I agree that there could be a concern with the “landgrabbers” blocking up areas, but I think 14 days is a good compromise.
My server has lost so many great players because of this ridiculous 7-day timer.
My life is not Conan. Having said that, I will go a month playing it daily (4+ hours each day). Then I may go a month of not playing it (there are other games out there – and some real life responsibilities to tend to). Many of the veteran players I played with were much the same way – but they have all left as well because of the same problem.
7 day refresh timer is great for you addicts (I’ve been there), but for those of us with a multitude of real life responsibilities and wanting to play other games as well, the 7-day timer is just not acceptable or reasonable. While I did suggest a 30-day timer on PVE, I do actually agree that a 14 day timer would be reasonable. During the summer time when I am camping - I cannot make a 7 day timer. However during winter timer, that is no problem.
I really hope FunCom gives this serious consideration. They have lost SO MANY players because of this. Moving to a 14-day timer would greatly help with player retention and would bring many players (including myself and many friends and others that I know).
@Exkar I don’t play PVP but I can understand where your coming from since I have been around since EA but the issue is largely with PVE. You get players come on and either mass build small bases as they move north or build large bases near resources occasionally even purposely too close to them. Then the players stop playing the game basically except to log on to maintain the base doesn’t decay. I also agree with you that purges could be a usefull measure to remove these structures I hate the current purge meter decrease I think it should rise slowly for days logged on but after one or two days of not logging on it could grow faster or even have a meter that only climbs when your offline and decreases when your on
This got me thinking of a new idea for PVE server structure refresh timers. Beyond a threshold, the more building tiles (foundations/walls/etc) that are connected to a structure, the quicker the refresh timer should be. (With an exception for very tiny structures). Deco objects would not be included (statues, furniture, etc).
Here would be my thoughts:
50 tiles or less: 7 days
51-1000 tiles: 10 days
1000 tiles - 5000 tiles: 14 (or 15) days.
5000+ tiles: 7 days
20000+ tiles: 3 days
This would create a sweet spot where you could build a decent-sized structure that would not be hogging land, and be able to maintain it reasonably. If you want to be a land hog, then you are going to have to put in the time to maintain it.
It doesn’t even need to be category based – just based on a similar mathematical algorithm. Perhaps the tier of the tile would also be factored in, so that the only way you could have a 14-day refresh timer would be by having a 100% Tier 2 or Tier 3 structure that has enough tiles to be in the “sweet spot” range.
Note: The tile amounts given are just an example of my idea – I really don’t know what a suitable tile count would be for each category, but that would be up to the dev’s to decide on.
Again WHAT issues?
That you dont like buildings from other people??
But there is still one… And good land depends on the viewpoint. Where my mainbase is, no one would say its a good land.
Again what issue? There is NONE, as long as no one blocks resources.
And even when people come HERE to the forums and complain about blocked resources, most answers are: no one needs it, you have alternatives, etc.
So all your “problems” and “fears” or “issues” are what exactly? Theoretical problems which you often are not even targeted (because you have your base)…
If you’re not even going to pretend to empathize with or consider the validity of other people’s repeated concerns, then I’m not sure how else I can phrase things.
Edit: A decay pot sounds like a reasonable suggestion, btw. At least then people who want to maintain ridiculously huge structures would actually have to make a time & effort commitment to it rather than a token login. Might be a good way to make them get bored of their nonsense.
I had originally thought of something similar, however the concern is that if I go into full on OCD harvesting mode for several days straight I could potentially fill up that decay pot to last several months.
I do understand that they also want to keep players active in the game so I’m not sure if a decay pot would work, unless there was also a maximum of what you could put in there (i.e. roughly 2 weeks worth of mats).
So in your opinion, if I play 4-6 hours every single day straight for 2 months, and then need/want to take a break for 30 days, I deserve to loose everything? Sorry, I disagree. If I put hundreds of hours into the server, I should not be punished for wanting to take a short break.
As for your last sentence… I am married to my wife and not the game. Should I schedule a day and time on my calendar once a week for logging into Conan Exiles to refresh all my stuff – okay probably if I deem it important enough. I guess my point is, logging into a video game to refresh stuff should never be important enough to be a weekly chore on anybody’s calendar. Sure its a great 1st world problem to have, but its so easy for them to remedy. And I guarantee you that they have lost more players than they have kept by doing this.
Its unfortunate that I enjoy playing on official servers so much as the easy fix would be to run my own server.
Oh well, this will all be a non-issue when Amazon’s New World is released
Yeah, I suspect it would pretty much have to have a maximum cap of for whatever the server’s max decay time is.
For example, if a server had a max decay time of 2 weeks and a building of 1,000 blocks required 1,000 stone for a 2 week decay time, and a building of 10,000 blocks requires 10,000 stonoe for a 2 week decay time, the guy with the small base shouldn’t be allowed to game the system by putting in 10K stone and then disappearing for over 2 months.
As for a 2-month absence, that sounds a case for having a friend keep your base refreshed or asking the admin of a private server to intervene. Asking for essentially permanent monuments on unmoderated public servers (like the Officials) seems well beyond the use case for which they are provided.
Agreed. I’d love to be able to get the save file for the one I play on and spin up a private server from it without the few “problem children” who make decay a necessity…
I don’t think a 30 day decay timer in the current system is a good idea, but I agree that there can be times in peoples life where 1 week just isn’t enough.
If you go on a vacation for fx 2 weeks outside Funcoms 2 week holiday timer or maybe unable to log in for a week because of other real life issues, it doesn’t matter how active you otherwise are, miss one and your base is gone, that is not the right way, especially on official pve servers where harvesting rate is 1x.
What i would like to see is a system that makes you pay a tax(fx gold coins) each day depending on the size of a base(building blocks) and amount of followers, and by each day you miss the payment, all your building parts will lose a certain amount of health so that you would have to repair them to get everything up to 100% again - The amount of building decay should depend on the tier of building making sandstone(t1) disappear fairly fast.
such a system would off course not be fair to new players, so they shouldn’t pay tax before reaching a certain level, however their buildings should start to decay after a certain amount of days of no activity.
I think such a system would get rid of those only logging in for a few minutes every week just to refresh their base and at the same time give active players an opportunity go on a vacation or otherwise be absent for longer than the current system provides, at a cost off course
30 days is too long. The lands are always littered with spam, so I welcome the decay timer.
For a busy week, just keep a reminder on your phone to refresh decay about 2 days prior to decay. It takes 10 min of your day to log in and refresh timers. Everyone has 10 minutes.
Yes, there are issues. They might not all have the same severity as blocked resources, but they’re real issues.
On the server where I play, there are multiple players whose bases have blocked up certain passages. You can go around them and they haven’t blocked any resources. Then there’s a player who has huge amounts of pointless foundation spam all over his base. All of these players have one interesting thing in common: they log once or twice a week, long enough to refresh their crap, and they’re gone.
Just because a türd is on the chair next to you instead of in your plate, doesn’t mean people should be allowed to defecate without consequences
You don’t. But that has a solution – get a clanmate
I think about 1 week is about ideal. I would however agree to extending it to 8 days for reasons already mentioned. And I also approve of the 2 week extention during holidays.
In my case, 3 of us banded together on official PVE, so our structures would be kept alive. Works for us just fine but obviously there would be stretches of weeks when none of us has much playing time.
In those times we do that horrible thing: Log in every few days, ping all the structures and be on our way. Personally I do not feel bad about taking up spots for others while doing so because long term, I would describe us as very active on average.
As for changing decay time maybe something in the lines:
“if you play alot, you earn the right to be absent a bit more, if you only take a peek every now and then, you will need to do that more frequently”
Structured suggestion:
Start playing on server with current decay time (1 week)
Have a meter implemented that would measure average activity of a clan (similar to purge meter)
On reasonably average playtime (min few hours per week?) nothing would change
On lots of activity (over a longer period), meter would go up, increasing decay timer for few days (up to another week?)
On no activity (like loging once a week for 5min to reset timer), meter would go down even under the base value, making max decay time shorter.
I think a lot of 30 days, but I really like the ARK 14-day system, I think 14 days is perfect, I think it is extremely abusive 7 days too, I’ve already lost a lot of bases for that.
I really like this idea. It would help to support those who are an active part of their server’s community while making it require more of an effort than might be worthwhile for the refresh griefers.
A casual player buys Conan Exiles. Plays casually. All their stuff rots, and they quit.
SOME of them come back periodically.
Most people don’t enjoy babysitting their base after they inevitably get bored of the game. Suffering a catastrophic loss that involved weeks or months of grinding really chases players away.
A longer timer would help retain players that need/want a break from the game.
This would help Funcom make a profit via DLC sales.
Basic business.
Funcom has not yet found a solution to the building spam problem, so they are addressing it with a very blunt stick.
I would like to see them fine tune the purge (or purge type mechanics) enough that it can function as the SOLE map clearing option.
No, it wouldn’t, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t imply that. On the other hand, why make it even easier on these people to maintain their crap with negligible effort?
The whole point of my reply – the one you quoted – was to show that it’s not just “boohoo land claimed”, that there are real problems with claiming land and then just keeping it like that without consequences.
Incidentally, that kind of belittling is what really gets on my nerves on these forums. Is it really too much effort to discuss these things without calling people names? Doing it in a subtly underhanded manner doesn’t make it any better
Look, I know you know what my position is, because I remember replying directly to you – on another thread – that I believe that the PVE claim system is broken:
As long as the PVE claim system isn’t “fixed” – and I doubt Funcom sees any need to fix it, so that’ll probably be forever – increasing the maximum decay timer will just exacerbate the problems.
If the decay timer is 7 days, there’s always a chance one of these jerks will fail to refresh their crap on time and we’ll be able to demolish it. If it’s shorter, that chance increases. If it’s longer, that chance decreases.
Am I advocating for shorter timers? No. I’m just against making them unnecessarily long.
How should FC even fix it? And why only PvE? vault spaming pretty annoying at PvP too…
And about blocking whole areas: I doubt a shorter decay time would help there. I would give up the server… its lost. Such people have fun, being trolls/griefer.
And If they ever get bored and give up, decay time doesnt matter.
Except the server got lucky and they forgot… but its hard to say… some people have fun destroying games for others and the only real help, would be an admin/moderator…
Even a fuel based decay, cannot prevent griefer/harassing. So I cannot come up with a better decay system to prevent current situations…
I have a couple of ideas, one of which is the “upkeep pot” I keep mentioning. I should probably open a suggestion thread for it – although I’m sure others must have proposed something similar before – so that we can argue about it in one place instead of doing it across many threads
I do have another one, but I’m still trying to think it through.
As for why PVE, it’s because in PVP there is an in-game way to counter the effects other people’s buildings. In PVE, there isn’t any. Kiting a Purge really shouldn’t count, but I can agree to disagree on that one
Let me get the absolutes out of the way first, my dear Sith There is no way to completely and magically prevent griefing and harassing. Even moderators/admins wouldn’t be a perfect solution.
What I would love is a system that: 1) allows players to fight back against griefers/trolls, and/or 2) makes it progressively harder to grief/troll other players. By “progressively harder” I mean “the more severe your trolling, the harder it is for you to it in the first place and/or maintain it later”.
There is no way to completely and magically prevent griefing and harassing. Even moderators/admins wouldn’t be a perfect solution.