What makes a settlement? Also why the noise about footfall?

Nightstar · 2019-01-15T18:37:01.310Z

I have a beacon tht won’t resolve into a settlement.

I created a post about this last week but since the plot analyzer was coming, I stopped trying to sort it, and I’m so glad right now. Reading around the forums this morning, I’m getting the notion that the beacon has to be AT LEAST THREE PLOTS wIDE in every direction in order for it to resolve as a settlement, and each plot has to be surrounded by at least 8 other beaconed plots to not be discounted as ‘road’ or something else.

My portal route to this particular build was down but now i have worries about my original lonely cave settlement which is maybe 30 plots from three avatars (After i delete another beacon when the game is up) and is probably not three plots wide anywhere.

It cost me a lot, not being able to find any documentation on this game. I’ve been loving it but I’m not going to fight it. 12 weeks (and 1549 hours) in today is my ‘anniversary’. I’m not sure what’s going to happen when i can finally log in and travel but I’m nervous about this. If every settlement is a fight or we just HAVE TO Plot giant cubes now, I’m not even interested.

The way the plotter tools work is already a problem, and they make it so you can easily, acccidentally spend your plots instantly, but you have to find, dig to, and get inside a plot to remove it this has tied up 60 plots for almost 2 months of my 3 months playing. Yes, I could have invested the hours to decrease that number but again, it should never have been a problem.

I bought plots, 2 plots tall doesn’t seem like a TOO big deal, I was willing to adjust and it would give me some space above to add floating lights or something. But it did force a purchase and will require an extra, mostly empty, 100+ plots off my balance to achieve it.

I mean, I was talking myself into accepting that the game would force me to double-plot everything if I don’t want to pave out a square. Now, after the dev stating that you have to occupy at least a 3x3 to form a settlement I’m just peeved this starts to stink like a cashgrab.

Also how do we integrate?

I’m not even worried about footfall. I don’t understand how much the guys that have plot walled the hubs or have shops in actual busy cities are making. In the capital of my world approaching and then passing 200k prestige I never got over 3k in a day. In fact the one day I broke 2k was a banner day for most of the city I’m not sure but there was a wave of new players or something. I have a build that touches the defense wall of the UA regional hub and I’ve never gotten more than 200c in a day from it.

In 12 weeks I still feel like a newish player and right now I’m super confused. One thing that has left me frustrated and uninterested in any social aspect of the game other than talking with some builders who’ve builds i’ve enjoyed.

I’mnots ure what’s going to happen when i can log in and check out my stuff today. Will all of my edge plots be roads?
Will I lose the pathetic amount of footfall I make because the only plots i could get where I wanted to be is a 2x5 that won’t even qualify as anything but a road now? IS my notion (fed by many builds) of creating a nice, attractive area of paths and such to invite people to build in pretty much hosed if it’snot a 9x9 for everyone and a city paved into blocks?

AAAAARGH I know I’m not expressing myself well. IDC I guess I’m locked of the game and trying to sort or solve any of this and I’ve come to the forum to vent, and see if anyone else (while venting or sharing) can offer some insight into any of this.

Also for any dev (I’m not trying to tag any or get attention I imagine they’re in crisis right now) who might be following random threads is this stuff published anywhere? The rules of \what it takes just for one solo player to create a beacon that will resolve into a settlement that doesn’t touch anybody else? Why can’t i see how many visitors I’ve had?

I can’t believe I tore down my shop and rebuilt it into the city brick by brick to create travel paths and a new route over obstacles/across town and now I’m afraid that will be counted off my prestige and my beacon without fake shop to lure people to the very center of it won’t be generating any footfall, anyways.

Dunno, seems to me that if I’m not willing to build with absolutely zero regard for status, prestige, or footfall I’m going to be endlessly frustrated here as I try to move from grinding for the basics into building and expanding an ‘empire’.

I’m not even done at all. I just know what happens when you post 1000 words to a forum. If you’re also avoiding posting your random worries and concerns to the forum, come get your catharsis put it here. For less than one week I’ve been attending the forum and I need to understand if I’m in a common boat, or if I’m just missing something obvious.

NerArth · 2019-01-15T19:08:48.816Z

I’m certain you’re not alone in your settlement frustrations. Personally, I do not have many issues with it or settlements as a mechanic, but the main settlement I participate in, is very dear to its founder, and I know they are just as upset and frustrated about the plotting and settlement issues. You can easily find the thread about it elsewhere on the forum.

But I do myself have found the unplotting and plotting mechanics to be poor, at best. In pre-release you could at least see plots even through ground/walls, and it was extremely helpful to make a mental image of how your plotted area looked, but also made it easy to unplot underground. I don’t know why this way of rendering plots was dropped exactly, but it’s obviously had a serious practical impact, since many of us seem to have issues with unplotting.

You’re absolutely right though. The information available in-game, and even outside of the game, often is not adequate to many of our issues and does not help untangle complex situations. For example, even though I had 500+ hours from pre-release, when I started playing again, I had no idea how coils affected spark costs and crafting times. Why?

Simply put, I wasn’t told anywhere in-game and they were novel to me. What I’m saying here is to make the point that the game has a fair bit of information that is too obscure to understand at a glance, at least without someone else with experience telling you about it.

There was a post about someone having loads of negative coin before they could realise how – again, the game hadn’t been clear that warping directly to your home beacon is always possible even when your coin is 0, but at a negative credit cost.

And the worst thing about it is that if you’re purely a solo player or don’t particularly have the time to research certain aspects of the game, so many important details about mechanics can easily be missed or simply be absent to you, and it shouldn’t be the player’s fault for not knowing details that are required to be known but haven’t been stated anywhere in-game.

All in all, what I’m trying to say is that I empathise with you and do feel a lot of parts of the game can be very frustrating, probably more so for those people with less time on their hands.

Nightstar · 2019-01-15T20:28:19.366Z

Well, it looks like being surrounded by other people’s plot can make your settlement status, at least you don’t have to own the whole 3x3 if you’re in town.

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This is a hub and food shop and generates more footfall than my large build across town.

Thanks to being surrounded my larger build is OK for not being a road. Infinity city is pretty badly broken though yesterday i wasn’t even in the ranks, now I’m three of the top 5.

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Also now it says 60c per visitor instead of 30, but I have 80c. No idea how many people have been here.

The build that completes that path across the water and houses my main portals is almost 20% road now, including the “most built” plot of the entire beacon:

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Contiguous plots of a 4 wide section are roads. If settlements are resolved at plot level what is the "current settlement"status of some plots that aren’t shown as plotted and not others? the analyzer doesn’t seem to change with altitude so it’s not indicating where this beacon is and isn’t plotted over 1 plot vertically.

It does however seem to be counting vertical plots as well as the unoccupied ‘current settlement’ plots for the 4 edge plots that are turned into roads.

It’s a little worrying that plots which should (I would think) be extending settlement status themselves are actually cordoned off, or that with 40+plots in a contiguous block this beacon could barely form a settlement on it’s own. If I’m getting this correctly 9 of the 45 plots might achieve settlement status without my other build hugging the one side. Luckily not a problem for now.

As for my dark orange dream ona new world, major choices to be made today.

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I just tossed in several pics there, I think it will take at least 4-5 screen of analyzer to display the layout of this build. It has some extra holes from me trying to troubleshoot with wrong/confusing information before but I don’t think the remaining ~500 plots I have on this avatar can salvage this into a single settlement without making it into something that would be unattractive for others to try and build in or around.

Also it wouldn’t leave any plots for the road to the place that I had started thinking about. Which is irrelevant because while I haven’t got to the point where I can even be footfall-oriented yet but while 100 plots for a 50 plot road was harsh but considerable, I’m not spending 150 for it, which would also create an ugly 3 plot wide long plaza which again, would be a huge landgrab/obstacle and not inviting to any other builder or sense of community.

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Not 100% sure yet but, at least I shouldn’t have to unplot the whole thing if I abandon it. Reharvesting all that copper will be a sad bit of work, though.

Well for anyone reading who can’t log in yet your totally surrounded in city builds are probably ok, if your city isn’[t too badly broken heh.

My notion of a future in boundless is changing a lot today. Even if you just plot yourself a straight 10x10 you’re going to be losing a third of your build to ‘road’ status if you don’t get it shoved right up against someone else’s build it seems.

At this time, my feelings are still very mixed. I am wishing that I had waited for the update to buy plots. There’s no way i would have thrown $100 at boundless today. I’m off to find out what sort of shape my original, isolated cave build is in.

I’m basically following up for my own catharsis right now, if the whole thing has lost settlement status as I expect I’m just deleting those early builds. I was considering this anyways. Moving storage will be a pain but I will no longer be distracted with ideas of repairing or advancing that build any more.

Finding the ‘lost’ plot in a jumble of flooded caves will also no longer be a thorn in my side so, undoubtedly that bit of good is something to hold onto lol. My tendency and desire to try and build things that integrate with the environment or follow the features/land of the world are pretty much wrecked, though.

Meh.

Nightstar · 2019-01-15T22:00:02.447Z

Yeah this is just for me at this point, lol, but I’m posting the results of my trip to the countryside.

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This area has been more or less filled in at different times. The build touches the mantle, and the top of the sky. The beacons wind vertically through the caves in a way that isn’t clear on the analyzer screenshot.

Since I unbeaconed a large underground garden it hasn’t included the single-row border plots as part of the settlement anyways. At this point I think I’m just going to unbeacon this museum and be done with it.

Parts of my viewing platform are part of the settlement, and parts are not.

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Farewell old home.

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Just for lulz here’s another growing build i passed on the way. I guess a lot of people will be learning that their ‘settlements’ are 50% or more ‘road’ this week.

TBH I’m not even sure how much this changes, and how much it’s just revealing, by adding the analyzer.

It would explain how my solo builds hardly ever generate footfall even though I see people in them.

This seriously impacts my entire philosophy here. I was trying to figure out how people get enough footfall that they even care, much less for all of this crying all the time. Apparently I’ve just been doing it REALLY wrong and beaconing out massive swaths of refined stone pavement that people can’t avoid is the only way to go. Preferably in the middle of other people’s parking lots so you don’t waste high percentage of your plots to ‘road’ status.

Overall,this has severely dampened my enthusiasm for the game. It’s looking like parking lot competitions and empty mansion wars are what it comes down to, and with some added weight to the notion of the ‘first mover advantage’ that so many players already resent.

Time to sort out my motivations I guess. Went form being in a busy capital to being in a broken, abandoned town this week,and apparently the only build I have that the boundless devs/system consider ‘worthy’ of standing alone is due to me having plotted out a giant area that is, tbh, probably 50% empty right now.

I’ve been curious about the footfall thing, but for me it’s totally secondary to this. Covering my builds in little red squiggles that say “you’re a griefer/your build is bad” and refusing to allow me to participate in the part of the game that it seems like most players are somehow able to depend on for their gameplay pretty much

Well pretty much i dunno what. I already gave these guys my money .If I can’t sort something out or get to a place in the next couple days where I feel good about participating here, or see a hope of becoming “part of the system” without completely subsuming my gameplay to another person or guild, I’ll probably just kiss it goodbye.

NerArth · 2019-01-15T22:35:36.587Z

To be honest I never got much over 3k footfall coin a day either, some days even less than 1k, even being in an area that had decent popularity. A good portion of my coin came from sales but those were sporadic, too, understandably.

But I don’t think the system is saying red squiggles mean bad build or griefer necessarily. To me it seems that your settlements are quite complex in terms of plot layout, and it seems to me that the new plot detection system is simply not making these complex plot layout builds work properly as a single unified settlement.

Something else though, the “road” type plots being at the edge of that random beacon you passed by for example - it seems a bit empty there, so it’s not like there’s a lot of difference if edge plots are being considered “roads”?

From my perspective, settlements don’t mean a whole lot on their own, but I think that players in general have been giving them more meaning than they inherently have as a system. That doesn’t mean I’m devaluing settlements - on the contrary, if it’s important to so many players, then it should work in a good way for those players.

Settlements have been important to me for two reasons, one being that they can and do promote cohesive player communities sometimes, and also because of how footfall works, it’s just a part of things that we have to be part of a high traffic area to receive some coin to spend, since objectives and feats on their own are too sparse (in time) by comparison.

As I don’t want to turn your thread into an economy debate, I’ll stop there, only adding that I only wish we could all afford the things we want and not only the things we feel that we need; this is how I most often feel about it anyway.

And personally, even since before settlements were even a thing, my main interest has always remained in building, mining and a bit of exploring, but more of the first two. So whether settlements come or go, as long as there are rocks and metals and gems… I’ll probably remain interested to some degree.

Nightstar · 2019-01-15T23:23:49.565Z

irst off I don’t think there’s any worries about derailing a thread like this lol. and long rambling discussions are ‘my bag’.

I get that it’s not a griefer tag directly but how to put it into words, that bit of “this part is uselss/doesn’t count” is one thing on the edge of a 10x10. It’s another thing entirely when it’s stamped on up to 90% of your build.

Also it’s bot even just an exclusion, it’s labeled as a road, etc… I mean it seems like everybody loves a good path but pretty much all discussion of roads and road or bridge builders i have seen is negatively biased. TBF it’s bluntly announced that this part of the system is in place and was developed to prevent griefing in prestige wars and footfall grabs.

This, then, is doubly irritating when there is no other settlement involved. Who even knows how much overhead this would save the system in all the calculating and recalculating of prestige and status I read about if there was just a simple check at the beginning that said ‘is there even another settlement involved’ at the beginning?

The case of the pathways is a special case a little it’s a compromise build and here’s where discussion of the economy is on topic IMO. I consider myself a solo/lonewolf type in a lot of ways, I’m not eager for ‘community’ in most scenarios.

Economics are 100% related here as well. Footfall is, apparently the thing and so whether by seeking it or conciously deciding not to, it’s a factor in every building and plotting decision we make. Footfall may be my third priority on that pathway build over a gleam field, but there’s not any denying it’s a priority.

And as for gauging a build by what you see from an analyzer screenshot, it’s not easy and those who can’t access it may have a misimpression that it makes this simpler. It’s a single overhead view and it doesn’t change with altitude or levels.

I mean, I see the same diagram in that view whether I am standing on the ground, 16m under it, or at 252m on the platform. there’s no way for me to tell which plots are 1 thick, which are multiple layers thick, and which are plotted at various levels through the reservation column.

I was so happy when i got to name my outpost or whatever the first level is there in the cave. How sad to see that today it would be literally impossible with the current restrictions, and the structure of the build, for that first home to have ever achieved any status past “beaconed”.

So anyways all the ratioinalization about how I felt about building before i understood this, or how I haven’t been dependent on footfall anyways - it doesn’t change how I feel when I stand there and see my entire build squiggled out in red and designated as “road”, which is blocked out from participating in the system.

I’m still seeing a prestige count on the beacon, which I assume includes the bricks in those plots. Maybe this is another reason why the footfall I receive is rarely divisible by the “coins per visitor” amount". Again I know this value has just been blatantly false in cities now but within my own settlement?

Also I’m not scared to run portals any more so I’m pretty much done building onto the onions of cities that people have created around the hubs and trying to drag people across several paved over “first mover” reservations just to protect their status as enclosed parts of the city and take on the burden of being the road edge myself. The game is young but all I see is so much plotted over territory and abandoned settlements, I’m 100% not interested in having any part of my traffic depend on anyone else’s presence/builds/portals.

Also thanks for even discussing numbers. Honestly from all of the complaints I hear it seems like everybody but me must be making tens of thousands of coins per day or something there’s constant outcry over it and building in and out of the city, adding and removing portals, trying a couple strategies now I’ve never managed to get a useful amount of coin together from footfall. I enjoy a few hundred, or a couple thousand coins every few days but it’s usually not even enough that I could do something like, buy a forged tool or a nice stack of hard to farm bricks every week.

I don’t know, some of that sounds a little contradictory but emotions are rarely clear and I’m re-sorting my motivations here today.

uacko · 2019-01-15T23:35:52.423Z

Nightstar:

Well pretty much i dunno what. I already gave these guys my money .If I can’t sort something out or get to a place in the next couple days where I feel good about participating here, or see a hope of becoming “part of the system” without completely subsuming my gameplay to another person or guild, I’ll probably just kiss it goodbye.

This update has barely been out for 12 hours. There are are a lot of bugs. Lots of people are having problems with their settlements. Take a step back and give some time for the dust to settle.

Nightstar · 2019-01-15T23:57:28.747Z

Fair enough, I’m not looking to ragequit or anything.

It’s hard, finding useful information about this game. This update and the information it has brought to the fore change my perception of the game, and that’s not a bug this is clearly intentional and while one dev has said he would post a slightly better explanation of some of the rules nobody is saying that this isn’t working correctly.

At this point it seems that’ we’re expected to sort it out.

So, this update has barely been out for 12 hours, which honestly means that there are still probably several days of players coming back and finding their settlements sharded into pieces, perhaps 100% marked as ‘road’, and everything this entails.

It seems that every build that is not completely surrounded by another build, or at least three plots veritcally thick around it’s edges, is going to have plots designated as ‘road’ in it.

If you have plotted yourself a nice 5x5 (bigger than I could understand needing when i started lol) alone in the country -16 of your 25 plots are ‘road’ now, right? The Minimum number of plots that will allow a single plot to properly be an outpost is 9 and that’s only if they’re in a 3x3 which will allow 1 plot to resolve as “member of a settlement”.

I’m not kidding as a new player with two neighbors hovering over me and 1 complaining about how he might have wanted to expand this way etc… I was hesitant and felt a little greedy taking my first 2x2x2 to learn how to build. Perhaps that’s just a factor from my lack of familiarity with this genre butI do read that plenty of players respect a local warden, ask to build, etcetera too.

IMO these conversations are part of “the dust settling”. As for the money comment, it’s hard to tell right now how things will go for me. I didn’t realize the size of the coming dust storm or I would have waited until after seeing exactly how the dust “shakes out” and begins to settle.

james · 2019-01-16T00:01:49.010Z

Post about the system:

Explaining Beacons and Settlements post Release 211 Devlog

Below are some notes that will hopefully help players understand the Settlement and Beacon changes introduced in Release 211. Chunk Resolution: Before Release 211 Settlements were evaluated at a chunk resolution. A chunk is a 16m x 16m column (from bedrock to max height) within the world. A chunk is hence big enough for 2 x 2 plot columns. Each plots is 8m x 8m x 8m. Beacons are plotted via plots. So in 8m x 8m x 8m cubes. The Settlement system would: scan over all the chunks in the world …

Nightstar · 2019-01-16T00:10:47.141Z

Thanks for the link James, going to read up now.

james · 2019-01-16T00:14:08.188Z

Nightstar:

Thanks for the link James, going to read up now.

Good luck.

Heureka · 2019-01-16T02:01:15.995Z

Very nice, so the plotmap is a 2D map with columns.
So i can have plots like roads on different heights, and as long the columns touch each other they will merge.

Nightstar · 2019-01-16T02:51:01.005Z

That’s mostly good info. In regards to the comment about creating confusion you are 100% correct that having documentation at release is a good thing.

I’m not having any settlement identity issues or confusion over naming rights. I have a beacon flashing an error message at me under both the old and new systems.

There is actually only a single beacon involved, It was never dependent on chunk resolution or bridging unclaimed plot columns.and until today I’ve been left at a complete loss as to how a single beacon with no other beacon, plot, or settlement touching can be pulling me an error about bridging two settlements.

However this explicit description clears up the reason that my completely contiguous plots are not able to resolve, it would seem:

Release 211: Empires - Guilds and Messaging++!

Moving to plot level will have ‘changed’ things. But also makes it much easier to comprehend as it’s now always ‘plot column neighbours join together’ rather than plots merging for settlements even if there were 2 gaps inbetween; but only sometimes! Since depended on chunk borders.

The old road hueristic was ‘each chunk has to have 4 plots’ and now is ‘the plot and it’s 8 neighbours around it have to have 9 plots’ which largely works out the same but sometimes is more strict, but again is easier to comprehend as it doesnt rely on chunks which you cant see borders of.

Before, ‘if you were careful with chunks’ you could get away with a 2 wide set of single high plots to make a road that didnt hit the road hueristic, but sometimes had to be 4 plots wide, now its consistent 3 plots wide single height wont hit the hueristic.

At least for PC, the new debug screen for beacons/settlements will help find any parts of a beacon that ‘cut’ a set of plots into two via road pieces which lead to ‘bridges settlements’

TBF lucadeltodecso is clear enough to have answered my actual question without the analyzer.

Pretty much everything I’ve posted since I read that is exploration of the new tool, and some existential angst over the fact that i have to largely rethink most of the build plans I’ve been working towards to comply with this requirement. It’s the opening statement of the thread really, it isn’t about unanswered questions it’s my reaction to the answer.

This leaves me with hard choices concerning my build, and my approach to what I’m wanting to try in an upcoming build. Under this heuristic there is no “light touch”.

I’m sure you guys were very busy last week when I posted more detail about this situation. I never filed or ticket or did anything to explicitly get dev attention to the problem as I was told the analyzer would help clarify things.

Apologies if mis-titling or oversharing regarding how this impacts my evolving expectations led you to think I was confused about this technical aspect of the game engine.

The remaining question for me isn’t ‘how’ it’s ‘if’.

This includes me taking a stop over at “why” for a while but, I can go do that without the forum if it upsets people.