Change the Decay System

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
1

I feel that Conan desperately needs a new type of decay system that is lore consistent, reduces land claim issues, has flexibility for players and admins and gives more control to players and admins of private servers. While similar to the discussion here, I feel my suggestion is different enough to warrant a new post. Here is my proposal.

Solution:

  1. Remove land claim from all current building pieces.

  2. Add in three new “stations”. One the size of a placeable (equivalent to the size of a standing torch), another the size of regular workstation, the final the size of an altar (or slightly smaller)

  3. The new stations all produce a maximum land claim respective of their size. The actual size could be tested for optimization, roughly I will suggest the following in units of foundations:

  • Small (10x10x10) volume of land claim
    -Medium (25 x 25 x25) volume
    -Large (50 x 50 x 50)

  1. The land claim sizes are maximum and can be decreased by the owner through interacting with said placeable

  2. Land claim objects cannot be placed if they overlap with another players land claim, but can be placed if they overlap with your own land claim.

  3. Each player may naturally build one of each of the land claims, for a total of three land claims. For clans the number of possible land claims (of medium size) goes up by one for each clan member to a limit of 5. So a clan of 2 may have up to 1 small, 2 medium, 1 large land claims, a clan of 10 may have 1 small, 5 medium, 1 large. Remembering these may be overlapped to increase base size. If the land claim maximum is exceeded when players join a new clan, the clan owners/officers claims takes precedence, and those exceeding the limit will be automatically deleted within an appropriate time (say two days). Those flagged for deletion may be changed by the clan owner through the interface.

  4. All buildings not in the radius of land claim will automatically decay in a 1 hour.

  5. All buildings within land claim will remain safe for a week (by default), after which a player must login and reset the timer by interacting with their land claim placeable. This setting can be increased or decreased by Server Admins.

Server Admin Specific

  1. Admins can place as many land claims as desired and decay is automatically turned off on Admin land claims (can be turned on individually if desired).
  2. Admins can make land claims invisible to players through the interface.
  3. Admins may adjust land claim maximum limits through server settings.
  4. Admins may give additional land claims to players as awards.
  5. Admins may turn on a settings requiring upkeep cost (which will be prorated based on the number of pieces in the land claim) - setting off by default.
  6. Admins may place a hard limit on pieces in land claim (off by default) above which pieces will be deleted.

Additional feature (which would be cool): The owner may transfer ownership of a land claim to another agreeing party through both players interaction with the land claim. Allowing for builders to “sell” or donate buildings to other players. Admins may also do this but only with their land claims.

Lore Argument: The Exiled lands and Siptah each have devastating storms and one might argue a natural magic that decays buildings over time (hence the run down nature of thrall settlements). Only magical structures seem to be immune. It follows sorcery can by used to protect against decay as is the case with these placeables which make a magical barrier preventing the storms and time from decaying your base.

I feel these changes will still allow for plenty of creativity for builders. Will reduce large scale land claiming by individuals and large clans, will positively impact server performance, will allow much more customization for private server admins and will greatly reduce the frustration and time that private server admins now invest in enforcing build rules and keeping their servers clean. As many Modded servers currently have decay off to avoid losing custom built content. These settings would allow decay settings to be on and for building rules to be automatically enforced in accordance with the server settings, freeing admins up to do more great work running the community and creating new content.

What is everyone’s, thoughts? Did I miss something important?

2 Likes
2

I am sorry but I am against any form of building limits. I rather deal with the land claim then seeing this game become a second moe.

2 Likes
3

You are of course entitled to your opinion and indeed as a sandbox game having less limits is generally ideal. However, in a gaming world of limited resources we are suffering from the tragedy of the commons. I think some sensible regulations could be put in place that do not put any hard limits, actually increase customization options, and solve other problems at the same time (like the excessive time admins must commit to enforcing any build limits on private servers).

1 Like
4

Who is suffering? Spam can reported to Funcom on officials through Zendesk. On privates pipi mod is doing the job for you in seconds. I do not see a problem, just further limitations of the game and I simply do not want that.

2 Likes
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what nonsense you say, you want to claim a dominate land. fight for her.

7

how durable would these be? Meaning if I destroy one with say a few shots of explosive arrows, does that mean in an hour, the base is gone?..I really like this idea :smiling_imp:

8

You bring up a good point here which would need to be addressed. Personally, I feel that the claim station should have a health value equivalent to the summative health of all the pieces in the land claim, to avoid the situation you just described. Thus, if you want to destroy someone’s land claim it will cost about the same amount of resrouces as just destroying their base. However, it would be cool to implement additional features to the land claim stations, such as a capture the flag feature (which would not be default but optional). Lots of potential when you change land claim from pieces to a place able.

9

No keep it simple…1000 hp…defense building would not only need to keep people out but defend the placeable as well. I really like this idea.

1 Like
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I see we have a difference in opinion here. However, it is a fact that private admins spend an inordinate amount of time keeping their servers clean even with tools like Pippi. In addition, funcom would not have started policing their servers and come out with officials rules if this was not a problem. That land claim abuse is a continuous problem in Conan is simply the truth. I will grant I don’t have access to hard numbers but I imagine funcom does. I understand you feel like any limitations placed to address the problem are overly restrictive. This is where we disagree. Personally I feel any game mechanic which require players and employees of funcom to police rules rather than play the game, is a game mechanic in need of improvement.

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Indeed that would add a whole new element to base defense. In that case the decay timer may need to be adjusted to allow players some time to respond should their land claim be destroyed. But with proper balancing I think that could be a lot of fun. Cool idea!

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it’s a very good idea that you have, only one point bothers me is the sale of property in my opinion it could create a lot of problems, but any solution that goes towards a reduction in player bans is a good thing .

13

Yeah, because they over do it most of the times. Most servers have decay on, so unused bases are gone automatically after a week or two. There is no reason to remove a base before the timer is up. Yet they teleport like busy bees over the map every day because someone is reporting a base where the owner hasn´t been seen for a couple of days because they simply want the spot for themselfs or just because they want to play the big admin. Simply true. Playing on a private server often turns into a daily must login so you do not give the admin or any other player on that server a reason to remove your base or make a claim.

Any bases that get a real report for spam or building in a spot that they are not supposed to can be checked within seconds with pippi. It shows you where a player or clan has build, how much they build and when they have been logged in the last time. As admin you can remove the clan or the buildings of that clan within seconds. No need to teleport around the server like crazy and check everything your players do 24/7. Everything you need to know is right there. But most admins do not even consider to wait until a person is online again so they can speak with them about their base so they can adjust or move. They simply get deleted because of admin abuse and yes I say admin abuse. This people do not know how to behave like a good admin should be nor do they care. Their server, their rules and you are their slave. This has not in the slightest something to do with beeing an responsible admin, this is pure arbitrariness and arrogance. There is a reason, why most official players do not like the new tos. Because it gets abused the same way right now then on privates. They are playing officials for a reason.

If you want improvements demand Funcom to fix their buildingpieces, demand from them to provide their players servers that are stable and can handle the 40 people and their buildings, like they should. Stopp demanding a change where the players are the ones who have to pay the price for Funcoms incompetence to maintain their games. They are the ones who have a bad record in doing so, not the player that simply want to play the game. Its up to every official player to report spam to Funcom. If people do not do it then it seems they don´t have much of a problem with it.

14

There is so much here, I’m afraid I cannot address it all. I see you are frustrated and apparently had some bad experience on private servers, I thankfully have not had those experiences. Let’s just say you don’t like my idea because you don’t want more limits on players. That’s fair, I disagree for all the reasons I stated but at least we know where we stand and we can leave it at that.

15

I appreciate the response. Perhaps you’re right that “sale” or giving of a base might be a problem for clans especially when not all the players trust each other. Or in PvP, I could see some potential abuse. My thought was there are people that like to build, so it might be cool to allow them to make a building and sell it to another player. Perhaps it would have to be an optional setting or just removed entirely. But In any case the new land claim mechanic would at least afford an option for new things that perhaps modders could take advantage of.

1 Like
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I dunno, not a bad idea I guess. I would want to simplify it. So in the Server Setting Panel there is:

  • Maximum number of land claims per player _____. (0 = No Limit)
  • Maximum number of land claims per clan _____. (0 = No Limit)
  • Land Claim Radius _____meters. (1 foundation = 2.25m)
  • Decay Rate Inside Land Claim Radius __ :__ :__ (DD:HH:MM) (blank for no decay).
  • Decay Rate Outside Land Claim Radius __ :__ :__ (DD:HH:MM) (blank for no decay).
  • :ballot_box_with_check: Show Land Claim Flag (checkbox)

And sure the center point or “Land Claimer” item could be a flag or anything - which could also be picked up and moved by the player or the admin at any time.

17

A very very bad idea for pvp, I can tell you that. Every raider would straight go for the flag, destroy it and wait until the rest is decayed. As defender you would have no chance to save your base. Getting raided and loose stuff in pvp is one thing, but loosing the whole base another. Right now, as is, everything I would need to do is enter renderdistance to check where the flag is. Since all g-portal servers are laggy as hell, all objects will load in before walls and this will tell me in seconds precisely where I need to bomb to get straight to the flag. If you think people are already mad about the current pvp changes, wait until something like this will be implemented. Then we talk again.

Ps. Even if you think if you check a box a skilled player would not see where it is, then you are wrong.

18

Who said anything about the flag being destructible?

The other “issues” you site aren’t relevant to the proposal at all. So I dunno about them. They are to do with something else entirely.

19

No. Now someone who could usually build 7 foundations away from me can build even closer?

Ok, I’m following you so far.

Got it, so the smaller station is a smaller radius, and so on.

Ok, so will there be a grid that appears in the same way the Battle Standard shows a grid when placing it? The grid shows us how much land or building is covered by each size station?

Ok, so if we used one too large, we could scale down to the medium one? interesting.

Here is where you lose me. Clans with 8 members, but only 3 active players can use their available land claim stations to build how they normally would but have extra land claim based on clan size, while a clan of 1-2 are severely limited.

ok.

Not much different from some other suggestions I’ve seen.

My final opinion: If any type of building limit is to be added to the game, I’d rather it be a “fuel” based system. I swear someone on this forum had a good thread about it long ago, It might have been @CodeMage or even @Barnes, like I said my memory escapes me. However, the premise was that no matter what the size of your build, you have to put “fuel” into a station to maintain the building in addition to the decay timer. Meaning, that serial refreshers who only log in reset and log out, actually have to fill a “station” or “pay tax” of some sort to keep the build.

Also, players (even people who play the game often) can build big, but they have to harvest enough fuel in relation to their base size. if their build is X size, they need Y amount of mats to keep it. If they can’t make the quota, they either need to downsize, or the build hits decay.

So far, this is the best limitation suggestion I’ve heard, and I’m for it.

20

Funcom would never introduce a indestructable pvp feature. It would make landclaim even worse. People would go to a server just to use their flag to claim land because they can. It only would be another form of spam.