (Player testing has verified this.)
  3. Players not realizing that chunk/guild changes have lowered their settlement ranking (e.g. Town to Hamlet) and that ranking determines the base multiplier for all footfall.
3 Likes

I suspect its the 1x20 area that is causing a ‘bridging settlements’ issue. If you could make it into 3x20x1 (with 1 being height) or 1x20x3 (with 3 being height) it should properly connect. Sometimes even 2 wide is enough, depending.

If you can’t tell if one of the beacons is in the invalid state, PM me the location and I’ll take a peek for you.

The issue is I have no issues with the bridging settlements part that the update broke as It’s mainly there for the bridge aspect for other players to use.

However it producing no coins when it had no issues before is a serious issue and people have made posts about it as this also.

Adding a ton of extra plots to it’s height, sides is not possible with other peoples builds near it, would be a waste of plots really for this character.

Just a shame if this is the case for people who do bridges or roads and cannot fix it on their end other then adding a ton of plots vertically as these are important for settlements and getting around with.

Well, one of the causes for producing zero footfall are beacons that fall into the ‘bridging multiple settlements’ state, so really to my knowledge adding plots is the only way to fix it when that’s the case.

You could also try to merge the ‘road/bridge’ beacon with another of your beacons (which would require replotting the entire thing) and maybe there’s a chance that it could help, since at least as far as footfall goes, having it all in one beacon or split over multiples makes no real difference.

If you want to have it as a separate beacon for aesthetic purposes tho (to have a different name than the main beacon) then the only solution I can think of is adding more plots. :frowning:

I guess in summary, anybody who factored footfall into their playstyle now hates it, those who hated the idea of all things footfall love the change, those who hate portal hubs love the change, and those who never paid attention to footfall are scratching their heads wondering what all the fuss is about.

As long as the economy can stay relatively stable it’s whatever I guess.

2 Likes

Does it really need a poll ??

If you personally do not wish to read about footfall then do not read topics that are labelled with the word footfall or coin or economy - easy

1 Like

For a particular plot column to be valid it must have 9 plots additively within itself + the 8 plot columns around it. So if you don’t want to or can’t add to the width (2w×2h works) then you must add 2 plots to height (1w×3h works). Your bridge must also be over 10k prestige.

Just know that if there are individual settlements on each side of your bridge that they will become merged together + your bridge once you’ve fixed the plotting.

The system is working as intended now as roads were intended to be able to be built without unintentionally linking settlements. The unfortunate side affect is that footfall generation is a settlement system and only is generated in valid settlements.

I agree with all you said but footfall doesn’t really match your idea. First, footfall does not reward building, but strategically clever claiming. And second, footfall is permanent. Claim once early on and reap the rewards forever.

There should be more rewards for building and less for claiming. How to do that I have no idea.

2 Likes

A separate ‘likes’ system where each like a building receives generates a bit of coin. Ideally each character would have, say, 5 or 10 ‘likes’ a day to give so they’d have to think about who they’re giving those to. This could also interact with the prestige system as an additional multiplier but that’s optional.

And if people want to use that to further support their favorite youtube personality or whatever so be it (because I know this example will get thrown at some point, like every time a likes system is suggested). I see nothing wrong with rewarding content creation as well with this system.

1 Like

Very true, Most people as myself that enjoys building opens social projects. I own a mall, and before the update, I was making enough for my time and mats that i keep putting into it. Its gettin better with the small fixes. But almost not worth the time here lately. Some days, time gets tight. Its hard to put time into the project and still go find hunts to help supply oort because footfall is no where near enough to fund the portals i keep open.

It just felt right before the update. It feels off at the moment. Everyone just keeps telling me to go create money farming or gathering. Thats not creating any money. Thats just moving money, and deleting 10% at the same time. Nothing being generated.

3 Likes

I’m happy to come and look at this beacon.

If the beacon does have a skinny bit (which could be a bridge - say) then one solution is to split that part into it’s own beacon. Align all of it to your guild and the fat parts will generate their prestige again.

This is an opinion independent of data.

Here is a chart tracking median footfall per data for all players.
(Reminder that median is: put everyone in order and ask the middle person what they got.)

median%20footfall

There is a dip when we did the release. And we’ve tweaked the a balance since and the median is higher than ever.

The majority of players are getting more footfall.

The change we made in Release 123.1, was another step to balancing the configuration. Today will be the first 24 hour period that contains the full release. The partial data from yesterday already showed a marked improvement.


A plot actually needs 5 plots around it to not be a road.

The initial update was set to 8 based on image based comparisons of settlement maps before and after the change. But we quickly realised that this broke too many beacons that were very carefully plotted and we altered it to 5.

6 Likes

Yeah, my testing was indicating higher than both pre-211 configurations already, given a somewhat even mix of repeat and new visits.

I’ve been saying this for a while but I think one of the main problems here is that people are, first of all, noticing only their daily footfall rather than their average footfall over time, and in that case a bunch of cognitive biases would make the cases when the daily take is lower than expected stick out in their memory more than when it’s higher, and second, that when they see a lower number than they were expecting they immediately generalize this to the entire population which is, of course, not necessarily true.

2 Likes

Just to make sure I understand, that means that if you have square beacon, the corners of your area will always be roads unless you build vertically on the corner plot and one other “touching” plot, (or 2 touching plots) right?

The question wasn’t to me, however I’ve seen this happen a few times with my own beacons. Those road-like corner plots don’t usually break settlements in my experience, tho, because in general people plot ‘cubes’ and neighboring cubes wouldn’t be connected only by those corner road-like plots, so that tends to work out fine in practice, for most cases anyway.

If you have a neighbor (with your beacon being Y plots):
X X X R Y Y
X X X Y Y Y
X X X Y Y Y

that would be fine.

If you had two neighbors, one being Z:
Z Z Z Z Z Z
X X X Y Y Y
X X X Y Y Y
X X X Y Y Y

Those corner road plots tend to go back to regular ones, even if plotting only at 1 height.
I think with the changes from 8 to 5 even the X and Y example would be converted now, since it seems to count diagonals.

1 Like

Does this data indicate an increase in grand total footfall for the system overall, or just a higher number for the median person…? Also glad to see that the process is ongoing and being looked at on a regular basis and not just every month or two.

The chart plots median for all players per day (and nothing else).

  • The 5 plots don’t have to be your plots, these can also be the plots from your neighbor.
  • A road is only a problem if it connects two settlements. If you don’t have a neighbor, a plot marked as “road” on the debug screen doesn’t prevent footfall from being generated.
1 Like

I don’t have time to lookup the thread for a link to the discussion but it’s confirmed that these plots marked as roads still generate footfall and otherwise act as part of the beacon and settlement, as long as the beacon is not “bridging multiple settlements”.

You may have to touch builds on more than one plot to join to or expand the settlement this way, if things are only 1 plot thick.

6 plots combined in adjacent columns so a 6-plot vertical will create a valid settlement in a single plot column. “5 other plots touching” implies they have to connect physically but they can actually not touch by vertical offset.

As long as they’re in the adjacent pot columns, though. This basically means you’re always looking at a 3x3 to determine this status no matter where the individual plot is in the shape of your beacon.

EDIT: actually easy to find it in my history, here’s the discussion from the time of the change with pictures and corrections and all:

1 Like

Thanksn folks. There are so many layers of systems now I keep getting confused. Lol

No worries. The main thing to remember is the only difference between a road plot and a regular plot is that road plots can’t force settlements to merge. For all other intents and purposes, including footfall, they work the same.

The only problem with road plots is when they’re in a ‘bridging multiple settlements’ state (because they can’t force a merger) and in those cases you have to debug it by either removing plots so it doesn’t bridge multiple settlements, or adding plots so it’s no longer a road, which would force a merger. That only seems to happen with thin, long series of plots (1 by X by 1 roads primarily, with X being length).

So those corner road plots (when they happen) have no effect at all.

2 Likes