BUG: Pieces of buildings disappear regularly, empty logs, no purge, no damage, nothing stolen [GAME BREAKING]

[hackbackwards]

Game mode: [Online Official]
Type of issue: [BUG]
Server type: [PvP]
Region: [US (West Coast)]

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Pieces of my base go missing every day to every few days. This latest instance occurred after the hotfix was deployed to the server I’m on - I was online when the server came back from restart, and my base was intact at the time.

It’s always in the exact same section - I’ve discovered that building things above this area will also result in missing pieces. It appears to be a vertical slice of the world which causes anything built within it to disappear at random.

Below is a screenshot of today’s missing pieces. They occur totally at random, sometimes more are missing, sometimes less. Thralls are left floating where there used to be a floor. I have several wheels of pain full of named thralls that were accessible as a result of these missing pieces, and they’re all still there.

Nothing was touched. My purge meter hasn’t reset. No damage to any surrounding piece. My logs are empty.

I re-build only this section of my base once every day to every few days. Nothing beyond that area is ever affected, and as I mentioned before, building above it will result in those pieces missing as well.

It doesn’t appear to occur at server reset either. I was online last night, and logged in right when the server came back up. My base was intact. I logged in again this evening to see missing pieces again. It happened some time in the last 19 hours. This is the 5th time in the last 7 days.

This is horribly game-breaking. It is very expensive to rebuild my base every day. I would not mind as much if it were due to player damage, or NPC attacks. Even if it were the jar exploit, I would at least know that it was someone doing it maliciously.

This is just the server deciding that random pieces of my base shouldn’t exist anymore.

The behavior is consistent, and localized to a relatively small section of my base. The pieces that go missing have no pattern or logic.

There are numerous other reports of this on these forums and others. It is not the jar exploit. It is the game.

Fix this.

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Please provide a step-by-step process of how the bug can be reproduced. The more details you provide us with the easier it will be for us to find and fix the bug:

1. Build something at the coordinates of my base, within the affected area, on Official server #1934 PVP. Please contact me directly for further details of the location. The behavior is very consistent at this location.
2. Log off.
3. Log back on at least 12 hours later
4. Repeat until pieces start to go missing

For the convenience of anyone reviewing this issue, I will post a screenshot which shows the missing pieces each time this bug manifests. For now, I’m trying to figure out if I want to even play tonight. Logging on to find the game has erased portions of my base - for the 5th time in a row - doesn’t exactly make me want to play this game anymore.

[Jens_Erik]

Hey!

Could you send us the coordinates of your base? Hit SHIFT + ALT + L to bring up the coordinates.

[hackbackwards]

I will when I log in again this evening. Thanks for your attention on this.

[hackbackwards]

I have sent you a message with further details.

I logged on tonight, and no pieces are missing.

For reference, I have attached a picture of what that part of the base is supposed to look like.

The incomplete section at the top of the image is in-progress construction, although it did lose a floor piece, wall piece, and three or four pillars. I haven’t rebuilt those yet.

[Trenn]

This same happened to us just this morning during the server restart. One altar, random pieces of floor and at least one box disappeared. All inside the house we use all the time. Nothing in log. Server #1089, location 165290.34375 -12449.21875 8428.785156.

[hackbackwards]

I logged in today, and pieces have gone missing again.

One sandstone ramp, one column of sandstone walls (about 10), a few ceiling pieces. There should be no gaps in the wall. There weren’t last night. I’m lucky more isn’t missing this time.

[hackbackwards]

I logged in today, and pieces have gone missing again.

Two columns of walls, three other walls, three sandstone ramps, one ceiling piece. I’d just finished placing them last night and verifying their stability. Again, this structure should be completely enclosed. It was when I logged out last night.

It’s a good thing I’ve started stocking up on spare building pieces. At this rate I’m going through at least 10 walls a day, plus the other stuff.

Please help.

[hackbackwards]

I’m not using mods; I’m on an official server.

The triangle pieces don’t collapse, it’s generally ramps, walls, and square pieces. The angled section sits off center because they’re two separate buildings merged into one. The triangle-piece “floor” is actually the ceiling, and is two stories up. I never have any issues with the lower building - the one with the triangle pieces. Well, sometimes stairs and walls will go missing inside. The upper building is built with only square pieces.

The lower building also doesn’t go that far into the upper building - only about 1.5 square pieces in. In my very first screenshot, you can actually see where the lower building ends - the triangle pieces stop right at the first wall.The rest of the upper building is completely separate from the lower building, yet is generally the building most affected by missing pieces.

I have verified the stability of the structure - only a few pieces are at 20, but I’ve never had issues with those, and they’re not located near the area that’s affected. I’ve also verified the timer around the affected area - it’s always at 143 hrs. It wouldn’t make sense that these pieces would decay in less than 24 hours either, seeing as some of them I’d placed the night previous.

I logged in yesterday and found missing pieces again. I took screenshots but forgot to upload them. I’ll do so later tonight.

This topic is about to close, however the issue remains unaddressed. I will create a new thread to continue to document the disappearances until this is resolved.

[hackbackwards]

I’ve uploaded the screenshots I took of yesterday’s missing pieces. They were a bit more scattered and fewer than previous instances - this is more reflective of the day-to-day manifestations of the behavior. Scattered pieces, not very many, just enough to make you think you’re going crazy and forgetting to place things.

There should be a sandstone stairpiece in front of me here:

This single ceiling piece:

These five ramps:

*Edit: Although it’s hard to tell, these latest instances have occurred within the affected “vertical slice”, just like all the previous ones. The structures look different because I can’t seem to stop building. No pieces outside of this vertical slice have ever disappeared.

[hackbackwards]

I logged in today, and pieces have gone missing again.

There should be a sandstone stairpiece connecting these two platforms. The lower one is supported by a column.

This balcony is missing: one chair, one low wooden table, one sandstone frame, two sandstone walls, one sloping and one inverted sloping sandstone piece, three sandstone ceiling pieces, four reinforced fences, one crenelated fence, three simple palisades.

For reference, here is a picture of the balcony I took last night after I put the finishing touches on it:

This is starting to get a bit costly now that I’m building with more than just sandstone.

Again, this has all occurred within the exact same vertical slice of the world. My base has expanded well beyond this area, and yet only this area is affected. No other pieces in the rest of my base, which is built with the same design techniques as the affected area, have ever disappeared.

The behavior is very consistent.

I can reproduce it almost every day.

It is a terrible bug.

Please help.

[Kwalya]

I’d say: stop building in THAT exact vertical area and shift your building to where you know it’s not affected
But also give the time exact ingame co-ordinates of the area affected to Funcom eg it’s from x y to x y to x y that it’s happening in so they can try building exactly where you are. I see from the top of the post you tagged it as PvP so perhaps as a private message to Jens with a link to this post so he knows it’s in reference to this issue.

I did see in one of your pictures that you had a ramp (I think it was) intersecting a missing square ceiling tile on an angle … I had an spiral staircase despawn in full or part several times that I could only attribute to trying to have square and triangle pieces on different levels over the top of each other … it would let me place one and then a pillar and then the other but it wouldn’t be there when I logged in the next day (after a server restart). I kept altering the design slightly to see if something was more stable. At one stage I could not even place a square ceiling tile because one level below there was a triangle foundation BUT no pillar on it. So nothing I could see if that should have prevented the square from being placed… but when I removed the triangle foundation I could place the square ceiling tile … this is when I figured it must be a square - triangle problem. When I matched them square piece above square or triangle above triangle then they stayed.
I do not know if this is relevant to your building.

[hackbackwards]

That’s not exactly an option for me, the affected area is now inside the core of my base. The base is now quite large, and the affected area is about 5% its total size, but located just off of the center of the structure.

I have already sent the coordinates, along with additional details, to Jens. That was 6 days ago, after Jens asked for the coordinates in this thread. I posted an update saying that I’d sent him a message with the requested coordinates earlier in this thread.

I have not encountered the building behavior you’ve described, however the recent missing pieces (like the sandstone stairs) were built on top of matching pieces - i.e., there were square pieces beneath and above that are aligned to the stairs, and part of the same structure assembled through snapping together aligned pieces.

Now, I have fudged with alignment and smooshing things together when building this base, but again, I’ve done that all over. None of those other areas are ever affected. The parts of the affected structures which lie outside the “vertical slice” do not experience missing pieces, and they are almost purely constructed of misaligned and mismatched pieces. I can only conclude that design is not the issue.

[hackbackwards]

I built two structures: One with triangle foundations and wedges, the other with square foundations and wedges. The square piece structure sort of… “eats” the triangle structure, and sits on top of most of it. They’re not directly connected. The base itself currently consists of three different structures merged into one. Again, however, none of the other merged parts experience this behavior, and they’re merged pretty wonkily. Building pieces which have experienced no wonky merging are also affected.

You can place building pieces that intersect and overlap with eachother - walls can be placed in walls, ceilings overlapping with other ceilings, etc. You have to build in a specific order to get it to work - a ceiling piece can’t be placed on top of a non-aligned wall, but a non-aligned wall can be placed below a ceiling piece, for example. Walls can intersect with ramps only if the wall is built after the ramp, and only if the intersecting portion of the wall is less than a certain amount. A majority of the structure is constructed this way, but no section other than the one in question has experienced this issue.

The off-center pillars aren’t providing support to the ceiling pieces they appear to connect to, they’re supporting other parts of the structure. I was very meticulous about ensuring a proper spread of support - some of the strange design features you see were dictated by the need to ensure support was going to the right pieces.

[hackbackwards]

Then why don’t the 100+ other walls, triangles, and other ceiling pieces built the same way disappear ever? Why only this narrow slice? Nothing beyond that small slice ever goes missing. And I’ve built intersecting walls on triangle pieces all over the base. No issues anywhere but in that one, very consistent location.

I also did a test last night and every piece I tested had a full decay timer. As stability is a constant concern for me, given the shape of the structures I build, I have my repair hammer out while I’m building, always. I check the stability of each piece or section of pieces as I build. I have never, not once, seen a decay timer below 143 hours on any piece I’ve placed. Not. Once.

That also doesn’t explain why some days, nothing goes missing. Or why I lost a single sandstone stair piece that wasn’t located remotely near any triangle pieces, and was built on an entirely square structure.

What you’re saying also doesn’t explain these two pictures:

Before:

After:

Why did the reinforced fences disappear? They were built on square pieces built on square pieces all the way down to square foundations, there were no merged walls above, below, or adjacent to them, and no merged walls all the way down to the ground. Same with the missing ceiling pieces. Also, you can see couple merged walls built on triangles in this screenshot (which were the only ones that didn’t disappear), touching some other ceiling pieces which are unaffected. You can also see some triangle pieces here, but they lie outside the generally affected area, and as a result nothing went missing that was connected to/touching/built above or below them.

Or this screenshot:

Again, there should be stairs directly in the center of the screen. Why aren’t there stairs there, if they connect to square pieces? There are no triangle pieces that are a part of the structure where the stairs are missing. The stairs, and their supporting structures, are not merged. There are no triangles above or below. There are no merged pieces above or below. The entirety of this section was built on square foundation pieces - if you go all the way down from here, there will be a square.

You can see merged pieces in the background of this screenshot, which have remained successfully merged since their placement.

There are merged pieces built on triangles in the sections of the base that don’t appear in these screenshots as they’re far away from the affected area - these pieces have been merged for a few weeks now, and have never disappeared.

There’s a structure nearby that I’ve built into the side of a cliff, and it too has merged walls on triangle pieces. However, it is well outside the affected area, and as a result, I’ve never had any issues with that structure.

Your conclusion is unlikely, and not remotely supported by the facts of this issue. Based off the other reports of this exact issue, from people with different building styles, and people who don’t merge building pieces, this is a bug.

For further reference, please see this thread, and read the other player replies:

BUG: PvE-C Palace Destroyed (not by purge) [GAME BREAKING]

I play on PvE-C server 1822. I finished what is, by far, the largest structure on the server the other night. Experiments in single player suggested that if I left my gates open, my thralls would be in better position to help in case of a purge. Players are not supposed to be able to destroy player structures and I felt I’d addressed possible purges, so I took a little pride in opening the doors for others to see the fruits of my (months) of labor. (I started working on this week 2 after the…

Finally, I want to repeat what I’ve said earlier here: The early manifestations of this bug were a single to a few pieces missing each day - a simple palisade here, a ramp there, for example. The pieces were going missing before I learned how to merge walls.

[SpiralValve]

You are trying to use solutions for standard building when you are not building as the game intended. How can anyone trouble shoot something and expect a proper result when you are not using the tools as intended.

[hackbackwards]

I’m sorry if I seemed ungrateful, I’m just very frustrated. Pieces of my buildings go missing every day, after all.

Still, a majority of the affected pieces are built on square structures that don’t have immediate, secondary, or tertiary contact with triangle pieces or merged pieces. The sections more heavily infused with merged pieces and triangles experience very few to no missing pieces.

[hackbackwards]

The affected portions of buildings are built using mostly standard building. The non-standard portions of the buildings remain unaffected. The affected portions are mainly square pieces attached to square pieces built on square pieces, not merged with any other pieces. The triangle pieces and merged pieces have been left mostly untouched. Please review my latest screenshots. You can clearly see that the affected portions are built with standard building techniques, while non-standard portions are visible in the background, unaffected. The non-standard portions are also not connected to the standard portions, as they are aligned differently and unable to snap. I don’t have any issues with the building made of triangles. I do have issues with the building made of squares, and mostly involving the portions that aren’t near, connected to, or touching triangles or merged pieces.

I was experiencing this behavior before I learned how to build without using standard methods.

I will take more screenshots of my base, since all you’ve seen so far have been the affected areas. You’ll be able to see that a majority of the base is built using merged pieces. A majority of the base is also unaffected. The problem area is just this one rectangularish slice of the world.

We’re beyond troubleshooting here, there’s nothing I can do to stop this. I’ve tried. I’ve messed with stability, I’ve removed whole sections, I’ve redesigned and rearranged. Sometimes nothing goes missing. Sometimes I’ll lose only a single piece, or maybe a single placeable. Sometimes half the building is gone, and I’ll have changed nothing from the day previous. Portions which, I will repeat, were built with standard snapping tools and not merged over other buildings.

I’m posting these screenshots and updates not to ask for a solution from the players, but to bring attention to this issue, and to give an opportunity to others who’ve experienced this behavior to relate that experience, and add to the pile of evidence.

The most-merged and fudged-up section of my base has never appeared in these screenshots as it’s located a ways away, and has been completely stable for weeks.

[hackbackwards]

@Shadoza

As I stated, in my test, the unconventional placements did not disappear, they remained. Parts as far as six placements away did decay away within 60 minute decay time.

I’m aware - the fudged-up section I mention isn’t even attached to the same structure as the one that is more often affected. They are not connected.

For the sake of additional information, I’ve drawn up an incredibly rough floorplan of the base, noted the fudged sections, and affected area.

1. Unless otherwise indicated, each structure was built with standard techniques. The non-standard sections are outlined here.
2. Each structure is aligned independent of the others, and none of them are directly connected via snapped pieces.
3. Each has its own independent supports.
4. Structure 2 is the only one built with triangle pieces.
5. Structure 4 encloses the other three.

[hackbackwards]

I logged in tonight, and no new pieces were missing. I haven’t yet replaced last night’s missing pieces.

This topic will close in three hours, however upon the next instance of this behavior, I will begin a new thread to continue to document these occurrences.