Prestige Balance in Testing 218

An aoe type change would be nice, but I would rather have a new machine to type change mass quantities or rock and wood types.

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Or even an augment that can be applied to a stack of blocks to change from sedimentary to igneous for example. Giving us a new craftable that can be sold (and in high demand i would assume)

Nope, you still have the stop & go while you have to wait for energy to regen.

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Not sure about normal chisels personally, but could we change transmutation to have AOE levels after the first one? Level 1: Transmutation, Level 2: Cross AOE transmutation, Level 3: All AOE Transmutation.

Would be convenient for changing a bunch of bricks quickly.

If you’re asking about AOE Chisels…

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Energy regen epic. Energy epic with max zeal and attributes bonus.

I have hardly any problems with energy with this setup.

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Yup, ignored it for a while for the other (was it health?) But after trying it out I will never take it off again. Waiting 1sec instead of 10 or so is a huge win to me!

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I’d say the first one. Would be pretty helpful and I feel has more use cases than the latter - especially with different types of AoE, I think the existing AoE boon wouldn’t work on chisels since the downsides don’t make sense, and for chisels specifically I would really like to see a higher vertical AoE type (than 2). Chiseling rows and columns of blocks would probably be the most common use. I’m not sure if a boon would make sense actually, since customizing the AoE type would be more important (than simply maximizing amount of blocks hit).

Heck, maybe chisel augments for different AoE types? I think that could be amazing.

But the thing I’d be most excited about with any of these choices is the possibility of a full 3x3 AoE block type changer. I had to place and convert thousands of blocks at this point as well, and I know I’m not the only one longing for it!

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Chisel aoe augs +1. Great idea!

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His #1 point has always been an issue on high-tier worlds. An easy way for scaffolding to work, and distinguish itself from generic junk blocks, would be the ability to “recall” or deconstruct large quantities of it with a single click.

As an example, let’s say I was doing a massive build and deployed several hundred blocks of scaffolding in order to work on it. Now, I go to recall it - but, rather than simply right-click and grab a single block, maybe I hold down the right button (similar to the unplotting mechanic) and it removes all connected pieces of scaffolding with that single press of a button. Optionally, maybe you could “go nuclear” and deconstruct all of the scaffolding within a particular beacon using a similar method.

They could go to my inventory, or they could all simply deconstruct and fall the the ground for me to collect… Honestly, I’d be a much happier man in either case.

I brought this up a long time ago and it seemed to be a hit with the people who read about it, but it never got any dev response.

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I know people here seem to hate with an absolute passion any comparison to Minecraft (despite the fact that cherry-picking positive features should really be encouraged), but as far as scaffolding goes they have a really neat upcoming implementation for it.

Boundless devs could definitely take some good ideas from that.

On topic:

The changes sound pretty positive. I would say though that I have never understood the need to reward ‘exotic’ blocks in builds over regular ones, it always felt like it was a creativity limiter rather than something rewarding.

Now that Prestige values for blocks are being more closely tied to effort-to-acquire (while exotic blocks are not harder to acquire), it definitely feels like it’s time to ditch that prestige modifier. Even more so since it sounds like you have now had to add another complexity to the calculation just to factor that in and balance it.

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What nooo,really Bad idea.
The Prestige system now is perfekt .

Not many Player in this Game and the new System many Player leave the Game.

Mhonts of work and then all dir nohting :rage:.

It would allow me to earn XP very fast.

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Extended thoughts:

I think the prestige calculation the devs need to implement is necessarily more complex than the prestige rules players need to comprehend. This mirrors footfall a bit. Players say the footfall system is too complex, but that’s only if you’re trying to predict the next amount of footfall you will get. Really all a player needs to know is “visitors generate coin”. The rest is implementation detail and/or secret sauce. You’re very kind to share the details here where we can weigh in early, but lots of players seem to confuse that with complexity in the essential system. For the prestige changes, I think all a player should have to keep in mind is “don’t spam” and they are good to go. So I would try to find how you can message these two views separately rather than let them get conflated like with footfall.

I agree that you could lose the exotic tint modifier completely. Exotic doesn’t mean much in our heavily portal-connected universe. Some places on Finata feel closer to me than remote locations on my home planet of Gellis. If you for some reason do need to take tinting into account (e.g. forward thinking for farming) can you bucket it based on N color space buckets rather than by comparing it to planet colors?

Bucketing by prestige will penalize players who use many different kinds of deco stone or brick. They all have the same prestige and therefore get bucketed and drag one another down. But if you look at the builds they would look better than a floor that was all 1 stone type. Can another histogram of block variety add in some value to counteract this loss?

I don’t see block orientation being accounted for. Some players spend a lot of time positioning blocks to get new patterns to emerge. It would be nice if they were rewarded with a prestige bump somehow. This is another way to recapture value from variety that is lost in the low resolution view of prestige bucketing.

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he means sticking the transformation boon on a chisel along with AoE boon so you can transform 9 blocks at a time instead of 1

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Oh I thought of another signifier that might help capture value in aesthetically pleasing builds - variatic height. Gleam towers, parking lots, blocky houses; would receive less bonus points than domed houses, giant statues, etc.

If the histogram bucketing is the ideal way to enable diminishing returns on prestige, then the heights of block columns could be bucketed and awarded diminishing rewards. One way to measure this is the height from the top of the world to a placed block. We only need the values to be consistent relative to other blocks within the same beacon so this is a good way to capture that without planning for a bunch of edge cases.

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Gleam towers and parking lots. I bet you would absolutely adore my crazy WIP. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Idea for this prestige. It would be great if when we access our beacons it would not only show us the value of prestige but how it is being applied to our build. And how will this affect footfall. I have been building a car on raxxa in infinity city, I am not done with my build yet, has over 109 plots and over 200000 prestige, yet footfall only 216. And my home on pheminorum says it is part of to be continued in beckon, even though it is in pheminorum. I believe there are still issues with beacons since last guild alignment. Maybe fix that before changing more with the beacons.

Would it be possible to look into some sort of separate prestige ranking for guild settlements? A lot of the time it seems that world rankings are full of essentially duplicate settlements where the top settlements all align beacons with a guild (this isn’t malicious ofc) and push everyone down which can be quite demotivating.

I would definitely find this variant super useful (for half slab faces, and when beveling long stretches)

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Overall, I like the attention being paid to re-balancing this system, thanks!

  1. Correct me if I’m wrong regarding block variety and tints for alien vs native: More prestige gains for varying the two. Not really a penalty for uniformity just less overall gain, right? I would expect that as is a common practice IRL that main color = vast majority of a building (for example) and highlight or accent colors make up the balance.

I.E. If you make a massive solid color alien block castle wall, while impressive, it’s not as impressive as a massive castle wall with an iron banding, native block crenelations, and other native accents, etc.

  1. Curious, Will the world prestige list will get any attention? Personally not a fan of guilds competing. Maybe we could get guilds on a 2nd list and not see a guild settlement and a settlement with the same name?

Thanks Dev’s and Community. I like this place.

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