Here is a simple feature that will let the game generate more revenue and open up a lot of player possibilities.
Let us buy the ability to put a marker on a planet’s compass for a limited time. These markers would be viewable from anywhere on the planet, and behave just like the yellow capital marker does.
For 10 cubits per day, you can advertise your build to anyone on the planet in an unobtrusive and intuitive manner. This would be controlled from the beacon you wish to advertise.
It could also make the icon look more special when viewing it with a warp totem. Would give a strong reason to make warp totems as you can go to Sanctum and basically browse the planet for builds players have called to your attention.
That would actually be pay to win.
That feature would be very abused and the game economy will be even more broken than it currently is.
The first thing you will see is markers for shops and shop hubs since anything else is hard to maintain to be worth a marker in such manner.
I recommend playing a mobile f2p game for a reminder of what p2w really looks like. It’s purchased hammers with better effects than anyone can forge. Special buffs, gear, and stats that you can’t get access to without spending real money and which requires no effort to obtain except opening a wallet. Boundless has none of those things and will continue to not have them after adding an advertising channel.
I don’t even think shops are the primary benefactor of this feature is they already have plenty of ways to reach customers with shopping hubs and trade channels on both the forums and discord. This feature would be used by players running community events or for drawing visitors to their impressive builds. Currently the game gives these attractions no way to bring in visitors. I could see shopkeepers using it when they are running sales or special events.
Finally you assume that the intent is to maintain a marker indefinitely. The design should discourage that. If 10 cubits/day is not sufficient discouragement there are other techniques such as setting a max of N days and then waiting for a cooldown period before you can advertise again.
Mmm would like a compass fix for this too to make it more clear in which direction you are going. Icons seem to overlap the NSWE markers.
Cubits are earned ingame so doesnt mather much if it costs that.
I wonder with the guild update if those beacons show a different icon.
I don’t want us to get into semantics of the pay to win concept and I hope the following is enough as an example to cover: if you can pay x amount of cash and receive something/anything in the game that gives’s you and advantage be that an item or a plus in exposure above other players (even if it can all be obtainable with in-game currency)… that, is “pay to win”. In all the gaming industry, cosmetics, are probably the only thing that are considered acceptable to pay real money for them and not be “pay to win”, since give only a visual modification and do not contribute to any stats.
I understand your suggestion, and it’s “noble” in design, but not all players will use it the way you intend. Such a concept can be used fairly easy in “malicious” ways and for devs to implement mechanics to prevent that… it’s hard, very hard.
With respect,
Lion
P.S.: Even now there are a lot of people considering buying plots with cubits a pay to win mechanic, and if there wouldn’t be beacons that require fuel, it would most likely viewed like that.
For now you can see the coordinate markers if you look straight up. But I agree with you, there should be something done about this, there probably is a task related to this in the backlog but, there are other more important things to be worked on.
While I want people to be able to promote themselves I would not want something like this. I already have to turn off shouting because people feel the need to tell me about their store… this would just add to the noise I don’t want to see.
Even if this is not P2W which we can debate forever, it is Pay 2 Annoy. Why do I want to see these messages or additional icons from someone just because they paid for them? I agree with some of the other comments, where they stated they do not want to further clutter their screens. I definitely am on the side of asking the developers not to add this to the game.
By your definition of pay to win, buying plots for cubits and then gleam club to avoid fuel is pay to win. Because I have the “advantage” of not needing to collect materials to craft fuels. So gleam club is like buying beans and monster loot directly from the developers.
Your definition also makes cosmetics count as pay to win because they make more players look at my character model, which is “exposure above other players”. My signs use colored text, which I paid for, to draw people’s attention, probably away from the neighboring stores. So I am paying to win over players who can’t color their signs.
Your overly permissive definition of pay to win is the problem here and we do have to get into the semantics. Advantage alone is not enough to make something P2W. The advantage must be quantifiable and that quantity should be infeasible for free players to obtain through normal game mechanics. If your definition were sufficient, Boundless is already P2W.
What “fairly easy” malicious uses can you dream up? For how easy they are to come up with you seem to have forgotten to type any out.
Why keeping a feature like this behind a paywall?
The game could include compass filters. To let players choose wich information are displayed.
By the way, agressive shop advertising should not happening in the first place.
If plinth system is failing this hard, it’s time to aim for a more solid mmorpg proof solution (like regional auction house).
Good feedback so far. If the compass is already cluttered in people’s minds then we shouldn’t add more to it. I still like how the idea interacts with the planetary map but we are all portal hubbing around the galaxy so the average player looks at a planetary map only once in a great while. This isn’t enough exposure to make buying visibility there worth it, hence the compass approach.
It seems like the compass HUD will need some love before more things can be added to it, including this idea.
I also prefer the developer artwork that was linked, for a physical item which provides this ability, vs my idea of controlling it from the beacon menu. In general I prefer placing physical items to dealing with UI.
I do like the artwork, but I like anything that I can add to my buildings to make them look better.
If they set up a messaging channels for the guilds, maybe they could add one for your suggested location markers. If you are interested, you could look in this channel and see the messages and maybe then the markers would appear in your compass?
Maybe this is something that can be added to atlases that can be toggled on and off and we can choose how much or little information we want to see, a bit like satnavs and google maps.
I like these ideas.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t wish for the death of player’s shop. They are amazing!
Moving some informations on the Atlas is another good option. (dropping a plinth on it?)
