100% agree. Nerf gleam. I feel like I am missing out because I don’t friggin WANT to make a glowing abomination (or even bury a glowing abomination), but to be competitive, I would have to. It is simply not feasible to compete with bricks, etc. I can’t make enough aesthetic materials to keep up.
Also bump.
I can understand why they dont want to make it based purely on aesthetic value. I would never want to discourage someone from playing just because they arent the best builder.
While I dont LOVE box houses if it is all someone is capable of fine.
That being said I feel like a mix of the two systems would discourage people from just dumping a massive pile of the brightest blocks possible into the biggest plot they can get.
I guess what I am saying is it would nice to see a system that rewards effort.
I agree entirely. More variables means more variety. They could continue to tweak the current system, while also adding a human element.
Some of the measures taken to stop groups of people gaming the footfall could also be applied to build appraisals.
My idea about the subject is basically this, is not merely about what gives and what doesn’t give prestige, and what ends up being the best copy-paste method to gaining prestige (currently it’s gleam towers). Many of the different topics circulating around it devolve in that, due to the actual benefits prestige currently give (I’m not questioning prestige giving a benefit, it should considering how much time and dedication some people put into it), prestige currently helps these:
That’s about all I can come up with, now, do I think something of the above needs to be changed for something else? Not really, I think the benefits are fine as it’s. What needs to change is the Settlement merging Once that’s changed, I expect to see more prestige focused posts than now.
Now on the topic of how to calculate prestige, I consider there’s never gonna be a perfect method, it’s impossible given the wide variety of taste and visions each member here has. There’s always gonna be outliers; while building gleam towers is really something I don’t like, there’s people who can do magic with big quantities of gleam and produce great builds to look at (but that’s not the norm, that’s the exception).
I think a mix of subjective factors and objective factors would be the best fit, a purely subjective or purely objective metric will never be perfect, nor will the mixed variant, but at least it comes best to a middle ground.
What I propose is the following:
Keep the system: Rewarding prestige for time investment (making the more difficult to craft blocks) & the other factors such as: variety, exotic, etc.
Introduce a human aspect to the prestige system: Votes, likes, etc. Make the points be a modifier of the actual base value.
I think there’s always people who’re gonna try and game the system, some individuals like that game style and will pursue it, but with a better prestige system, at least those who don’t won’t be so left behind, biting the dust.
TLDR Prestige is discussed due to the benefits it provides. People will always look for the next thing to gain prestige. Mixing subjective and objective factors is the best system. You will never make it perfect, but there’s more we can do to make it fairer and a better mechanic than it currently is.
I’m glad to see the opinions ! I think the last reply give some good points. I really hope that at least bricks will have a higher prestige value (skill+spark cost+material+multiple step craft) since right now it is lower than refined gleam.
Prestige matters for the above points but also it kind off sucks when you’ve been building for 3 weeks with your community, making bricks, wood and stones buildings to gain capital and then 1 person comes with gleam, regardless of what they build and how it looks, and beats your prestige value in merely 2 to 3 days. That means either something is undervalued or something is overvalued?
Also in that point a human factor with some kind of limitation per planet would work great, upvoting or rating or something similair in a kind of way.
This seems to be the main issue for most people in the thread right now, and introducing new elements to the current system certainly isn’t something that can be done overnight - and whatever suggestions people come up with here wouldn’t be put into action by the development team for weeks - if we’re being optimistic - but more likely months if we’re being realistic.
For the time being a simple decrease in gleam value would be enough, and it really needs to happen sooner rather than later. Regardless how we all feel about gleam towers, some people have put a lot of time into them, and they deserve not to have their builds severely nerfed months from now.
Right now if you’re not using copious amounts of gleam, you’ll fall behind; at least in terms of Prestige. This will inevitably result in all capital cities eventually becoming neon gleam cities - and again, love them or hate them; the system doesn’t promote variety.
Oops. Seems like I missed something while writing my comment. I might’ve accidently quoted something while typing on my phone. Corrected my statement.
I think there’s two ways to go about gleam prestige.
1. Reduce gleam prestige value
2. Make a maximun amount gleam can contribute to prestige: gleam contribution limits will depend on a matter of plots (more plots means that you can use more gleam to increase prestige). In all honesty this would help increase variance of blocks used, which is already considered in the current prestige calculation. You won’t be punishing players that use gleam tastefully (totally subjective) and making it so people are less inclined towards feeling plots with gleam.
For the record, Kada I is a T2, not a T1 as advertised here…and as my recently deceased builder can attest.
Ooo my bad. Ill edit my post.
Still the best place to get it though.
They need to up the prestige on certain blocks that resemble realistic builds such as wood paths, stone floors, foliage as vines on sides of buildings, and so forth. It just seems too low for me. I’ve pumped out 9 thousand refined wood and my settlement has only reached 120k prestige.
Very disappointing to the builders out there that are genuine with their builds. Creative and idealistic. Not just blocks of gleam which takes 30 minutes to harvest a full smart stack.
I’d love to see them up the prestige on decorative wood and rocks, even refined wood and rocks. It takes a lot of time, material, and fuel to pump out these materials. So people who just harvest and don’t even bother investing in the building part of the game… such as refining blocks and placing them, chiseling them to a certain degree. OR refining blocks and then dump them into the workbench and turn them into decorative.
It just seems lucrative that something such as gleam is so easy to get and so easy to beat other settlements in a landslide by dumping dump trucks of gleam on your property. Rather than farming and spending time refining wood and rocks and making your settlement look beautiful.
I will mention that yes,some of these people do refine the gleam they get, but then even some of them don’t. Normal gleam, I’m pretty sure has more prestige than a decorative rock/wood. Correct me if I’m wrong. Maybe I looked at an out of date prestige values on blocks list.
Although I will admit that this might anger other players that are actually dumping gleam on their property… Say if the developers lowered the prestige value on gleam, it would affect all settlements and some will probably even lose their capital status. It’s a lot to think about.
This, people dumping gleam on their property, brutally punishes the creative builders that use actual decorative realistic blocks for builds.
No worries. I grabbed my hunter and went back. I now have fat stacks of white gleam.
They actually don’t need to reduce gleam if they implement a human element to the prestige system.
Another issue is leaves, and trees - beautiful hand made trees are in my opinion one of the hardest things to create in Boundless, and I’ve seen people spend huge amount of time on them. Not only that, but they can look absolutely stunning. The prestige system won’t recognise their work though.
Exactly. Prestige doesn’t recognize beauty, it’s only numbers. It blows. I’m making a settlement out on Tana VII, and its on a beach cliff with a ton of palm trees. I’ve made the center of my settlement have a huge palm tree, and it’s gonna be a big project. Considering the way they are built, very complex. (Will have to run back and forth to a close-by palm tree to view dimensions and angles on the palm tree.)
When its complete, it’ll be “Papa Palm” of Palm Springs. 
Please don’t compromise. Forgot about the prestige system. I don’t want all the good builders to start compromising on their builds. I want to see some beautiful settlements, landmarks and world wonders.
I am all for something that would encourage people to get out and explore but the problem is if it affected prestige people would still find a way to maximize their gains from it.
Ultimately warden and viceroy have very little impact on the game and it shoud stay that way. People get upset enough about prestige values even though its mostly meaningless, it would only get worse if it had some kind of tangible benefit.
EDIT: Personally I build what I want regardless of prestige, the o ly reaons I use high prestige blocks like brick is because of the effort in acquiring them it represents.
Buddy, I’m a carpenter in real life. I draft mansions on a daily basis. I have a bit of architecture practice, but not a degree. I’m VERY genuine when it comes to my builds. A settlement is what to me? A village or a town where everything is merging with the vibe of the settlement. Say if its night life, then modern/art deco buildings. Beach life? Palm huts, tiki torches, and wooden circular/spherical buildings. You get the gist of it. Nowadays, all these settlements out there are all built from such a huge horizon/variety of colors and it never matches. Such a huge eyesore. I have not found one settlement that stuck to a certain theme.
(P.S - I won’t compromise! 
I’ll keep it original and classy for people to come visit this tourist destination!)
What are the chances? A fellow builder/builder. I’m a site manager in real life. Started out as a brick layer.
(slightly off topic there)
Seems like we should meet up and friend request. I was a scaffolder, now Im a supervisor for the crew on building mansions. Its fun. I build houses at work while thinking about building stuff on Boundless. It’s a paradox! lol
To throw a very off-the-wall opinion out there…
Am I the only builder who doesn’t care about prestige?
I’m not a builder, but most builders I know don’t care about prestige.
However, I do care (and I know quite a few people that feel the same way) about build-limit-height rectangles of a single material (regardless of material) being built in the middle of the nice view from my balcony overnight, and those are usually built by the people that just want the most prestige for the least effort. 
Edit: That’s why changing prestige values would do nothing about the problem, because then they would just switch to a different high prestige block. 