Frankley because T1 structures are easy to build and replace, they are also 90% of the clutter on maps from people starting playing and stopping. Loosing a t1 structure sets you back a day at most, loosing a t3 structure sets you back weeks possibly and someone who took the time to build a t3 structure is likely more involved in the game and it is a main base not some small lil temp shack close to a spawn for taming for example.
I pictures T2 being somewhere in the middle of the two timers. Though T2 could be 15 days with T3 being 22 days.
I am not calling for an arbitrary decay based on looks, its based on the build in tiers of the building that the game dedicates on what level they can be built and the difficulty of building them via what resources are needed.
Sandstone needs to decay quickly because it can be built at level 1 or 2, with nothing but a stone tool, it is what people build just to complete the journey step and most don’t destroy those structures when they finish building them. It is the most likely thing to litter the map from abandoned buildings of people who tried the game and left or went to another server. It is also the easiest to replace because of building materials are small and common in every area of the map.
The others take much more effort to build and should take longer to decay.
We will have to disagree because I build the same base out of sandstone before i could make t3 materials when I was using only iron tools and took one nights worth of work collecting and building. To upgrade that same building to T3 has taken more than a week of farming and I am not even half done.
It is not a matter of level or punishing newbies. It is based on the time it takes to gather the resources and process them. Simply put sandstone requires wood and stone, you can find that in any map location any biome and harvest with any tool, you can get 1000 stone easily with a stone axe and pick and quickly build a sandstone base. The same cannot be said for the higher teirs, which is why they should decay slower
Additionaly you are ignoring the argument about what type of structures clutter the map, what type of structures do people build as temp locations for shelter from a sandstorm or to complete the early journey step without removing or to capture a thrall. or place a cauldron. Those are all sandstone because its easy, fast and cheap. Those are the types of structures we want to be able to destroy and remove from the map, basically trash people left behind. The bases of someone who started out and decided the game wasnt for them and stopped playing. People should not have to wait weeks and weeks to destroy those to open the spots for someone who wants to actually play and live in that location.
The decay timer is extremely important to pve and pve-c servers.
Time (hours) spent in server = additional decay time.
Lastly, implement a way for players to SPECIFICALLY, EASILY, report a (structure abuse) at a specific point. As in, a button that automatically reports location and is directly related to trolls blocking pathways and instances with structures. A passive system could keep track of “reports”, requiring at least (insert number) unique report I.D’s to alert a moderator. Then do your moderator thing, and deal with abuses when you deem them to be abusive. If you deem said reports of structures NOT to be abusive, click a button that will send a message to the reporting individuals informing them it has been “investigated” and deemed not a problem. This will stop (some future reports) and also, stop some abuses.
And, for the record, decay timer should cap out at 3 weeks to a month.
If the base decay timer is increased to 2 weeks, and leveling to 60 gives you an additional week of decay time…
Everyone wins.
The decay timer is an aspect of the game, it has a purpose to serve, but it needs to be refined to better address that purpose.
It’s purpose it to help get clutter off of the map.
That clutter is (generally, but not exclusively) the stuff people leave behind as they move northward as they level.
Combing the fact that (in general) people move north after a time and leave structures behind, and how (generally) structures built by lower level people are cheaper, and often outright replaced by a higher tier structure via direct upgrading… or via moving base location.
A low level player, who chooses NOT to level, and loves their sandstone base and wants to make a giant orange castle, should STILL have two weeks before their base rots. And as the structure gets larger, and they spend more time in server, maybe THEY too can have a 3 week timer.
Character level matters.
Time spent in game matters.
Killing off a person’s work cause they don’t log in for a week - horrible business model.
Funcom is here to make money, we are here to have fun.
Neither of those things happen when FUNCOM destroy’s a players base cause they did not log in for a week.
If you can’t agree with statement in bold, then I guess I can’t talk to a rock.
To correct you, again, as someone else already tried to do in this thread.
The decay timer is currently set to 144 hours. Which is 6 days. They change it, recently.
It USED to be two weeks. They then changed it to 6 days, left it like that for months, then for their holidays, bumped the rot timer up to 2 weeks again. Only to have recently changed it back, to 6 days.
IT IS CURRENTLY 6 DAY DECAY TIMER.
But meh, why do I argue with a rock. I made my point already. Have nice life Shadoza, it’s hard being dense.
How do you propose they make this happen? Players dont deal with their clutter that is the reality of it. There is no quick way to dissemble a large structure and at only 1/3rd resources there is zero reason for a player to take the time to take apart an old base.
In addition not all clutter is people moving some of it is people who quit the game, or a particular server, how are they going to handle their own clutter, or another player? On PVE and PVE-c players cannot handle the clutter that is why the decay timer exist. To most people the timer is a good thing and wanted. Many advocate for shorter timers because they hate having to deal with abandoned structures for weeks before removing it.
Your point about what if they are on a different time schedule then you really has no purpose if they just login at a different time of the day from me then they dont have to worry about the decay timer as it wont affect them because they are playing the same still every few days. Besides the servers with their set times windows for various things means most people should be playing around the same period of time.
Also remember the decay timer is based on the clan so if you have a clan only one person needs to logon and be near the structure to prevent decay. I personally thing the T1 structures should be 1 week and add a week for each tier, it encourages people to upgrade. While I understand the want for 2 weeks as people are often gone for 1-2 weeks for a vacation especially during the summer I just found the official servers unplayable because of all the cluttered structures preventing me from building anywhere even on a pve server i never saw more than 4 people online on.
Why would I join a server with east coast prime time and set pvp times etc if i played on pacific times GMT. That makes no sense at all. Sure i might not always be on 5 pm to 11 pm or whatever the time window is set to but when i play it would generally be between 4 pm and midnight because you pick a server that works with your schedule.
If the player does not want to upgrade because they want to take the easy way out with cheap materials then they deal with the quicker decay timer. Want a longer decay timer upgrade to T2, T2 is not exactly high level, and no one said newbies are not important, but the fact of the matter is 99% of the clutter the decay is meant to solve is T1. If you are a new player that just started you level very quickly and dont have a massive base. If you do have a massive T1 base then you are not really a new player.
You are correct I want to be able to place a base, somewhere on the map, but i ran into base after base after base without seeing a single person any time i logged on. Over more than 6 hrs during the server window there was not more than 5 people on but the landscape was littered with structures. This is exactly what the decay is meant to solve. You complain about harming new players, but the decay is meant to help new players. Without a decay or with a very long decay new players cannot join a server because they have no place to build, so they get fed up and quit. The clutter is a much bigger harm to the new player than the decay timer is that most new players never run into. The decay only affects extremely casual players, those that cant login 1 time a week.
Human nature means you will never get players to take responsibility if it doesnt affect them, even if you get a few you will never get everyone. Just because you feel someone should clean up after themselves doesnt mean the decay isnt needed. Would it be great if everyone took their trash directly to the dump in real life… sure, does that mean we should expect them to do that and get rid of trash men?
The bottom line is decay is there for a reason to fix a problem that is common, so common in fact that every single survival build game has some form of a decay timer.