< < < DEAR DEVs: A letter from the Base Builders > > >

American Angel, I feel your frustration in your opening post here. I wish I had found this thread before posting my concerns/frustrations/ideas/suggestions (feel free to decide what they were) over in the committee thread. I too have wanted to see if anything new was going to come down the pipe for base disigners. I have at least one major base - and two smaller ones that I've "inherited" - that I have stopped even thinking about because the current method of doing things gives me nightmares.

Please, we need some love and support too.

It seems to me that what bases really need is a complete overhaul of the base designer from the ground up to make it more user-friendly, stable, and feature rich.

The problem with that, is that base building is by design only used by part of the player base - namely those members of the SG that have permissions to do so. Therefore the amount of time and effort that such an overhaul needs is not warranted by the number of players it would appeal to.

The solutions suggested so far have been (1) people could create their own SG and their own bases, and (2) personal apartments could be added in addition to (and possibly linked to) SG bases.

The problem with (1) is that it encourages isolation rather than community building. That's bad, so that's out.

(2) sounds good and doesn't really present any problems except this: most (if not all) of the time, only one person is going to see your personal apartment. Screenshots and possible visits aside, it's not going to be the community-wide shared form of player created content that warrants a lot of development work for its own sake.

It seems to me that the one thing that could provide a bit of development priority to this would be to find a way to make the hypothetical new Base Builder tool compatible with the Mission Architect. Add spawn points and other necessary mission features to the base maps that can be activated when the maps are used in active missions.

This way, the base builder is also a mission map builder and, in my opinion, adds a whole new layer of depth to MA.

I know that a base builder overhaul and fully customizable MA maps have both been asked for, and it makes sense to me to bundle those suggestions into one tool (and I'm sure someone else has probably suggested that too). I think that might give the Devs the justification to put the resources into it.

There are many things I'd like to see added to or outright changed with base building. I'm sure some of them have been brought up elsewhere, but I am not a frequent visitor on the Forums.

1.) When you stack desks vertically and accidentally drop one at the base of your column just beside your stack, that puppy 'aint going anywhere. There have been times when just to remove one block, I've had to tear down over one hundred items. It'd be really nice if I could just move that one offending desk. As an adjunct to this, some times when you have a large sum of items all flush together (take for example, desks forming a second story floor atop a floor tile used as scaffolding) some times it becomes impossible to select an object that you should be selecting and you instead find yourself repeatedly selecting some thing ten feet away. Then you have to go in to Current Room and locate your item that way to delete it. Again, may I just click the tile plz?

2.) Copy, Paste, Rotate (by 360 degrees) and Lock. Yeah, I said it. I wanna lock structures so that they can not be added to or deleted from once completed (unless unlocked), and then it'd be swell if I could copy them, rotate the structure one degree at a time with a left/right button method (in addition to the regular 90 degree rotate) with a chat bar that lets me quickly type the amount of degrees I'd like the object to be rotated. It might seem like so much work for something that'll see so little use, but I once wrote a fifteen foot tall sign in cursive using small wall lights. Then I replicated it on the opposite wall. They held a combined 1,100+ items. Copy/paste could've spared hours of my life there. I recently made a spiral staircase encased in glass bottles leading to a bar. I desperately wanted matching inverted staircases in the same style, but it was over 900 items by completion and you could count the capillaries branching off the angry vein on my forehead. I contemplated making a small wall light sign behind it reading "Never again." If I could've copy/pasted that and inverted it at will, my base would be peppered with 45,000 prestige staircases that were the envy of the fake world.

3.) Ideally, since the advent and proliferation of floating has exploded into the renaissance that it is, isn't it about time that we get horizontal *and* vertical control without requiring the tradition voodoo associated with floating? In floating the beacons on my tech tp pads out to just in front of the first two columns, I found it takes 36 wall lights. Not bad. Until you multiply it by 18, then it's bad. 748 is a lot of items to add and delete. In hindsight, I should used the large wall lights, lined my tp pads in rows of four and floated one long column through four tp pads at once. It probably would've taken half as many lights. 1,514 object manipulations is an absurd amount of work to float out 18 beacons. For less object manipulations than that I made a nine cell prison with a two story central security tower surrounded by turrets. Everything stacked in to the ceiling.

-Sign generators. How cool would it be if there were a sign generator that allowed us to create an alphabet of letters using items and then type a message in to a chat bar and generate a copy of that sign in your base copy/paste clipboard that could then be placed as a locked item (or discarded)? My base entry room has over 500 wall lights making several small signs, and I seriously doubt this tool would go unused. Signage would spring up rampantly virtually overnight. Getting lost would become a thing of the past.

These four changes would lead to an IMMEDIATE and drastic increase in base quality the game over. There'll be some things that could be done in five minutes that can take hours to accomplish. Beyond this, there are numerous items I'd like to see added.

- The best suggestion I've heard is the ability to add statues of your SG's members, in any pose they choose. Please don't add this as something stupid like the 110 vet badge, requiring people to stick around for years before they can be immortalized in statue. An arc or TF would be much more popular.

- How about event base items? The winter event could produce spectacular base items. I know chandeliers have been mentioned. How about ice chandeliers? Ice pillars? Ice tables? Ice blocks? Christmas trees? A Menorah? Mazao? Can I at least get a Yule log? On a side note, we're dying for water in our bases. pleasepleaseplease do some thing about that.


I love the game. That's why I'm never on the forums. Thanks for making, keeping and constantly improving upon it.

Edits: Thanks, Nyt!

Another thing I'd really like to see that I'm sure others would also are outdoor bases. How about the option of "no" for a ceiling in rooms? Even just plain higher ceilings would be better, but I'd really like to see options for entirely outdoor bases or bases with no ceilings and control over time of night/day with an option for just letting it rotate with game time. Sun rooms and courtyards... I wants 'em.

Teleporters, med-room, crafting tables, storages, vault are things for all, not only basebuilders. I think bases needs more neat content for all SG members and something nice for builders too

How about room by room permissions, just like we have permissions for each storage bin?

That way you could have "bedrooms" as part of the larger base that individuals could decorate.

And that would allow more people the ability to play with and enjoy base building.

Was there ever any response from the dev team on this?

Did that "Base Committee" ever accomplish anything?

Or are improvements to bases as dead and buried as they appear to be?

no.

no.

yes.

My post to pm the lead dev has been removed by the mods. I apparently was insiting a riot. The riot is over, now we go back to waiting.

I completely agree that the devs need to give supergroup bases and base builders some well deserved attention. I do not feel that an entire issue devoted to bases is necessary but I do strongly agree that we deserve to have at least a small amount of attention given to bases with each future issue.

None of us expect to have all of our requests granted in a single issue or for that matter in the very near future. But it is clear that bases have been completely neglected for many issues and everyone would benefit from positive changes to both the base editor and the functionality of supergroups.

It is my strong belief that the base building community would in fact grow and the desire for future improvements to bases would grow along with it if the developers simply gave supergroup bases the attention they deserve. Supergroups should be more than just storage space and a set of teleporters. The possibilities for new content branching from supergroups are at least equal to that of the mission architect system and supergroup bases could be used to provide a whole new flavor of content to us, the players.

I know that the OP came on rather strong with his arguments, but it is my hope that the devs will see clearly that we are all simply devoted players who want to be heard and have our requests given proper consideration in the many issues to come.


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@Minos Minnarel
Justice Server

Sigh..

I guess it's true then. I know i have heard it before, but I just thought it was just a few people overreacting.

The dev's hate us!

I think the base building community has firmly been planted at the bottom rung of the ladder, and getting stepped on all the time for other things in the game deemed more important then to even say so much as a word to us. I mean, I wouldn't even be writing this post if the dev's could have so much as just posted telling us to please be patient, (as if we haven't been already).

I'll still have hope that one day we will get some kind of love from the dev's, but every day they wait to give us that is another day I lose a little bit of that hope.

I guess it doesn't really matter, I only play the game about twice a week for a few hours at a time. But I really want something else to draw me in again like the bases did in i13.

I still have hope.

Dear Devs,

Don't worry about it. I gave up. So have many others.

XOXOXOX

To those wondering about the BBC:

We have been at a boulder's pace and I can't help but put most of the blame on myself. Now we have had to endure two members having serious life events, the loss of our contact mod 8 (which Avatea is taking the place of), holidays and now the Incarnate system. We should have alot of work to show you but we have tried to sponsor events that did not go through and we are still trying to put the lists together. I should have had a formal meeting by now, but I too had some life stuff come up.

However regarding changes to the bases this is a direct email from Avatea as to what the BBC can accomplish.


Avatea:

Putting together a list of base items is a great thing but I want to make sure you add in there the benefit or reason for every single item, so as to underline their importance. The more weight you give to each item, the better.

Unfortunately, we don't have one single developer responsible for base design and not all our devs are on the forums, but once you've sent us that list, we'll make sure it lands on the right desk.

end quote



Now i know many of you have come up with lists too, but this gives us guidelines that the devs will follow.

There is going to be some reshifting of position in the BBC soon, so if you want to send me or Impish kat a version of your list then it would be greatly appreciated.



Once again I am sorry at the lack of progress so far, but it is not to be put all on the devs. I hope that it is rectified soon.

So now what?

They say one definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result.

I can post a dozen or so earlier snippets where myself and others warned Turbo and the BBC about "lists" but that would have done nothing of a positive nature.

So here's where I am at this point. Do whatever you want BBC in public or in private; to me that doesn't matter. Priortize it as "the players input" however you want; again to me that no longer matters.

I have zero expectations for results. If, per chance , there are results (even if it is something I could care less about) I will be the first in line to congratulate you for a job well done.

There is also the old saying, "Fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me". How many times do we need make lists? We have come up with different options for the dev's to use as a template for change, and they get ignored. We have told the dev's that we'd be happy with just adding in-game items, Heck, we've even told them to post in the base thread and some of us would be happy for an update. I think that we base builders have been more than helpful to the dev's in hopes for SOMETHING to make us happy.

I just feel that as a base builder, I am being ignored.

There's plenty of lists that cover everything. Doing any more lists than whats already there is transparent busybody work.

Done with that.

I guess the ONLY thing base builders can do at this point is just wait and see if a new dev is hired.


Yeah...

Paragon needs moar resources. plx.