In PvP, you at least have options to deal with people who build in dumb, or trollish ways. You can destroy their structures. If the whole server dislikes what the person is doing, they can get together to do something about it. But PvE, you are simply at the mercy of these bad builders.
For instance, on one PvE-C server, this guy has literally taken over the whole large water area near the mounds. He is in the process of enclosing some areas that we need to access for game purposes. His base is ugly, and nothing more than sandstone…huge walls…no point to most of the building except to conquer territory. I see this a lot. And, this is always a huge problem on PvE servers, and DEVs never seem to want to do anything about it. I had hoped that the Purge would deal with these people, but I have lost hope on that ever being the cure.
The cure is simple really, but Devs seem loathe to implement it. Restrict how big people can build. I know some people who only play the game are going to squeal like stuck pigs at this notion, but you can build great structures without taking up the land area of a shopping mall.
Most of the bases I have seen, that are big, are ugly. One of the coolest bases I have seen, is made of insulated wood, in the north (H 8/9) It looks like a village. Each building is a player home, or a crafting area, or stables, etc… This is on server #1942 PvE-C. It’s not small, but not ginormous either. But most importantly, these guys know how to build good looking structures, but aren’t blocking off anything important, nor just trashing an area where a lot of people will want to do things.
For instance, on this same server, somebody had build a structure IN…yes IN Shattered Springs. Thankfully he left the server. I was worried he was going to do what I saw somebody do on a PvP server, which was build all over the area, blocking the spawns of Brimstone. He only blocked a few, but still, why is that area not a no build zone? I honestly think PvE needs more areas to be no build zones. The Devs should take a serious look at the map, and think about whether people building there, will affect people playing the game.
That same clan that build in H8/9 are now building near the mounds also, but again, they are building something that enhances the area, instead of destroying it. They are using the roads near the Mounds to make a village around them. Once again, not blocking important areas, or blocking spawns. What they did do, to reserve some area for their future building, is create some insulated wood gazebos, with a brazer in them. Again, this enhances the look of the area. Contrast that with the area around the ponds near Sep, where somebody is blocking tons of spawns with sandstone foundations, and the place just looks ugly.
To be honest, it makes me want to just go play single player, when I see people just spam sandstone foundations.
So, suggestions are:
- Create a flag/object…a land claim, that creates a circle that you must build within. Anything build outside of that will decay and the timer cannot be reset. It may be feasible to include some minor land claims that allow you to build a few outposts. These would be much smaller, for building map rooms near Obis, outposts for thrall gathering, etc…
- Drastically increase the destructive power of a purge if people build big.
- Make foundations with no walls or ceilings within a certain distance, decay with no timer. This would take some experimentation. The idea is for the server to detect land claim structure spamming. The idea is to encourage building useful structures, but not spamming structures to claim land.
- Create more no-build zones to keep people from blocking off game content.
- Create an upper limit of structures that a clan can have. Maybe have it increase with each additional player in the clan. For instance, for 1 player, it may be 10k structures. For an additional person it would be 12K, for 3 it would be 13.75k total for the clan, etc… Each person does not bring 10k structures. The idea is that you don’t need to recreate everything for each person. The crafting area, for instance may need to be slightly larger, but not much.
And please…can we get a gray version of the sandstone, and sandstone brick? Building yellow stone in the North looks bad…really bad. The stone there is gray, not yellow, so it makes stone look out of place, until you get to T3, and now have reinforced stone, which is at least more gray.
