Suggestion 1: There is tons of land out there. 10x everyone’s maximum plots so people can protect their builds better if they want, or alternatively, build towns if they want. Leave it to free choice. This would give everyone plenty of room to grow creatively. To be honest even with over 1000 plots I feel boxed in, and I would definitely have more interest in playing as an end-game player if I had more land to work with creatively.
Suggestion 2: Civilizations Update. Half of each world becomes a “civilization”, centered around the largest build on the world currently. Future worlds would have the “civilized” half assigned automatically. In the “Wild West” half of each world, there are no rules regarding plotting. On the civilizations half, any town that passes 5 million prestige gets a buffer around the town of that many plots. So, a 10 million prestige town gets a 10 plot buffer in all directions, a 100 million prestige town gets a 100 plot buffer in all directions. The highest prestige holder in town gets control to allow people to plot and join the town. For every 10 million prestige the town has, an additional representative gets approval permissions.
Suggestion 3: Homeowners associations. Any town over 30 million prestige can elect (see representatives, above) to have a homeowners association. Homeowners association is made up of the top prestige holders with one vote per million prestige. The association can edit roads in town, and can write up citations for ugly builds, griefing etc. towns could even choose to have color themes if they wanted. It would be up to them to act in any weird way they wanted, just like real homeowners associations! (I remember growing up we were only allowed to have a basketball hoop if it was NBA approved, cement foundation based, glass backboard and perpendicular to the street)
Suggestion 4: Adjacency fee. it requires 3 plots to build adjacent to someone, not 1 plot, unless both parties agree to the build. This would make hostile takeovers and griefing more costly, and it would encourage people to leave space between each others’ builds, leaving everyone with a bit more breathing room.
Suggestion 5: House Movers. Make a craftable object that boxes an entire beacon up and let’s you move it as a unit, so people can move their whole builds if there is too much dispute. Maybe require one item per plot (so moving a large beacon would be a little more costly). This would alleviate much tension. This would also probably help keep some people in the game - people whose neighbors all quit and are now lonely; help towns grow and help build community.
Maybe limit total beacons each person can have to some extent? I know if I had gleam club there’d be nothing to stop me from plotting a single plot on every single planet even as-is…
Please keep in mind that prestige is an optional system and allowing a subset of players that game one specific system control over other players who don’t is potentially problematic.
Haha, true. But I thought it could be fun if it was like a real homeowners association potentially with annoyingly strict rules, to let people roleplay. The penalty for citations could be small, like -5% to footfall.
Agreed, but it seemed like a good way to choose ownership with minimal dev intervention (elections etc). It would also give end game players a reason to keep playing (to build) and more incentive to play for prestige. People who don’t want to play the prestige game would still have a whole half of every planet to build on. There would even probably be intentionally located cross-border communities that are half-civilization, half Wild West. Frontier towns
Suggestion 6: Plot claims go from mantle to max height for a cost of a single plot (beaconed, remove reserved). Yes this would break some protected farms (perhaps there could be a separate mechanism to make a 8x8x8 cube regeneratable), but it would allow people more freedom to build within their existing spaces, and it would encourage taller builds that don’t block others as much. This would be more realistic compared to real life real estate, too.
Make this an option in the beacon settings? I’d also like to see the option to allow multiple beacons in the same vertical space, this would enable terraced cities, or apartment houses, or multi-story malls. Current beacon implementation probably doesn’t allow this at all, but one can always hope? Maybe 2022?
What about from the plotted plot upwards but not down? If you want them all from the mantle up, go dig. If you want to get rid of those crazy trees, be happy!
That is costing me soooooo many plots, thos trees, grrrrrrr
Yes please! That would be rather nice, vertical plotting! Besides a market I also wanted a proper multi floored mall, but I can’t make that possible right now. Tho of course, if beacons can be rented out, etc. then that also works for that.
But I also would like to make a sky build over my market for instance, even thought f a big sign, I can’t since not all the market plots below it are mine…
I am not really fond of any of the suggestions. How about we try to get the developers to resurrect the protection zones they asked about a few months ago that got a lot of support from the forum.
This was being serious considered by the developers and something they were really looking at. I think it was just not an easy “add” because of the system behind settlements, plots, etc. So that is why we probably haven’t seen it yet.
What if when we got private planets, we could produce a temporary copy/blueprint of our beacon build data? That way we can place it on our private world, and not lose the build and/or stop being harassed by malicious players.
You should only be able to put the blueprint/copy on the same planet it’s on, or a private world. It would prevent exotic prestige cheats.
Also the blueprint/copy should be untradeable, and if it’s dropped then it can only be picked up by you or it immediately disappears.
(Maybe for larger plotted beacons, a visual can open[like the plot debug menu we have with all the squares], so you can see where you are placing it)
Please no.
It will just kill malls and ruin all the bigger cites, it will create huge unusable wastelands and won’t solve anything. Overlapping buffer zones next to your build are just the same as someone else’s plots: unplottable, unusable and lost.
Buffer zones are ment for those situations where you deal with uncooperative neightbors.
But if someone builds right next to you and is not willing to negotiate over plots, they won’t as well negotiate over buffer zones. It just creates a dead unusable no-man’s-land.
If you face someone who is willing to grant you permissions to build in the buffer zone, this person would most likely also have moved plots for you. The system defeats the purpose.
I know it’s planned to be able to turn off the buffer zone, but let’s be honest, if it’s an opt-out-feature, most people won’t do it because they don’t know about it or they don’t care and considering how fragmented big cities are, buffer zones will be a constant annoyance everywhere.
Better not release buy and rent function for plots…
Even without this function i already saw a lot of people trying to plot the area inside city and trying to sell with ridiculous pricing. It basically just give troll good reasons to troll the city. Your idea is good for solo players, but for people who manage the city will be the nightmare for sure.
I think it would be better to figure out exactly what problem we’re trying to solve for. In my experience a good solution starts with a good definition of the problem. Otherwise you can’t be sure you’re addressing the source of the issue rather than a downstream effect.
We have to understand why players get angry at nearby plots. If you understand the motivations of everyone involved you can incentivize behavior to change those motivations.
My attempt:
There are two types of players when it comes to beaconing.
One type of player wants to build near existing infrastructure. This gives them access to traffic and resources they otherwise can’t or don’t want to provide themselves (portal hubs, roads, etc).
The other type of player wants to build, maintain, and grow their own infrastructure. They may expect the first type of player to join their mega build, effectively acting as a prop or component of it. They have rules for how other players can or can’t participate, but few ways to enforce those rules.
The true source of the issue stems from a miscommunication between these two types of player. The devs also can not help because the game rules they set up do not recognize two styles of player. There is only “landowners” in the law’s eye.
I think this is close to a true definition of the problem. With it you can start to see why ppl want private planets so badly. They want to create two types of player where there is currently only one. It would be a shame if it takes giving players an entire planet to create the two roles. The devs’ old plot buffer idea doesn’t really address the core problem. It makes both types of player “louder” but still gives them no way to solve their disagreement.
By allowing the player to buy plots, it allows the players who want “nature” to plot the nature they want, as long as no one else took it, it also allows them to turn a desert into a grassy plain, or what ever they want.
I’ll admit to being the second type you mentioned.
I’ll build before completely knowing what I want the final building to look like, and I will have to change many things before I like it, but I tend to think function over esthetics, while I try to balance both. The best/worst thing about this game is the people. I can show off my build when I’m done with it as much as I can have others get in the way, but rather than blaming that person who liked my build so much that they wanted to be close to it. I blame myself for not planning it out well enough.
Maybe 2022?