I am curious if there is some way to keep bridges and such from regenerating back to nothing. Maybe it is a good thing that they regenerate, but at the same time, they were built to facilitate travel in areas where it may not have been possible without them.
Are there any thoughts on ways to approach this or even if it matters at all?
Maybe there can be minibeacons that connect to each other, protecting a small radius along a line?
But but doesn´t that make things more complicated and limit area usage too much for one player?
Maybe…what if they weren’t so much “beacons” as they were just “anti-regen” markers? (so not tied to any player, and can still be edited by anyone; just prevents world regen in that area?)
I remember reading ages ago that the idea would be that they were protected by smaller Beacons but I don’t know if that is still the plan.
Thing I don’t like about smaller beacons is that players will likely just put dozens of small beacons together in a square shape and turn it into a larger beacon, just with more annoying beacon borders. They would have to either limit the number of small beacons given, and thereby cripple the ability to protect long roads or bridges, or allow limitless small beacons and give griefers a tool to make sure their destruction is permanent. I think @DarkRepulsor is on to something with the anti-regen markers idea.
Summary: This debate is pointless because regen shouldn’t apply to player placed blocks. while this will cause some overworld griefing, it can easily be snuffed out by a clear no grief policy and bans from the devs. No one will spend 20$ to grief once or twice and then get banned.
I know we’ve been talking about regen, but I don’t think that means that placed blocks will disappear. Or at least it shouldn’t entail that in my opinion.
Regen should only apply to natural blocks. Yes that means that people can do placement griefs, but that’s ok because players could remove those, and if necessary devs can help remove as well.
If everything built reverts then any sort of infrastructure would be impossible because of the above mentioned exploits. One thing that we’re going to have to get over is that there will be griefing outside of the beacons. No two ways about it. The restoration (regen) of natural blocks cuts out about 50% of the griefing we could worry about. Even still there will still be placement griefing (placing blocks all over just to be mean). If the Devs take a clear anti-grief platform, and the only possible griefing is placement griefing, it will be easy to punish people for griefing- maybe permanently if necessary.
I’m also in favor of strong anti-grief policy, but I also believe you can cut a huge amount of paid moderator’s workload out by building the game with prevention in mind. You make a good point about world regeneration, and really we don’t know the fine details of what the dev’s have in mind. Regenerating only natural blocks (both placed and destroyed) would solve the roads and bridges to some extent, but also means that some popular building materials like gravel and logs can’t be used. Still, that’s preferable to your first statement (imo) that player placed blocks should not be regenerated at all. That pretty well insures that noob towers will fill pop up everywhere and since it’s not directly griefing, a strong anti-grief policy won’t deter it either. I’d be interested in seeing some details on the dev’s regen and anti-grief plans, just to clear up a lot of concern and confusion.
Someone proposed that larger beacons should be able to extend their protection to structures like roads.
Hmm, I think the regeneration also includes the removal of player placed blocks. just think about the sand or dirt piles people build to get on higher grounds or just to get an overview? This should also include crafted blocks outside of beacons. There should be another system for keeping them.
but yeah, griefers should get a long ban if they are cought. That’s for sure!
Im also interested in this
dito; also;
Because there is a over 2 km long way…
It is a tough question. Bridges and roads are just blocks. I can’t even define what a bridge is because it can be of any size, go through mountains (tunnel) and so on. A bridge is really a bridge just because we say so. So this question is sorta Pandora’s box.
I like the idea of no-regen zones. They would be areas not owned by nor protected from players. Maybe some sort of toll blocks could be used to preserve these areas from regen. Also, placing a beacon should probably end up breaking the regen zone. The concept seems simple, but
Hmm, I think a useful kind of smaller beacons should do the job. Their was already the talk about having few big beacons or some more smaller ones per player. If the maximum is set with a reasonable balance between the different sized beacons it would be enough. In the later game bridges or tunnels will be a good point for securing even smaller areas and also some roads may fall into this category. But roads longer then a hundred or two blocks should either be a group project (by the people connected through them) or not to be protected such a long way. Just think of the exploration part of the game. Having roads all over the worlds would destroy the feeling of the wild untouched areas.
I think it would be cool if it was a large guild/city project to build a long road, and since they would own the road they could prevent certain people from using/changing it. The roads could provide decent movement bonuses, and possibly even have a kind of train or something of the sort along it.
It seems like,
as this conversation goes,
the more complicated it gets… (" T’~T),
Why not just have everything the same as it is now?
We can re-gen certain blocks like those 4 blocks that disappeared from a 10x10x10 range if we really wanted it.
Griefers will probz be the rich trolls, beginners, harvesters, or someone mad,
but I think the price of the game sorts through the majority.
Well, Minecraft also costs about 20$,so the price will be no protection. To keep it simple, stay with beacons. If you plan a bridge or road, then use smaller beacons. May be together with friends. For longer ways you may build linked portals or use warps, so very long roads don’t have to be a matter. The rest of the griefing problems which may occur will be handled by the regeneration or some bans 
being banned from a minecraft server honestly isnt much deterrent, as there are hundreds of others.
jep, but in Oort it will feel much more harsh
Sounds like an awesome, not too easy exploitable and not too hard to implement idea.
This could also be a feature that only allows to connect the beacons of (big) guilds to prevent roads beeing all over the world.
But this should be somewhere at the middle/bottom of the to-do-list though.