End pillaring: Bonus Claiming from Flags

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
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The Problem

‘Pillaring’ is a term used to describe the general exploitation of land claim during PvP, such as warring clans “pillaring” their resources. This includes ruining the land around their base to prevent expansion or harvesting. This is an aggravating tactic, and the game should prevent this kind of behavior. It’s a “scorched earth” tactic that leads to excessive land claims, which prevent new players from joining the server. It also prevents players from staying online.

This is recognized as a griefing tactic on both PvE and PvP servers. Players can cheaply construct stone pillars surrounding enemy bases. In order to destroy these pillars, players need to waste valuable raiding materials to get rid of these stupid pillars. If you play a PvE server, there is no recourse against people who pillar your base.

Solution: Give Flags a Purpose :triangular_flag_on_post:

A devoted solution might be to create a special mechanic for Flags. This expands upon them, making them become a significant part of the gameplay.

I suggest that Flags gain a new mechanic; being able to claim territory in a moderate radius around them. Flags could be placed to extend claim radius beyond your walls. Players could defensively build flags upon their walls to expand on their reserved territory.

In order to place a flag, the flag’s bonus claim radius must be outside of any other player’s current claim radius. This means that Flags cannot steal already claimed land. Their claim cannot overlap with other players’ pre-existing land claims. This means that they are highly effective as claim defense, and less effective as claim offense.

Flags might be used for offensive or defensive long-term strategy. They would be quite expensive to craft, requiring Layered Silk.

They are an integral part of a cultured settlement, and as such, they have a vulnerability.

Players can claim other players’ flags by pressing ‘E’ to interact. This makes the flag property of whoever last claimed it — although it doesn’t steal the building that it is placed upon. Whoever has last claimed the flag may dismantle it to take the Layered Silk, or else reap the benefits of the bonus territory it once gave to the defender. This means that a player will be able to build within the flag’s bonus radius, such as for building a siege weapon.

Players will need to construct watchtowers to protect their flags. This would prevent players from climbing the walls and capturing the flag instantly. Flag-capturers would need to reach the flag in order to remove it.

A Caveat

Currently, land claim is also bound to resource blocking. The issue here is with land claim directly, and resource blocking does not need to be affected. Flags do not need to prevent resources from spawning.

Summary

Land claim should be changed. I suggest introducing a ‘Flag Claim’ mechanic. This would introduce a new mechanic to the game, specifically to do with contesting land claim. This would prevent players from ‘pillaring’ around enemy bases, and give a supported method for clans to more effectively claim territory defensively.

  • High Priority (DO EET, DO EET NAO)
  • Medium Priority (Cool, but not essential)
  • Low Priority (Put it in the ‘ideas’ box)
  • Zero Priority (No thanks)

0 voters

4 Likes
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I love this idea… so don’t get me wrong with my critique, assuming I understand what you’re saying.

What’s to keep me from making a flag for my radius, putting it on a t1 foundation, then t1 spamming the crap out of it near someone’s base? I really like the idea, but it would still be costly, even if just costing time and grief, for an opposing clan to have to remove the litter just to get to the flag. Am I missing something in your suggestion that would prevent this?

Maybe add a cap… 10 flags per clan, one for each player? Gives a clan (even if a solo player), access to build up to 10 locations? Maybe do 10 ‘base’ flags, and then allot 2 raid flags, so clans can build their raid shacks? IDK, just sptiballing with ya here.

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You always put such thought into your OPs man, thanks. I liked your ideas in an earlier thread. My choice would be flags or cairns, and that they have diminished HP the farther away they are from a base.

Right now I have a tower, and it is working beautifully and not destroying essential resources nearby. That makes me a senselessly silly citizen on a PVP server. I’d love it if we could only place a claim increase within the venn diagram of the main base. Making it out of reclaimable valuables sounds excellent. If we made one condition: the flag can only be placed with the aid of a top tier priest of your chosen religion, it would eliminate a lot of the lone-wolf spam.

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What’s to keep me from making a flag for my radius, putting it on a t1 foundation, then t1 spamming the crap out of it near someone’s base?

Any player could come along, press ‘E’ on that flag to claim it, and then dismantle the flag to get the gold, silver, and whatever it is composed of. They wouldn’t get ownership over the sandstone foundation that it is placed on, however.

Dismantling flags would be a benefit in itself, as they should be rather costly, and valuable to protect. There’s a significant ‘capture the flag’ element, as capturing and dismantling flags that are placed out in the open could net raiders a significant amount of gold. Especially so, as it wouldn’t necessarily show up on Clans’ event logs.

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Error with your idea. Does your entire base get wipe out by having no flag? Destroying hours,days and months if no server wipe. Larger clans become gods now. They can afford the man power to defend and resource gather. Avatars are now focus on flags only now. Your idea empowers large clans and damns all other clans.

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Sorry, I didn’t specify, but I would enclose the flag so it can’t be clicked on.

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This asks for more grieving, as you would get complete clans of grieving over compensating twelve year olds to camp these flags.

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No, it doesn’t replace the existing claim system. It just adds a second way to extend your claim, which is with flags. Building claim is still king.

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The flag would be tall and large, and might require a 2x2x5 to encapsulate. So that’s a volume of 20 blocks.

The volume could be higher if the flag itself can be interacted with, rather than just the pole. If the flag is also interactable, then the volume could be 3x4x5, or 60 blocks.

Even if you encapsulate it, you’re essentially building a watchtower at that point, which is much preferable to building dozens of pillars. Dozens of pillars reads as a griefing tactic — a watchtower reads as a legitimate game tactic.

However I do get what you’re saying. This doesn’t resolve the root problem of land claim grief, but it does introduce methods to defend against land claim grief. It replaces “Pillaring” with “Watchtowering”.

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It’s not intended to change human nature.

But it does provide a method of defense against ongoing grief.

The cost of the flags might be something like:

  • 50 Layered Silk
  • 20 Long Shaft
  • 20 Gold Ingot

Twelve-year-olds should have a tough time mass-producing it. It should be more of an ‘established empire’ kind of item, similar to the Map Room.

Of course the cost is very flexible according to balance needs. If it needs to be very expensive, then that is regardless if it works. More efficient clans will be able to produce more of these.

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Made some edits to the original post resulting from the conversations.