Report Meta: Is funcom trying to stealth wipe official servers?

Those you mentioned also have POIs, which are necessary for a journey step. Perhaps those are “worth” more than rocks, trees, and plants.

What I’m getting from your explanation, however, is that building an “almost unraidable” base is not possible without breaking the rules. As someone who doesn’t play on PVP servers, I don’t have a horse in this particular race, but have you considered that maybe being unable to build “almost unraidable” bases is something Funcom might not see as a problem? Indeed, something they might consider a positive change?

Which is why I said “my view is”, rather than “fact is”.

Yeah, and I’ve said – on numerous occasions and across many different threads – that this is a big problem that Funcom should fix. I would go so far as to implement a change in the game code so that when you create a character on an official server, you get a message pointing you to the TOS and saying clearly that you should read the rules if you don’t want to get banned.

Another thing Funcom is handling badly is the discoverability of the clarifications they provide. There have been numerous examples of Funcom staff saying something of critical importance deep in some forum thread and never even making an announcement post about it.

I’m talking about seriously important stuff, like when they decided to reclassify the fence foundation stacking as an exploit. People were getting banned for that left and right, and the only indication that Funcom suddenly changed their mind and decided it was an exploit was buried 100+ posts deep in an obscure forum thread that never even got pinned.

And to make all of this worse, Funcom is also not providing enough feedback when people request information about a ban, via Zendesk. I’ve seen numerous complaints from people who requested info and either never got any answer, or their request was auto-closed due to age, or they received a canned reply along the lines of “unfortunately we cannot share the details of our investigation”.

That’s incredibly counterproductive. If people don’t get enough feedback on which rules they broke, and how they broke them, they won’t be able to learn how to stop breaking those rules, and they’ll just keep getting banned. That’s really not okay at all.

And none of what I wrote above is something I just came up with here – I’ve been saying that for a while. But hey, I guess it’s easy to assume that the guy who told you that maybe you should realize you broke a rule is someone who always takes Funcom’s side in everything :wink:

Yeah, just because you keep repeating that, doesn’t make it true.

First of all, the rules say “such as dungeons, obelisks, resources, and other areas”. The words “such as” indicate a non-exhaustive list of examples. I can see from your video that you don’t speak English, and I don’t speak Portuguese, so the closest I can come is Spanish: “bloqueo del contenido del juego, tal como calabozos, obeliscos, recursos, y otras áreas del juego”.

Second, the whole reason they included “and other areas of the game” is precisely because they knew that someone would inevitably find a way to block something they shouldn’t and then complain that “it’s not in the rules”.

If I had a dollar for every time someone accused me of being a Funcom employee in disguise, I wouldn’t be rich, but I could probably get a free beer once a month :stuck_out_tongue:

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Then they should fix in game, i have seen many positives upcoming changes like nerfing drawbridge and gates. and not only that, they should not only remove the ability to build in these spots if they see it as a problem but also implicity say that they dont want us to do specific things to make “unraidable” bases. like they did with stacking, they said and then they changed it ingame, as they should.

but that term only really applies to the dam is a spot far too broken in current meta, and it was always a problem that i don’t understand why it wasn’t adressed sooner, ever since that i started playing in 2020 that this spot was among the top of the lists.

so if it was always a problem, why something wasn’t done sooner?
wouldn’t that be easier than ban people who don’t know what they should not be doing, if this assumption is correct?.

i doubt it, and you can still get those POIs even if you have a base there.

when you create a law that has as open a description like conan exiles TOS.
You ended up creating a bigger problem than you had before.
I’m a law student, obviously the laws have different contents, different forms and different applications.

But when done in this way, law enforcers can act arbitrarily. For example, at some point an admin might say that by building a base in the priest king’s retreat, you are blocking some of the content, which in fact it is.

So these rules must have clearer limits and definitions so that situations like mine and many others don’t happen.
Common sense in the game tells us that blocking unique resources or places of great interest should not be done.
But what about blocking spawn from a tree, a small camp of npcs or things like that?

So if I were to act as an advocate for this case, I would keep picking up on this point:
“Blocking of content in the game, such as dungeons, obelisks, resources and other areas of the game.”
In this passage there is no mention of thrall camps.

And when we talk about game content, we can encompass anything, including the spot where you make your base.

I can very well report you for having made a base in local X because it is preventing me from having access and seeing what is in that location if we take TOS literally.

see how harmful this type of rule is?
This becomes not only a problem for players but for funcom itself. Of dissatisfied players, bad reputation, and a likely large volume of reports and ban appeals, unnecessarily.

I agree with almost everything you wrote on this reply.

but our friction on this topic came from you making statements about my banishment, and as I showed in the rules, this information you said is not clear.

The rule is simple and its application arbitrary.

Other than that, it’s like you said. They do not give clarification on what was wrong so that the mistake is not repeated.
I have friends who have already lost 3 accounts.
The first one was really wrong and the other two were trying to get the rules right. lol
Even this friend even stopped playing.

Luckily I still haven’t lost and I wouldn’t want to.

if you were a funcom employee it would be even better, because I would be sure that my feedback was being read.

Oh you’re probably right.

I’m not a law student, so I hope you’ll forgive me if my analogies are crude and based on the US law.

There are laws like that. For example, many of the US states have laws about “reckless driving”. Here’s a typical definition of reckless driving:

If you take a look at that definition, it doesn’t list all the ways you could drive recklessly. In fact, it doesn’t even list one of those ways. The closest it comes to that is to merely mention “speed”.

Now, many of those states also list certain criteria for what they call “per se” reckless driving, such as “driving without using headlights” or “improper passing of another vehicle”. If you do those things in those states, you are automatically guilty of reckless driving, but that does not mean that only those things constitute reckless driving.

Going back to your statement about how “law enforcers can act arbitrarily”: can a law enforcement officer charge you with reckless driving at their discretion? If you stop and think about it, yeah, they could. What’s stopping them from doing so arbitrarily is not how the law is phrased, but rather the whole judicial system. If they take you in for reckless driving, you can contest the charge and they have to prove that you were, indeed, driving “in willful or wanton disregard for the rights or safety of others” yadda yadda yadda. You get my point.

And that’s the biggest difference between Funcom’s TOS and actual laws: Funcom admins are law enforcement officers, and judge, and jury, and executioner.

So what are the options here?

Well, for starters, they should work to clarify the rules, and to make both the rules and those clarifications easily accessible. But they can only clarify the rules up to a certain point, because – as they say themselves – what’s important is the spirit of the rules, rather than the letter of the rules:

In the end, there will always be a certain degree of ambiguity left at the discretion of admins.

This is why I also insist that they should provide good feedback about each ban case when requested via Zendesk. To go back to your analogy with laws, this would be similar to the concept of “case law”, although not so rigorous and binding.

I’m willing to bet that with those three measures – ensuring that everyone is aware of the rules, making the clarifications easily accessible, and providing good feedback for individual cases – most of the problems with the TOS would go away.

Except that the rules aren’t meant to be taken literally. That’s why they explain that the spirit of the rule is what matters, right at the top of the TOS.

If you really did block those NPCs, then I have no doubt whatsoever that you were banned at least for that, if for no other reason.

I have, regretfully, had to reporting someone on a PVE-C server who blocked a small NPC camp and didn’t want to unblock it. Their base was wiped within a day or two.

The friction is also due to my tone, but I’m a little bit burned out by these repeating discussions on the forums. I saw that you said you blocked that camp, and I was really pissed off that none of the “Bans Are New Meta” people pointed out that it’s not okay to do that. Most of them – but not all – only come out to complain, and never to say “yeah, no, you shouldn’t do that”.

Oh, I can assure you, they’re reading the feedback. That has been proven many, many times :slight_smile:

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exactly. lol

responding @Barnes about not understanding pvp builds…i’ll just leave that out there.

I just wanted to chime in here @ “unraidable bases” thats a myth :laughing:
At some point it gets annoying and expenses are not worth rewards, but no base is ever un raidable

But im personally hoping the ban meta isnt a true thing, i know on xbox any report usually gets you a 2 week suspension… i once got reported by a guy who came at me 6 times and lost each one, somehow microsoft said im harrassing him by repeatedly killing him, but thats why i have multiple accounts lol also why im trying to go pc if i can get the rest of my clan onboard

he said it’s almost unraidable and he is right.
It’s because if there’s only one guy inside this base, he can repair it all day long.
you can’t stack jars in front of it’s bridge, so the damage will be low. you just need to repair and repair.
with god bubble on (which everyone on pvp activate this on daily basis), it’s almost impossible to raid.

I suppose almost is acceptable, as well you only need to last a few hours… most people when they repair stuff to outlast a raid they forget to bring a gasmask :wink:

Its even funnier when the thralls pop through the walls and start messing things up for them

the only way you can get raided on this spot is if you make a mistake as you said about gas mask. lol

As easy as you can say its a conspiracy, you cant prove it not to be. So, till then, we all have hats on.

Yup, and thats your opinion that basic common thralls that server zero purpose in the game isnt a common resource like rocks and trees.

Literally no one goes for low level thralls, and since there is countless spots for farming better, and legendary artisans, this spot is as useless as blocking a few trees.

Sorry not sorry. Funcom allows blocking low level common resources since there is so many spawns, the same can be said about low level common thralls that serve no purpose, and that have numerous other spawns.

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My personal opinion: thralls are rocks and trees until they hit t4 or t3 crafters in a pinch, that said, i could see blocking a camp if it has something inside it worthwile like a recipe or a legendary spawn, or more than 4 thralls as being bannable but a small camp not so much. At max level alot of the time its less time consuming to farm steel from npcs than it is to make it, but usually to do it efficiently you go to bigger camps

I can prove it by using common sense and higher critical thinking skills than a schizophrenic toddler. There is no conspiracy by the devs to ruin their own game. People just cant control themselves

They did get bought out by tencent… if i remember correctly from my youth, theyd buy old games and monitize then into the ground.

EDIT: Not trying to cause panic or lack of respect for funcom. Just my personal experience

And yet rampant cheaters and undermeshers go unbanned, while legit players who block a spawn of some basic thralls gets banned.

Because even schizophrenic toddlers can see how completely insane that logic is. Sorry you cant, but maybe its because no one elses chin is that high in the air.

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This is extremely true.
When transfers were opened, i saw a group of hackers going from server to server ruining everything.
They can teleport inside your base, put jars in some kind of ghost mode and even loot your containers without breaking it. Destroy blocks outside raid hours.
It’s bizarre. we reported them. a friend of mine got totally wiped (lost a base with 1 year of loot).
I was told that they were banned for 15 days another day. but they returned with the same accounts.

But this is an enterely new topic eheheh.

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nah man how you dare to block a nordheimer 3, crucial to everyones gameplay.
that is definectly the only npc camp in the entire game and the most important, teimos can be blocked as well… oh w8… you can’t…

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