Yes it is an exploit. Not a cheat. But so is quick travel/return home trick with beaers. The fact I can have a base without doors on exiles is exploiting the return home feature of thralls. That harms the raid mechanic, as now I do not have to have any doorway exits of base.
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@CodeMage, sorry if my post wasn’t clear. I was utilizing your quote to help me emphasize my point. But I placed your quote in the middle of a paragraph addressed to OP. I was not disagreeing with you or trying to categorize your view. Sorry.
Crossing was definitely worse, no argument there. 10 fence foundations = 10 fence foundations, agreed. Stacking however, is everything placed in a congested space, which does put more strain on the server because it’s trying to load everything at once. As you said, it’s math. If you’re not stacking, even adding ceilings to every piece, still limits you to 2 pieces per foundational square. This means everything gets spread out and the server can load incrementally as you approach, instead of all at once. Spreading everything out however, is not ideal for small hidden basses in PvP, and I am not suggesting it go away.
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Imagine… 
It’s called PvE-C. Every time I join a new servers discord, and someone asks me if I want “immunity” I throw up in my own mouth. Keep your safe spaces on the college campus’ where they belong. 
Seriously though there is a learning curve to PvP. It can be brutal, and players should understand that beginning on day one. If you need a “safe space” PvP is probably not for you.
It depends what form the fix came in… I am mostly solo, so for me PvP is all about reducing my footprint. Often to the point that I barely exist. So building out 10 foundations… sorry I started daydreaming for a moment… probably never going to suit my play style.
Of course I use my own methods like every solo does, but it would be nice if we had more options.
To be clear, I 100% understand where you are coming from, and agree that would essentially be the result for most players.
Now that is a fact! Dbd should obviously address that. But it will never #stopthestack.
At this point, I see it is as an advanced building technique (and it should remain that way), but some people do get carried away which can cause server issues. That is when I would call it an “exploit”. (Even though technically it always is.)
I strongly stand with you! I was hoping someone else pointed that out. I’m pretty sure he came in sniffing for nerfs, then asked for a nerf.
This is one of the very rare instances where I would fully agree with that sentiment. I personally would say the result is unintended, but as long as people don’t abuse it I see no problem.
People who do abuse it should be dealt with accordingly. Just as with any other deliberate abuse of the building system.Your example of light sources is spot on.
The only other issue I can see funcom having is the same with animation cancelling, in that the skill gap is vast between someone who can, and someone who can’t.
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You could still make 10 ceilings deep without it, but your also going to have to make the walls around it 10 thick, all covered by the stacks of ceilings with significantly increases the amount of building you’d actually have to do to achieve the same protection
Stacking is a defense against offline raiding, this is true. But really it’s just a defense against raiding in general. If you can build a small base that can stand up to hours of offline raiding you are obviously going to be equally protected from online raiding, with the added benefit of being able to actively defend
On top of this, a large compound is a more tempting target, so just adding more walls and ceilings and foundations might have a similar effect, but it will also draw more attention, thus making more players want to raid you
I get no one likes offline raiding (except those people who constantly do it and then complain when it happens to them) but using a mechanic that the game never teaches players to use it, which actively requires you to fight against the building system shouldn’t be the answer in my opinion
I do really wish we could get a bit of developer insight into the issues of stacking and offline raiding. It seems very clear to me that stacking is an exploit, simply from the amount of work required to get it to happen
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The game teaches you very little. Hardened steel, steel have no 8ngame explanation of recipe. Mostly have to google or ask on first play through on howbto make bars.
And it isn’t hard to do stacking…12 triangles, a few ceiling tiles, a d.few pillars when necessary and you have the blue print fences in place. So working against the system it really is not. The OP just wants to make a gapped of sorts to save time. And with all the calls for insta travel, may have figured it was right up devs alley to make an easy button for this tried and true building style.
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I get the point behind doing it, and I don’t blame players for using it since it’s so widespread, but if the developers are going to take time to make it easier I’d rather have them spend the same time instead giving us a way to reinforce single pieces.
Rather than adding more snap points that players will constantly have to fiddle with to not accidentally snap to the wrong point, give us the ability to make single foundations that are as strong as stacked foundations.
This would allow for the same strength without the game having to render nearly as many pieces
Give players the ability to make pieces 10x stronger at 10x the cost
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That’s a bit of a contradiction there. What he just said was that he is shoving and overly large number of pieces into an condensed area to make his “footprint” smaller while still using the same amount of pieces and resources. That would, if this is the “meta” lead to degraded performance as base after base after base has crammed with over saturated pieces jammed in on top of one another in a section of space that is not designed to hold that many pieces. That being said clearly the devs haven’t deemed it bad enough to do anything about it as they did with the overlapping pieces which were a much larger problem.
Now, I am not advocating for any changes to the building system, but that goes in both directions. Not making it easier to “exploit” the building system or to overhaul it. And I put exploit in quotes because having never built in the way you are speaking I will not claim that it actually is an exploit.
That I can agree with. A change to the build system is not the solution. But making it easier to “exploit” isn’t either. There needs to be a middle ground.
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I can’t see the contradiction in what I said, but maybe I’m missing something. For what it’s worth, I wasn’t, at any point, implying that the foundation spam was going to degrade the server performance more than the stacking. True, I didn’t state that I disagree with that aspect of his argument, but there’s no point, since I ended up on his ignore list for disagreeing with him too much 
At any rate, what I was pointing out here is that one of the many arguments I have against the removal of these building techniques is that it’s going to make another problem much worse: the foundation spam that everyone hates.
Yeah, I’m not arguing for making it easier, either. I personally don’t believe that the cost of development time would be worth the potential benefits for the group of players I belong to and care about 
Besides, like @OctaviousWrex pointed out, it could very well become a UX nightmare. Placing building pieces is already a pain in the ass more often than I’d like.
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ROFL! That is hilarious!
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Let’s not pretend that stacking so many fences into such a small area isn’t having an effect on server performance. There has to be a better way to accomplish what you want without condemning server health.
Everything ‘abused’ to limits will hurt server performance but did you know that stacking makes buildings use less building pieces to have same defensive power? Using ‘normal’ method to build same defensive power will use A LOT more building pieces, a lot bigger construction which will end up hurting server more? biggcane55 already explained it to you.
Excessive fence foundations stacking - #4 by Hugo - You can clearly see developers don’t consider it a bug, exploit or anything like that.
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I do really wish we could get a bit of developer insight into the issues of stacking and offline raiding. It seems very clear to me that stacking is an exploit, simply from the amount of work required to get it to happen
I think raid time window is too big. I understand there’s a lot of fun in raiding, also you need longer time for bigger bases but having to play 5 hours daily to be able to defend base is overkill. Most of people have personal lifes / work…
Rather than adding more snap points that players will constantly have to fiddle with to not accidentally snap to the wrong point, give us the ability to make single foundations that are as strong as stacked foundations.
That would be perfect yet simple solution!
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@Mefistos I concede. In that post Hugo states it is not considered an exploit. Although it was from 10 months ago, I will not argue that point any more.
biggcane55 never said it would take more building pieces to accomplish the same ‘defensive power’ if stacking wasn’t used. He said quite the opposite in fact:
Although he does hold the opinion that stacking does not hinder server performance, but I also explained why I disagreed with that. Which it sounds like you decided not to read, so I won’t bother explaining again. I do find it odd that @Ragnaguard suggested increasing foundation HP in post 13 and you didn’t like the idea, but now it is suggested again by @OctaviousWrex and you say:
Very odd indeed. 
Very odd indeed.
Only increasing hp would not be solution but I also explained why I disagreed with that. Which it sounds like you decided not to read, so I won’t bother explaining again.
Of course I read your post (or I wouldn’t have brought it up). But I fail to see where you explained why you disagreed with increasing the foundation HPs in that post.
Still, very odd.
As it will break balance as it is to normal building pieces.
Making different 10x stronger pieces like OctaviousWrex said could fix this problem without touching basic balance, that’s just logic, it’s not odd.
And again you are wrong, without stacking people would have to build more and larger, not to mention foundation spam that will lead to more server performance drop - use logic thinking, when you have to spread your 10 layers of walls on 10 squares instead of 2 you will have to pump up side and top layers too which will force you to use A LOT more building pieces which will drop server performance more than 2 square building with 10 stacked fences and NO it won’t hinder server more due to ‘loading it all at once’ - it will load it by some chunks, you do know that’s how building piece loading works in game?
Very little of what you post makes sense to me so I will just agree that we disagree and leave it at that. Best of luck.
Suggest to improve a exploit… :'D
Stacking stresses the Servers so no Thank you.
Why should Funcom make it easier to be done instead of just find a way to Prevent it of being done.
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“to be clear regarding this matter, this is currently not considered an exploit, bug, nor something our team may act upon in the form of an infraction report.
The developers are aware of this, however, and should there be an opportunity to revise the building system it will definitely be considered.“
That doesn’t really make sense. It’s either working as intended or it’s a bug. Why would you consider changing it in the future if it was WAI?
The comment reads to me like it is a bug but not one they plan to punish players for using or taking the time to fix.
How can something be “not currently considered” a bug or an exploit? If they programmed it to work this way intentionally it’s not a bug. If it’s intentional why specify “not currently”?
If it’s not a bug now, then it won’t be a bug in the future. There is no in between when it comes to bugs, either it’s working as intended or it isn’t.
Of course not all bugs are fixed, and some even become features of future projects if they improve the players performance
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Read whole thread or don’t bother to post biased opinion.
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It’s not intedned but it’s not considered as bug / exploit and you can’t be punished it. It means that they wont ban anyone for doing it but they think about solving it somehow.