So I believe this has been mentioned before but I really think Funcom needs to do something to address this issue.
Simply put, entire sections of the map are being covered by massive foundation spam… Really stinks when you try to ride your horses. One obvious answer is for other clans to try to remove them but the economics just don’t work i.e. trying to remove thousands of T3 /black ice foundations with explosives while the folks can pretty much instantly replace them doesn’t really work…
Open to suggestions but my initial thought is that a clan should have a set limit on the amount of locations they can build on. I’m all for folks being creative and building large bases but there needs to be some sort of size boundary and anything beyond that instantly decays…
Also, before someone does the “you should just play private servers”, I’ve played/play on both and honestly they both have their pros and cons…
i have to agree, players who build masive fortress tend to fill the land outside their territory with foundation, for future buildings or just to keep other players/ purges away.
i don’t mean that they shound’t build big or even bigger, but they ruin the experience for other players, that without mention those who close plaths to important places…
Sadly, the best you can do to avoid this, is to play solo/co-op, host your own server, or build even bigger.
This is a problem on many official servers no matter if it is pvp or pve.
I have often thought about why it is so widespread, and in my opinion 2 things seems to be the biggest problems, the current decay system where you can refresh timers with very little effort and the fact that buildings doesn’t really have much cost once created.
So what can be done, the most obvious would be moderated servers which we all know probably never will happen, but there are other ways…
Landclaim system
Giving each player a certain amount of landclaim objects(flags or whatever) working the same way as thrall pots where everything built within the landclaim would need refreshing like now, but everything built outside will decay with a set percentage each day(lose hp) and need repair to keep it up.
Tax system
A tax system that could be a new currency or a current resource like fx gold coins.
The tax system could be set in effect after reaching a certain level giving new players time to prepare for it.
The amount you would have to pay could depend on how many building blocks you have or size of landclaim.
I could also see this as a good way of removing the current decay system so that players who have to pay tax would see their buildings decay by a set percentage(lose hp) each day they haven’t been paying tax.
General decay system
All building parts will decay a set percent per day depending on their tier.(T3 < T2 <T1)
To prevent people from running around repairing individual buildings blocks 1 at a time there could be a system like the thrall pot but for building parts or a repair hammer that repairs an area each time you swing it.
This system could also replace the current decay system.
These ideas are not perfect and will probably not be accepted by everyone, but in my opinion this game desperately needs some limitations and/or cost to building besides crafting cost and just refreshing once a week, personally I lean towards example 3
Kudos for offering a system as at least it is an attempt to make a mechanic to address it. The problem as it exists right now is “what criteria constitutes building spam?” to take action? To “conquer the map” means you have to build.
I think it can be done without a new mechanic though. Simply wipe all officials once a quarter. Then new players have a shot against old and a quarter is plenty of time to max out and fight for turf. There wont be as big an incentive to foundation spam if you have to do it every quarter.
Farming T3 building pieces became far to simple compared to the days of EA. Back then, it was a real challenge to build anything in T3, and you were scared to invest all that time because…
God used to be nukes that took care of everything in a matter of seconds. Now we don’t have them, and if we ever get them back, they will be weak and useless.
Weren’t seasonal Officials a thing early on? I seem to recall hearing that they weren’t particularly popular.
In any event, I think such a measure would be disastrous to Official PvE servers. Lord knows I’d have probably rage-quit if I’d logged one day to find that suddenly quarterly resets were a thing and all my work was a memory.
Personally, I think @Frillen has rounded up some of the better approaches that I’ve seen from the likes of @Sera67, @CodeMage, and others…
I can only speak for official pvp but they just need a fcking landclaim system. If you dont claim someone can either easily build a treb next to your base(since a bubble doesn’t def it anymore, yay) or if it is a ■■■■■■■■ clan they just build walls around your base to annoy you and prevent you from building.
I found a method for me to not spam everything all around me with blocks of foundations but still claiming the area but it would be way easier if they would just bring out anything to mark your land. Like the followersystem. For every player more in out clan you get extra claim.
Way back in early ‘early access’ there were pvp blitz servers with monthly wipes and accelerated progression, but they never really became popular.
The problem with server wipes is that no matter the interval it will always be a bad time to join a server the closer you get to date of wipe, so you will likely see less people joining official servers.
Also I don’t think it is suitable for a game like Conan Exiles because the game require you to build up over many hours, and in pve servers where people spend a lot of time creating their dream castle, it would be devastating for some to see it all disappear on a certain date and having to start from scratch again, and I don’t think higher rates will help much - But that is just my opinion
If we’re talking about PVP, I can agree with the concept of “conquering the map”. If we’re talking about PVE-C, I can also agree with it, but the game lacks proper mechanics to make that work. However, when it comes to pure PVE, I disagree with the very idea of “conquering the map”. You might want to “tame” your bit of it, but there should be no conquest in a game mode that does not offer any mechanics for conflict.
I like @Frillen’s suggestions because they neither try to be too clever and define what “spam” means, nor are they rigidly draconic (e.g. a hard cap on building pieces). We need to put some flexible limits on players’ ability to build, so that spam becomes expensive.
On top of that, we really need some kind of gameplay mechanic that will allow us to fight trolls, griefers and spammers, if not on PVE, then definitely on PVE-C. This would become even more important if we were to go the way you propose:
This would be simply disastrous in terms of griefing and trolling. Right now, if a malicious clan comes to a PVE(-C) server and screws everything up, people will stop playing and the server will eventually “die off” and the trolls will move elsewhere. If you wipe the server once a quarter, you’re giving trolls more incentive, because what they thrive on is the process of bothering everyone and you’re giving them a fresh chance to do so every quarter.
The above point about monthly I agree would be a disaster. It’s far too frequent for people with limited schedules.
I guess what I’d like to see is half of official pvp and pve-c get wiped quarterly (how do you decide which ones? Meh, roll of the dice…) and half not. I understand there are people who will hate it, but I think there are people (me being one) who play A LOT of CE and would like to play on officials, but the advancement curve is too steep compared to the existing denizens and some of the ones I’ve scouted have the aforementioned foundation spam and hideous sprawling pvp structures for me to spend more than a couple hours on before calling it quits.
I play another game that has quarterly “seasons” that is fundamentally perpetual, and all about the long term progression that has two main environments; one is a quarterly, everyone starts from zero environment, and a perpetual environment in parallel. The perpetual environment is a cesspool, and the quarterly one has a much higher player base. That’s anecdotal and I understand the games are different, but the underlying cause may (and I stress “may”) be the same with the same solution. I don’t pretend to know a quarterly reset will result in higher player retention and participation in officials for CE, but I do know that the lack of it keeps me off of them. I’m a datapoint of one but I would be surprised if I’m alone.
Oh, no, don’t get me wrong. I’m not against the idea of seasonal servers per se. I would probably enjoy that. I’m just saying that it would exacerbate trolling and that, since Funcom won’t ever start moderating official server, we need an in-game way to fight back without blanket server-wide base destruction.
I would love to have an upkeep cost to mantain your base, payment in silver and gold coins.
The bigger the base the bigger the cost, and it would prevent decayment…
So instead of a decay timer system, the decayment depends on the players paying in-game money to mantain their bases, and yeah they could just farm gold like crazy and keep the payments ready to not worry about that, but depending on how much territory they claim the prizes could be so high that it’s almost impossible to mantain.
I don’t know, i just think that leaving too much liberty to the players makes them abuse of it against other players and the game itself.
Funny thing is, i have experimented on a PVE official. IT has the same problem as PVP, over building just because one can. On PVP, it is to protect bases from trebs. On PVE, it seems to be to build cities, that really have no interactions other than to say “I have a lot of free time, so i am claiming 4 map squares”. Then it becomes 6, then 8. This is on PS4 official PVE. Do not understand how that is healthy for the entire gaming community that would like to play on those maps.
Sort of, but not quite. I’ve never built anything that large, so I’m not speaking from personal experience, but I can understand why it’s happening. Bear in mind, I’m not saying it’s okay, I’m not justifying it, I’m just talking about it
Basically, it all boils down to two things:
There is not a lot to do on PVE servers besides building. Sure, you can catch thralls and pets and level them up, but why? You can kill bosses and do dungeons, but why? The primary motivation for all of these boils down to being able to build and decorate. On PVE-C servers, you have the ability to damage and kill other players, but most people don’t use it, because – again – why?
People who like to build, like to show off their builds. Yeah, sure, you can build your grand city in single-player mode, but who’s going to see it and explore it?
So people either build or get bored and move to a PVP server or a different game. Those who stay and build will sometimes go big, because they can. The game allows it, there are no restrictions, and there is no way for anyone else to do anything about it.
It’s not wrong to want to build or even to want to build big. But there has to be something to limit that on official servers, because those are public, shared resources. Hoping that everyone will play nicely is … cute.
It would be nice if there was also something else to do that didn’t involve the risk of losing everything you have, but that’s just a nice-to-have. But we definitely need something to help keep players’ builds within some sort of sane limits.
So I like Frillen’s suggestion about some sort of land claim and I like the idea that it should be based on clan size similar to followers i.e. a solo player just gets one land claim while a clan of 10 gets 5 (or something like that). Maybe each land claim allows a certain area so the clans who want mega bases just need to combine their land claims to extend the space.
Also, I really have no issues with large bases (within “reason”). The game killing issue is the massive amounts of foundation spam that just crisscross entire sections of the map with the occasional vault thrown in.
This is something that Funcom really needs to address.
Ironically , it also deters would be “Viewers” to even play on the servers. So one is basically building to show off to no one. Hence why i said it doesn’t help the game populations.
And i also do not do this sort of thing…Even when i owned a private pvp server, my raid bases/dungeon builds were done in areas and sizes that did not damper any other players opportunities. Defeats the purpose of PVP to not have players on it.
Yeah their need to be some cost to building. We need a cupboard that will consume mats over time according to the base size (tiers 1 consume rock and wood tier 2 iron reinforcement isolated wood/brick and shape wood ect. 1 cupboard per clan = 1 base per clan. Each building needs to be connected to the cupboard if not they will decay. (Only for official PvP) the bigger the more expensive. This system will make for more efficient bases compared to all the nonsense. It’s would help the server lag by avoiding spamming.
Zeb, you know I’m not a PVP player. You know my primary motivation for playing CE was building. If you’ve seen some of the pics I’ve shared, you know my builds are not something you can call “compact”. And maybe you also know that I maintain 7 public map rooms on my server and 2 public arenas (one for melee and one for mounted combat).
I’ve seen castles and arenas and towns and inns and prisons and tons of other beautiful things on PVE-C servers where I’ve played. The best times I’ve had on Conan Exiles was when I was in a clan with two creative and imaginative builders.
I’m saying this to make it clear that I really do understand your point of view. And I agree almost all the way. But not all the way.
Whether we like it or not, official servers are a shared resource. It’s not just about the server performance, although that is an important aspect. There’s also the fact that it’s really discouraging to come to a new server and see that it’s chock-full of stuff that people built and are just refreshing without playing actively. And yes, I know, that’s exactly what I’m doing these days, and I shouldn’t be able to do it just like that. It’s even more discouraging when some of that stuff takes up 4 or 6 map grid tiles!
If you haven’t ever encountered a player or a clan that builds massive structures inconsiderately and without regard for anyone else, then you’re lucky. There really should be some kind of limit. I agree that it shouldn’t be the same for PVE, PVE-C and PVP servers, and I really don’t want it to be a hard cap, but something should be done.
I agree to 100% with you. I was playing on a Official-PvP Server and they just spam “Smallbases” like Carrots everywhere. I didnt move 2 Mins and see another one “Base” of the Alpha-Tribe. Well that happend, if u dont have much Admins to look around. And what you can do? Put some explosives with you and go on!
