Prestige buffered regen

< shrugs >
Well, I don’t know about coding nightmares, it’s doesn’t sound like the craziest idea I’ve seen floating around. ^^
To put it simply, it would just be about converting the plots of a beacon which went wild but had a prestige level above Village or Town into a new type of plots with a new set of rules, not very differents from the ones we have on existing plots :

Ruined plots

• Wouldn’t suffer from world-regen.
• Machines wouldn’t work. Every craft in progress in cancelled.
• Crops wouldn’t grow. Prestigious crops would instantly wither.
• Would convert into wild lands and be elligible for world-regen if prestige level goes below Village or Town level.
• Could be plundered by others or be regen-bombed.
• Could be claimed by interacting with the ‘ruined beacon control’ by one who has the required number of free plots.
• Could be claimed plot-by-plot by someone with a beacon plotter. This would substract them from the plots in the Ruined beacon and would reduce the amount of prestige left, hence furthering the risk of the ruins going wild, just like with people plundering them.

I’m sure the devs could manage that.
We have Player-owned plots, Reserved plots, Plot-Protection and Wild lands, so why not yet another type of plots?
Then again, I know nothing of the technical limitations the devs have. As I often read him talking about the technical aspect of things, maybe @lucadeltodecso could confirm if that’s doable or not?

I’m 100% that it would help the game a lot.
It would lessen the risk of players leaving the game after an beacon-fuel-mishap, and players who are always jumping at the occasion to plunder builds that went wild could also take advantage of that.

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It would produce a significant amount of garbage in the worlds. If old builds do not regen, the planets will fill up and I doubt that people would run around cleaning up that mess.

In the long run you can expect the server load to increase if regen was turned off.
Besides it is pointless for people to not want their builds to regen, if you leave the game your stuff regens as simple as that. You can always pay gleam club to prevent “accidents” not very expensive for a western world player.

On the contrary I propose instant regen, fastest regen as possible on a dead beacon to prevent plundering.

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You’re basically saying that every beacon above Village/Town where the owner isn’t actively playing is garbage as soon as there’s a beacon-fuel mishap. That sounds a bit like “my stuff is great, the stuff of others is garbage that should be cleaned-up ASAP”. :confused:

And instant regen? Really? If a player has such a mishap and feels bad to the point of wanting to leave the game, don’t you see that as a problem? Instant regen would make that even worse! It would prevent good samaritans from saving plots that went wild like the Raxxa Empire thing from yesterday.

I for one would be happy if there were permanent ruins I could either clean-up with one or two throws of regen-bombs, or take over and use at my advantage to build something cool out of it.
It’s not like everybody reaches Village or Town prestige levels without some heavy dedication.
Plus, it would allow some players to leave secret underground treasure rooms for other players! That’s something @majorvex suggested on my own thread, if I remember correctly.

Plus, it would change from the boring wild zones that barely have anything cool to show. Yeah, I said it, sorry devs : we have about 50 worlds and we’ve had about twice as many exo-worlds, and all of them are the same damn thing. They all look way too similar because they can’t use any of the crafted blocks.
Boundless doesn’t have “biomes” like other games of the genre have.

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Sorry for going a bit off-topic, but what do you call the distinct areas on the planets then if not biomes? How are they different from other games?

In Boundless, what you call areas are just color-variants of the same other things we see everywhere.

In other games, a biome has very specific textures.
Here an example from CV :
Stalactite biome :


Lava biome :

Corruption biome :

Tundra biome :

There’s about 15 biomes like that. Jungle, marsh, grasslands, forests…

Yeah my stuff is so great that I regend 4 of my bases already, all together in total worth over 20 mil pres.
It’s dev speak, garbage refers to unused data space.

The amount of clutter created over time would amaze you, a ruin here a ruin there. And think about the new players unable to forge regen bombs. Plus I have no desire to have to manually clean up thousands of plots if I want to move my base again to some unused space.
Which would create a real hassle to find then. “Is it still in use dunno it’s still there. Is the owner having a mishap should I not build there?” etc.

I like the system how it is and it gives the players time to reclaim too. The instant regen is more a thought to totally prevent plundering.

I can’t really see what we would gain here. The ruins would mostly be picked up or regened by a few players just like it is now. It’s probably doable, but what would be the gain? To push a change their needs to be a need, and this doesn’t really address any need other than giving people a chance to plunder an entire build rather than a partial build. The chance it is going to go back to the original owner seems pretty slim.

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Yeeeeaaaaaaah… :grimacing:

I doubt devs would use the term garbage like you did, though. :sweat_smile:
Maybe you have the time to cr@p out builds worth 20 million prestige every now and then, but I wouldn’t consider that as the norm.

The normal player comes, builds a basic house in a week or so with basic blocks, not even refined stones, then it downs on that player that he’s gonna have to keep playing often to keep his stuff.
That’s already something that will deter a lot of players.
If that player gets dunked on by a beacon-fuel-mishap, depending on how proud the player was of his build, there a high % chance it’s a player who’s never playing the game again.
That’s a problem Boundless has and weirdly enough, other building games don’t.

The amount of inactive builds below Village or Town, I know it’s huge, there’s no doubt about that.

Inactive builds above that threshold, honestly, I think if someone reaches Town or City on their own, I’d say that person shouldn’t be treated the same way as someone with a basic 2x2 plots house made of refined stone.
But if Village or Town is too low a requirement, hey, I could also get behind putting the threshold at City level. < shrugs >
I just can’t get behind the “everything is fine, don’t change anything” mentality. The game is NOT fine. There are issues. Don’t you see the many threads where people ask “how to increase the population of Boundless?” that pop-up every so often?

You’re throwing A LOT of fake problems.
What’s that BS about new players being unable to forge regen bombs? An AoE diamond hammer that oneshots blocks on T6 worlds, now that I get. But regen bombs are super simple to make or to find.

Crying about having to clean-up someone’s ruins to take-up the space?
When I wanna build somewhere or move my base, there will be a clean-up process anyway, because I gotta remove trees, flatten the ground, etc. Having to throw one or two regen bombs to remove ruins if I don’t wanna play with them changes nothing.

And asking yourself “is this still in use?”… I mean that’s not a problem. It’s obviously falls in the fair-game-category where you can do as you want. Plunder it, take it over, clean it. The player can’t complain if you do, but he still has a chance to get everything back if he gets there first.

I thought the gains were pretty obvious.
• Lessened risk of a high-prestige beacon which went wild to regen.
• Emergence of actual player-made ruins that could be taken over or cleaned-up.
• possibility to create hidden treasure rooms, or fun community-bases events.

Now sure, there will be plunderers.
But as we’ve seen yesterday, there are good samaritans, that’s a cold hard fact.

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The first paragraph shows me that a discussion on this topic with you is pointless.

Have fun, I stated my point and am out of this.

Lets be honest the people asking for this as just people that want to loot big builds from people that have quit the game right?

At least if you all are honest then you can suggest what you really want, Maybe something like if a player placed block gets hit by regen it has a chance to become ancient technology or something like that.

I feel the problem with this game is that people who quit… like they are really gone… their trash doesnt go away fast enough and were stuck with random builds everywhere with endless timers.
(ie look at this awesome area and that player has plotted 4 plots right in the middle, ill just wait… 6 weeks to see if he is actually coming back)

Im not sure what hacking is involved you can literally walk up to a beacon and look at how long it has left, you can then go on your phone and set a timer to go off 1 hour before and go camp the build out.

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Yup we just got lucky haha. I wandered by and Baby was like “DK come help us save raxxa city!” I was pretty confused at first without any context but I just followed her haha :slight_smile:

But I too want to know if there’s really a way for people to exploit and see when beacons expire. This may sound crazy, but if this is in fact true, IMO the devs should even the playing field and let everyone equally see time remaining in game. Until they address the issue.

Yeah, sure. If you say so.
As you were also never going to change your mind, it was indeed a waste of time debatting. :wink:

That’s very cynical. I wouldn’t do that, and I’m sure Krollbar wouldn’t either… :confused:
I can’t believe the Boundless community is really that bad.

It’s uncool to use the word trash like that (and don’t try to say it’s a coding term like the other guy XD). But I get where you’re coming from, for sure. I myself am surrounded by builds belonging to players who log in maybe once every few months.
For that, this entire thread isn’t a solution.

The issue would be that we have people who only log in to refuel their beacons, and don’t do anything with them. But really, that’s fair game, and I don’t see any proper way to change that.

Would you recommend a limit on how much gleam-club time you can have at once? My own build is pretty much protected up until October 2020. Should there be limit be 6 months max? I don’t think the devs would agree, it’d mean less money going to them.

I mean, if it was me, I’d cut the game’s retail price in half (making it about 20$), I’d remove the gleam club and I’d make its features baseline. THEN I’d replace the current beacon fuel system by something like the beacon fuel automatically going back to minimum 25% of it’s timer (about a month, right?) everytime the owner logs in. And you only use beacon fuel when you know you’re gonna be absent for a long while. To make-up for the loss of gleam club, maybe make the beacon fuel buyable with cubits?

I just think ruins are cool… what if ruins grew kindling plants or vines as they slowly decomposed…? Something fun like that. Loot means very little to me. A more active decomposition system… all just ideas for fun.

I will try to explain this to you^^

Every block that is not default to a world has to be calculated, this essentially grows the amount of data in a world. Player placed blocks are not counted as default which requires the system to grab those as extra since they are not in the default world layout. If you grow this too long or too much it will eat cycles on the server and we all know how strong BL servers are^^

I do not consider anyones build who is actively playing as garbage. I was trying to refer to data that is not in use, which accumulates in a world if you turn off the regen (which is essentially the servers garbage collector, see above the wiki link )and in programing terms creates objects which are not in use anymore".
I dislike mud huts for sure but everyone has to start somewhere.

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I think anything that tries to prevent regen is subject to abuse. If I plot a gem spawning area, mine out all the gems and then let the beacon expire, If I have a large enough area with enough prestige (which can be easily manipulated with the correct blocks), I now have a dead area on the planet where gems will not respawn unless someone comes in a regens the area.

I also remember too well the large numbers of abandoned builds in EA before beacon fueling was even part of the game. That was with fewer players and not nearly the same amount of plots as some players have now. I just think beacons that expire need to regen. If players think it would be better to have the building materials go into storage versus regening and allowing for scavaging, in case a player comes back then fine, but I think the planets as a limited resource need to have a process in place to remove builds automatically. Some of the current builds cover thousands of plots, I do not think it should be the job of the remaining players to spend time and resources to remove these builds

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@VirtualEclipse Dude, I got what you were saying when you called it “dev speak”, I’m not an old guy who calls a computer a “button-box”. :rofl:
It’s just that the way you put it in the first place clearly wasn’t sounding like you had the technical term in mind :

I don’t think it’s my fault for reacting badly to that.
Fact is, there are a number of people who have absolutely no consideration for the builds of other players. Casing point, right after you, Xyberviri used the word “trash” and assumed Krollbar and/or I had nefarious intention for defending the relaxation of regen features.
So MAYBE you meant the technical term from the get-go, but it was a pretty poor choice of word either way.
Sure, some builds are objectively ugly, but I just find it sad to generalize with these types of words.
There’s not much else to say about that.

Oh yeah, like if the regen system was a bit smarter, you mean? Like, instead of blindingly making a chunk regen and having dirt spawn out of nowhere, it would instead replace some non-air blocks with grass and basic plants (like gladeflowers and such)?
Oh that could be awesome!

Right now, I’m imagining a scenario where a city like the Ultima place on Eresho became a ruin and grass and leaves started to replace some blocks, kinda like what I do in the gardens at my place. That could look awesome.

How many would you say were at City prestige level?
Were there regen bombs already? If so, were they as easy to craft as they are now?

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Nah not your fault, it’s second nature to me, the wording should have been followed up by a proper explanation.

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I understand what you want and what you consider gains. I am just trying to figure out what is driving this push for change. This doesn’t help people who lost their beacons, but those who scavange beacons. If you said you wanted to allow people to take on a more active role in scavaging as a proffession, I would understand where you are coming from. But this doesn’t help Joe #4 keep playing when he logs on in three days and his build is still gone.

Its not a community friendliness issue, decay is a designed mechanic used to help free up sections of the world. I would gladly help community projects with plots, but I am not going to use them on the possibility someone I don’t know may come back in the next few months and want their stuff back. It just makes it harder for new folks to find building spots.

If we really wanted to help these folks, all of their machines, tools and coils could be placed in a storage for them somewhere for when they returned. I deal with a lot of project management and root cause analysis, and knowing what is driving a change is almost (if not more) important than the proposed ideas. I’m not saying I don’t like the idea, I am just saying its not really going to help keep people when their beacon expires. So if that is the focus we need to look for a better solution. If its just about creating ruins for people to plunder then its a solid idea, though should still go wild after a set period of time so it doesn’t become the community’s job to regen the world every few months.

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Yup there was a previous thread about leaving builds around and we ended up with both camps… people that wanted it and people that said it will not help anything but make the worlds worse. Personally I am on the keep regen as it is side of the camp since we would have holes and various blocks sitting around that no one wanted that would never clean up…

Additionally, those that left because their beacon expired wouldn’t be saved from this. Not to mention those people that “left the game” left the game and most didn’t have plans to come back. So this doesn’t solve that either. If we want to save the accidental beacon fuel oooppss then put in a real system for that.

I get the atmosphere look and feel of having ruins and I agree with that… but I would prefer worlds that actually had ruins assets not some left over player junk that no one cleaned up after the prestige mongers took all the good blocks to just increase the vaults.

see thats the thing, only those high value blocks and inventories get sought after, you arent going to collect every shelf on a t4 planet if you can save the durability.

Honestly id rather have blocks that were high value turn into something else that has to be mined out instead.

there use to be a 2m prestige city over on that mountain 6 months ago… which in gamer time means basically forever… now there is a massive deposit of old ancient tech and other potential resources that might not be native to that planet