Then you don’t know the map as well as you thought. Here’s where my base was:
That’s in C7, right outside one of the gates to the Unnamed City. Points of interest blocked? None. Recipes blocked? None. Thrall spawns? None. Paths blocked? None, you could walk, run, or ride around my base without having to climb anywhere. Mob spawns blocked? Maybe one or two scorpions, but not the boss. Resource spawns blocked? Some dry trees and branches.
The base was fully functional, with redundant crafting stations for speed of production, but all crafting stations were used, including all 6 (then later 7) shrines. The only purely decorative elements of the base were on a vertical axis, i.e. above or below or in between functional floors. And like I said, I measured the server FPS back then, including with help from other players (since you can’t see the FPS changes while you’re still logging in and logging into your base might affect server performance), and there was no measurable impact.
Oh, and total number of building pieces? Around 11k.
The reason I’m explaining all this is because people like you and @DeaconElie need to learn that your personal preferences are not good enough to define whether a build is an abuse or not. It’s not about the size, it’s not about the aesthetics, it’s about the impact you have on other players.
Like I mentioned in my first post on this thread, the rules might be simple to read, but they’re not simple to apply. You can’t just make a simple checklist and go down it. You have to actually analyze and consider the impact.
Building a small base by an entrance is not an abuse. Preventing access to the dungeon is. As for building in the middle of the path, if you can go around the base – or if it’s built like an overpass so you can go underneath it – it’s not even an annoyance, much less an abuse.
Honestly, I’m not sure that even fully blocking a path is necessarily an abuse. Funcom hasn’t clarified that at any point, and if you can take a different path and arrive at your destination, then I personally don’t see why it should be considered abuse. It might be an inconvenience, and I might not like it, but “abuse” goes beyond that.
At this point, I’m not actually sure what you consider “areas with points of common interest”. You don’t seem to be talking about POI markers on the map. Those used to be integral to completing a journey step in the old journey system, but that’s not the case anymore.
I’m starting to think you have a list of pet peeves that you want to enforce on others, like a few others on these forums.
This is yet another bit that requires interpretation. What is “all of the game’s content”? If you get narrowly technical, that would include every single resource node, including rocks and bushes and branches. Block one of those and you’re breaking the rules.
Of course, you and I would both agree – I hope – that it’s ridiculous to say that blocking one bush is abuse. But where do you actually draw the line? The line is not a number. You have to consider the impact on other players.
Except that statement was nowhere in your opening post or your reply to me.
Now that you’ve presented it, I can say that it’s somewhat concrete. And it’s about as “clear” as Funcom’s rules 
As for disagreeing with it, you’re right, I disagree with it vehemently. I don’t care if you consider something to be a “nuisance” to you. What the rules should be about is behavior that creates actual problems for other players, not behavior that other players don’t like. The difference is important.
No, it’s not. Show me the part in the actual rules that says that. As a refresher, here’s the section of rules that talks about building abuses:
“Monopolizing an area” is a vague expression that could mean different things depending on the reader. “In the way” is another.
The rules use concrete expressions, such as “do not restrict access” and “blocking”. It’s not about being in the way, it’s about making other players unable to access something.
You’ll notice that the rules don’t talk about “paths” anywhere. As long as you’re not blocking access to something, the rules don’t say anything about what path you have to take to access it.
And there we are. You’re saying that if you can’t explain what abuse means or we disagree with it, then we are the problem, not you.
Which road would that be? There are two parts of “the east”, one on the northern side of the river, another on the southern side. You can go from the northern side of the swungle to the southern side without swimming.
Both sides have multiple roads. Blocking all of those roads would make the players swim or climb or have to go through The Passage.
Now, I’ll be honest and say that I don’t know if Funcom actually considers that – in and of itself – an abuse or not, since the access isn’t technically blocked, but I personally don’t want people doing that.
No, I don’t think it’s okay, and I also think it’s a clear abuse of the rules, since we’re talking about blocks that are “placed for no other purpose than to prevent other players’ access to resources and building spots”.
Same rule broken as the previous example.
Like I said, nobody cares. It’s not about inconvenience, it’s about actual problems. “I couldn’t gallop straight across this path, I had to swerve around your castle” is an inconvenience you’ll have to live with, as long as I’m not:
- blocking your access to unique or high-value in-game content
- building in a way that leads to loss of performance both on client and server side
- building something that has no other purpose than prevent your access to resources and building spots
- walling you in or preventing your expansion
Good for you. I have. In fact, I’ve measured the impact.
And what I’m saying is that imposing simple limits will not guarantee to solve those problems – on the current server hardware with the current server settings – without crippling that creative freedom. The causes of performance problems are varied and not straightforward. The only people who believe that those causes are simple are people who don’t understand anything about computing performance.
Yeah, like that 