Put building cap in PvE

Well, a Map zone is 500m by 500m… and a foundation block is 256cm by 256cm (according to the Conan Exiles Wiki, anyway…) So that means to fully cover a flatish mapzone would be 195 by 195 blocks… 38,025 JUST to put in a floor. Of course, very little space is really flat in this game… so that number is probably greater.

How do you feel about using that number of blocks, just for foundation? Is that reasonable? Or is that a good start point for imagining what “out of control” looks like?

Of course, the building abuse that people want to stop is Foundation snakes and massive stack builds. Both can ruin the server for everyone, but in different ways. Neither of these tactics requires someone to cover an entire zone Quadrant in foundation. And both of these tactics are not intended.

I wonder what the average actively uses in buildings.

A building limit wouldn’t be that bothersome either frankly and I’m not opposed to anything really let alone vehemently opposed. My issue lies more with the way these forums constantly seek change time after time . Nerf this, nerf that impose this restriction or that restriction. I’ve asked before and I’ll ask again, when the game is just not making people happy anymore at what point do you stop asking for changes to the game instead of making your change in the way or place you play the game?
I’ve seen maybe 4-5 posts about overbuilding recently and it’s the same voices out of how many players? So many things about CE have changed over the years and not all of them have been for the better. Funcom never seemed to have learnt the small changes slowly to see how things progress trick. They make changes hard and fast and it’s been detrimental to the game many times over the years. You say funcom will eventually do something about this particular problem, I agree, and as a betting man I’ll hedge mine towards their “ solution” being one that makes even more people unhappy probably including yourself.

I’m not one for applying the same logic in a video game as I do to real world events and happenstance. When a game or someone in a game is annoying me I switch it off, life is of course a wee bit different than a game and requires it’s own course of action born from quite a different logical stance than I can apply to a game.

Bottom line like I said I’m not opposed to a building limit, if it’s needed, I just worry that by catering to a player base requesting constant change, freedoms will be lost and eventually this great game will be made not so great anymore.
Actually instead of trying to make a game wide limit why not just introduce a limit for players that DO overbuild? I’m not tech savvy but if you can ban someone’s account why can’t you restrict it? Building too much? Here your building is gone and now you have a (insert figure here) limit to your buildings. Same could be done for thralls.?

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It sounded like you were, and I couldn’t figure out why. I’m glad you’re not and you’re open to discussion :slight_smile:

You seem to be treating these forums as one big, homogeneous (and schizophrenic) entity, instead of an aggregate of many individuals whose opinions are all over the place :slight_smile:

It’s the nature of humanity. We always want more, always want better, and, as the old adage goes, “you can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”

What you said is true: people will ask for one nerf, and as soon as it’s implemented, people will ask for another. But what you seem to overlook is that it’s not the same people. Most of the time, nerfs happen because the group of people asking for them is big enough and has been asking for them long enough and someone at Funcom thinks they have a good reason to ask for that nerf.

The only way for people on the forums to stop asking for changes would be for Funcom to drastically change their policy and state that they will not listen to any more feedback. “You get what you get. If you’re not happy with it, go play something else.” That’s pretty much the only way to squash people’s desire for change.

But I don’t think you need to worry so much about it. Like I said, it’s not like Funcom nerfs things just because a handful of people asked, without any further consideration.

My happiness with the game is not a binary thing. I can be happy with some aspects of it and unhappy with others. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know that when I’m unhappy with a game in general, I stop playing.

That’s what happened to me between February and May. I went on a hiatus. At first I was refreshing, because I thought I would be coming back. Then even refreshing became too much of a chore, so I let all my stuff decay. Now I’m on a new playthrough in Exiled Lands and I’m having fun in general. But that doesn’t mean I can’t point out problems I see.

The key word there is “recently”. If I were to judge only from the recent flare-up of the posts on that topic, I would conclude something similar to what you said: there’s a handful of people (myself included) talking about it on different threads. Of course, if you take a closer look, you’ll notice that those threads are started by different people, not the vocal handful you’re referring to. We just jump on those topics and amplify them because we’re interested :man_shrugging:

But like I said, it’s not just the recent flare-up. I’ve seen this pop up over and over again for at least a couple of years now. Hell, I can still recall several forum usernames who used to be passionate about a year ago. Some of them are still at it. Others have quit, either the forums or the game.

Here’s the thing, though: everyone can and would say the same about CE, but you would be hard pressed to find two individuals whose definition of what improved and what got worse are exactly the same. In the end, what matters is not a single individual – not me, not you, not JJDancer, not Hel – but everyone in aggregate.

We all care about our view of the game more than anyone else’s, of course. But in the end, it’s the aggregate that has the chance of swaying Funcom. That’s precisely why I insist on voicing my opinions here. If I don’t, I could miss the chance of influencing that aggregate.

The exact same logic? No, me neither. But I do tend to apply my core beliefs to both. For example, I wouldn’t resort to crashing the server or undermeshing or ganking someone who’s going through a loading screen, because one of my core beliefs has to do with personal integrity, and I will not compromise it just because a videogame isn’t “real”. Similarly, I will keep asking for improvements in this game as long as I play it, because I believe we all have the right and the duty to try to improve things around us.

It’s certainly feasible. It’s currently not implemented, but they could do it. But how would they justify doing it? When they ban someone, it’s because they were either cheating or harassing someone else.

In other words, the guiding principle behind their disciplinary measures is whether the person or clan being disciplined has acted with malicious intent. How would you justify limiting overbuilders? Every single example of overbuilding that I’ve seen on PVE(-C) servers has been done by players who were simply doing what the game let them do, without any malicious intent.

Other people have also insisted that overbuilding should be handled by official server rules, but I still don’t see how that would be feasible for Funcom. A private server admin has the freedom to say “our rule is that building is restricted to a reasonable size”, and when you ask them to define “unreasonable”, they have the freedom to say “I’ll know it when I see it”. Funcom has a certain leeway, but not that much. Trying to handle overbuilding through rules is just not going to work.

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Limiting Overbuilders by altering their accounts abilities sounds a bit over the top… it’s what I would expect on a strict Private Server maybe. I mean… how long does an account get limited? When does the limitation go away? With the Gods, you’re trying to fly under the radar, but once the consequence occurs, players can get right back to playing. With Account Limits, a player’s top concern becomes “How can I undo this awful curse” but it’s not a function of the game or lore, it’s all about the Mod. I wouldn’t be opposed to actual in game curse mechanics, but the players would have to have built in quests they need to complete to undo them. It’s a whole different approach.

I guess I just prefer the idea of making the Gods have a more active role and tying it to socially engineering the changes they need to make so the game is played closer to how it was intended to be played. When a player continuously refuses to cave to the system intentions, then the Chat Log will announce angry God Strikes as they occur and possibly even callout the map quadrant so others can swoop in to rubberneck or fish troubled waters. It might even include name and shaming… or the Gods might have a longer timer that slowly increases the information released on an individual/clan when God Strikes become more and more common against them.

I mean… what’s more satisfying:
1.) You have a long conflict with a player/clan who uses abusive tactics… culminating in one of your reports finally sticking and getting them tossed from the server.
2.) You have a short-medium conflict with a player/clan who uses abusive tactics… but then the Gods catch on and strike that player/clan’s holdings down, letting you enjoy the show or seek revenge when they are weakest.

Because the Abusive Tactics are probably never going to completely vanish, certainly not where competition is encouraged. You can keep modifying rules until the cows come home, but as you close one door, new and unexpected doors often open afterwards. The best games have always come to a synergy with the exploits and unintended mechanics… Examples Team Fortress (And Team Fortress 2), Tribes, Battlefield…

Whatever system Funcom decides on, it has to be automated. Relying on Mod intervention is just going to lead to heartbreak, I think. If it is an automated system, it needs to be something that they have a tremendous amount of ways to modify and adjust it. The more fine-tuning they can do, the better… this is especially true if they adopt an asymmetrical system like I am suggesting. Any difference in the temperament between the Gods Jealousy can simply give a deeper impression of different personalities.

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I think the more pieces/placed items a player or clan has, the more often they should get purges (that can’t be mitigated), and the deadlier they should be. Maybe purges at more than one location at once, to “help” those people who have several massive bases on a server, to help motivate them to slim down a bit :slight_smile:

I’m for the Hard cap building limit.
I know my opinion is very (very) unpopular but the hard cap (reasoned and rationalized of course) is the way, especially in multiplayer mode.
Hey, I would even remove/hard reduce the landclaim to force ppl to fight for the “right spot” but I understand that this could lead to very toxic experiences, but in the end limiting the number of (any) pieces you can put down is the only way.

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I’ve sugested this a hundred times already, but here we go again. An old survival game had a building system called “crest”, You could put your crest around your building to make it yours, players usually surrounded it with placeables and traps to defend it, cause if anyone destroyed your crest the claim wont be yours anymore, would be considered public and anyone could open your chests and doors. The crest has 2 upgrades, you have to farm your *ss off to upgrade it, but every update would allow you to have an area expansion to your building. I think that was the best claiming system I’ve seen in a survival pvp online game so far, and I think something like that, lets say, a throne, or a banner, or even a statue or something, maybe some item related to your religion in game, would work in CE and could be the end of the toxic claiming.

Also, official pvp servers need a wipe… I’ve just came back to play it with the siptah release and I still found old undermeshes… And don’t get me started talking about the bodyvaults sleeping all over unnamed city…

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Sounds like an interesting idea, but it would only apply for PvP servers since their is no raiding in PvE-C and PvE servers which the crest idea would entail.

I doubt they will do a wipe since they always said they will not. Clearing the undermesh is a different issue.

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What hard cap are you suggesting? 1k? 5k? 10k? 15k? per player, per clan?

Please note, this little building (Aquilonian Bath House) is over 1k (EDIT: 740 pieces - finally got the true number - although the center is hollow - no ceiling or floor on the main level but foundations to make the pool) building pieces in size (I think its approximately 1,200 which can not fit all the crafting stations - only have the T1 stations in the structure)

image

Coming up with a hard cap number would be the hard part if they implement it since what is considered fair?

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Why tho? They wouldn’t be able to abuse the building system anyway…

That’s very true. 100 blocks can sound like a lot until you put it on the ground and realize it’s only a 10 x 10 floor.

Applies to real life too. My neighbor got a huge bag of wood chips to spread under some bushes thinking she’d have more than enough only to realize that one bag only covered a very small fraction of what she wanted it to.

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Tselem said he would like a hard cap on building. So I was asking what the limit he was suggesting and noted my clan mate’s building (which I had to rebuild twice) amount of blocks it took.

Personally not in favor of hard limits but curious what he thoughts were.

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I play PC only.
It was pretty quiet for awhile until the IoS release. The same thing happened when they released CE. The servers were all full and people were just spamming everywhere.

The big difference was that they wiped all of the Officials before the CE release.
They should have done the same with Siptah.
As much as I want to play Siptah, every server I go to (PVE-C) is full of bases and building spam, and I just cannot get into the game.
On IoS I keep a small base by the lake with the brimstone pillars and waterfall, and just check in every few days.
Already people have moved in, built crap everywhere and then quit. I just help the process along, demolish their bases, and help myself to the loot and crafting thralls.

For Console players everyone is new, but the same thing will happen. Eventually more than half of the enthusiasts will quit and their builds will decay.
You just have to wait it out, or put in a Zendesk ticket that will probably never get resolved.

As much as I love this game the building spam is the worst, most annoying thing ever.

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This sounds very cool, but it would totally invert the current dynamics and open up a Pandora’s Box.

I don’t think they are going to do wipes on this either, partially because being able to maintain your favorite fortress is currently the only endgame reward players have. While this obviously needs to change, it’s also partially the reason I don’t think they will put in Build Caps. Until they have put in some form of progression that rewards players when they actually move on from their creations.

I think people have long wanted some method to officially claim existing structures (Outside of inheriting them from an Alliance.) However, it’s possible FunCom doesn’t want Squatter’s building claim to be part of the game. I can see arguments either way, especially since they have gone so long without it. It’s definitely something to ponder either way.

It might be neat if NPC’s could take over abandoned buildings… but that’s beyond the scope I suspect.

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Very (very) rough answer by seeing the image you posted and I’d say 2k pieces at max per player, including furnitures of all kind of course.
A clan could simply be an addition: 2k per player, wanna do a castle? You need more associates so build that (so you gain more “pieces limit”), 6k to 3 player, 8k to 4 and so on (to a some maximum I still say).
And what if a player leaves the clan, what happen to his “pieces”?
Here is where is needed to rationalize the question, 'cause you should not simply “destroy/decay” the pieces that were built by the exiting player, but still you have to find a way to avoid a mechanism like:
“entering a clan-making piece, exiting a clan, making other pieces, re/rentering a clan and so on…”
The idea from Aletoo does not seen bad at all…

Actually I like his idea also. Say you start the game with one standard you can plant, and the grid radius equals X from the standard in all directions. X should be large enough to accommodate a healthy base and outbuildings such as pens and wheels. You can also build upwards within your grid.
Then when you get to level 30 you get another standard and can build another base. at 60 you get two more standards. Anyone that thinks they need more than four bases really needs therapy.

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Build cap on foundations?
Just use pillars or fence foundations…

Add a cap on pillars and fence foundations?

It totally depends, but I don’t like building limitations, I’m a builder that enjoys all the other stuff in the game as well… if building gets restricted too much… I probably get bored…

I think 1 and a maybe a outpost is more then enough even haha

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Another reference point. Took a bit to figure out how to use bluboard to find out the stats on my structure. Please note the picture is from the official server and the stats are from my server where I recreated it although made improvements (slightly shifted the location, bridge is higher, etc) so its not exactly the same build but pretty close for purposes for my comments.

This structure with the bridge/ road to hill behind me which isn’t that far (road probably bit twice as long from this spot but it gets shorter since this is going uphill. This building is 7k+ in building pieces (including placeables since could not remove those, but they are roughly 100 pieces (one of each crafting station, storage boxes, light sources and perhaps a few decorations (approximately 20 since i have yet to decorate).

image

So if you limit the buildings to 2k or even 5k per player. Structures like this (which isn’t that big) would not even exist. Plus building a tower or staircase up the mountain side would be a waste of a player’s limit since that alone could be 2k or more.

My palace is a big circle surrounded by 6 smaller circle towers, with a small bridge at the back (build next to hill slope and one road/bridge in the front that heads towards the clan leader’s clan hall & his personal tower. They are not connected nor factored in the bluboard numbers since i did not recreate that on my server yet.

Added note, the base building, has 2 floors and the roof. Towers have one extra floor, with the roof floor of the base building. So its not a tall structure. Lastly, the front (picture side) is the deepest part of the structure. It is a bit shorter on the one half of the structure due to sloping ground.

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Aaaaand this here is why I used to be completely against building restrictions of any kind, and why I’m still against a hard cap :wink:

No offense, but I’ve seen cases where a single person has more than 4 structures that aren’t causing problems for anyone and are, in fact, quite popular among the players. Want an example? Just go on a random PVE(-C) server and look for public map rooms. If you find 3 of them held by the same owner, they already “need therapy” :stuck_out_tongue:

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