What if there were a decoration that players could interact with to “like/heart” your build? They behave similar to beacons where it’s one per zone.
I think it would bolster a few of the community trends.
When seasonal villages pop up each installation could have one to vote for the winners. This would let more than just the forum community participate in these building competitions.
Each heart could give a little prestige. So if you make something small yet beautiful (statue, flower bed, etc) there is still a path to higher prestige for it. And large groups of players who want to settle together can get some natural prestige off of their friend network, which helps slightly to resist outside meddling. I wouldn’t crank this too high, just a nice little additive buff to prestige.
It provides an alternative leaderboard on the Worlds view. In addition to seeing the top 5 settlements by prestige (which is grindable) you can see the top 5 settlements by hearts. You might have to dedupe it from the prestige list, but I think it would help highlight a new class of attractions on each planet and give experiential builders something to aspire to.
There is a lot of emergent creativity opportunities. Players could put them in secret places or hard to reach areas where adding your name to the list is the reward. Players could create scavenger hunts by combining them with signs.
There’s a lot of room for an idea like this to grow if it performs well, e.g. adding voting options or guest book functionality. But those raise a lot of social questions so I’m not including them to keep the MVP simple.
Maybe it can be an option added to the beacons. I’ve come across so many awesome builds, and if the person is there I’ll tell them they’re doing great, but if no one is around I can’t. I think that little boost of praise can really lift a person’s mood.
This could also work in other democratic things, like picking a city name (my friend and I discussed that being a thing) or like choosing a design. This would also help people who don’t use discord or may not play as frequently.
I think a visible voting system/leaderboard could alienate some valuable members of the community who are not talented builders, but I like the idea of a guest book. I’ve seen some cool builds I’d like to leave a note for the owner or similar.
What if likes could only be given by those outside the settlement, so friends cant stack each other? Like a true stranger appreciation of your location?
I really like this idea and posted a similar suggestion a while ago.
But i don’t like the idea of it giving any ingame advantage like prestige or leader boards because then the system will be exploited and abused and becomes meaningless just like prestige right now.
