I think this is the part that I was questioning, not so much the how. With the ease of travelling between planets, I don’t feel that there is any real distinction between the time it takes to gather materials locally or anywhere else *.
An argument could be made that gathering blocks from higher-tier worlds does indeed take more time and effort to gather and so should be rewarded more, but my understanding of the current system is that ‘exotic’ is defined as any block in a colour that is not available on that planet (hence blocks of the same type from an alternate planet with the same colour do not count as exotic), so no distinction can even be made about whether a block is ‘truly’ exotic, let alone from a higher tier planet **.
I guess at the end of the day the prestige bonus from exotic blocks is already built into the game, and you might consider it a waste of time to remove/refactor it into something more straight forward like ‘Many colours good, few colours bad less good’.
* Of the same planet tier. ** And I don’t think that system should change, I respect that block-data is at too much of a premium for that right now, let alone in the future.
The new formula for calculating prestige is going to have a melt down when it finds this beauty. This is the PERFECT build as far as the new prestige calculation is concerned. This is what all of our builds should aspire to be. I mean seriously, this meets all of the requirements of a beautiful build.
If the creator of that build likes it and is having fun playing who cares. If someone doesn’t like the way a build looks they can always decide not to go back…
I think the point of the prestige rebalance is to prevent exploiting certain ways of gaining massive amounts of prestige quickly and to reward builders who choose to incorporate natural blocks.
Of course there will always be outliers and ways to game the system. That’s just the way it is.
I am all for the natural block thing. I think that is great.
I just do not agree with a player getting more prestige for using many different types of blocks. I feel that this change is going to encourage sloppier/uglier building, as players attempt to gain prestige.
I really hope these changes don’t provoke a reaction similar to the chunks/plot changes a little while back.
This had a lot of people upset (messing up identity of builds) and some of changes were eased eventually which solved the original issues.
This new system will/might altar builds rankings and I can see that winding some players up, especially if they don’t read the forums and are unaware of these upcoming changes
Personally, while I’ll be a tad gutted if I lost 50% prestige (thinking worse case scenario here because I really have little idea how these changes will affect me…) I will certainly carry on regardless…might just take me a little longer to getting 'great city’s status
Am I not understanding this? If I use few different blocks I get less prestige than someone who uses multiple different blocks? Correct?
I use very few types of blocks in my builds. My prestige is going to go down most likely when the update hits. If I add a bunch of random nonsense, I can probably keep my prestige. What am I not understanding?
Lets say ur native planet has night azure rock, you refine it and use only that rock. You will be penalized slightly for no creativity, defeating the gleam bombing thats going on. Using alien rocks and ones that are harder to gather/craft will naturally increase your prestige, also natural blacks will also provide a small presrige now, like regular soil.
Its just a smarter system to take into account creativity and amount of labour. Also a good ratio between empty space, and solid blocks increases prestige.
What do you mean by a few blocks? Are they all one type, from the same planet they are from and used 100% same color everywhere on the build?
If no then you will probably recive an increase, if its a solid tower of one item in one color with no air space, good ratio between chiseled and regular blocks, just a solid tower will probably be penalized.
@XaniMatriX
For my builds, this is generally how it goes.
I build my walls out of red timber.
I bevel chisel the outside of every single block, then bevel chisel the inside of every single block.
I then wrap the outside in black brick.
I then wrap the inside in dark orange gleam.
I then wrap the inside of that in black brick.
I do this to achieve a very specific look.
My walls are 3-4 blocks thick, solid. The chisel pattern repeats. I have used only 3 block types.
To the prestige formula, I am trying to game the system. To a human, I have spent a good deal of time and effort building.
You can make just as ugly designs from just 1 block though. (Just look at some of those ugly gleam towers for example). If the devs focused their decision on whether or not people had good taste in building then I wouldn’t be surprised if they all would constantly get ulcers just trying to figure out what would work and what would not.
To be fair, no matter your opinion on that picture you posted… that’s a lot more work than if someone used just machined iron to build that. (referring to your post before and not your own build by the way)
Also, now referring to your build. Perhaps one way you could help alleviate the problem (if there did end up being one) would be to use not just black brick, but maybe some other black rock type? You’d be amazed at what even just a small variety of textures of the same colour can do to a build. Looks good though.