More strict build and thrall rules on official PVE servers

@GullTopp
It’s always great to see more clear rules, bu there is one thing about it that I find a bit unclear…

Massive constructions or over-use of memory intensive items leading to loss of performance both on client and server-side.
Time will not be spent to carefully remove only offending pieces. All constructions belonging to the owner (player or clan) will be destroyed. There will be no refunds of materials or inventories.

What is the definition of massive?
Maybe they should consider a warning giving clan bases that are considered massive some time to reduce it, I mean most people who has big bases didn’t have to consider this rule when they built their base, but in a short while they may be losing everything because of this new rule :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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It looks like they gave the criteria right there: “leading to loss of performance both on client and server-side”.

In other words, if your build causes loss of performance both on client and server-side – whether that’s because you made it massive or because it’s small but uses too many “memory intensive items” – then it falls under this rule.

Again, this doesn’t look to be aimed at making the official servers a curated experience without eyesores or theme parks or anything like that, but rather at making people not screw up the server for everyone. It won’t get rid of any of those stupid map-spanning highways or stuff like that, but it will get rid of “every time someone ports to the Sinkhole the whole server slows down” kinds of builds.

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@CodeMage , Did they already start it? In 8013 some massive builds gone, poof, tbh I like it, today after so many days I went to Grey pools and had normal fights, for the first time ever. It was so cool. You think it was a coincidence? I really don’t know. Same in 3728, the game rolls better. Even in my museum for the first time I didn’t had lags the past days :man_shrugging:. I was ready to bring it down, but the last 3 days I have no lags no crush, nothing. Why?

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Not really because they say: massive or over-use of memory intensive items leading to loss of performance both on client and server-side
It’s the or that kinda separate the 2 things :slight_smile:

I honestly don’t know. They said they would start enforcing the new rules on September 27th. I don’t have any insider knowledge of how things work at Funcom, I’m just a loud-mouthed, opinionated guy with a bit of industry knowledge :wink:

If you break down the sentence into parts and label them A, B, and C, with A being “massive constructions”, B being “over-use of memory intensive items”, and C being “loss of performance both on client and server-side”, there’s a bit of syntactic ambiguity which could have been avoided with a properly placed comma.

The way you’re interpreting it is A ∨ (B ∧ C), which they could’ve phrased as “massive constructions, or over-use of memory intensive items leading to loss of performance [yadda yadda yadda]” (note the comma before “or”).

The way I’m interpreting it is (A ∨ B) ⇒ C, which they could’ve phrased as “massive constructions or over-use of memory intensive items, leading to [yadda yadda yadda]” (with the comma before “leading to”).

I have no special reason to interpret it that way, other than their track record so far, which has been to take server performance issues very seriously and give them very high priority.

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and there is the problem…
If the 2 of us already interpret it differently, then what happens when those employees that look into also see it differently?

I fear that this is their way of getting around building limits or an upkeep system easily by sort of saying…
We will evaluate you and if you are found too heavy according to the person handling your case then you will be punished!

I’m sorry this to me feels like a poor way of handling how much you can actually build before it is deemed too much.
We got a thrall cap, so why not do something similar to building or an upkeep system, I feel that they are taking the easy route to solve over building issues!

Again it is not that I am against them doing something to prevent theme parks, foundation spam, blocking etc. I love to see these problems being handled, but I fear these vague rules will just lead to a lot of frustrations instead.

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@Frillen you can read this post if not already done, there is debate on the subject with different point of view :wink:
https://forums.funcom.com/t/new-terms-of-service-clarification/178466

it is true that it can have ambiguity but the universe of conan from my point of view does not allow a set of defined criteria
it’s an open world with few restrictions
and therefore necessarily it is the door open to abuse
I like funcom’s speech, because it keeps a margin of maneuver by avoiding too locked the game, it is a daring and risky choice, not the easiest
Basically I take it like this: man you have a brain, you can understand.
I don’t know who said that anymore, but don’t be a jerk and as they say if you want to play the game go to PvP and assume
This leads us as a player to adapt, to ask questions and to analyze his environment.
now I would say for sure you want to build here in PvE the place is taken go look for your happiness on another server, that’s not what is missing
Now things are done little by little and it is not won, it never is
They try, they test with constraints that undoubtedly could make you go goat
Do your best

This I can agree to, but I am very curious to what “massive” means because even on the store page they tell you that you can build entire cities?
But I will stop the discussion here and continue on the thread you have posted, still I have a feeling that this new rule while perhaps removing a lot of spam also will a lot of people not knowing why their base suddenly became too much without as much as a warning :neutral_face:

Yeah, they should rephrase it to avoid this kind of ambiguity.

As long as we’re talking about the rules – as opposed to game mechanics – this will always be the case to some degree. The only way to phrase the rules in a way that does not rely on interpretation and judgment in any way would be to phrase them in a way that is trivial to abuse.

Sure, they could do that. They would still need the rules for people who find ways to abuse the system despite the in-game limits, but at least it would help reduce the problems from overbuilding.

Maybe. I’m pretty sure we’ll keep seeing a lot of frustrations stemming from the rules and their enforcement, mostly because it’s… well… I don’t have a nice way of saying this, so I’ll just say what I think: it’s a total clusterf*ck.

There was a thread I saw yesterday. It was the most level-headed and polite post I’ve ever seen about a ban. The person who made it admitted they broke the rules and explained that they were not complaining or criticizing, but rather wanted to tell their story as a cautionary tale for anyone else who might be breaking the rules.

For whatever reason, that thread has been locked and unlisted, but I would still invite anyone interested in the topic of rules to read it.

One thing that stands out in that testimony is that the player who got banned had to allegedly suffer a whole lot of toxicity in chat, including not only the typical foul language but also threats of all kinds. This kind of behavior is clearly against the rules, and yet, according to the player’s testimony, reports of that went unanswered.

Now, I have no idea if things happened that way or not. I have no idea if the reports of toxicity in chat included screenshots of evidence or not. And to be honest, I don’t even care. The only reason I’m bringing this up is because it’s not the rules themselves that cause the frustrations, it’s the perceived injustice in enforcing them.

I’ve seen threads from people who claimed they submitted proof of a player cheating and bragging about it in chat, only to see that completely ignored, and then they themselves got banned for saying something in chat or for claim spam.

Enforcement is not working properly. There are many reasons why this might be the case, but regardless of the reasons, the outcome is undeniable. We can quibble about the rules, but even if the rules spanned hundreds of pages of legalese, specifying all the possible criteria and outcomes, it would still be worthless without proper enforcement.

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The reasons I think a building hard cap wouldn’t work for the purpose of improving performance is because build density makes a huge difference.

You’d have to set the cap so low that if someone were to use all their available allotment on a giant pile of torches still wouldn’t be able to effect the game.

That’s the only way a building hard cap will help with performance issues without leaving a grey area within the rules

I do agree that there certainly could be more clarity on certain aspects, like some examples of memory intensive items. Or a few pictures of big compounds that are within the limit and some that are beyond the limit

We know torches are memory intensive and I therefor assume that means all light sources could be memory intensive, but I have no idea if it’s actually true. :man_shrugging:

I do think a fair portion of the grey area is there intentionally, but peoples nerves would be put at ease with some more clarification

I’m personally indifferent on an upkeep system, so long as it’s manageable without becoming a chore it’s fine with me

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In any case a player should be warned before being deleted. On PVE/ PVE-C the only real gameplay is building lovely bases…take that away there is no point to playing anymore. i block nothing when i build but i do build what i consider art. take it away and as ive said many times, im done with the game

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I made a break for some time playing and it is very nice to see that you begin to take measures. People I spoke with were very pleased about this. So the new limit on thralls is very nice (still, who neets 65 thralls as a lone player w/o clan?) Much has been done, and it is very cool that this problem is in the focus and people kept it in mind!

Still the question is why not limit building (on PVE/PVE_C)?
I am right now playing on a very nice official Siptah server with nice people, it is a better one, pretty performant, stable and not so many big structures.

But here is for example one (old?) Clan with 2 people left which shows the problem:
This clan spammed with the time the whole area from E10 to the southern Isle ~C6.
Everywhere are streets of fundaments, streets of lights, scattered altars, wheels of pain,
animal pens, fundament pieces (1-3), different (abandoned) structures and parts of structures,
palaces in wild style mixes… you ban say, it is a pretty excessive land claiming. The leader of the clan is not cooperative when you talk about this. ofc you can now report this, but why can’t building be limited at all?

8-10K ?? pieces for a main base where everything has to be connected;
maximal 4 other small outposts (has to be talked about limits what means small)
12K ?? pieces total all in all at max.
A player can only renew his own buildings not of a clan. Every player needs to do it for his own.
A maximum of stacked fundaments. (so walls of 20-30 stacked fundaments are avoided)
A maximum of hold items in chests and safes. (100.000 items are needed?)
More crucial areas where building is impossible.
More space between a npc settlement and a possible spot to build.
only 1 T3 instance of every altar (=max 7 atm) to avoid big laser shows
->the light sources (torches) I have really no plan what to do; trolling snakes of fundaments with light sources is ofc also a problem; i have no suggestion ;((
-how to handle solo player/clan with x members ist ofc also another thematic.

something like this, just an example. I mean, whoever wants to do more should make/rent a private server and build what he/she wants. Official servers should give people in general a way to play Conan efficiently, if someone wants more he should make his server how he wants it.

I know it is very hard to find reasonable rules or a solution, it is fantastic that funcom cares for this problem meanwhile and hopefully finds a good solution somehow.

Thank you!

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A clan on one of the pve servers I play on was removed by this new insane rule system. Their bases were not blocking anything, causing any memory lag to me when I was near the base and I would NEVER consider their base to be massive. This new rule system is already set to fail and cause people that have played and built for years to rage quit. Because the rules are so ambigious and people can report out of spite this will lead to even more people quitting. What do you do about over zealous admins? This whole thing is completely ridiculous. Im just waiting for my ban for #noreason

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Nobody knows this except the developers. And sometimes it seems to me that the developers there are not very aware of that. Perhaps they often change employees, or for other reasons. Anyway it is not the players task to make sure that the server does not lag. Developers have ALL the tools to programmatically restrict actions that degrade the performance of the server. It’s not okay to dump this challenge on players. Just imagine being blocked on Instagram if you post too many photos.

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This is a very interesting tradeoff to consider.

On the one side of the equation, if Funcom decides to punish overbuilders, a portion of them will quit. On the other side of the equation, if they decide to let overbuilding continue, a portion of the newcomers to the official servers will keep quitting because the overbuilt server is unplayable.

It remains to be seen how this equation will balance out.

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I have been blocked from a meme group on facebook for posting too many on topic memes… not gonna lie and there is more than a few people here who would not be surprised…

As you say. Never was my Intention or thought that people get banned by vague not really defined rules.
On the other hand buildings and fragments of (old) clans spammed over many segments of the map in the good/beginner areas with maybe 1 person left, or maybe that person was alone spamming in his “clan” a big part of sectors are a real problem…

Maybe something like a “heart of life” can be set in the centre of a structure with “x” radius, and if you exceed this limit your buildings fade away fast out of this radius. a higher radius for the main base and for the 3 or 4 Outposts being allowed a much smaller radius. And everything which isn’t connected fades very fast. Just a curious Idee. Funcom sure has better heads.

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I personally suggest a modifiable foundation piece (to include fence foundations) limit/clan. Not at all unlike the Thrall limit in that it should be able to be turned on or off in the admin panel, with a default limit of, about 100 foundation pieces, +10/member.

Not a perfect solution by any stretch, but a quantifiable stop gap.

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nice idea, but 100 foundation pieces is far too few. but an approach.

I personally think of a “heart of life”. A “bigger” for the main base and you can have x outposts with smaller hearts. Those have a radius (y) area where you can build. And everything has to be connected with each other. So you can only place something if a connection to the “heart” can be verified by connection to the pieces. Your Idea of (z) fundaments in these areas. If the connection to the heart is broken everything is destroyed which isnt connected to the heart. Interesting new aspect maybe for pvp. Also maybe you begin with small hearts and can earn (feeds) for the hearts to make the (radius) bigger. Would be another reason for playing, searching those (feeds).

But I guess the calculation time would make playing impossible. And that in reality this just doesn’t work…

Meanwhile it seems, at least I heared it from someone, that people get banned if they build somewhere on resources…? …

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Uh, that’s just a 10x10 floor. In fact it’s the very example I use to illustrate how easy it is to underestimate how many pieces it takes to build something.

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