It’s great that we have a group here that enjoys the game tremendously, and plays a lot. But Conan also has a casual player base too that all of these ridiculous measures would most certainly drive away.
No, I most certainly do not 
Yes and that is part of the problem that’s why you have so many base refreshers because the system allows for it, hence why @erjoh felt the need to open a topic on it in the first place, because this type of playstyle has negative consequences affecting other players.
The thing about freedom is, one has to know the line when theirs ends and they’re trespassing over somebody else’s
So I’m not trying to dismiss your style of play by any means, in fact I don’t even think your style of play applies here as I don’t think you’re maintaining ridiculously large buildings on several servers just for the sake of maintaining them, are you?
I mean after all you prefer pre-60 play anyway so I really don’t think you would mind losing any of those bases from what I’ve seen your approach to this is, in fact you’d be glad to start from scratch and build up again.
Bottom line is this, like many pointed out before - if you want improvement, then you cannot keep doing what you’ve been doing up to now and that applies to all manner of things in life
I merely tried a shot at a potential solution like many others and I still think my approach is pretty reasonable and it’s the most considerate of various playstyles from the options listed so far
Edit: there’s also the possibility that my explanation of the system I proposed was too vague and hard to understand so tomorrow I’ll try to make a more detailed post on it see how people like that version
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is PvP. I know a lot of players don’t like that, but it is what it is.
I would much rather have weekly taxes in form of building materials based on the size of your building, just like it is implemented in Myth of Empires.
Makes players think twice about building spam and huge builds on official servers.
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No it isn’t.
That’s like saying the end game for the NBA is the World Series. Utter nonsense.
Arguably not just allows it, but encourages or even requires it since you can’t have multiple characters sharing the same server/buildings unless you have multiple accounts. Personally I’ve stopped using my alt accounts, just not worth the hassle with all the new limitations.
Strictly one-server-at-time for me though, don’t have the time to keep multiples refreshed. So you could say the system works in that regard.
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Horseradish. PvP isn’t content, any more than role-playing is content. It’s just interaction between players, and that exists at all levels of play.
I submit that writing naughty limericks in the in-world chat is endgame content.
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On Ark, the meaning of pvp is different. i see players ask others if they want to engage, and that is pvp to them, like it was some roleplay.
Dunno how that discussion evolved here.
Make a kickstarter tbh.
And finally gold and silver would be used for their natural reason of existence ! Currency.
And if you didn’t pay the prize then your purge bar would be instantly fill. But this purge would be from God avatars!
Ps @DelRioServerMaster sorry I used your purge idea!
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It’s possible some variation on this could work - knowing people they’d just farm enough mats to have buildings stay up ‘till the heat death of the universe tho.
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This would mean that they are active, so why not!
I meant prior to ‘becoming inactive’ considering how much most people like to stockpile 
. But if it would allow me to go on vacation or a trip for work (both of which are upcoming for me) without everything turning to dust it’d be cool for sure.
And yes, as long as people are playing, the decay system of course shouldn’t impact them.
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Exactly! And this is the reason I ask for currency.
Right now the greatest issue is the stockpiles we have in our base above all.
Imagine if you had a banking system that would allow you to sell everything you don’t need and at the same time to buy with your currency anything you need (using an admin panel form). So I need tar right now to fix this, I go out or I pay for the amount I need? What do I have a lot? Bones, I sell them to buy 50 tar 
. This way the storage items would be minimized a lot.
Not to mention the ability of carrying a banker with you like elder scrolls on line, this would make things way more easier.
But let’s stay to the simple thought before we make it more complicated. If a player could sell his whole house at the end and gain the currency that would help him rebuild very fast some other time, then people may just sell everything and leave the server. That means you wouldn’t need a body vault anymore .
A lot problems could be solved with a system like that, not in the rough presentation I use, something more delicate and correct like gaming devs can do!
And yes, for people who wants (needs) to take a break for a month (several reasons of real life), this decay system is punishing.
Not on a PvE server.
But yes, taxes of a sort on large builds and no taxes on small ones would do a great deal for server performance and player comfort.
The option to build very small, and have no decay timer. Vs the option to build very large, and pay a price/decay for it.
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Yes of course. As others have stated, PvP is a form of player interaction. So basically any player interaction can be endgame content.
Raid a base or sell your goods or be a blacksmith and give tasks to new players that need to farm materials for you. All viable options for endgame content.
Alright, so I said I would come back with a more detailed explanation on what I was suggesting above. (@stelagel )
Activity point system
The suggestion is to use the same mechanic that calculates your purge score to handle your “decay score” as well.
It does not have to be tied to the purge itself unless they want to do that… but the purge could remain as it is, this would not affect that - it would merely piggyback on the same activity measuring system which already exists in the game.
Why? Because it’s already there and as such makes this much easier to implement than if it wasn’t the case.
This would essentially measure player activity as best as it is possible to measure in a game like this, the purge score already registers pretty much anything you do whether it’s crafting items, harvesting, killing, building etc.
This part of the system would ensure that base refreshers can’t just log in for 2 seconds and call it a day, however we still need to make sure we’re giving them options of maintaining a presence relatively pain-free which is what the next part deals with.
How the decay system would use these points
My suggestion is to make the significance of these points relative to the amount of property a player/clan has with a non-linear equation.
For example an accumulated decay score of 4000 would count as a much longer decay timer for someone who only has 1k blocks on the serer than for someone who has 5k blocks, essentially creating a type of “upkeep” system, but the upkeep here would be player activity instead of resources.
Essentially the system would try to encourage the concept that if you want a large presence on the server with massive and multiple bases, then you need to be equally active and actually playing on the server
And yes, this would also passively result in the fact that larger clans might be able to have and maintain a bigger building, however it’s not like a fixed block limit and if a single player is dedicated enough they can do it just as well, just requires them to be more active.
On the other hand if a player is casual and only logs on occasionally, they would be encouraged to reduce their footprint on the server and possibly be able to maintain a tiny base for even longer than the current decay timer if they build up enough score and then go on a bit of a holiday.
The Decay
This is where the hard part comes, because no matter how we put it, it’s not going to be entirely perfect.
So far we “solved” in theory the issue of “base refreshers” and also massive builders, but we haven’t yet solved the potential issue of satellite bases…
I would like it if the system could actively discourage way too many satellite bases, however I also want them to expire sooner than the main base, to prevent every asset of the player crumbling at the same time when the decay timer runs out. In order to do that we would need to collapse the satellite bases first, however our solution needs to make sure that satellite bases cannot be used as a “buffer” for their main base decay.
To solve that I would suggest a “Fill all glasses in a sequence, but drain them at the same time”.
What do I mean by that?
- Each of your bases would have a score (by base I mean collection of building blocks that the purge system already uses to target you and the decay system already uses to “bundle” together) based on how large it is
- The largest of them would be considered your main base
- As you accumulate “decay score” through activity ONLY your main bases timer would extend at first
- Once your main base reaches the cap set by Funcom, your activity would start increasing the second largest / second in distance to your main base (depending on what people prefer).
- After the second satellite base has its decay timer full as well, only then you would start filling up the third one etc. etc.
- However, ALL decay timers would tick down simultaneously and your smaller satellite bases having a smaller “capacity” would be the first to crumble in case you become inactive.
This would solve the issue of too many satellite bases, there also would be no need to physically visit ANY of your bases, if you wanted to gain all your scores by running dungeons from a “shack” as your base of operations, that would still refresh your decay properly. It would also make sure to get rid of satellite bases first. Discouraging too many satellite bases in the first place was already handled by the previous step since these additional blocks also make your accumulated decay score less effective.
Overall I could see a system like this working way better than what we have currently and potentially solving the issue of base refreshers and overbuilding for no reason. It might sound complicated in theory, but a lot of it is already present in the game and it’s a matter of hooking these systems up to one-another and balancing it (which is the harder part). There is also no need to set a 1 week hard-cap decay timer with this and it can be more relaxed / dynamic based on building size, bases, activity and everything.
In theory if balanced and implemented well, this should also suit most playstyles. If you want to play on multiple servers you would be able to maintain a smaller base easily on multiple servers. If you’re an active clan and you play a lot anyway then you wouldn’t even notice the system change.
So I’m not talking about some super difficult amounts here that would require you to grind excessively… but something that feels “natural” and obtainable through regular play… while at the same time also making people admit the truth… that if they’re inactive and don’t actually want to play this game, maybe they shouldn’t be taking up a lot of server space.
Hope that explains better what I was trying to say in my first post, obviously this is just a random thought, but I see it as a potential good base to start off and others to brainstorm on… I’ll just leave it at this for now and leave the brainstorming to you guys and Funcom 
Cheers
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2 things.
1st what makes the base main base, the size? The bed? You need an object to characterize this base as main base, in the past @CodeMage suggested flags.
2nd, what about clans?
Some people clan up but each one has his own facility, if only the clan leaders facility has normal decay timers wouldn’t this discourage more the clan status in pve servers? It’s already not encouraging enough for pve, this I believe would be the final hit!
Then again since you find the time (thank you for this), in your system can you implement the purge system to follow the build and not the clan?
In clans some people are very active and some less, but they still have to share purge in a random building and this is a very discouraging matter for clan up in pve. I remember when I fixed this
https://forums.funcom.com/t/happy-birthday-kate/197196/41
Purge hit the clan but there was only one member active from the clan and until he reaches my point purge had destroyed everything. I didn’t care a lot that I had to do it from the beginning, but tbh I didn’t manage to recover the sword of Crom (rng is a b… h). But this is me! You cannot imagine how many fights I witnessed all these years for this matter in chats and discord pages.
A lot for consideration!
But you are in a good route keep it up 
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Yea, in the above I suggested trying to systematically “guess” it based on size, but I was wondering about this myself - like I said a lot of the details in my suggestion are very open to debate and change so a lot of it I filled with what would be the equivalent of “default values” in text so that the system makes sense to some degree, but all of these are subject to debate.
So yes having a pillar-stone / flag etc to mark your main base could also work.
This part is not necessarily possible sadly without the necessary changes touching too many systems. Currently the game straight up replaces the owner of everything you have with the clan ID and there is absolutely no record after that that you ever owned any of it - which is also how this data is saved.
So this would require adding an additional parameter to everything along the lines of “original owner” and following it through all the way to the save system in order to have anything for the purge to distinguish based on. Obviously it “can” be done but I’m not sure Funcom would put in the effort for that.
Keep in mind that if you’re in a clan the activity generated by others also accumulates to the same place, so while yes, deciding on a central base to keep as “last one standing” might be useful - most clans already do this though and have central hubs. But at the same time the upkeep would be much easier when multiple people are playing so I don’t think this would particularly be an issue, it all depends on balancing like I said at the end of my post
If set up well, it can actually be an encouraging factor to join a clan on PvE as well… since that would allow for a much easier upkeep of super-builds. So I can actually see this as a potential positive effect if balanced correctly.
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I wholeheartedly support your suggestion
Mostly because I would refuse to pay the tax and play out my own “me vs. the government” war scenario lol.
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I don’t have enough time to give a well-thought-out response, but I will say that other survival games like 7 Days to Die use a “Claim Block” for denoting base locations. Maybe something like that would work for denoting “Main Base” and you can only have 1 or something. Just spit balling at this point
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