Having 5k pieces or having 40k pieces doesn’t matter. Its the way they are being used. People reported 40k pieces base, nothing happen because it was a legit base. Its all about having proper use and not just land claim. And that you cannot fix with a in game system.
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You ever read the warning labels on stuff? Yes common sense needs to be included in the ToC more then anything else. If common sense was actually common we wouldn’t be here now.
Yet some people seem to think their share is several map squares.
Note: There is a player on the server I’m on that has bragged about his 9 alt clan so he can have 100 thralls. I am a clan of one. You are not going to limit single players to one claim.
As I’ve pointed out before for me land claim is not about server lag; ornaments, storage ect sure.
For me it’s about sharing the server and being a considerate builder. But I often have to wonder just how much map area do you feel you are entitled to?
This isn’t about server lag, if it was I’d being pushing for rules on ornamentation.
What we agree on is something needs to be done because what we have now isn’t working.
Let me tell ya a story. I still need to get my battle pass done. Got the challenge to collect crimson lotus. easy enough, all over the mounds. Unless the mounds are so over build there are only 3 lotus still spawning.
So yes, having difficulty because of rampant multiple full bases impacts my game. But there is no rule against it, and am I supposed to run around and report every build blocking a lotus spawn? And would it actually be any sort of violation to report?
And even if a build has stacked violations, and has been reported a few times, admin still have to investigate it, or not.
I’m sorry but expecting people to build with in clearly defined rules, and expecting other player to report those that don’t, is not going to change anything on the PVE servers.
In order to have the warning I feel all players deserve, with a clear explanation as to why they are getting the warning, suspension, ban first you have to have a moderation system that works.
Yes, I’d rather have active admin, have it part of a battle pass, like battlepassplus. That includes official admined servers. I’d pay a bit extra for that. A few others have said they would as well.
Hell I’d tell old whatis the server was theirs, bye. And start over fresh.
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I agree, but I think it’s a bit worse than you state it: you are only going to limit “honest” (for lack of a better word) solo players. People who play solo and just want to play, without resorting to tricks like this, will be the ones who have to pay the price.
Speaking of the price, we’re talking about official servers, so on PC you would have to pay an actual price to get those 9 alts. I don’t doubt for a second that there are players who will shell out that kind of money to get around the inconvenience of playing by the rules, but like I said, that just makes the idea worse.
The blame for that falls squarely on Funcom’s rules. They’re the ones who decided that as long as you can do X, no matter how hard it was made by other players, you don’t get to complain about those players.
Thing is, introducing a limit on claim size or build size will not fix that. It will just make it less likely that a single clan will introduce the difficulty you’re complaining about, but you can bet that you’ll still get that difficulty because of multiple clans building on top of those spawns.
What you provided is a great example of why you can’t automagically replace human judgment with code. (At least, not yet.)
Bingo.
FWIW, I understand where your proposal comes from. Every time I decided to come back to the game and start a fresh new character on an official server, I would spend at least an hour looking for the “least crappy” server with a decent ping.
Contrary to the popular belief, you don’t have a thousand, or even a hundred servers to pick from. Hell, you have fewer than 10 of them, when you take your ping in account. In my experience, it’s like 5. On each and every one of those 5, you’ll find some amount of player-built garbage. If you want to play on officials, you have to settle for the one where that garbage bothers you the least, and then pray to Mitra that any future newcomers to the server don’t turn it into a dump.
So yeah, even though I might disagree with you about the details of what should be acceptable or not, I know how you feel.
You will not solve that with tech. You won’t even come close.
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I think most do. I do too. But for the reasons you’ve stated and more, it just won’t work the way we’d hope it to.
Neither will culling the amount of servers either. We’d just see the remaining players take up every build spot and refresh. Punishing those that do actually play.
To add insult to injury, the decay system aims to solve abandoned buildings but we have that problem of serial refreshers. That happens on all modes too, not just PVE. While I have an entire post dedicated to getting around decay timers - my hope - is that it’s used very little and only for extenuating circumstances.
Then the ones who do play are punished further by the over-arching, oft-repeated problem with this entire system: the lack of transparency, clarity, explanation and implementation of the Terms of Conduct (cue my sour face).
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Honestly, I think these dudes convince themselves they ‘conquered’ a land by surrounding it with a big wall on PVE! 
I wonder what they are trying to compensate… 
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Everything here is pure speculation, because Funcom clearly does not follow their own rules. I and many others were wiped without breaking a single rule from the Land Claim Abuse on Official Servers
This means no matter how many paper rules we come up with, and how well we follow them, no one is safe. Thinking Funcom will spend time to give details on every case and discuss it is delusional. It’s unmanageable.
The only and ONLY solution that will work is designing the actual game mechanics that will simply stop people from abusing the system. If you’ve ever worked on a product design, you’d know what I’m talking about. It’s the same as building inside of dungeons. The game simply doesn’t let you do that. Or maybe devs shouldn’t disallow it, create some documentation for dungeon use, and wait for reports to fly in? /S
You can’t have everything. You can’t have a freedom to build everywhere, anytime, as much as you’d like and hope everything will be nice and dandy. You can’t write more detailed rules and hope people will follow it. Nobody will go to the website, try to read through some documentation and remember it all. That’s simply a BAD GAME DESIGN (almost like designed by a strict developer, not experience designer…documentation for playing the game? What the actual hell?)
This entire idea about devs giving us better guidelines how to play the game is utter nonsense and massive fail in game design. It’s game designers job to create just enough freedom and restrictions within the game mechanics to keep the game fair and functional. This is what game design is. Not sending gamers a PDF book that they’ll have to print out and have it open while trying to play the game in fear of breaking rules that don’t exist in the game itself.
I’d gladly sacrifice some building freedom on official servers, than have a community that will slowly kill itself off. That’s what’s happening right now. Either abusers make people quit, or unjust staff action make people quit. And yes, such system can be designed and is not that hard. Other games did it. Conan already has basic foundation for it. It’s not THAT complicated. Again, documentation? Rules? What is this madness? Propose game mechanics that can be developed at manageable cost, and will not rely on users having to follow guidelines. That’s the only thing that will work.
Most, but not everything. There are a few actual facts in this thread. Everything else is, like I keep saying, people pointlessly arguing about stuff that has been pointlessly argued a zillion times before.
That’s also pure speculation, because no one ever gets any concrete explanation about their suspension or ban. All you get is an extremely generic message and if you ask them for details, they tell you they can’t disclose them.
See above. You’re speculating, because you don’t know.
Unlike what you’ve said so far, this is not speculation, this is just your personal belief, which happens to be false. It’s might be the only solution you’re willing to support, but it’s not “the only and ONLY” solution.
I abso-freaking-lutely love it when someone tries to get into a pіssing contest about credentials. I happen to have over 20 years of experience in software development. Out of those 20+, only 2 were spent in the game development industry, but that was enough to learn some pretty valuable insights from some well-known and respected game designers. I’m talking about people who worked on Half-Life 2, Portal 2, and Left 4 Dead (1 and 2), for example.
In short, I know what you’re talking about, and you’re flat out wrong.
If you’re still talking about the official server rules, then you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. That’s not “documentation for playing the game”. It’s got nothing to do with how to play the game. It’s a set of rules, no different from what a private server admin will tell you about their server when you join. “Don’t do X, Y, or Z, or we’ll kick you from our server.”
Speaking of which:
Try telling a private server admin you don’t care to learn or remember the rules they impose on their server, and let’s see how well that works out for you.
You talk much about game design, but show little understanding of it. In a game that was specifically design to offer its players the freedom to set up the gameplay experience they want (e.g. by hosting their own server), it would be bad game design to implement game mechanics designed to enforce a conduct expected on a tiny portion of servers.
And when I say “tiny”, I mean tiny: official servers aren’t even 10% of all servers that appear in the server list for PC. On top of that, you have unlisted servers, and of course the whole wide world of consoles.
Good for you. Most people wouldn’t, especially if that sacrifice was in vain, because the solution whose flaws you carefully ignore and avoid discussing would only help with a small fraction of possible infractions.
I highly recommend you take what @CodeMage says under advisement. He has been a part of this discussion longer than I have.
If you have any intention of remaining on Official PVP and want some pointers, let me know.
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It’s very hard to discuss with you. No, the things I said about game design is not speculation, it’s facts. If you think coming up with a book of rules on how people should play the game is good game design, you just lost all credibility in this matter. And yes, no need to mention that you are a software developer. Just the idea of documentation alone shows it clearly. You’re heavily overcomplicating things. It’s a video game.
No, this has a bit of merit, and the evidence was Umborls reply here: The rules seem to be dead - General Discussion / Feedback - Funcom Forums
When he says he sees no violations when you clearly see a long walkway/wall with torches which he talked as being violations in his land claim thread. So, Baeltor has a bit of a point about Funcom not even knowing how to interpret the rules themselves.
(Edit: scroll down one reply in the link, its not quite in the right spot)
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So yeah, here’s an idea to follow your thinking: let’s remove all crafting requirements, remove inventory limits, thrall limits, allow people build in the sky, have unlimited skill points, allow everything because “the game is built based on premise of freedom”.
And then let’s create a giant 100 pager of rules saying that hey, we give you the freedom but you can’t do this, this, this. Everyone must memorize it and keep it in mind while playing a VIDEO GAME to not get banned (but will get banned anyway due to human error).
Game mechanics are rules that can’t be broken without using exploits.
Maybe that’s because you don’t bother to actually read what I wrote, misrepresent what little you actually read, ignore any counterarguments I provide, and end up restating what you already said without presenting any actual arguments of your own. It brings to mind Shannon Alder’s quote about playing chess.
For example:
This is an example of not reading what I said. I specifically said it’s NOT speculation. I said it’s your personal opinion, and a wrong one at that.
This is an example of misrepresenting my words. At no point did I say anything about a “book of rules”. Stating the rules of behavior on a particular tiny subset of servers provided by Funcom is not a matter of game design. It’s orthogonal to game design, and I explained why. Not that you bothered to read or address that.
This is an example of flat out making shіt up (“idea of documentation”), coupled with an ad hominem.
I did not say “the game is built based on premise of freedom”, but don’t let that stop you from doubling down on your strawman.
Also, the fact that you’re conflating mechanics like crafting requirements and building in the sky with mechanics like thrall limits shows your lack of understanding about game design.
Anyway, I’ve had enough of pigeon-chess for today. If you can’t even distinguish between being banned from the game and being banned from a tiny portion of servers on which you can play the game, then there’s no use replying directly to you any further. Go ahead and have the last word, and make sure you sprinkle it with ad hominems to make it really stick 
The game in its current state is not capable of supporting most of the suggestions that every random player has. Including this post. Without changing the code at a fundamental level and on the surface how the game is played.
Funcom clearly did not anticipate the problems that we’re seeing now and that is 100% on them. It’s also 100% on them for being vague, not providing explanations or appearing to be fair.
What I mean about appearing to be fair is in regard to this:
To Funcom they are making decisions based on their “internal policies”. The ToC is asked to be interpreted based on the spirit of it. As such they have the final say on what is considered a violation and what is not. Not what we, as players, have an opinion about.
Do I agree with this? ABSOLUTELY NOT. But it can explain why the results are what they are. Do I think they’re doing a good job? NO. They do make mistakes, the frequency is up for debate.
This is a very unique game and it is old by most standards. That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement but let’s be honest with ourselves too and realize that we don’t hold the cards here.
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Nobody is doing a pissing contest so I have no idea what you’re talking about. You talk about me not being able to read, yet you missed many of my points or simply misunderstood them. Some criticism is not bad. Not every opinion you have is a fact and it’s ok. Nor is mine. Take a breath, relax. We’re only discussing possibilities.
Side note: I made it clear I’m talking about official servers. Private servers should have all the freedom the owners want (you’ve missed that). There’s no question about it. Sliders are easy.
Not quite.
I know what you’re getting at, though. When I look at that screenshot, my immediate reaction is “this is a clear infraction”. But there are two problems with that.
One is that it looks to me like a clear infraction, but I don’t know if that’s actually an infraction according to Funcom.
The thread Umborls wrote about land claim abuse clearly says that it’s meant to show some “examples of building strategies that should be avoided by players when playing on Official Servers”. It illustrates some general principles, but the devil’s in the details.
Should the build in that screenshot be judged as a foundation web, or a wall, or a decorative land claim? Without more extensive screenshots, you can’t tell if it’s purely decorative, if the shape merits being called a foundation web, or if the wall “extends too far from the buildings it protects”.
How do Funcom admins judge these things? Beats me. The only information that would actually help us understand that is a concrete explanation for each specific case, which they stubbornly refuse to provide. My own (rather uncharitable) theory is that they don’t want to do it because it will reveal just how badly they’re doing this, but that’s a whole 'nother can of worms.
The other problem with the post you linked to is that Umborls said “that screenshot doesn’t really show me anything”. Sure, it might mean “it doesn’t show me any infractions”, but it could also mean what I already mentioned above: “it doesn’t really show me enough to determine if there was an infraction”.
At any rate, I agree wholeheartedly that they’ve made an unholy mess of the official server moderation. As I’ve stated several times, I really regret being one of the voices that kept asking for that moderation. If I had known how badly they were going to do it, I wouldn’t have asked. Dealing with an occasional griefer would have been less depressing than these pointless discussions.
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I agree, I was just pointing out how the guy that gave us good examples of land claim couldnt see it in a picture provided when Ill bet you 95% of players could see that. To me thats an issue.
But, lets leave this for another thread I dont want to derail Deacons thread on propositions for land claim ideas.
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This is exactly what I meant by common sense, self moderation to prevent damaging overall experience for every player on the server.
As for GPortal I started there, then I moved to premium service provider charging €70 for a 20 player slots server with all the bells and whistles.
Eventually I built a PC to host dedicated server at home (for 70 a month you can buy a RAM die, and replace CPU twice a year).
Anyway I googled what hardware is GPortal running, and on that config they run 4 Conan Servers at a time according to what I read.
My Conan-PC is far more beefier than GPortal’s systems and all it runs is Windows and Conan Dedicated server. And with around 15 players online the performance hit is visible.
40 players online? Possible only on a RP server where everyone just stands in one room for 3 hours and types text into the chat window.
Optimization is the problem, not hardware, as I run the latest and it can’t pull Exiles as I would like it to be. Of course there are mods… but I know it’s not because of mods.
There is video on Youtube where someone brags how he’s unconquerable because he had spammed so many candles in his base that server cant handle it and crashes, or something like that…
And one more thing about TOS in general.
As we all know Funcom does not play this game. They don’t know nothing about performance or what is causing lags, they don’t know about daily issues community is facing on official or private servers.
So what kind of rules can they create while being out of touch?
This is why I apply to the “common sense”.
When I was starting my private server there were many experienced players coming from official ones and they told me - limit this because of this, now restrict that because that is going to happen, make a rule about this so you prevent this from happening.
Players know what has to be done.
And then there is what Codemage wrote:
At the end it’s up to community to create the rules and to try to enforce them…
So there you have it funcom. Seems the most popular solution to the problem is funcom P2P servers.
Now you know I’m for the land claim block simply because that is what I am used to. Every other sandbox/open world builder I have played had a land claim block.
I don’t see it happening because funcom has yet to set down at the table.
Promise I wont bite.
Actually, the pop up windows exist. Not upon character creation (playing on an official server is just an option, so it would not make sense to placard their rules before the player even chooses a server), but as soon as you enter an official server.
The first time you enter it, the rules are briefly declined and coupled with a link to the website in which they explain them in further detail. On the next connections, you basically just get the link, each time you log into the server.
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The suggestion to which I replied was about limiting the number of bases per player to one. Meaning, you could teleport from your base A to your base A.
Depending on whether those placeables require foundations, and how easy/difficult it would be to give them a longer decay timer, or those transportory stones etc. would go poof pretty quickly.
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