Well, I think it has more to do with scale than anything. The idea of castles and villages is fine, but some people take it way too far and build structures that take up unnecessarily huge chunks of real estate.
Or as another example to illustrate the point, things like public map rooms. I tend to picture something like a basic truck stop on the side of the interstate. A small, relatively simple structure available for anyone to make use of. Then I see video of someone running around refreshing their stuff and all of their “truck stops” are more like Buckingham Palace or the Empire State Building.
Basically it wouldn’t be an issue if people would just learn a little humility and not go overboard with everything on a public server.
Yea, I think that Buckingham Palace and the Empire State Building should be fine as long as each group only has 1 of those per server and not much else.
But please Funcom should adjust the following building related issues:
We need smaller altars (half the size it is right now)
Altars must be able to be placed next to each other (currently its 8 tiles btween each one)
Smaller pens (its great to have the single slot but its still massive compared to the animals we put in there should be a 1 slot, 3 slot and a 5 slot, and much smaller, could be a open design without sections)
Remove the stables (make the pen compatible with horse taming no need for another building)
Smaller wheels (the design for any wheel is just too big)
I understand this feedback could be a pain for development, but at this time with the current issues its something that needs to be adressed.
Some buildings I personally don’t mind being big… thats why I didn’t state them above but here they are:
Tier 3 bencehs (you can still use the improved ones, they are fine)
Honestly, I don’t believe any game is performant enough to support multiple Taj Mahals on a server with the hardware official servers have. And that’s what inevitably ends up happening if you don’t try to curb it with rules.
I agree and disagree. You DO need rules, but I think the rules should be coded into the game, not arbitrated by human moderators. Ideally we should have better tools to control building more granularly in the server/game settings.
Also, with regards to performance: I’m pretty sure it’s feasible within the context of Unreal. That said I won’t dive into nitty gritty tech stuff here, as to not detract from the original conversation.
I agree to a degree. I used to agree completely but then Umborls came here and three times stressed that it’s not about size. What’s a girl to think…? From what I’m gathering (and it is a gathering process…) it’s all about purpose and intent. Not the intent of the player, but the intent of the structure. And, purpose defines itself - is it purely decorative or does it have an intended purpose (ie. function).
He has said a few times now that one is important to their considerations, and the other is not. Thus, the take-away for me /currently/ is: Building to contain all the alters at their current spacing, however many animal pens you’re capable of actively using, all of the T3 and T4 benches, all of the Wheels you’re capable of using, a double bed for each player (maybe even in a separate room), all the planter’s you can make use of, fish-traps, stables, and so on right down the line, is fine and permissible. But, as soon as you start making empty towers, guest houses, or large towers that contain only a few chests or something - and especially if spread out - then you’re looking for trouble.
That’s the message I’m getting from him. The trouble however, is two fold here (besides the fact they have chosen account suspension as a remedy):
Their past record of bannings hasn’t always matched up with this. About 10% shouldn’t have had actions taken against them when comparing their builds to others or those builds Admins have officially approved of - by replying to a complaint with something like: that building is fine and doesn’t violate anything.
Their (his?) definition of purpose and intent (aka: function) doesn’t seem at a glance to be consistent - or, is too restrictive about some things and [too] lenient on others - and sometimes it’s just all-together confusing. (Example: A maproom with 4 lights, or a small bridge with 8 might be OK from reading him, but 8 lights occupying less area than either a maproom or a bridge to light your front yard, will get your account suspended.)
All of this also leaves open these judgement calls to fortune telling. Like the two empty buildings Player X has on either side of his main base currently… what is he planning to do with them? Will they contain animal pens when in 2 weeks from now he gets the mats and knowledge to build them? or does he intend to leave them empty - just for looks?
I think the best solution is to have those tools you mentioned, but in this particular case I just don’t trust that they would be implemented in a satisfactory way. If I have to choose between a hard cap on building pieces and endless forum complaints, I’ll take endless forum complaints.
Maybe it is, and I also don’t want to derail the whole topic, but I’m not convinced even Unreal can handle what the players will dish out if the building is completely unrestricted in any way. Players can be really, really creative
And I would go even further than that: my hunch is that the purpose isn’t binary. It’s not a simple choice between “completely decorative with no other purpose whatsoever” and “you can’t be banned for this”. I’m guessing that if you have a decorative build with a couple of crafting stations that you use extremely rarely (if ever), and you have those same crafting stations in your base and you use them all the time, you still might be found to be breaking the spirit of the rules.
Just a guess, though. I would really love Funcom to clarify that further.
Those are some good questions. Stuff like that can still be determined with a thorough investigation. For example, if those empty buildings have been empty for the last 3 months, you would be pretty justified in thinking that they were decorative.
However, we don’t know whether Funcom’s investigations take that into account. I would really love to see Umborls (or anyone else from Funcom) open up a bit more about that.
Even better than that, I would love it even more if they implemented a way for their admins to contact players/clans and warn them about the specifics of their builds, giving them a few days to fix the problem, and then following up with admin action if the problem isn’t fixed. I know it’s a non-trivial feature request, but the rules are more ambitious and ambiguous than we all thought, and a ban is a very drastic measure.
I suspect some of our problems with the understanding of the rules stems from the fact that we don’t know what structures have been reported, and also whether Funcom investigates all of the clan’s builds if you report just one. This could be what’s causing a lot of “how come X is fine and Y got banned” complaints. Not all of them, but I’m willing to be it’s a non-trivial portion.
I think this clan was on my server some time ago, they did exectly the same building type covering almots on grid of the map with lots of spiderweb foundations, they walled my base too, because i reported then because they closed the brimstone lake, they was banned (i suppose) but when the ban end they come back. Because of then many players leaved the game, and now with server transfer they can infernize the whole community instead just one server.
Yeah, I specifically asked @Umborls earlier in this (or another?) thread to outline the process a ticket goes through just for this reason. He hasn’t replied yet however. I dunno what his position is at FC but he seems to be focusing on these feedbacks about once a week or so… So there may be some hope yet that he’ll address it at some point. Maybe it was in the thread that @Ulyssi started - did that get reopened? It should be if not…
I am content to let sleeping dogs lie. This thread seems to have become a catch all for feedback and has active moderation so it’s probably best the discussion stays here.
Also FWIW I think when @Umborls refers to a binary they only mean as to whether or not “claim spam” occurs. This presupposes that we are in unison on what constitutes “claim spam” - which as @TeleTesselator has pointed out with the torches examples we are likely not yet. However, for the sake of their argument that clan size doesn’t change the zero tolerance policy on “claim spam”, I think viewing its occurrence as binary is fair. Far be it from me to speak on their behalf, but that is my understanding.
In regards to the torches examples, I think the difficulty is in separating it from problems like public works or defensive blocking. While I agree the examples seem extreme to me, I am not sure by what logic we could deem them okay while condemning a public bridge or foundation web of a similar scale.
This is what I mean by too strict and too lenient on a few things. “of similar scale” in the images he posted would mean about an 8x8 tiled area (or if freestanding blocks you can fit only about 3x3 foundations without snapping). Seriously, they’re going to ban people for having only 9 foundation blocks in their front yard (in a similar pattern to those lights)? Really??? FFS…
I realize we (many of us) asked for [more] active moderation and requested administrative actions be taken and brought on-line. But I’m pretty sure no one was talking about lighting up one’s front yard - or even 9 foundations in very close proximity to one’s own base. I’m pretty sure we were talking first and foremost about actual cheaters (speed hackers, undermeshers, etc.) and secondarily about silly moronic builds like @NORfem posted above.
It seems heavy handed to me as well. I’m hopeful that some clarity is provided and I am thankful you are prodding on this point.
I’m not sure how to best handle builds that serve for the lack of a better word “meta” objectives like QOL or defense. It seems to me that prioritizing effect over intent is a better strategy here, but it means we would have to accept some amount of land claim for the sake of land claim. I’m not sure where or how they could draw an acceptable limit line around that either.
Well, they should be able to exercise roughly the same degree of common sense we’re expected to concerning these issues. If these three bases are considered about the average median in size AND about the closest players should build or are capable of building, next to each other then anything that extends it too much farther is in violation. At that point what is the difference between a fence, a 1 or 2 block high wall, and free-standing foundation blocks 3 out from the base building’s walls and about 3 wide? Besides that the free standing foundations usually look like hell. This is very different from something like the foundation webs @Umborls showed us.
Saw your link in the other thread thankfully. Going to nip this real quick.
So I definitely agree that trebs may need a bit of a rework (maybe remove the check for landclaim requirement for placing them, so players aren’t even tempted to try to build in ways to counter them that are against the rules.
But adjusting damage of bombs can have some pretty nasty effects in active raiding situations. Right now, if you doubled the damage of bombs, you would still have a nasty time raiding a base with its clan online.
The issue is the raid window. Unless you make it too short to be enjoyable. You always end up with situations where players either have to be online during each and every raid window, to avoid losing their stuff.
Because here’s what needs to happen to raid damage to get what everyone wants in this situation. Raid damage needs to equal the amount of damage that can be done in a raid window, equal to what you are ‘allowed’ to build on an official.
The damage value there is extremely small and makes active raiding just impossible. And suffice to say, the number of servers that allow offline raiding compared to the number that don’t allow it make this a very valid concern. And let’s be honest. Offline raiding is PVE with extra steps. Not PVP.
The best way of handling this is through server settings. Eliminate the raid window, leave raiding on 24/7 and turn on Dynamic Build Damage. Then the only value that needs to be fiddled with is the timer of that setting so that the amount of damage a raid can do in that span of time doesn’t exceed what people are allowed to build.
The benefit of this as it pertains to this topic is players won’t need to build crazy walls and thick structures to avoid or slow down offline raids. Well they’ll still need to put their valuables in fortified areas, but they won’t have the fear of missing a window and waking up in the desert zero’d out.
A few of you have asked directly or indirectly what my position is with Funcom. I work in Customer Support. In addition to work I do for our other games, I spend a significant amount of time in Zendesk (our ticketing system) investigating Exiles reports.
From my experience with investigating these reports, I know that some of the extreme examples that I tried to describe here were occurring way too frequently. It was also apparent that some players didn’t know why they were being suspended. This is clearly a problem because many would repeat the exact same offence once their suspension had expired. This ultimately leads to more tickets, which means a longer wait for all tickets. It also leads to speculation among players, and this further muddies the waters.
My goal here was to spread awareness of the sorts of things we look for when we read your Zendesk tickets. The hope was that this would reduce some of most severe infractions which cause the most pain to players, which would in turn allow us to focus on some of the more nuanced edge cases. So far, I am pleased with the results, and it has encouraged me to keep following up with you in these threads. We have also seen some feedback which was unexpected but ended up being very useful. It has helped us reshape our policies and procedures to better serve the community on the Official Servers.
I think I have made these examples as concise as I am able to for now. Next, I would like to focus on some of the other infractions we deal with routinely. Much of the feedback we’ve received has been helpful, so thank you for the conversation. Please feel free to continue, and I will continue to respond if I feel that I can add something to the conversation.
I disagree with the notion that bombs do not need a rebalance. I believe that a bombs alpha strike is too high given the current state of play (addressed earlier in the quoted post regarding placing, crafting, and detonating). I also want to make clear that when I say “rebalance,” I’m not at all saying that they need a hefty nerf. I want all raiding methods to be viable, and all defenses to be viable counters. A rock-paper-scissors effect, if you will, where bombs get countered by the defenders X, X gets countered by the raider’s Y, Y gets countered by Z, and so on until it loops back around to _____ gets countered by bombs.
My issues with bombs are mostly in that alpha strike and placing distance.
@Umborls I’m glad our chatter is worthwhile ^^ Thanks for your feedback on our feedback, and I look forward to hearing from you in the future!
