Remove parts of the game that encourage conflict

[anon34275467]

@MinerDiggerMan

Could we remove the parts of the game that encourage the behaviors that this patch was supposed to address?

Why not make a Heart-shaped statue, where people can come and choose which builds they like most instead of footfall? Give everyone 10 “likes” or allow 10 of their “likes” to contribute to an “art bonus” or “useful” bonus for builds. Portal hubs keep their income, and the best builds get art bonuses. Builders get rewarded not for how large a city they have, or how much prestige, but for how much people love a build.

I still miss that random fish shop build someone posted a while back that regenned. Out in the middle of nowhere. I felt it deserved more “footfall” than many other builds.

Then just massively buff dailies and add more for every kind of activity in the game. Total amount run, total amount creeped, gathered, mined, farmed, hunted, processed, explored, etc. Reward every activity in the game so most of the coin income is actively gain, not passively. Every day they reset and you can earn them again.

Then people won’t care as much about where their beacons go and stop trying to plot solely for footfall.

Also, remove the quest that tells you to make a settlement.

Honestly, I’d like something like this.
In my very first thread on these forums, I wrote something that went a little bit in that direction.
Right now, I’m even wondering if my post isn’t what made the devs change how prestige was calculated. I think back then. Might be totally wrong, though.

@anon34275467

• I think there’s a big overlying issue in Boundless about how Prestige is handled, that causes different problems. Bear with me, this feedback might turn into a suggestion thread, there.
World hubs are players made, and what decides which settlement is the greatest on a world is not how many people like it but how much Prestige you have.
So then, everybody wanna get the most Prestige to own “the best settlement”. But what are the best ways?
From my understanding, there are at least two ways players do things :
A) Either they make alliances and merge settlements together to add-up the prestige (sometimes they forcefully merge themselves with others - it’s basically settlement rapping).
B) The other non-exclusive way is to put a ****load of expensive **** in your settlement, like entire buildings only made of machine titanium and compacted gems.
We end-up with two problems :
A) An unhealthy competition of "who’s got the biggest… collection of expensive blocks stacked together.
B) Well… an ugly collection of expensive blocks stacked together that people call “cities”.
I mean, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, sure, but the fact that people are aiming for the maximum prestige and then make everything out of machined alloys and gleam instead of trying to make beautiful cities with tasteful color choices… I blame the apparently primitive way Prestige is being calculated.
From where I stand, there should be more complex ways to calculate what’s inside a beacon’s plots.
Why not make a “decoration” Prestige multiplicator for how much variety of blocks you use? And a “Bob Ross” Prestige multiplicator for how many colors you use? An “exportation” Prestige multiplicator for how many blocks came from other worlds than the one the beacon is on? Stuff like that, y’know.

• And why should Prestige decide which settlement is the capital to begin with?! Why leave that decision to some algorythm, and not make it player-driven?
What if there was an item-block that you can put inside your beacon, let’s say a “Golden Book”, that everybody can interact with, and each player non-affiliated with a settlement can give a star to said settlement by using that Golden Book. Each player can only give one star per world, as long as it’s not to a settlement he’s associated with, so they gotta choose well!
How many stars your settlement got decides if you’re the capital or not.
I’m just spit-balling here, though.

Anyway, now, I’d say the best thing would be to add a Like system to complement the Prestige system.
Getting rid of it would be spitting in the face of those who made builds only with prestige in mind (instead of the artistic value).
Those likes couldn’t be given by characters who are even remotely connected to a settlement (such as alts of a builder). But I think friends should still be able to give likes, though.