Unknown build limit?

Considering the only two active players were my good buddy and a PvE-style massive builder himself, I reckon Admin was just doing sweeps. I’d heard tales of similar activity, from other servers. As you might expect I’m a rather assiduous builder, and will regularly take assays of my impact on local performance.

I do allow for a lot of personal leeway with clans, because while I’ve been maintaining a lot of this decay, I’ve been seeing the ways my clanmates have built. My guys did fine, but there is one giant staircase with braziers that could be a problem. Unless you watch your mates closely, you might not know of such a feature.

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That’s ideal PvP. Nowadays it’s less than ideal. Most players I know and respect have multiple server presences just to maybe get into a fistfight.

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Edited my my post. We only have 13,200 pieces. My error.

That’s the interesting thing about our clan. When we started, we didn’t think about building separate bases. We built a walled main base area, and everyone built their own house within the space we had set aside, with a work shop in the middle. The additional bases were built as outposts mostly, with a room for a bedroll. All of our beds are in the main base, and each player has a bedroll at one of the other builds in case some turnip decides to try and wall off our stuff. We can hit the battle flag and travel to our bedroll to refresh.

The biggest outpost we have is completely on the lake by the dam. It is, of course, more a home build than an outpost now.

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So I can confirm in my clan’s case that Zendesk did verify that we were banned for 14 days due to having too large of a structure (after they first wiped 3 of our bases).

We did not cheat, spam, or stack. We just had a large base since we had been on the PVP server for ~3 years and it seemed the best defense against raids. I can also confirm that we did not know that we had exceeded a limit and thus were completely surprised when it happened to us (when they first wiped the base we thought it was a new cheat that raiders were using…).

In hindsight our base probably was too large but I’ve seen similar sized bases on servers before and it seems a common way on PVP servers of trying to build a defense that works.

It is what it is and I’ve moved to a new server and will do my best to keep bases small but as the original poster pointed out, would be nice to somehow know when you have reached “the limit” so this does not happen again.

Also, bases being wiped/banned by Funcom seems to be driven now by folks reporting them. In our case our server was being raided by an active group of cheaters (yes the cheating was confirmed by Zendesk as well and we were thanked for reporting it) but they structured themselves so that each member or two had a separate clan name so a ban would not impact all of them. All of the bases that we and other clans had that survived their raids were apparently reported and as a result only those bases/clans were banned. I suspect going forward this will be a new tactic on PVP servers. If a base is too large/protected to raid, just report it to Zendesk.

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I can’t say that Funcom wouldn’t want this behavior, as eventually people will have ‘legal’ defensible bases that will not get removed by them and the over large bases will mostly be gone.

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True and fair but I also suspect we will see more folks complaining about this issue in the near future as folks who also thought their bases within limits find themselves being banned for 14 days with no warning. When you ban folks for crossing a line but have no way of clearly identifying such line then there are bound to be some upset folks (thus as the original poster and others have stated, we need a way to understand what the limit is). I also suspect there are people who are defending Funcom now, since their large bases have not been wiped… yet, who will find themselves also banned in the future.

Thinking about this more, maybe Funcom can post pics of examples of reasonable and unreasonable bases. That would be something at least.

Once again on our server it is not like we made a large base overnight. We had it for years with no problems or complaints (and the admins have been on our server on a number of occasions dealing with cheaters).

Anyway, we’ve moved on and going forward will not build any large impressive bases anymore — not worth the risk.

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From what I’ve read from a lot of responses, people don’t really play on pvp offical. It is 10 man vs 10 man. A base can get wiped in an hour with that amount of people attacking it.

That’s how offical is played, build mega bases that can host all your loot and all your clan mates. I’ve see clans with 200,000 + structures.

It seems to me that it’s the server that is the issue. Playing on the new Xbox, I have absolutely no issues rendering in these huge bases. Conan shouldn’t advertise ‘build unlimited’ and then have a sook when people do because their servers can’t handle it.

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Server doesn’t do any rendering. What you’re comparing is not even apples to oranges, it’s giraffes to refrigerators.

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Private server here and I own it. I’ve promised myself not to wipe my bases for using too many pieces. I’m at about 13k so far, split between 6 large bases and a few smaller satellite bases. My new Nemedian base is going to be my biggest project yet and it is pushing my laptop fans up an octave or so.

I’m about half way done and this side is the most complete. It is probably 4k pieces. Laptop is a fairly high end gaming machine, so I was surprised to see it working this much harder, but at the same time, this would have shut down my older machine from 2 generations back.

Long story short - build limit is really what your machine can handle. My server barely has to come out of sleep mode to run things with only this many pieces.

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Fair point, but you have to understand what I’m saying. They shouldn’t advertise build unlimited if their servers can’t handle 40 people building unlimited. It’s not fair to then come and wipe people’s bases for playing the game.

After you’ve raided everyone worth raiding on the server, do you just grind resources and leave them sitting there in the base? No. You’re going to want to build an empire. It doesn’t make sense.

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Anyone who believes in advertisements of “unlimited” this or “infinite” that is just fooling themselves. There’s nothing unlimited or infinite. Just read the fine print on any unlimited data plan and you’ll see that many of them will either throttle or deprioritize your traffic after a certain threshold. And even those that don’t spell it out in the fine print will still do something behind the scenes if they can’t handle all the traffic, because TANSTAAFL.

That said, I don’t think Funcom is advertising “unlimited” building in the sense you’re interpreting it. “Build anywhere” doesn’t mean “build everywhere”.

The idea that people should be allowed to make the server shіt the bed just because they believe Funcom is advertising unlimited building reminds me of that story about “unlimited travel” on American Airlines: people paid a ton of money for the unlimited travel pass, then used that to make money by charging other people, and then acted surprised and offended when their membership got terminated. The whole “unlimited travel” program was a poorly-thought-out cash grab and was never going to be sustainable right from the start, but the fact that some members abused it for fraudulent purposes is the cherry on top.

So yeah, I’m sure that everyone wants to build an empire and nobody wants to get banned, but if people can’t share the server responsibly of their own will, I prefer bans. They’re much better than Funcom deciding that “this is why we can’t have nice things” and implementing some ridiculous limit system. Their last attempt – the follower limit – failed to bring the promised performance improvements, so forgive me if I’m not sympathetic enough to people who haven’t adapted to the changes.

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And that clearly means that you don’t play on official pvp either as it’s 10 man vs. offline clan with no one online 90% of the time or more. Offline raiding is the meta on official servers which means there is no 10v10 as the other clan isn’t even around. So although that may be the POINT of pvp, that is not the REALITY of it.

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This is because they didn’t set them low enough. A ballpark figure is 3+1 to 6+3 (base + each member in clan, so around 4-13 to 9-36, assuming 10 man clans) for larger servers (40+). Sure it sounds really low, but the performance boost is great (allows for over 30 server fps at 50ish players online. Possibly even better.

I had the jungle obelisk unblocked for well over one year Offical PVE-C, past that it got blocked, we had to report etc.

If a big clan decides to report you, you can get your stuff deleted.

Happened to me or the decay bug some months ago. ( i got banned, zendesk said i wasnt banned) and the decay was a fact.

Anywho this is my sickest build i think, only the video remains, I built and kept deleting my build after awhile. One man clan rocks.

Jungle Build

Yup, it’s not the resources of the client device. It’s the ability of the server to form and transmit packets in response to client input (interactively) in a timely manner so that there is no perceivable “lag” client-side and everything moves and reacts predictably and quickly. The server keeps track of things like chest inventory, block integrity, player and NPC positions (x,y,z & h,p,r), hit and collision detection, and so on like that.

Client-side anti-lag systems that inject interpolated (guessed at) server packet data are usually used to assist and can even explain phenomena such as rubber-banding where the interpolation “guesses” wrongly and then is corrected by some received packets from the server - etc. A single server node (virtual machine comprised of arbitrary resources - whatever Funcom set up or paid for) likely handles a large number of active games. I can’t guess but let’s say between ten and a several hundred - and may even dynamically split loads with other VMs when computations become too heavy.

You’re right (I think) that our local (client) hardware doesn’t have a problem with rendering even huge bases because for the most part (these days) the heaviest aspects of frame rendering are the lighting and shading models used - and in that regard Conan is pretty light - and dynamic enough through user or automatic configuration to perform well on most hardware from consoles on up. Those limitations will result in higher or lower framerates though and not the server lag being talked about.

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This is where the new guidelines comes in. It really is up to the interpretation of Funcom to decide when a base is too large.

Unfortunately that gives you no concrete direction as the door is left wide open for ban based on the interpretation of what is over built or too big. Not that I’m complaining as I think a “build limit” might be more problematic then the interpretation.

Best rule of thumb is try to be conservative and avoid getting reported in the first place.

Its weird, I logged on today to find some of the biggest builds on our server 3053 gone almost overnight…poof!

The total collective amount of man-hours that these must have represented, makes me wince (regardless of legality)

Not sure whether all the clans were consolidating, leaving it all to decay, or just got banned. Most of these were here long before I showed up (easily over a year)

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You can´t avoid getting reported and you can´t avoid beeing banned except you avoid playing on officials. Everybody who wants you harm can report you and get you banned. If not for the base, then for something else. It only needs one screenshot with a good angle where it seems you did something wrong or a short video that was taken while you “teleport” all over the place during server lag fest and people will claim you are a cheater. If someone wants you gone he will get you gone. Funcom doesn´t care for how long you played on that server, they do not investigate enough. The took a short look at the evidence and poof. That is the reality no matter what people claim otherwhise in this forum.

And I would prefer flags like in Myth of Empires, since banning people for building in a game that is all about building is plain and simple stupid. Put your flag(s) down and then work for it to get the ressources to keep your flag(s) up and the decay off and the more you play and gather points the more you can put into your flag to upgrade it to have more range. Limit the flags you can have to 2 bases and voila your done. No spamming anymore, no more login in to refresh your decay timer.

Funcom is running out of time and players. If you like it or not. So far, besides Ark there wasn´t much on the market that you could play that was as good and simular as Conan so people came back after a while and gave Conan another chance because there wasn´t much else to play that was similar. But this has changed. And I can tell you that there got a game released this month that is steeling Conan´s crown in a very rapidly way. As a long time single player you might not care atm since all you want is playing alone. But for people who like to play online with others this game might fill the gap faster you might expect and like. For me there is a lot of ways Funcom could have handled this situation better then throwing out a tos that has more holes in it than a swiss cheese just to then go from server to server to empty them out until all players that played Conan for years on that servers have left the game. Great job. In the end its their game and their choice. We (the players) have done enough reporting over the years. Be it bugs, abuse, other problems or even suggestions. At one point people have to see impactfull progress and in regards to pvp we don´t have that.

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While I like Myth of Empires, I do not like the small range the flags have. Limits the builds, like having a bridge to cross the river for example (we built on an island, so we have to swim each time when we exit our base area). Plus not sure we can even build all the stations/farms in the circle. Already running out of space (note we increased the range for the guild marker and it barely increased by 1 block if that much.) Granted this is Early Access so things could change but its highly limiting (even on private servers).

So, admittedly not a fan of this concept at the moment, plus for those who like building a rectangular buildings. pieces of the structure could fall outside of the space - the corners which what happened with the personal flags which were much smaller and this was not a very large building. 9 x 4 structure.