@CodeMage@LostBrythunian and @Exkar As someone that has built a 24300 building piece castle town on an Official PvP Server (which will likely decay or be admin deleted soon) I have found that NO ONE–even the most prolific builder–needs more than about 40K pieces or 1/4 of a map square. As I have stated previously, I’m not in favor of strict build limits, but I do think official build limits (including land claim limits) are probably better for the health of the game than rules. I would have never started my base as it is currently designed if the rules had been more clear. I am always in favor of technical solutions rather than arbitrary rules; however, it seems to me FC has had a hard time retaining engineering talent.
To @LostBrythunian’s point: this is the kind of system that I have been advocating for for quite some time, but given the state of the CE UE4 project and CE in general, I am not sure FC has the time, resources, or will to rework how the land claim system works. (Though I could be pleasantly surprised). A “load” variable, that functions like a “budget” variable in Halo’s forge or Fallout 76 camps is a much better solution because it taxes placebles with a high performance overhead like Lights, Animated Stuff, and Particles more than things like static placeables which use a lot less compute resources. (Long way of saying “I approve your message”.
I think you’re right on the money. I’m interpreting the rules the same way. The only issue I have is that this change (just like the previous 6 months changes) have a huge negative impact on the gameplay of Official PvP servers. Perimeter walls and layers are critically important to defending a base on PvP servers and reducing the thickness of our bases without compensating elsewhere has done a lot of damage to public PvP (although admittedly, the continued undermeshing and hacking on officials are an even bigger problem on public PvP than the things I generally gripe about).
This. Everything you described is right on the money. I prefer to play “Batten the Gate and Man the Wall” PvP defense. But in Conan, T3 bases are so weak that most people will be in your base before you can even get kitted. I think drawbridges HP should remain the same and other building should have a buff. Being a despoiler, certainly you’re getting bored with raiding being too easy right? And you’re right… I’ve played with experienced PvP demo operations. No Base Is Safe In Conan.
Okay, so what would the proposed 50k limit solve, then? Why should Funcom spend time on implementing that feature?
In fact, I keep asking what the building cap is supposed to solve, in general, that isn’t already solved by the TOS and nobody bothers to even try to answer. The closest anyone ever got always boils down “but we don’t like how Funcom enforces the TOS”, which fails to answer how the limit is supposed to solve that particular problem.
At least it looks like they’re willing to listen to feedback and reassess things.
I’m surprised that almost nobody mentioned the PVP elephant in the room: offline wiping by other players. Would people still need foundation stacking, claim webs, or any other tricks like that if they weren’t under a constant threat of logging in only to find that their whole base was razed while they were offline?
I get the impression that the devs would really like PVP raids to be… well, raids. Not wipes. A raid is, fundamentally, an incursion, not an act of total annihilation.
But then again, maybe that’s just my own impression.
I’m not playing PVP, but following this thread and this hit my eye.
I use bombs for fun and tearing low level mobs apart if they annoy me, but always found the bomb’s making and placing and igniting out of place. It should be made in the carpenter’s bench just like explosive arrows, or in the alchemist station where orbs are made.
Placing should have a crouching animation just like skinning or butchering something.
Igniting: I agree, explosive arrows to immediately detonate it, or interacting (E) to start a ~5 second cooldown.
Pairing with (hopefully future) stealth mechanics would be fun to just sneak behind somedudes, set it off and watching 'em fly!
Nearly zero without an incredible amount of assumption on the reader’s part. This wasn’t obvious from the replies and threads that resulted? Not being disrespectful but without more concise language the player is left to run a confusing monolog in their head. This leads to very broad interpretations and assumptions which may or may not generate a ticket - but certainly more rather than less. Each self imposed judgment call will be greatly influenced by what the player wants as well as what they expect to be able to get away with.
Not a B&W rule-set, you’re getting me wrong brother. Just more concise language. Many of your paragraphs convey opposite messages within them. If you don’t mind me wearing my pedantic pedagogue hat for a moment maybe I can demonstrate just within your reply(s) here:
FC: “I like the concept of public structures on PvE servers.”
Player: Oh, good! Public structures are OK then! Whew!
Wait, does it matter if he likes them? Or only the person behind the desk at the time of judgment? So, does this sentence hold any weight? Ummm…
“Just keep in mind that land claim is inherent with any building.”
Any building? OK, so public structures are out then! Dang.
“We are forced to consider the impact of the resulting claim and the benefit of the building to the server.”
So there’s a grey area. OK, I can do grey areas… what are the upper and lower limitations of this range or grey?
“There is no formula for how to vet such a building, so we have to make a judgement call.”
Noooo… I want to be able to make that call for myself so I can’t get banned in the process when someone else makes it.
Result: Nearly zero understanding or clarification. Are they good, bad, or just a mystery? If an Admin can make these grey zone calls we can too - but we need more precise language.
It doesn’t need to be B&W. It could be something like: We generally frown on them in all forms but if they’re extremely modest and don’t break other rules we will almost always overlook them. Build them at your own risk. Or in the opposite colored light something like: Public works are fine in almost all forms not withstanding the other rules of course. We see no problem in using a few hundred pieces here or there in order to serve or assist the community. See, not B&W but my feeble attempts here contain more concise messaging. They are much closer to a yes or no answer - we can get a general sense of “I probably shouldn’t - I’m likely to be banned” or “as long as I’m not being ridiculous, it’s acceptable”. . You’re casting your net too wide is all I’m trying to say. That we’re having entire threads among ourselves trying to determine if the official messaging is pro or con (and why) on specific things like maprooms is a good indication of this.
BTW, taken examples aside, I love your proposed solution! Truly public land as I’m imagining it, solves the problems between FC and players. And while it might introduce a much smaller set of problems between specific players at least those are addressable among ourselves without external intervention! Good one!
Edit:
BTW-BTW, if containers are included in this “public land” solution, this would also solve several other wants and desires among a large portion of Official Server players! Doubly-yummy!
I’d like the second @TeleTesselator’s endorsement of this solution. I’ve seen a couple of posts regarding Land Claim Flags here an there, and this suggestion got me thinking of basically “anti-land claim” flag that unclaims the land from building pieces within a certain radius. Just a thought, but regardless, I like the idea of declaring certain structures as Public Use
Hi friends! Looks like things got out of hand in this topic recently. Cleaned up some posts.
As a friendly reminder:
Please refrain from personal attacks
Please do not abuse the flagging system
We generally do not comment on actions taken against other users except to the actual affected owner of the account or user themselves
Naming thralls offensive terms, or obvious spoonerisms of said terms, is in fact not okay (including the term referenced earlier, which I’ve now added a censor filter for on the forums which I’m honestly surprised was not present in the first place)
If I may butt in briefly, one of the concerns I’m having lays in the definitions being considered. Using spam in order to increase claim area is obviously against most people’s idea of fairness. But, what is the definition of spam? And is FC’s definition fair to players?
In this example of yard lighting using only 11 torches, I would claim that this is not spam at all and it is unfair to the player to call it that. These CE maps are beautiful and at night they are often too dark. Don’t change it - it makes the game more fun - but within 10 or 20 block’s distance from our bases such lighting enhances our experience of the game dramatically.
Likewise, a road often traveled and/or in immediate view from our bases will benefit dramatically from 8 or 10 torches and also may fall more into he category of “public works” rather than spam. Considering FC’s resolutions include account suspension , these definitions of spam likely won’t be acceptable to a lot of players.
In neither case did it appear the players were attempting to increase claim area by spamming placeables.
The reason pillars are often used with standing torches stems from a lack of understanding about how the build system’s decay works. So instead of building foundations out to the desired position of the torch - placing the torch - and then removing the foundations thereby tying the torch’s decay to the base, players add a pillar thinking it will increase the amount of time the torch has before it disappears.
A possible solution here might be to remove the falloffs toward claim borders. So, within the claim borders defined by foundation groups (not designated as “public land” as per your proposed solution), lights, benches, containers, and etc. all inherit a common shared decay time. Such a solution might also reduce the computational resources imposed on the servers. “1” usually requires less computation than “100” divided by distance.
Allow some of my recent photography to serve as RL examples:
I just learned this from your post. Thank you, @TeleTesselator for sharing this particular tidbit. I’ve been trying to get my torches to not immediately decay, and you just fixed that issue for me!
2 questions if you may.
1st. I have a habit playing in pve servers creating one outpost at the time, just to trigger purge on this area so I can have purge thralls or crafters of different races . My outpost has always small footprint , but with a little decoration especially flower pots that seem to frenzy the purge npcs . Either home or outpost, I try always not to destroy spawns other that some stones or trees. Will this be allowed in the new rules?
2nd. I prefer exile lands for the teleport system. If an obelisk doesn’t have a map room close and when I say close I do not mean next to the obelisk, but close, is it allowed for a player to place a map room in a place that it is not so building attractive with no resources around. What I mean, on lava rivers on north, or underwater in the black keep for example?
Thanks in advance
FC need to officially clarify to players that placing torches like this is okay if you don’t put any building pieces around them. If a path is frequently travelled, the light sources won’t decay, even without building pieces. That being said, to your other point:
I think you’re dead on the money. The problem is people don’t understand how the decay and land claim systems work. Unless they’ve watched youtube videos on the topic and been playing for a long time most people simply don’t understand the effects their actions have. IMHO I think the entire land claim system needs a rework. But that’s just me.
Is it? I was under the impression that it falls under claim spam. In fact, I’ve seen it used as deliberate claim extension tactic before. For those of us who have seen it before, it’s pretty obvious when that’s the case, just like in the images Umborls posted.
How is it claim spam? Placing a torch provides no land claim…
Placing a torch on a pillar–however-- does. Hence I said “Without placing any building piece around them”. This includes pillars. Simply placing a protected iron torch or standing torch does not generate land claim or stop anyone from building. Which appears to be FC’s primary concern.
It is on my path home, but is not in the land claim of the base, so it has an independent decay timer. The decay timer increases up to cap while you stand near it, so as long as you pass by your placeables every other day, they should not decay. In addition, this statue does not produce any landclaim, and other people can build near it. Not to mention, the HP of most placeables is significantly less than a Statue of Guidance and easy to blow up.
It’s pretty obvious to me at least, that in one case it was done to light a path and in the other case it was done to light up the trees in his yard. In the case of the path there’s no desirable land to claim. In the case of the yard, yes, it extends the claim - by 25 meters - big whoop! But in any case it’s pretty clear to normal folks these weren’t done with the intent of claiming massive swaths of land nor preventing others from building nearby. For those of us who have actually seen land claim by lit pillars or foundations it’s abundantly clear this ain’t it! Eleven pillar supported lights when so near to one’s base, isn’t and shouldn’t be considered spam-with-the-intention-to-abuse-the-land-claim-system.
As far as being placeables, that’s not what they are. The torches are. The pillars supporting them are not.
Yeah, sorry, I didn’t pay enough attention to details of what you said. My bad.
Moot on PVE(-C) servers.
Maybe not to you or me, but the whole point is that we don’t get to decide for everyone. It’s that same principle that’s behind the rules that “strongly recommend not building any bridges or roads”, because “the presence of such structures also lay [sic] claim to the surrounding land”.
Regardless of your insinuations to the contrary, I have actually seen land claim by lit foundations and pillars, and yeah, it looked pretty much like that.
From everything I’ve read and my understanding, Castles and Villages were on the early road map for Funcom, but have essentially been scrapped because they can’t make the game performant enough to support them. My 2 cents.
Some players want to build stuff like this, and it would be great if Officials could accommodate this (especially with the way the game is advertised), but unfortunately I’m not sure how feasible it actually is. I’m wondering if we could get a statement from the Dev team on the feasibility of such things.
The reason I believe a lot of players are peeved is that the screenshots of bases with perimeter walls in the Rules post by @Umborls are about the same size as bases shown in the game’s launch trailer and marketing materials.
I want to be able to make that call for myself so I can’t get banned in the process when someone else makes it.
, these definitions of spam likely won’t be acceptable to a lot of players.
