So you are just going to ignore the context of the entire post? Funny I thought we were trying to create dialog here vs playing debate ‘gotcha’. My bad.
1 Like
Earlier I asked:
@Umborls replied:
———————
I might not have been clear enough in my question as I was trying to ask basically what @Rekt has put forth. I can understand not allowing foundation or pillar spam.
Is a building whose main (but perhaps not only) purpose is to deny trebuchet construction in especially weak locations violation of TOS?
FWIW I’d guess it is, given the position on walls, although I’m still not clear on how much the rule on walls is dependent on scale.
4 Likes
I think loot has gone down overtime due to the amount of sweepers, the resistance part is more surprising as most sweepers are PVE preferential, they will fight your thralls and base, but avoid fighting you, they want easy targets and easy loot, because its almost like buying playtime with raiding, every t4 armorsmith you get on a bodyvault /homeserver hidden spot, is one you don’t have to farm when you get wiped.
stronger bases tended to be a barrier to even large clans that would join pre transfer, the alpha of a server could often endure the early blow, recognize the new rising threat, and then would fight for server dominance, a large base isn’t an unassailable advantage I recall defeating an alpha in a purely defensive war that had summoned the whole server to fight, merely because in two major battles at the walls of our base they lost all their best gear and thralls and had no will left to fight.
So in part we have a perfect storm of the grind being high to incentivise raiding at all costs a server transfer system which allows lightning speed attacks, and bases not being able to legally sustain a direct blow.
2 Likes
This right here. The design of the game is towards easily accruing building mats. Or better yet. acrue mats faster than the need to use overall.
Purges are too weak and do minimal damage once you get your thrall count and T3. So no need to repair, or farm to repair.
Weapons durability is high, and need to repair is minimialized with legendary repair kits (once hard to obtain, now just a rng thrall easily and cheaply crafted.). No need to farm to repair.
So basically at a certain point you are just farming excess materials that make the repair game loop easier and easier.
The economy is broken, so players just build and build and build to keep busy until next dungeon update.
3 Likes
Thank you for further clarification. When I first read your post with the pictures, I agreed these were problem bases in one way or another.
Even the Walls and Villages comment, though a bit unclarified, and a concern, did not really upset me since I believe any reasonable admin/CS would not see my base as spam or too large.
That singular statement about Official servers raised my eyebrows and really worried me.
I play Officials because I have tried private servers and in almost every case, the extreme build limits, out of control mods, and controlling admins were not to my taste. Playing SP is a lonely experience, and I like player interaction.
9 Likes
But where is the line between “decorative landclaim” and your archer points? The torches are also one where landclaim is obtained and a functional aspect as well that are specifically told is a no go.
I still haven’t seen any official feedback on working on solutions to the root cause of player land claim. @Community Is that a higher priority on the docket of revisions to work on viable treb defense/increasing base fortification?
Had I not joined this forum 9 months ago I would not have had any idea that there was a even call for active moderation. I’ve been in the game for 18 or 19 months total and the first 6 or 7 of those was on a private unlisted dedicated server we ran just for a few developer colleagues and artists. When I heard there was a call for such a thing I winced, but mostly kept quiet thinking it would be to combat actual cheaters. When it became apparent that wasn’t the case I tried to make sense of it all. It seemed (4 or 5 months ago) that everyone but an exceptional few were trying to figure it all out too - and were having a hard time of it.
I thought I could helpful by documenting all of the reports here and joining a bunch of servers to see what I could see and document that as well - then forming a list of things people were actually being banned for - as evidenced in 30 examples, I could pass that and a text version around so people here could understand and players playing would know how to avoid the ban hammer. A few people were receptive and few not so much - so I just stopped after posting it in 6 or 8 different threads. Maybe @Umborls can take a look and say how accurate it is or isn’t and maybe also use a few of those things for his next round of image explanations…
I’ve gone back and forth agreeing and then disagreeing and vice-versa, with Funcom’s “rules”. But what I’ve never agreed with is banning people for first and second violations of almost any of them. This is what I would most like to hear @Umborls address - unless he already has and I just missed it.
2 Likes
My base that was remove by admin. It was a great base that no one ever build there. Lol got to wait until the rules stabilizes and not be a tool of a weapon to win.
Its not block actually it was open up so people are able to walk and kill it. The only thing that this is “blocking” is water swimming and iron nodes.
I’m not sure where the line is with “decorative landclaim”. If I build Rekt’s archer tower to defend against trebs, maybe it’s against TOS. What if I stick a forge in it? Has it suddenly become acceptably functional? This seems much less clear to me than things like public bridges or torches, especially in the context of defense on a PVP server.
If the idea is you are not to have satellite structures, fair enough. I don’t think they want to outright admonish that though, given the statement that small contextual lift/bridges are okay.
7 Likes
Heliograph heights is a very desirable location so I’m not sure why you think “no one” ever builds there.
Also, your base was exceptionally large, even after you trimmed it down to just what’s shown in your screenshot.
Given the examples in the original post, it should be pretty obvious that your base was in violation of the tos.
2 Likes
Its desired to build a wheel of pain but usually you dont see a base. I do agree it was a bit excessive but I shouldnt prevent a clanmate from building their own base. Plus thrall limit spreads out this much otherwise you would have to stack which could be a exploit.
I should broke the clan into smaller ones so everyone can enjoy their own base.
When I see a base this big I dont think report. I would want to raid the base. The base was failed to raid which is why it was reported.
Mind you people came looking to raid so when they failed or tried to extort they resort to report. The size of the base they did not care at all except for loot.
1 Like
Or does it become a village at that point and not acceptable?
Or is this another time where each build needs to be assessed individually because intent is clear many time and only a handful of times is intent questionable.
I just don’t see it possible to develop black and white specifications/rules for this and there will need a level of trust in the admin of the server regardless of private or official. IMHO, intent matters more than the physical build. JJ’s intent is clear in the pics. I would spare it over a structure a 10th the size but decked out with witchfire, burning so bright that you can see it 4 clicks away because intent was clear. It’s the grey areas that are problematic (like archer towers) where you need to review the amount, the positioning, and how they are set up. Throwing some t1 archers on foundations that are perfectly spaced 8 spaces from each other for a full map square in all directions…yeah gotta go. 4 archer points on top of the crevice crater that are T3 constructions with flags for decoration…that intent is clear.
4 Likes
I agree with you that it was big but violation is debatable because the fact I reach to ticket for clarification.
They stated all have to fit into one square which it does if i built it in one square. Even those bases got reported.
Either way they should just add limit to the code to prevent building further.
In addition this will cause clans to make mini clans all next to each other.
It may not be. The difference is that on private servers we have much greater access to Admins to pick their brains and those Admins have a higher motivation to retain players on their specific server.
The thread in the OP was a step towards that for officials, but if you think it sufficiently answers the concerns that have arisen on the forums as of late such that we can “just trust” on the rest of the details, I would have to disagree. I would prefer more clarification to less.
6 Likes
Not just trust but there has to be some level and if there isn’t, I don’t understand how people would want to play a game ran by someone they feel is untrustworthy.
I think threads like this where there is feedback and official back and forth helps all of us that are wanting to make the game better but we should all be aware that things change and just because something was good 3 years ago, doesn’t mean its still good. Emergent gameplay is a neutral concept that can be good or bad for the server. If we all take ownership, I can see the game lasting. We got good people on this message board and a company willing to put resources in not just creating cash cows but as CSR’s that funnel things back and forth between the dev team and the playerbase. All the components are there. It just requires common goals and respect to win out.
5 Likes
Well, that’s kinda the problem. I don’t think anyone here wants to play a game ran by someone they feel is untrustworthy, but there are two possible reactions to that. One is to stop playing the game, the other is to ask to build trust.
The lack of trust you see here is not completely irrational, either. Sure, there are cases of crocodile tears and crying wolf, but there are also cases of not having enough feedback about why something is against the rules.
A lot of it stems from “why did I get punished for X, but Y didn’t get punished for Z, when Z seems to be worse than X”, and you don’t know if the answer is “because you got reported and Y didn’t”, or if it’s “because you were wrong, Z is not worse than X, for such and such reason”.
Then there’s “Okay, I didn’t block any major resources from spawning, I didn’t wall off anything, I didn’t build a claim web, I didn’t spam little claims, so why did I get banned?” That’s a perfectly valid question, and it can have many different answers.
One answer could be “your build is affecting server performance”, and that’s the one that is causing the most friction and frustration right now. People have had certain expectations for years now, and adjusting those expectations is going to be hard and unpopular even without getting wiped and banned in the process. Also, it brings up a valid question of “If I have no way to measure the effect of my build on server performance, then how do I avoid building in a way that will get me punished?” I personally don’t think people should be punished for this if they don’t have a way to measure it, unless it’s clear that it was done with the intention to affect server performance, but I would also settle for “you can avoid it by playing on private servers”. It’s not nice, but it’s clear and direct and honest.
Another answer I’ve actually seen is along the lines of “you have way too much purely decorative stuff and it’s taking up space that new players could use to build their stuff”. And again, I personally don’t think that should be regulated through summary administrative action, but I can settle for it being communicated clearly, with good guidelines on how to avoid it.
It looks like the post @Umborls published aims to clarify some of those concerns around claim size, but there are still some unresolved valid questions, such as “Do the admins take the clan size and game mode into account when judging the claim size?” This is an important question to ask, because our expectations as players have been that a 10-player PVE clan will have 10 bases instead of 1 shared base. If that expectation is no longer reasonable, that should be communicated clearly.
All in all, we’re moving in the right direction, but there’s more work to be done, not only by Funcom, but also by players.
11 Likes
a great thing to see would be some kind of player voice interaction such as polling in the launcher for direct and obvious feedback because there is a difference between what the majority wants and perhaps the loudest voice to reach the ear of funcom?
5 Likes
I honestly don´t know why we still talk about this. Officials is dead for play, simple as that. The only people that will stick to officials longterm are the ones with enough accounts to not care if they get a ban and they will keep doing whatever they want and this is the worst kind of players. They are the onces that will keep emptying out those server one way or another, especially on pvp. Nobody can build anything anymore that is half decent enough to withstand several hours of raiding without acting against the tos and thoose people know it and will use it to make you stop playing officials sooner or later. In the end the scumbags are wining again and Funcom is playing their game because accounts will be bought over and over again.
What Funcom does is giving the worst kind of players a plattform to keep playing and by all means this is nether producing good publicity nor does it help to make people stick longterm to the game if the first experience is so utterly devastating that they stop playing before they even had the chance to encounter the game enough to see its beauty.
4 Likes