Here are some ideas that may improve the game experience some for pve, some for pvp, and some for both.
Foundation Spam
Possible solution(s) :
Minimum building size and components required for land claim. Examples: 6×2×8 enclosed buildings or no landclaim/ decay protection. Sandstone foundations do not grant land claim.
Landclaim does not prevent treb placing.
Erosion : buildings and placables begin taking environmental damage 2 days after placing requiring maintaince performed by player or materials in a connected carpenters bench or blacksmith bench with auto repair switched on. AUTO REPAIR FEATURE DISABLED DURING RAID TIME.
Vault Spam
New feat : Lockpicking: locked vaults, boxes, and chests can be picked unlocking them by holding E on them for a time (if hold is released time spent towards picking of the lock is saved. In addition picked containers can not be relocked for a time.)
Vaults require building time similar to trebs and while being bulit do not have full hp until completed.
Thrall and pet abandoning and floating
Reintroduction of feed and added water requirements to thralls and pets (water bottles can now added to feed placeables also. Proximity to a well would count also) Thralls and pets can now die from hunger and thirst like players though at a slower rate.
6x2x8 is not enough if you want to build a small fishing spot. I don’t agree
environmental damage is a problem for those who have big bases and honestly not all of us can spend hours just to repair daily. some of us have families & co and only enter the game for a limited time. Just repairing stuff in that time will be a serious issue. And most of us don’t leave materials in benches to avoid stealing
Lockpicking - why would i build a vault and a gate to protect from a lot of bombs if you can just hold E to open it??? NO WAY
Thralls hunger, same problem as environmental suggestion
This game is already encouraging offline raiding and there is no protection whatsoever. Lava don’t instant kill, bubble don’t block trebs and so on. For people with limited time that’s an issue
NO, we need a bench/altar claim system, like tool cupboard in rust. Once you place the altar on foundations it counts all building blocks and re-enable the claim mechanic, if it’s out of the claim area anybody can destroy it. Also adding “upkeep costs materials”, basically for each building block you have to “pay” materials in the bench, if the materials finish then the decay timer start ticking. Would be nice also if it would autorepair broken blocks super slowly so we can deactivate repair manually for those who complains that people repair buildings while being raided.
Then people will dupe trebs (duping in unreal engine will never be fixed, it’s an engine issue) and start spamming treb stand in your base. Please be realist and understand that duping on UE4 will always be there (like in minecraft so to speak).
Very simple, like thralls cap, 1 vault per clan+1 vault per player in clan.
Sounds like we need a casual servers for this issue then. They can only lockpick if they can get to your vault anyway. The lockpicking time can be adjusted as well and remember they can not fight while doing it.
Survival games are about just that surviving not just build it and leave it.
Only part I heavily disagree with is lockpicking, no point in using chests or vaults at that point if someone can just lockpick it. Id probably quit the game if this was in it.
Bombs destroy chests, boxes, and vaults also. Time on the lockpicking would need to be adjusted to make sure it too investment in time as well. Lockpicking need not be fast and would not be.
And remember EACH box, chest, and Vault would need to be picked . Right now Vault spam is designed to be a shell game of which vault in the open has anything in it and its a numbers game banked against bomb cost to destroy not only access. Lockpicking doesn’t require destruction of the vault only time which can be adjusted to be fair.
Only way I could see this being balanced at all is if chests took atleast an hour and vaults 3-4hours considering all your doing is picking it, you aren’t investing anything(I’m not counting you time because you are already wasting it on a game along with dedicating yourself to sitting their licking a chest)
This would work as long as you could not just use this time to make bombs and blow it quicker. This would need to be balanced with this in mind. Players will a lot of times take the route of least resistance. Time is a factor always.
I think the underlaying problem is that building is so much easier than raiding. The cost of removing sandstone building spam is so immensely high that every builder can count on a vast area covered with a terrace style build to keep him save from attacks with avatars.
CE never used to look like this when you could stil remove sandstone with steel and the building costs for higher tier material was higher. It all started to get like this once black ice was made as easy to get as it is now.
As long as we have this misbalance on raiding Vs building costs it will always be a successful strategy to spam large amounts of building pieces or items like vaults. Vaults are so cheap that in fact I wouldn’t even care about them getting picked. They are large trashbins and sometimes even left empty. I feel that it was ‘ok’ when you could still stack orbs. But even then we would spam vaults all over the map
TL;DR make building more expensive and this problem will disappear.
Why not solve all these problems with one simple solution - limit number of building blocks/walls/ceilings etc per person/clan (optional for private servers ofc)
The biggest problem in this game right now are large clans who create colossal ugly blocky castles and fields of foundations around them that cover vast areas.
Because it’s not really a solution. Building happens to be one of the biggest end-game motivators for PVE players to keep playing. Put a hard cap on that and you’ll drive the vast majority of long-term PVE players away, the same players that are most likely to buy the cosmetic DLCs that provide extra cash flow for Conan Exiles.
I gave your post a like, but this is the only part of it that I actually agree with. I also agree with @q9c9p, in that we need the claim/decay system to be revamped, and I like the idea of having a claim “pot” that requires fuel to protect your claim.
However, I don’t have much hope of Funcom ever revamping the claim mechanics, which is why I like your suggestion. It’s a bit of a band-aid (no offense), but that’s pretty much how Conan Exiles generally “evolves”.
