The PVE Builder

I’d say you’re failing to account for the passage of time, that’s all. You said that was a year ago. They’ve been stepping up their response since then. That’s why they updated the rules, too. The new rules state that they’re not gonna dick around with partial demolition or give griefers a polite slap on the wrist. Instead, they’ll nuke the whole kit ‘n’ caboodle and slap a ban on top to drive the point home.

You can say that again. Judging from their own replies to reports, hey’re constantly playing catch-up with the workload they get via Zendesk.

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A yes an clan system update will be a big help to. If we can invigt players or join to the clans whitout the gameover risks we have now. Thanks for that point to ad in the long line of tools that shud be aded to the game.

I agree with the passage of time point, but, while I could totally be wrong, aren’t the “rules” or policies relatively the same as before? And now perhaps they got a little more staff to just enforce it?

Either way, I really hope they will give a warning prior to a wipe for those that don’t have obviously intentional malicious builds. Or figure out a way to be super clear about certain aspects before they continue demolition.

Geez, after they stated a cap on thralls, they were not only very clear, but gave an insanely lengthy grace period before people actually started losing thralls, right?

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As far as revamping the clan system, a month after I had started the game, I was invited to join one. Since no game I had ever played had any risks to joining or leaving a clan / guild, I didn’t think twice.

I found out within a day or so that this guy was just inviting people left and right, and after they logged off, kicked everyone and stole everyone’s things.

Took me a very long time to reach someone from funcom, and when I finally got a response, they said “the clan system is working exactly as intended”.

I lost all faith in and respect for funcom then and there and regretted giving them my money.

While a revamp would be beyond ideal, and in my opinion, a no brainer, I hold out zero hope for that.

This among many other issues are most disappointing, as I personally feel this game has serious potential, not just to be the best in the genre, but the potential to be one of the best games ever (once again, just my personal opinion).

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Its almost half a year ago they had the last stream so its about time thay have a new one, about this and other stuffs.

If a “good build” gets removed then it wasn’t very good to begin with. I don’t understand what is so difficult to understand here. Your intentions mean nothing, FC is seeking a results based solution to a problem that has hindered CE for far too long now.

Your warning is a temporary ban and removal of your offending structures. If you think that is too harsh that’s fine, I think it’s evidence that FC recognizes how serious the problem is.

People want limits and rules so they can push them, what’s worse is they call for them under the guise of fear. The truth is that if you are scared you will be banned for building, then FCs policy is working. If the CE player base won’t respect their fellow players of their own accord, then thankfully FC is willing to coerce them to.

I am curious if this was the same conversation on the forum with regards to thrall limits. Any lore keepers? In regards to building FC is doing their best to give us creative freedom with a cost of personal responsibility. It amazes me people would trade that for rules and limits just so they don’t have to bear the fault IF their structures happen to be removed.

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It was similar, but very different. The most important difference is that the thrall limit is an in-game mechanic, whereas this is a “change” in rules. That’s why people are treating it so differently, because they tend to view rules as something that has to do with cheating, justice, and similar morally charged concepts, rather than something utilitarian.

I was one of the people who were very vocal in their opposition to the thrall cap when they announced it. For context, back then the thralls weren’t as beefed up as they are now, and people like me relied heavily on them for purges. I usually play either solo or in a small clan, and back then I was the owner and maintainer of most of the public map rooms on the server where I played, so I saw the thrall cap as something that would leave me without proper purge defenses.

During the enormously long time between the announcement of the thrall cap and the moment when they finally activated it, I came to see it as a necessary evil. There’s plenty of evidence that having an excessive amount of followers does hurt the server performance. I still think there were better solutions they could have implemented, theoretically, but they chose this one because it was the cheapest.

That’s why I’m also adamantly opposed to simple building limits. By now, we can all see that a simple follower cap did not, in fact, solve the problem to the degree it was promised to. Sure, it helped, but the problems are still there. And there’s plenty of evidence that it’s not the size of the build alone that screws up the server performance, but also how the pieces are arranged, which placeables are used, etc.

I believe Funcom came to similar conclusions, which is why they decided to go down the route of handling overbuilding through rules, rather than an in-game mechanic. If implementing a solution for properly managing the followers’ impact on the server was too hard, implementing such a solution for the building system would be even harder.

But going back to your original question, yeah, the announcement of a thrall limit caused a shitstorm of legendary proportions. All the usual tropes were there:

  • people claiming that this would kill the game, and others claiming that the game was already dead
  • PVP players blaming PVE players for this, and PVE players blaming PVP players in return
  • proponents of the limit pointing their fingers at the detractors, accusing them of ruining the servers with thousands of followers
  • people telling each other to git gud, and calling each other names
  • insults and personal attacks at devs coming from everywhere, including calls for firing whoever came up with the idea
  • people saying that the devs were wasting time on this instead of fixing “important” things
  • complaints about how Funcom never listens to feedback alongside complaints about how Funcom listens to feedback too much

Like I said, the biggest difference was that any moral judgment came from people being too caught up in the discussion, rather than being somehow “given” by the nature of the change itself.

If you’ve got a lot of spare time and a masochistic streak, you can look take a look for yourself:

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I would not call people who do community deeds (what youbdescribe) as toxic. But I think many fail to realize that players play games to play. And being handed many “starter” items and pre built map rooms across maps removes much of what ghe game mainly is…grinding and building. For every map room a silo/clan builds next to 9belisks/dungeons l, it is one less mechanic a new player can enjoy imo.

I personally hate handouts. I appreciate the gesture, but I want to do it myself to feel accomplished on the game. Even on pvp when I join a clan, I prefer to be level 60 with my own main needs before I accept, and even then I rarely take from the clan loot.

Edit:
Except for Siptah recipes rng. I will trade aochie base, steelfire for those at most.

Example, 1st week ever at launch ps4 on pvp ever, we got hit by sub clan (noobs being fed by Alpha). They made a mistake bragging about thier suppliers, as well as the server plan to wipe a ln aggressive new clan. I contacted that clans leader to “warn” them of the 25 v 5 war coming. They said if we grinded 1000 bombs, they would help us retaliate against the sub clan. Took my noob clan 2 days and we 2000 bombs. They were so impressed, we joined them, and plus 2 other niobs we held off a 4 God attack, then proceeded to wipe the clans in that alliance in about 2 weeks time. Stayed docile Alpha after for 6 months. That server always had 20-30 players daily, and we never just gave away stuff. The server was healthy, until a toxic exploit clan cane and we just burned out playing 10 hours a day to counter.Point being, let players play, and don’t try to be game master for noobs, they will enjoy game more that way.

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That is very interesting, thank you for the thorough response. As alway you are a treasure trove of useful info.

This is mostly where my curiosity lied. I wondered if we were walking a similar path to follower limits or if this was a fresh approach from FC. I’m glad to see them learning and taking the tougher road here, the push back to that especially annoys me to be completely honest.

If and when evidence is presented that FC is misusing this new approach to demolish bases we as a player base agree is okay, I will be the among the first to criticize them and call for change. If we don’t want hard limits though we have no other choice to trust FC to be reasonable arbiters.

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And how are you going to find out about this? I saw how people on the forum quite politely told that they think that they were banned unfairly. “Closed”, “delisted” is the answer. Besides, it is unlikely that anyone has screenshots of their entire base. And even if he does, the fanboys will still say “you just didn’t show everything.”

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So we should just assume corruption with no proof because it could be possible?

If we are trading anecdotes - I have not seen anyone post a “why was I banned” post with evidence for the community to actually give an opinion on. I have seen posts whine that they got banned when so-and-so is just as bad or worse. I have seen posts admit they were guilty of rule breaks. I have seen rage posts at FC because they were banned.

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I have yet to see a post about being banned unfairly that:

  • is polite
  • explains that the author already went through Zendesk and didn’t get a satisfactory reply
  • doesn’t name any players or clans

Just like the game, the forum also has rules. But for some reason, when mods close and/or de-list posts that break those rules, that’s “censorship” and a conspiracy to hide unfair banning…

Not to mention that, even when the original author of the topic is polite, there’s usually at least one of the salty, toxic forum trolls that jumps on the topic to let everyone know how this game sucks and Funcom is horrible. And if, by some miracle, that doesn’t happen, there’s almost invariably someone who will say “don’t bother, player/clan SuchAndSuch is cheating on server 1234 and we have video proof and Funcom doesn’t do anything”, and we’re back to naming and shaming…

Honestly, Funcom could plaster a gigantic red overlay over the whole site, stating the forum rules clearly, and people would still break them and then blame everyone else but themselves.

Ah, yes. Start by assuming people are fanboys for questioning claims of unfair bans and “prove” that assumption by asserting they would still defend Funcom even if there was evidence…

Not a biased view at all.

I’ll believe someone was banned unfairly for their build when I see some freaking evidence.

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Please don’t take this as a pile-on. You’ve brought up some provocative stuff, I could do with less of the fanboy stuff personally.

One would hope that the recently dismantled would file his own counter report at ZenDesk. That’s what I would do. I keep plenty of screengrabs and videos to prove I’m building ars gratia artis.

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Well, yes, I’m sure everyone will screenshot the whole map every day. And if he is suddenly banned and the base is deleted, he definitely has up-to-date photos of all locations. I’m sure everyone is doing it.

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I keep screenshots of most of my builds. @Barnes does too it seems. You probably should too. That way if the FC boogie man comes to get you, then you can post them here and we can gather our pitchforks and torches together.

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No offense, but I do need to see evidence of admin abuse before I go saying there’s admin abuse.

So far, the only evidence I’ve seen that Funcom’s track record is crap is on the side of “they don’t do enough”, rather than “they do too much”. A popular complaint is “sure, they banned me for being toxic in chat, but they haven’t ban the undermeshers”. People keep complaining about cheaters who don’t get banned, reports taking too long, tickets being auto-closed after a long time, etc.

Does that sound like admin abuse to you? 'Cause it doesn’t to me.

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After reading this post, I am really happy I decided to run my own server. Mega bases are not allowed on my server. I have not found many private servers that allow the blocking of resource points or vaults. I require the clans on my server to allow for people to get around or by their bases and all bridges have to be open to anyone who wants to use it. I am not saying all official servers are bad and all private servers are great. I would recommend that a player take some time to look in to a server before you invest the time it takes to build a big base. I know from experience that it really stinks to build a great base on a bad server.

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If we take this build rules fluffyness over to the trall cam the rule say of you have to many thralls you will be baned. But we not gona tell you the thrall limit just ban you if we think you have.

Caouse if you get bamed you will not be able to log in and get thos evedens.

So wher do you think an bace become an Mega bases? Wher do you have the line?

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