The reserved plots might be causing issues in cities or malls, but if you build out in the wild it’s a cool feature. 2 plots on all sides are automatically reserved for you for when you would like to make smaller changes to your build. A hostile player (or even a friendly player) cannot build right next to your build.
But, a hostile player can plot right next to your reserved area. And this is a huge problem. If you ever want to change the plotting, maybe because plots aren’t account wide, or to make room for a friend or an alt, you will loose the reserved area to your hostile neighbor, who is now blocking your extension and even able to build right up to you. This was the thing we wanted to prevent!
Here’s the solution:
Plot a protective circle around your build. City walls worked in the medieval age, why should they not work for us! Now you can replot freely within your city walls and the reserved are will just be unreserved. No hostile player would be able to have a beacon within your walls to steal your reserved plots.
Bonus point, you now have a reserved area of 7 plots!
What you dont take into acct is you can 4 plot beacons in a checker pattern with a small amount of plots and own a region. So good luck finding that perfect spot if the region is reserved or owned by 1 player.
It is only beacons over 10k prestige that get the buffer, correct? That at least makes the investment required to plot a giant region with this method quite high. But for sure 10k prestige per beacon has to be cheaper than the 24 additional plots that would be required for the same area. I should plot a huge area with beacons just as a proof of concept how this could be exploited
Under the old prestige system I created some 10k market stall in 1x1x1 area with mostly decorative stone, using gleam and deco gem blocks for accent.
It’s not impossible or anything just a bit of work. with the new prestige system and rapidly decreasing “variety” bonus I’m not sure but you might just be able to block spam something mid level like deco stone and get the reservations.
One map is 576 X 576 plots.
Each map has 50 regions.
Assuming equal, square regions that would be 6635 plots per region, or approximately an 81 X 82 plot area. With a 2 plot extension in every direction a single beacon can reserve a 5X5 plot area. Let’s take an 85x85 plot area for round numbers. That would require 289 beacons(17 beacons east-west and north-south) checkered across the landscape to take over 1 region. So the real question is what is harder – Gathering 10,000 prestige 289 times or gaining 6635 plots?
And it may need tweaking. If we can think of a way to curtail what you have correctly stated is possible then we probably need to make a suggestion. I am drawing a blank right now.