This concept has been discussed much on the forum by many but I’d like to bring forward a full topic on the matter.
Warning System for Land Claim Issues
As I understand it, the Terms of Conduct, Guidelines and Procedures may be getting a revamp. Which is good!
We now have an in game feature to make reports.
The ToC and Building violations posts are both pinned to the top of the forum.
And hey! The MoTD on Officials includes information to read the rules.
All great steps in the right direction. But, this is the only game I know of that both removes buildings AND suspends/bans people for building violations.
This has created uncertainty in the community, for those both affected and those who know about it.
Such questions as “is my build too big?”, “am I breaking the rules?”, “can I build like this?” are here and beyond. Not to mention “I don’t understand why I was banned”.
I can appreciate the work that goes into managing a ticket system. I have managed a ticket system so I know what it is like. I can appreciate the enormity of requesting a warning system itself.
Many of us have argued over so many points regarding reports. I don’t have all the answers or know how it can be fixed - the state that it has continued to be in for the past year though has created a monster on many ends.
So, to alleviate dissatisfaction, confusion, lack of clarity and education, why not give a warning system a try? Educate, ensure it is done, then remove if and only if the offender(s) do not comply.
Or, perhaps if that is too much to ask, at the very least remove the buildings only with a reason and not suspend/ban.
Yeah, it’s rough not knowing what can happen. I lost my base on siptah and my only way to avoid being punished a second time was not build as large. I never actually received a notice as to what the exact violation was, so I had to work off assumptions. My EL base is pretty large, and I’m kinda afraid my clan could get banned at some point… so it’s like, should I just make the base significantly smaller? Idk… it sucks when I made it look beautiful and put a lot of work into it… especially when workbenches are getting so big and numerous.
I started a thread based on it lately feeling like FC has not been doing anything with reports of bases that are causing issues, which maybe because they are revamping things. The official servers are a hot mess of massive bases that from things I have heard are causing lag issues with some and certainly when blocking paths it is a huge issue.
A couple of months after the current TOS rules went into effect I was issued a 2 week ban so I contacted them and was able to return to the game and fix the issue so I did not lose my base. In my conversation with FC I learned exactly what I did wrong by having lighting out from my base, it was so I could see at night during purges but they saw it as land claim. A few months ago I lost a base but was not banned so I do not know if it was the decay bug or an admin wipe, however a few days later another clan moved into my old spot.
I would like to add some suggestions that could be added for making a more clear picture of what is allowed such as…
Can a clan have more than one large base on a map, as most clans seem to think that 4-8 large bases on the map are fine and they are not being an inconvenience to anyone.
is a base that houses ALL of the alters too big?
Is using thralls in a large area around your base considered “land claim”.
Building inside of and closing off POI such as the Crevice allowed, many people like to block that off.
Blocking of pathways needs to be a big no as there are many bases that do that.
I do agree that some sort of warning system so that they are actually in communication with the offending clan/player would be nice. I know that it would mean a lot of extra work on their part. It would certainly be difficult when the people that only log in to refreash the decay timer log in and now only have few hours to contact FC to try to save their base as the warnings would have to come with a time limit, especially if they log in during the night or weekends.
I truly want to participate in this conversation, but it’s hard to even express my love or criticism for this game without some form of personal aggression from fellow forum members. As I am writing this comment, today was one of the most difficult days of my real life, but also somehow among one of the most uplifting in game and fun days I’ve experienced in 2 months. I love this game so much, I only want the best for it.
This requires them to tie a FLS account to an email. Something they’ve said in two consecutive livestreams that they do not wish to do. However they have said they have done this for the players benefit.
This tells me if there is enough desire from players for FC to attach an email to each player for communication purposes, they may reconsider.
Currently going through this. I’m four days away from being unsuspended for a clan of ten build of 56,000 building pieces getting admin wiped due to “blocking off resources and areas for players to build.” Except we didn’t block any resources (isle of siptah built on a bridge and mountain top). We were mass reported by a clan that wanted us gone but wouldn’t pvp so they did what people do best on conan, spam the reports. I was online when our build was dev wiped and I thought it was stability bug at first because I had never seen anyone with that little built be suspended/banned. So I too would love to have concrete, specific build limits to avoid this.
I’m not wanting to touch officials until I know exactly what I can and can’t do. I assumed we were okay with what we had then and apparently that wasn’t right. I’d like to see funcom do more to better explain their build limits. Warnings would be nice too, especially for first time offenders.
I think it’s almost unbelievable that such system isn’t in place. Unless you are caught cheating, there should always be a warning and the player/clan should be given the possibility of correcting the mistake.
I don’t really understand why they don’t just admin lock certain areas. If we shouldn’t build in some area, why not just disable building in that area? This is already done in certain areas like points of interest/enemy camps etc…just do it wherever needed.
And secondly, if building big is such an issue, maybe make land claim blocks a thing, with a set radius and total number of pieces allowed within said claim space. Then make admin setting sliders to how many land claims per clan/player and how many pieces per claim block and boom, no more idiot pillars or huge bases unless the server allows for it.
It just seems very counter intuitive to punish someone for building somewhere they thought was ok, was clearly not on any major road/node and/or as far as they felt, wasn’t laggy.
They keep adding more workbenches but I am glad the thaumaturgy bench is on the smaller size and doesn’t require upgrades, I think I would have freaked XD
I think it would be nice to have smaller bench variations like the kiln (high tier versions I mean). Maybe make them part of the esoteric plans or something if they don’t want people to have access right off the bat. Although, I think if they wanted smaller builds, they should make them easily accessible to people right from the start.
Agreed, the kiln is important for base size mitigation, especially considering the T3 counterpart is x4 it’s size.
I think we have to remember a few points here: Funcom has communicated often that it is not so much the size of the base or how many building pieces you use but how it impacts the server. For performance, how many memory intensive items are placed. For land claim, is it preventing passage, resource blocking, POI blocking or disallowing others from building. Is what you built used and functional?
I realize that this post can go down those rabbit holes of building issues and of course the spirit of requesting the warning system is a result of these very problems and the outcome of the reporting system.
But I’d like to remind people that staying on topic is very important to ensure we can continue this discussion.
I would like our accounts to be tied to email accounts for both communication and integrity purposes and perhaps as @Taemien clarified, would allow a warning system to be implemented.
+1 here. Not everything needs it, but I wouldn’t mind more top tier benches that offers no particular benefit aside from being compact. Maybe increase storage space?
Heck, I would love to see crafting overhauled to be more in line with the build hammer menu, so we could have 1 bench offer…say…both armor and weapons all in 1. Or a leather rack also have the tanner’s table recipes.
I have seen an uptick in flat out building violations recently. Apparently word has gotten around that suggests overwhelming their reporting system will bring it crashing down.
In the PVP world, the length of time a report can stay open is just a death sentence. ‘You want me to hang tight for two weeks? I’m expecting two days before I get wiped!’
Not that. Just a blatant disregard for the ToS in general with the idea that ‘they can’t catch us all’…or maybe its a bunch of old timers that came back…the end result is that the system is flooded with reports and they can’t get to them all. Those that do follow the rules suffer because they just want to play the freaking game.
I strongly suggest lighter punishments for the first time offenses and draconian measures for repeat offenders.
So 1st instance, deletion and statement where ToS was breached.
2nd. Deletion and 2 week suspension.
3rd deletion and 30 day suspension.
4th deletion and 1 year suspension.
Whatever it was, I wish you the best and hope you get through it as well as possible.
Why? Literally add another table in the game database that stores messages from admin to clan, and an in-game UI to display them and acknowledge them.
Yes, it’s not a trivial change, but it’s doable.
Wouldn’t surprise me at all. Remember when they added the TOS clause about punishing false reports? I said right from the start that it’s an empty threat. They have no way to authenticate that the reporter really is who they claim to be, so they can’t really punish anyone for false reports. Or rather, if they start punishing people for false reports, the next “meta” will be to flood them with false reports impersonating someone else, to get that someone banned for false reporting.
The system is a right mess, and it needs either linking your e-mail to your Funcom account – which I would personally hate for privacy and security reasons – or implementing a proper in-game reporting system.
A proper reporting system would make it impossible to report TOS infractions outside the game, would help the reporter gather all the necessary data, and would send the report through the server so that it’s associated with the reporter’s Funcom account.
They really should invest some effort into these things: an in-game reporting system and an in-game warning system.