Inconvenient Anti-Grief Feature ruins painting and cooperating on working together in multiplayer
Dear Developers,
I would like to address a very inconvenient feature of your anti-grief system which was created and implemented quite some time ago. One of the features disallows other players to colour a grid which they do not own the majority off. But, as described in the countless other feedback reports filed on the topic already, factions are completely overlooked. As said, I am quite aware that there are many other posts regarding this issue. But the simple fact that they are still being ignored makes it necessary to bring the topic up again and again.
I am sure that this alteration to the colouring mechanic has saved a few ships from being griefed. But it has caused hundreds and thousands of other people pain and agony because two or more people really cannot properly build on the same base. Not only because you cannot colour other people's grids. But because two blocks from different players, even if being of the exact same colour, are not connecting anymore. Let me elaborate.
Visible in this image is a block I placed inside of a floor another player was building. The majority of the grid is owned by me, and as you may see, it does not have any colours yet. The two blocks share the exact same colour and texture, are, however, built by two separate individuals. And this makes base building really, genuinely inconvenient. The other two players may place their blocks, build rooms, all that. It will look wack, but they can still build them. But I will have to do all the colouring. Everything, everywhere. Simply because A) they may only place coloured blocks but aren't actually able to recolour them, and B) even if our blocks have the same colour, they will not connect between each other. It's, excuses my language, really fucking annoying.
But I am not just here to complain. Sadly, I myself have little to no programming knowledge and never looked into the game files myself, therefore I cannot evaluate how feasible the different options would be to implement. But I have come up with a number of different ideas myself, and I am sure that you will find many others if you acknowledged this issue.
- Give Players the option to share painting rights for their individual grids to individual players or the whole faction
Like "Ownership - share with faction" (and share with [List of players]) but for painting. This would best ensure that players could allow whomever they fancy to participate in their build to the fullest. If you do not trust the other person not to grief it, you don't allow them to participate. Simple and effective, yet I could imagine it requires the most effort for you guys. - Faction members will always be able to paint your grids as long as you share ownership
Basically like 1), however without the individual player distinction. As long as you share your grid with your faction in the ownership settings, they will be able to paint it as well. A little less work? - Faction Members will always be able to paint the grids of every other faction member. Minimal security, I know, therefore my least favourite option as well. Even ships you are not sharing ownership of functional blocks with your faction would now be paintable by them. Very wack and dangerous.
Alongside these, I have two even more impactful proposals. They might, however, be less work for you and or the player (admin) of the game. These would be directed especially at small dedicated or just steam connected games with friends.
- Add option to disable the colour grief protection in the Advanced Game Options or Admin Menu
I could imagine this would be quite a bit of work to implement as you'd have to allow players to just disable one feature of your anti-grief system. Smaller servers and local games with trusted players, however, would greatly profit from this option, as the players wouldn't have to care about each grid individually. You are playing with friends that you trust, after all. - Add option to disable the Anti-Grief System entirely in the Advanced Game Options
Admittedly, I am not quite sure about what the system actually does apart from this minor to major nuisance. But allowing the server admin to completely disable it completely would definitely fix this issue, and as said: In friends-only games, you shouldn't need an anti-griefing system anyways.
I hope you have made it this far and are considering my request. You would greatly improve the multiplayer section of the game with this, and I am sure, the entire player base would support this tweak. To support this claim, here is a list of randomly picked posts about this topic ranging from a few weeks to several months ago.
https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/pc/topic/ability-to-share-paint-rights-with-faction
these are just some of the many complains about this system on this site, let alone offsite on steam, unofficial forums, everywhere. And I am asking you to respect my inquiry, and don't just put me off and ignore me with your Keen Support "Thanks for your feedback, your topic has been added to considered issues and thanks for your eternal patience" Bot. But ignoring the people that have made your companies money like that is quite disrespectful. I am not talking about myself here, this is my first post - I am talking about the several dozens of others that brought this topic up before me and failed.
I can imagine that you must be really busy, not only with the bug and feedback reports coming in daily but also with hyping up and selling out dozens of in the end rather vanilla extending not-groundbreaking DLCs. I like them, I really do, but you seem to ignore the actual base game a bit too much. I really enjoyed the new collision system you patched in one of the last "minor" updates. It might not have been a game-changer, but it gets pretty close to that. However, there was no hype train, no large announcements. This really impactful and helpful update sneaked in overnight and was largely ignored for days. Tweaks like that are amazing, and I beg you to focus a little more on them again.
And one of these most important and genuinely essential tweaks would, in my opinion, be implementing one of the options I stated above, or similar proposals aiming at making multiplayer painting a more palatable experience.
I like this feedback
tl;dr: I propose a few methods on how the Anti-Grief Painting Protection could be revised and altered, allowing multiple people to build on the same base. For everyone who doesn't want to wait for Keen to finally look into the issue, I recommend the Paint Gun mod I will link at the end of this comment. If you change the configs a little, you should be able to paint like in vanilla, as far as I know. Nevertheless, an official fix for this issue is still essential and will be much obliged.
PaintGun: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=500818376
tl;dr: I propose a few methods on how the Anti-Grief Painting Protection could be revised and altered, allowing multiple people to build on the same base. For everyone who doesn't want to wait for Keen to finally look into the issue, I recommend the Paint Gun mod I will link at the end of this comment. If you change the configs a little, you should be able to paint like in vanilla, as far as I know. Nevertheless, an official fix for this issue is still essential and will be much obliged.
PaintGun: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=500818376
The Anti-Grief Protection has also kept me from painting my own grids i own the entirety of in a single player world when i am the host, or even grids i spawn in someone else's game when own every block on that grid. Admins should be immune to anti-grief protection acting against them just by being an admin. Clearly an admin is a highly trusted player, and all host's are admin. This is basically the game saying "you're not allowed to paint that grid you own".
The Anti-Grief Protection has also kept me from painting my own grids i own the entirety of in a single player world when i am the host, or even grids i spawn in someone else's game when own every block on that grid. Admins should be immune to anti-grief protection acting against them just by being an admin. Clearly an admin is a highly trusted player, and all host's are admin. This is basically the game saying "you're not allowed to paint that grid you own".
This anti-griefing feature makes the coop game like 2 solo games on the same save file. We're playning on console and in order for the friend to build on to the station they have to disconnect from the grid first. Just give us an option as administrator to turn off this feature. Also how are people grieffing in a faction? If they cause a problem kick them from the faction!!
This anti-griefing feature makes the coop game like 2 solo games on the same save file. We're playning on console and in order for the friend to build on to the station they have to disconnect from the grid first. Just give us an option as administrator to turn off this feature. Also how are people grieffing in a faction? If they cause a problem kick them from the faction!!
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