I think this would either lead to loss of trust from players or would need any beacon fuels capped at whatever the cut-off is. Otherwise it’s misleading to imply beacons are protected for that duration.
I think it’s probably possible to implement for the future if it was clearly signposted in-game, but I think they’d need to exclude existing purchases when doing so. I mean, you know, ultimately it’s their game and they can do what they want but I’d expect it to be seen as unethical to not do so.
Right, but there would be no need to change the mechanics of beacon fuels because built beacons would remain protected regardless of the player being inactive, for as long as they have gleam club.
It would merely be a completely unbuilt beacon exception. As in, you can keep it, but in order to keep it, you need an additional requirement of logging in every once in a while to make sure no one complained about the unbuilt status.
I don’t see the big deal because absolutely nothing is actually lost in the removal of plots that contain nothing. And if the person is overseas, or so sick that they can’t log in once a month, I assume that they’d have bigger worries than the unplotting of unbuilt plots.
I’m not too fond of this solution, either, but I can see how it would solve some problems in the specific and very particular case of large settlements. If you just pre-plotted some large area in the middle of nowhere as a plan for a future build then of course the devs would make an exception to the exception in the off chance that some malicious person asked 'em to unplot that area.
The game will automatically resolve most of the edge cases given time for beacons to expire. The player whose motives are in question must either return to refuel or let the land lapse. Either way you are guaranteed a path to resolution.
It gets really difficult when gleam club gets involved because you are paying money to disable the game’s automatic resolution of these edge cases. And there’s no cap to how long you can do this. For $200 I could ensure four years of questionably motivated plots. That’s not a lot of money for a games hobbyist, especially over a 4 year timeline.
I think something additional is needed to restore automatic resolution for gleam club beacons. Sorry I’m short on suggestions, just trying to shape the problem space a little more.
I’d agree with you on a plot with some sort of effort put into it but this seems like either a malicious attempt to stop expansion or a player that plotted a large area and lost interest in a game.
I look at it more like this, if we keep this rule how it is whats to stop people who have 4000-10000 plots from going to the top 10 cities and plotting a large area and quitting the game with 2 years gleam club?
I broadly agree with you and see where you’re coming from but I disagree here. I see a loss of value. You lose the place you reserved. Presumably you reserved it because you liked it. Perhaps you were there before the city. Perhaps it looked nice. You wanted that spot.
Now you don’t have it.
That’s a loss. I know it’s not much of a loss but it is there. I think we differ on how we view others perceiving it.
I don’t mind a change going forward myself because I log in so I’d meet any requirements anyway but it doesn’t feel fair to the people with existing beacons that didn’t start on that understanding.
But as an example: I have a holiday-home type build on a placid world. It’s not much but I like to sit in it and look out sometimes. The view caught my eye when roaming one day. So guess what? Another character has plotted some land in view so I won’t lose some of the view even if other people move in. I will never build on that land.
Now you build a hamlet sixty plots away. It grows to a town. My view is in the way of your expansion. Or you build a town two hundred plots away. It grows into a city. My view is ruining the plans for your new theme park area.
It’s contrived but you get my point. Unless we’re talking about provable malicious intent, there’s no way I should have to give up my view. There’ll be other examples where the blurry line is trodden. Where our views differ.
The only logical way I see to then be fair is to adhere to the existing rules: if you’ve beaconed it and fueled the beacon, it is yours. Unless you’re griefing someone, and then they should and do remove your plots and return them to you.
Right, I agree that the area being plotted before the city expanded in that direction should be protected too, even if unbuilt.
(Tho if you have a log cabin or whatever as part of that area it would be protected regardless)
The solution I’m proposing is specifically for people that claimed within a city, after the city already existed, and then stopped playing for whatever reason.
Maybe they’re planning on returning, maybe not, but if they cannot be contacted and they had pre-purchased a ton of gleam club, I think any reasonable person in that situation wouldn’t be too terribly offended at the game that they’re not currently playing for removing their claimed empty area that was placed purposefully within an already existing city and refunding the used plot points (which is the permanent thing that you buy with cubits).
Will they even remember those empty plots when they come back three months, six months, a year later? I doubt it. But loss of empty air space is very minimal compared to the impediment to the city in which they claimed land.
It just seems the path of less inconvenience, for all involved. And again, it only applies to claims made inside a city after the city was already there, so no issues with a city swallowing up your protected lake or whatever after the fact.
If the city is expanding towards existing plotted areas then it is the citys job to account for that and incorporate the existing structures, empty or otherwise, in their expansion plans. Or, you know, expand in a different direction.
Yep that sounds like it’d cover all exceptions to that situation. I hope it’s scaleable in terms of resource if the game grows in size. It sounds like a fair bit of data review to make a decision but I guess a lot could be scripted.
Well it would be a dev intervention thing, I believe. And as far as I know they can see who plotted first and whatnot to resolve those murkier cases, so it should cover everything.
Its a delicate thing to solve very exceptional problems so I don’t think it should be automatic, but if such a system were to be implemented (automatic or otherwise) going forward it would be fair to push one of those “news” announcement thingies on steam warning about it as a way of letting the people that are inactive at least have a chance of receiving notice of the change so that they can take action to prevent any issues, if they still care about those sketchy plots.
Not sure if the playstation version has a similar notification system that would reach inactives.
We are also was helped and now we can continue our idea! There are different situations and each needs to be sorted individually! We were very disturbed by one beacon which appeared and did not develop in any way, we saw that a beacon fill and tried to contact the owner, but he ignored us 2-3 months. If the owner will write to us in the future, we are ready to interact with him or compensate for the damage and disappointment that we have caused him. I had a situation when I had to move the base to another place, because another player surrounded me and did not allow me to develop, he found me on another planet and continued to annoy me. I had to pay him off, and only after then he leave me alone. Thanks to the developers and James for your help, we really appreciate it. We are also always happy to come to the aid of all players and make the game world even more beautiful!
just make a rule to send 3 emails to people after that use common sense count the complaints investigate and remove it
dont think there be that many people around that buy extra plots and gleam club and leave for 3 months and looses all email capable devices and hasn’t informed no one before leaving
I have been hunting for a guy for 2 weeks cause of hes 6 plots… nothing were wrong with those just that our road wouldve gone across it.
I found him after 2 weeks of “anyone knows who this guy is” questions to discord and he turned out to be nice german guy who had forgot he had plots at out place.
We’ve covered that. Then it’s the city’s fault for expanding into it and potentially falls into the category of griefing if the city encircled the older beacon on all sides.
The devs can tell which came first and if the city expands in such a way that it starts rolling towards beacons that had already been placed with the intention of swallowing them up then the city is wrong.
Then I think, you have to leave the plots. I think if we start assuming everyone has bad intentions then you hurt more players than you help and that only serves to drive players away from the game and to leave negative reviews. I can already see the review. “I paid to protect my beacon by subscribing to gleam club and came back after taking a break to find my beacon had been removed”. How do you reconcile that?
I can appreciate the frustration being expressed over empty plots, but since we have been told time and time again that if we want it we should plot it, this all seems counter to that argument. I have gone out and plotted large sections of land in anticipation of farming. So if I do nothing to them and I do not play for a few months because I am waiting to try farming, and someone decides they want to expand their city that way, they can?
actually yes…the person either speculated on the land being prime later or else blundered into it by chance…either way it is THEIR land…you building a city AROUND them is NOT their problem, it is yours.
lol you are welcome to try My city is spread all over the place …if someone were to block here, we expand there. if they block there, we expand here. Threatening folks will not win people to support your cause!
There will always be edge cases like that where it would be unfair.
