And yet you keep quoting and replying to every single person and someone fail to comprehend anything any one of them actually say. 
2 Likes
“The first time someone calls you a horse, you punch him on the nose. The second time someone calls you a horse, you call him a jerk. But the third time someone calls you a horse, well, then perhaps it’s time to go shopping for a saddle.”
If there’s a whole bunch of us that “don’t understand” a concept you’re convinced is so simple and clear, then you might wanna ask yourself how you’re failing so hard at explaining it.
But it’s way more likely that you know exactly what’s wrong.
It wasn’t the examples that led to so-called grey areas. Those are still there, with or without the examples. What you call “grey areas” are ambiguities that will always present themselves whenever something is described through natural language.
Your “simple question” relies on the word “necessary”, which is ambiguous. What in-game content is necessary and what isn’t? Ask different people and you’ll get different opinions.
Yes, we all see where you’re at, but the problem is that either you don’t, or you’re pretending not to.
So let’s make it clear: you’re proposing to make a rule more vague, claiming that making it more vague makes it clearer, claiming that the more vague version is easier to enforce, claiming that it should be enforced through logic that is neither implicitly apparent nor explicitly explained in the wording of the rule, and completely ignoring any problematic consequences of that logic.
Let’s unpack this:
- The original complaint is that the rules aren’t clear enough, because people aren’t sure what is bannable and what isn’t.
- One of the rules has a non-exhaustive list of examples. Those examples were added to give people a better idea of what the rule is talking about, without reducing the rule to a specific, finite list of forbidden things.
- Your proposal is to eliminate those examples. So instead of narrowing down the doubts people might have about the rule, you want to expand those doubts. “Don’t block content” is a rule that will make everyone ask “But what is content?” Yet somehow you claim that is clearer.
- Your reason as to why this is supposedly clearer is that the enforcement logic should be “If it is part of the game and necessary to play the game, then you shouldn’t block it.”
- This enforcement logic is not specified in any part of the rule. “Don’t block content” does not define that the content should be “necessary”, it just says “content” should not be blocked, without defining “content”.
- Even if your logic was spelled out the same way you originally did it, it still wouldn’t be clear, because people wouldn’t agree on what is necessary.
- Your particular definition of “necessary” – which is far from being universal, by the way – is that if there is another way to accomplish something, then it isn’t necessary. Even that is not specific enough and there are ambiguities to poke holes in. For example, I can loot iron from dead NPCs or chests in NPC camps. Does that mean it’s okay to block all iron nodes on the whole map?
- Even if your rule was clear to everyone who reads it (it’s not), even if the logic was unambiguous (it’s not), the outcomes of applying it would be worse than they are now. Using the logic you described – over the course of several posts, rather than in a pithy sentence you claim is enough – if player A blocked up all but one brimstone node on the map and player B later blocked up that last one, then player B would be punished, because brimstone wasn’t “necessary” before player A blocked it up, but it became “necessary” after that.
Depends on the people. Some don’t know in what way they broke the rules, and would like to know more. Some think it’s unfair that the rules staid the same but their enforcement changed, and they see that as lack of clarity in the rules. Some see others breaking the same rules without getting banned, and assume that means the rules aren’t clear. Some know exactly what rules they broke, but don’t want their actions to have consequences, so they make it sound like rules are unclear. Some have an ax to grind with Funcom, so they’ll take any opportunity to jump on the “Funcom sucks” bandwagon.
There are many, many reasons for this, and a few of them are worth addressing. The rest are just the same garbage toxicity you’ll find on these forums when dealing with literally any other game-related issue.
No, it’s not. You made that much clear. Of course, it would be naive to assume you won’t try to move the goalposts again and pretend that you didn’t say anything of the sort. Or hell, just claim that you said what you said but it means the opposite somehow.
If it were the same thing as Funcom says, then you wouldn’t have to change it, would you?
It’s not like any of us have a lot of choices when it comes to dealing with bad faith arguments. 
2 Likes
Yes. I made that point to you (repeatedly - it’s almost as if you ignore everything that is said to you). You have not changed anything meaningful about the rule. Yet you claim that your rule is ‘concrete’ and Funcom’s is not. If it is ‘concrete’ then it can be applied without interpretation. If it is not concrete then it is the exact same as the current rule and relies on human judgment and is not concrete. I asked you to provide a viable example of a concrete rule. You have not.
[quote=“Nemisis, post:532, topic:180741”]
Which is how it already works. People read a report and judge whether it is an infraction or not. That doesn’t make the rule concrete, it makes it subjective and requiring human judgement. Otherwise a computer could do it. You are literally arguing for the current rule set, while claiming to be arguing against it. I’ve pointed this out to you before and you continue to ignore it and claim that your version of the rules is magically more ‘concrete’ while being exactly the same as Funcom’s version.
[quote=“Nemisis, post:532, topic:180741”]
As I have already explained - Funcom says ‘resources’ as an EXAMPLE OF CONTENT, NOT A DEFINITION. Removing the examples does not change the meaning of the word. Content still means content, still means content, still means content. If you do not define content (in your case redefining it to mean ‘only necessary content’) then it means all things contained within the subject. The content of a game is all things that game contains - you may wish to limit that list, but then you need to define those limits. Which is the problem that has been explained to you over and over, yet you still pretend does not exist. For a concrete rule, you need to define each of those limits, precisely, so there can be no argument over them. Either someone has breached the rule or they haven’t breached the rule. If you cannot do that, then it is not a concrete rule, no matter how you attempt to twist the language. And anyone judging the evidence from a report should be able to see ‘yes they clocked a’ or ‘no the did not block a’. But that means that you have to define whether or not blocking ‘a’ is against the rules - and if you don’t explicitly define that then the rule remains vague and in need of human interpretation.
[quote=“Nemisis, post:532, topic:180741”]
You literally present two different answers. ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. They are opposing answers and you claim both can be true depending on the circumstances of the specific situation. That is exactly what a grey area is.
And again, the judgement call is exactly what the current rules already do with regard to these situations. It is your ‘concrete rules’ that would need to define an actual answer and can’t.
So already (as I have had to point out multiple times and you still don’t appear to understand) - you have had to change your rule from ‘Don’t block content’ to ‘don’t block content that is necessary for playing the game’ - showing that your rule is fluid, constantly changing and the polar opposite of concrete. And now you have to define ‘necessary for playing the game’. Everyone plays Conan for different reasons and has different requirements for the game - different things that are necessary for their enjoyment. So you now need a ‘concrete rule’ that takes account of all these different necessities, and protects all of them. And you have to define each of those situations.
Except that Funcom (and seemingly a majority of players) consider it to be banworthy. So you have another area of interpretation poking a big hole in your so-called concrete rule. So now you need a rule that states either it is or it isn’t ok to block Shattered Springs. (And no, before you try to take this out of context and pretend it means the opposite of what it does - Funcom does not have the same problem with its current rules because they have grey areas and human judgement built in - as I keep having to explain to you, that’s the point - that’s the difference between a subjective rule (Funcom’s rule, which can work, because it uses human judgment) vs a concrete rule (what you claim to have come up with but haven’t come even close to providing).
[quote=“Nemisis, post:532, topic:180741”]
No. And it is unbelievable at this stage of the discussion that you can claim this. I can only view this as dishonesty at this point. ‘Concrete rules’ cannot be open to interpretation and argument over whether or not something breaches that rule - it is a black or white situation where, given direct evidence, there is only either guilt or innocence. Subjective rules utilize grey areas and human judgment to interpret whether or not something breaches the spirit of the rules. You are the one calling for concrete rules. Therefore the examples you need to provide need to actually be concrete rules. There could be argument over whether a rule is a good rule or not, but under your system it would have to be clear to everyone how the rule applies in every given situation - there cannot be any guesswork or judgment calls. Yet you judge the Brimstone Lake to be fine to block under your rules, whereas most players would consider it not fine - and your rules fail to set in concrete which is the correct answer. And that’s on one of the biggest most obvious. You need to define the answers to every possible question where players might have different opinions - not necessarily to agree with all of those opinions, but to tell them which answer is the rule.
Funcom’s rules are subjective - they do not fall into the same trap as yours, because they state it is about following the spirit (‘don’t be a douche’) rather than specific details.
You are completely ignoring the point being made. Under subjective rules (current system) the situation can be looked at server wide and judged on ‘is there enough rock left’ - but a concrete rule system would need to define an exact amount of rock that needs to be left - otherwise it is not a concrete rule system, it is a subjective rule system. And the example I gave was illustrating the point that different players will disagree on where exactly that line should be drawn - you may consider it possible to still harvest rock if there is only a single rock left - after all, it’s still harvestable, but a different player might not consider that acceptable. You claim to be removing ‘opinion’ as a measure of what is or isn’t acceptable - then you need to define the fixed answer in every one of these potential situations - otherwise your ‘concrete rule’ isn’t concrete.
[quote=“Nemisis, post:532, topic:180741”]
By you deliberately taking it out of context and ignoring the pages and pages of preceding argument. It is the ultimate grey area in your rule, because you either have to redefine ‘content’ as not meaning everything that is contained in the game, or you have created a rule that says ‘blocking anything at all even slightly is illegal’. So, as I have explained before, the only way your rule can be considered concrete is if you are saying all building is illegal. Since you claim not to be saying that, but your rule fails to provide concrete answers to any of a myriad of situations without having to be further defined and have additional rules added, then your rule is not a concrete rule.
I didn’t claim Funcom’s rule was ‘so clear’ - and you can obviously see that, since you quoted the text in which I didn’t say it was clear. I said you made it less clear - which is a statement of fact. Taking a rule that states something and then provides a couple of examples, keeping the same rule and then removing those examples is removing detail - that makes it less clear. The fact that you keep pretending ‘don’t block content, here’s a couple of examples of content’ is less clear than ‘don’t block content - this is absolute, but we won’t give any examples’ frankly shows that you are either dishonest or don’t understand the words you are writing.
And now even you admit that your ‘concrete rule’ changes nothing - except for your final claim that removing examples removes the grey area - it doesn’t, it merely broadens the grey area to encompass exactly how each person reading it might interpret the word ‘content’. Without defining what content is, and exactly which parts of the game fall into that category and which don’t, you have provided no clarity at all.
Nice little strawman at the end, suggesting that I am somehow impossible to persuade of anything. In fact, if you go back and read other exchanges, such as with @Dogoegma, you’ll find that I can be persuaded by reasoned argument. However, I am not persuaded by attempts to redefine the meaning of words so that they mean the opposite of their actual meanings. A concrete set of rules would need to be a concrete set of rules. You have offered no such thing, only the same subjective rules as already exist and an attempt to redefine the meaning of concrete as completely subjective.
As for why I continue arguing - that too has already been explained to you in detail - Funcom has a history of seeing bad arguments spammed on the forums and only skimming them before acting on it. It is entirely possible that they will see people like you arguing for ‘concrete rules’ and decide to enact some actual concrete rules and wreck the game for everybody. And it’s only if there are enough comments pointing out that your example of a ‘concrete rule’ is in fact the same subjective rule and you are merely redefining what ‘concrete rule’ means, that they might be persuaded to keep their existing rules and allow players to continue playing the game.
4 Likes
Don’t worry, they’re not going to use this thread for any sort of policy, rule, or feature changes. I’m pretty dang sure about that.
3 Likes
I’m relatively sure too. But then, I was relatively sure that one loud troll complaining about the karmic effect wouldn’t have an impact either…
1 Like
I don’t know if you see that but you kinda answered yourself, you picked on me because I assumed that Funcom is banning people depending on their moods, and later you say you don’t understand why they do that and not this and that some stuff should be improved.
Well I also don’t understand. I guess there is a reason, but I also don’t see it. And that’s why it makes me feel like treated unfair and have my assumptions. I don’t say I don’t deserve a ban, I said that I didn’t take it to consideration that they will be more strict with some rules, but it is unfair to me that I get a ban for breaking the rules, and they don’t get a ban for breaking rules, and I can argue what I personally think is more of an abuse, either my abusing building system or like in this case them abusing building system AND meshing, but that’s not the point.
The point is that these people are still playing on their main accounts, and their alter accounts and not being punished for breaking the rules, which was obviously reported to Funcom… and I ask myself, why me and not them? How is that fair…
I also mentioned above, that these guys are using alter accounts to play and spam landclaim and block obelisk, because they are very well aware of Funcom banning system, and they do everything to avoid any punishment. That I was lucky that I got a screen shot of their accounts switching between two clans, one which is meshing and one which is not, the character name this guy used is even the same, the clan names were the same too, had maybe one double letter as you can’t have identical, but like I said I got ss of them switching in between these clans, I got screen shot of these guys talking on discord too with this clan name, and character name talking about reporting us, meshing, and being happy that admin is gonna check and wipe people’s bases. As it was from discord it might have been unnecessary and not taken seriously in the report, but it’s always some addition, to show this person’s character. And even if I wasn’t able to prove that this is the same person, another question is, then why even the meshing clan wasn’t banned?
And now, I guess we all know that people who have alter accounts definitely didn’t buy conan twice, or people who have 5 accounts like this guy I was talking about, because of the offending words he was sending to us and other people I know that I managed to ban his PSNs twice, yes two PSN accounts, I met him more than a year ago and all this time he keep just talking crap and trying to make this game disgusting for others. So I guess we all know as well that he definitely didn’t buy and pay for conan 5 times. And why is that? Why I also can check if he is still playing or not? Because I can also make an alter account, and as long as my main account with conan is on my PS and it’s is registered as main PS I can use games from this main account on other accounts too, it’s kinda family friendly thing, for parents and kids but as everything, can be abused too 
and yeah, I also do use another account and log in and check, and can keep “playing” I can do that obviously, I can also abuse system making another 10 accounts and don’t care about ban, as I can always make another one. But I am not like this… I’m not like this guy, and even if I log in to check if he got a ban I don’t really play either, I said I have lvl 13 on this server he was meshing, and except a bedroll and campfire I didn’t place a single thing on this map. I get a lot of information from people who have enough of him too (even my enemies! Coz they also are human beings and have some common sense) also many are writting from their alts and tell me that they saw him on this and that server so I know where to check. And this is another server where is not following the rules, and yet not being punished for it… and how if we send reports? And there is another question, maybe they have someone friendly in FC administration? Who knows…
But honestly I want my main account, I wanna play fair, I want be fully aware what is allowed and what not in the game so I can avoid breaking rules and be aware of them, and so my base doesn’t disappear a week after I built it and wasted my time. Who like to waste their time for nothing? I was saying that I wish Funcom could specify some stuff which is unclear for me and many others, and that even if I play fair and I’m not breaking the rules that I can count on Funcom to help players which are trying to play fair against those who obviously and intentionally are breaking rules and are bullying others with cheats. But so far so I see they let those cheaters go, so that didn’t change, they will focus on people who didn’t catch up on last updates with building system… and it’s sad… 
.
And honestly despite the cheaters, I really can deal with people blocking obelisk, I can deal with people’s huge landclaim, I can deal with people undermeshing, there is always a way to get rid of that, knowledge of exploits helps you to defend yourself from them or be aware of weak spots. For example, before when people knew how to mesh into other’s bases I knew how to build to protect myself from it, etc. You can also raid a mesh, and if there is no profit for me to do this and I might not get loot by destroying mesh, it’s possible to do it, not everywhere they can put bubble inside the mesh to protect themselves from Avatar, and if it’s outside the mesh you can always destroy it. THERE IS ALWAYS A WAY.
And no these guys wasn’t meshing on the server I played and got banned, if you wanna say that I meshed to raid them and this is a reason to ban, they joined already a full server where it was a miracle to log in as it was constantly 40/40, server with a lot of action, 10man clans, loads of proper bases, hardcore server for hardcore players, we had fun there without cheating. And these guys they knew most of us from other servers, we raided them, our enemies raided them too, not only once, so they reported us out of hate and week later whole server got banned, I am assuming because of overbuilding and too big landclaim. And meshing doesn’t work like before, and you are not really able to mesh into place which is landclaimed by someone else or it’s area where you cannot build. So you can just throw an avatar on it and that’s all, no loot, no profit. Unless it’s high up and it falls down out of a mesh.
But when Funcom is coming in, and getting involved, they only ban one side… ? They wipe my legit base, which okay has too much landclaim, but they don’t wipe the undermesh, and blocked obelisks and spam landclaim… when all of that was reported, how is that them doing a proper job? This is not me trying to excuse myself, I am just wondering why these guys are not being punished too?
1 Like
Scroll up to the top of the topic, there is such information and I made and a screenshot and cut out the interesting bit.
@diego126 I really wish I could help you out but none of these people here really can do much about it, and neither do I. And I also don’t understand Funcom’s actions. That is why I don’t really play now, I can play with my alt, but just to waste my time and have my base wiped again…? Because they didn’t clarify themselves and their rules but they are being more strict with them? And strict only to casual players not for undermeshing tryhards… I’m sorry you’re worried, I am sad coz I’m worried too… 
2 Likes
Technically (and only on a technicality, otherwise it is solid as far as I can see) that isn’t correct, so @Nemisis has room to maneuver here, however, given the argument provided, I am skeptical that this is the direction that he is going in. I think the claim that is being presented is that there are some ‘obvious’ assumptions that make any sufficiently explicit rule ‘concrete’. The problem that he is running into is that, not only is this unlikely to be true, but more importantly he hasn’t justified that this claim is ‘obvious’. Personally I blame positivism, but that is a digression.
The problem of perception is incredibly challenging for computer science. It is fascinating when the ability to perceive is taken for granted. It is extremely challenging to tabulate and calculate a function to determine whether a player “has the ability to do X” except in the most trivial of cases. What variables are we considering? Are we going to weight player skill? Set a specific bar of skill? In the exiled lands how much weight does on oncoming sandstorm provide to the calculation? How much processing power should be dedicated to what would probably have to be a neural network? To little, and it won’t be effective, to much and it will cripple gameplay. How much of a gap between the two, if any, could we exploit? Would we have to increase minimum computation requirements to even play the game? What would be gained?
1 Like
I appreciate the shout out. Thank you.
1 Like
Cool, thanks for that. I wasn’t expecting to have such a large number of replies. Heh, the more you learn and all that.
1 Like
I think it would do best for your argument to structure it like so.
P1) Most PVP are attempting to exploit some mechanism of the game to win, by definition of a competitive game
[justification]
P2) The rules are sufficiently vague that it is likely that most players violate some of the rules some of the time.
[justification]
{I would also point out that there is likely a bias toward sophistication as being a “superior” use of exploits (ie an exploit that requires a great deal of creativity and mental acuity), from P1). You could point out that in competitive games, generally, either there is an exploit (like a winning strategy) of some kind or the game is purely based on chance. That kind of reasoning could greatly support this premise (though you also have to connect it to Funcom’s rules after that).}
P3) There is a probability distribution in which any player is likely to be banned from the mods given them being reported. Given P2), this is bound to happen given enough reports, to any player regardless of “fair play”.
[justification]
P4) Players about to lose are more likely to unfairly report other players.
[justification]
C) Many/most bans are thus unjustified
[justification]
This seems to be a decent enough argument structure, and I think that if you could show it true, would prove your case. I think Premise 2 would be the most difficult to prove, but you might have some insight from playeing PVP that might help there.
1 Like
I don’t know what is there to win, I mean they cannot undo ban, and these guys jumped to another server already, and probs left the clan and bodyvaulted, so admins won’t be able to see actual players in the clan I reported, and all their stuff is now decaying too… so it’s already too late for anything, they will just keep doing what they do as they feel they can’t be caught. I’m just shocked that admins reacted so quickly to their reports and didn’t react to mine at all…
I could try to reach straight to Funcom, although I don’t know yet where to start, but it is very demotivating that we got banned after a week of building a new base, and together with us a whole server, and the guys who does that out of pleasure are purposely and obviously cheating on another server and then they jump to another, probably reporting next people, probably meshing, probably spamming around the map, and probably with their alter account… and Funcom don’t give a single F about it… and I can talk about it here, throw it out here hoping that there is someone who understands or went through the same, and maybe there is even a person who can be bothered to do a bigger case out of it, but I don’t think it’s me 
I might help someone who need some extra evidence, story, whatever, but it’s been two weeks now after I got banned, and I am being more and more disappointed with funcom, by the this time. One thing is my ban, the other is them ignoring my reports and asking for help with cheaters…
1 Like
Are you sure about that? I am less sure, particularly if my call to get rid of permabans gains traction. Further, I think that Funcom could consider reporting on the abuse of the reporting system. That might be helpful to add. I am not sure how possible such a thing is, but it is worth discussing, I think.
1 Like
I am not sure if it’s perm, I will have to really write to them about it, and ask but didn’t feel bothered yet, I could just wait to find out as I’m not really playing anyway, and Idk if I would even if I had my main acc back, I am just really demotivated… And I got a second ban few days after the first one, on a conflict server, also probably because of the overbuilding, so after 25th of Nov I will see if something changed, coz those who wasn’t with me on conflict are no longer banned, so… it might be that 
Although another ban can make it also longer, but if it will bother me this much I will definitely write to get it back, when I feel like playing and caring again…
1 Like
I hope things improve for you.
1 Like
We’ve been handling this for thousands of years. Its why terms like ‘beyond reasonable doubt’, ‘common sense’, and ‘just don’t be a jerk’. Have been formulated.
Your average person will be able to see such (technically) ambiguous terms and be able to function normally within the normally accepted limitations implied. Are they exact? No. But they don’t need to be. Nor should they be.
For example. What is the number of building pieces you can use before it becomes a problem? Is it 10,000? Well I’ve seen people use 50,000 an not cause any harm. I’ve also seen less than 1,000 cause major issues. I know how to use just 100 pieces to cause server performance hits, and a mere 10 to wreck an entire clan’s time on a server too.
Its just not humanly feasible to write out a 1:1 guideline on that.
Same thing with blocking resources and content. Are you going to get actioned for blocking a branch or two on a beach? No. Obviously not. What about the large iron deposit to the west of the Summoning Place, north of the flat sandy area? That will depend on context. Random foundations scattered around the ravine? Oh yeah, probably a demo. A neat little temple like something out of The Last Crusade, probably not.
When explained by Funcom, intent is a big factor when they come to decisions. And that seems to be the boogeyman in this discussion. As I said earlier, a few foundations in set areas can ruin a player’s day. A few foundations in the middle of nowhere is fine.
But let’s be honest, everyone in this thread already knows this. We’re not robots, we’re not computers, we’re human beings. Because of our unique ability to not only reason, but also to imagine, we can comprehend not only the written rule, but also the spirit of the rules.
At the end of the day they could in all reality, just sum up the rules as ‘don’t be a jerk’. And that would be all that is needed. The only reason we need to even think about defining them further is due to social and cultural weirdness. And right now, I believe the rules cover that as well.
For someone to not be able to comprehend the spirit of the rules as they are written now, has only three reasons:
- They’re too young, in which case a parent or guardian needs to explain it to them. Its not Funcom’s job to parent or babysit your kids.
- They have some sort of disability, one that we (us players and Funcom) are equipped to deal with. That’s the player’s local government/society’s issue. Not ours.
- They actually do understand them, and are trying to twist them for personal gain or simply trolling.
5 Likes
I’m inclined to think its 99.999% this.
3 Likes
What bothers me a little is the use of the term “exploit”. Because I am not sure that exploits of game mechanics always happen intentionally. Also if something isn´t fixed for a very long time (in this instance we are talking about years), people often tend to assume that it doesn´t get fixed because it needs no fixing. And it then remains the question if someone can held responsible for something he is doing, that he is not aware of or think its ok to use, because its there for years and developer do not talk about fixing it.
I am not sure if I can explain this well enough where I am going with this, but netherless I try to example:
Short after Conan went into EA doors had much higher ep. I don´t recall if higher then walls, but they where high ep. So people started to break the walls intentionally instead of the doors to get into bases.This way they did more damage to the buildings, because often times when you use explosives on Tier 1 walls the whole upper part and other walls are coming down too which leads to great damage to the building, but used it to save dragon powder. People started to complain about too much damage. At this time people mostly had their bases still in the starting area on flat ground. No climbing could be done. Simple bases, one door, nothing special, people are still figuring out how to make steel.
Then Funcom did an attempt to mitigate the damage done to buildings by adjusting the doors hp and also allowing weapons and orbs to be used to open them. The outcome of this was that people start camping the npc´s to collect the fireorbs. It was much easier and less time cosuming then to produce dragon powder. End of the story was that people figured out how they could make an orb burn for as long as they want to and also used weapons a lot to get into bases and to open chests. This leads to more complains to the developers and also to the first stacking methods in return to mitigate the insane amount of damage that was done to peoples bases.
To shorten this up. Funcom over time ended up cutting the doors hp in half, got rid of fireobs from npc camps and cut the dmg they did, got rid of that weapons deal damage to bases and tried communicate to people that way to use the doors to get into bases. But then they introduced the drawbridges which came with insane ep and torpedod their own goal to finally use the entrances to get into bases. Besides stacking now people also use the drawbridges to weaken the splash damage dealed by explosives.
And last but not least they now introduced the feature to pick up building pieces, which are without a doubt a great feature for pve and pve-c but leads in pvp to remove the doors completly. People simple replace a doorframe with a wall. The wall can not only hidde the entrances of a base, so the raider has a hard time to find the weak spots, it also offers twice as much the hp then the doors have.
I am following the developments for a long time now and this has lead me to the conclussion that whenever Funcom does changes they do not really think about the outcome of this changes before hand or simply underestimate the players creativity to mitigate the consequences of changes which lead us to the point in the game where we are now.
For me its hard to say where the exploit of the gamemechanics in this case started. One could say it started the day when people desided to bomb the walls instead of the doors, since Funcom clearly did several attemps, including communication in livestreams to prevent that people explicitly going for the walls when they could use the doors instead. That is why they lowered the hp. On the other side Funcom would never ban a player for simply raiding by only going for the walls since it is not forbidden to do so. Sitting behind a drawbridge repairing it during raids are also not bannable, even though people are able to kinda “hide” them in statues (putting the drawbridge so close to the statues wall that they absorb most of the damage done from the outside) without having to actually meshing them in. So in this regard they do not get a ban for putting down an drawbrigde in a statue, although it is an abuse. Stacking on the other hand is claimed as an abuse for reasons I personally do not quite understand since Funcom is not seeing absorbation of damage while building in statues as a ban reason but putting down fence foundations to absorb damage is. Confusing for me that two things are doing the same thing (prevent easy raiding or raiding at all) and yet get rated differently. Serverperformance wise I do not see a difference, do to the fact that stacking is not increasing server performance severly, foundation spamming on the other hand does, since the foundations code is corrupt. But even if serverperformance would be increased, you could argue the same for chests. Since the more you have chests with items in it the more you get server performance issues on that spot. And so far I didn´t have awareness of a case where a player got banned for having too much chests in his base.
Besides this. Also the new “tactic” to exchange the doors with walls or fence foundations could be labled as “exploit” since this is not what Funcom originally was aiming for players to do.
At this point I doubt that anything that someone can do in pvp is not exploititiv one way or another or can´t be labled as one. But still the question remains, is every player always aware of it and if not, what does banning achieves then in the end for Funcom and the community.
And I doubt that the rules can ever bee that clear, that this kind of unintentional exploiting could not happen.
True, but these aren’t always clear, and there have been issues with those terms.
True, but the quote is referring to why a ‘concrete’ definition as requested by some on this thread isn’t really doable. There really isn’t a way to make a ‘perfect’ definition of “Don’t be a jerk” that is easily confirmable/deniable.
I moderately agree with the former, particularly if there are no permabans for subjective errors. However, I disagree with the latter. It is far from clear that this is how it ‘ought’ to be. That is a question of values. There are good faith disagreements with the current system.
I don’t play PVP so I cannot verify, but this seems reasonable.
No, but it is technically feasible to write a complex mathematical guide using Shannon entropy to approximate such a concept. Further, most of the systems we use in the real world rely on random sampling methods to make judgements. Take GPA for example. We don’t really have a good way to determine if you are ‘objectively’ good at math. What we can do is take a random sample of a bunch of your mathematical work and derive an ‘average’ from that work. We determine what kind of career and educational opportunities are available to you based on this extremely imprecise method. Technically, we could replicate this kind of thing in Conan Exiles.
The main issue with this kind of approach is that it would be utterly inaccessible for most players (writing the manual would be hell, and would require a miniclass to be provided by Funcom in odrer to understand it), and wouldn’t be perfect either (there would still be errors). Further, it would be a huge drain on the resources, and wouldn’t really solve the problem of trying to implement a “Don’t be a jerk” policy.
Again, there are technically mathematical solutions to a subset of these problems, but those don’t detract from the main point you are making here.
The main problem with “intent” is that it is notoriously difficult to prove. Unless Funcom uses a classical court system to measure mens rea, this isn’t a good way to process these kinds of reports, particularly as there are such high stakes (like permabans) involved.
Not necessarily. What might be obvious to you isn’t universally obvious to everyone. While it is true that human society relies on understandings like this, it is far from perfect. The very nature of the problem is precisely why you either want to lower the stakes or have a more rigorous court system. I argue for the former versus the clearly less profitable latter. Subjectivity is rarely a preferred manner of adjudicating justice. It is really only when objective systems fail that we end up preferring those systems, in general.
That sounds fine when there are low stakes, but with such high stakes, that won’t suffice. What amounts to “being a jerk” is highly subjective and culturally diverse. There are plenty of situations in which activity that is “jerklike” to one person will be perceived as totally normal and in the bounds of play.
Not really, it is because of the inherent vagueness of language, itself a response to the fundamental problem of Chaotic systems, ie functions that are topologically transitive and periodically dense [I include this to distinguish Chaos here from the common understanding of what a Chaotic system actually is]. We live in a literally Chaotic world, and as a result our languages have deliberate, intuitive, and serendipitous vagueness and ambiguity built in. Our justice systems deal with high stakes and thus tend to have a very bureaucratically expensive manner of resolving these kinds of conflicts, precisely to deal with the inherent vagueness.
Either I would get rid of the subjective element of Funcom moderation, or change the stakes (which I personally feel is the better option).
Not every young person is under 18. There are plenty of people who live on their own and lack sufficient experience to understand these kinds of things.
I believe you meant “aren’t” equipped to deal with, but that is an aside. The mere fact that a player may or might not have a disability doesn’t really factor very strongly here. Not having a firm theory of Mind might be a sign of Autism Spectrum Disorder, however, that isn’t the only reason such a problem might arise. THere are good faith reasons to oppose subjective judgements.
Perhaps, but I would apply Hanlon’s Razor first. It is almost always better to start with that assumption.
Maybe, but Poe’s Law is extremely powerful, never neglect that fact.