While it is true that Funcom can change the TOS at any time - it is worth noting that they haven’t:
The rules haven’t changed, it’s just that they started enforcing more vigorously.
(Not denying there could do with being more clarity - too many people seem to be confused, even about things that would seem quite clear - just that a lot of the uproar about ‘new rules’ is somewhat misplaced.)
In the first place it’s not “white knighting”.
But so far from reading here, it is the same old tired story of regret and misdirected anger. Someone knows the rules (come’on, it’s common sense and with every log-in telling you to read them it’s highly unlikely they don’t) and decides to push the limits. They get busted with some actions taken they don’t like and they go the entitled child route instead of taking the responsible adult stance, learning and moving on. It’s human, we’ve all been there (which is why it’s obvious to so many of us) none of us have ALWAYS acted like responsible adults in every situation. We get angry, typically at ourselves for pushing things too far or not being careful, and instead of using that angry energy 
to correct our own behavior and take responsibility we demand a participation trophy 
and get angry at the rules - or the company that made them - or the person that reported us - etc.
Normally that wouldn’t bother anyone because well, that’s just human - it’s disappointing to see but easily forgettable. Except with MMO type games when this occurs companies want to please their customers and end up nerfing the game or changing it in ways that make it a lot less fun, less challenging, and more restrictive (a “build cap” is a perfect example of this). “I can’t control myself or learn from my mistakes so everybody else needs to be restricted and feel my pain” UG!
It’s not white knighting to point this out and the reams and reams of text attempting to justify this entitled child behavior accompanied by spaghetti 
highways of twisty turny logic implying why it’s OK for them to do so, why they should be heard, why they’re right, why the rules need to change, why the company is uncaring or bad, etc. is nothing more than a bore to most responsible players.
I came here to learn the tips and tricks of the game. But all I can say to the 10% or so of people playing this game of entitlement here on the forums is please stop, internalize your own behaviors and the consequences for them, please stop asking Funcom to CHANGE THE GAME because you can’t play it within the rules. There is a bug report and suggestion system in place for that and there is a big difference between stating in public thread “here’s an idea, what do others think?” and “I got spanked, Funcom is evil, let’s demand change!” regardless how many words you type to state them.
EDIT: BTW, I just had a building deleted that was full of boxes filled with expensive items. There’s a vault near my house 
and instead of humping all the loot back from it in three trips everytime I visited that resource rich area, I built a nice little castle nearby - just on the edge of the “no build zone”. It was 168 hour rated of course but in only 2 days off-line it got wiped. Am I mad? Nope! Did I start a thread about it here? Nope! Do I think the rules should be more clear? Nope! Do I think the rules should be changed to fit MY understandings? Nope! Will I “get it” and stop building 
so close to vaults? Probably, I would hope so anyway. It’s just common sense!
I have to 100% agree with this. A nebulous “don’t be a dick” style rule is just not good enough if it’s not abundantly clear what “being a dick” entails. The consequence for breaking it (which might well be accidental) being deletion of your base or a ban just exacerbates this issue. If they had active GMs (this is a pipedream, so it’s just for arguments sake) who could warn you when you were close to / just over whatever the limit is, maybe then. But allowing people to blissfully go on for months building their base and then one day it goes “poof” ? Nope. Not OK.
Any or all rules Funcom seem fit to implement and enforce can be okay, but it needs to be pretty clear just what said rules are - and not through reading the ToS either, if you can break them through playing the game in a normal fashion (such as overbuilding).
I’ve actually played on several servers that literally had ‘Don’t be a dick’ as one of their rules. And pretty much the rest of the rules were to facilitate the type of server the owner wanted it to be. Never saw a problem with people understanding that.
If we have a civilization where that is considered to vague, that people have to have every minute detail on how not to hurt other people, then its time for a meteor to just wipe out all 7.4B of us. But I doubt people are that dumb. Some on these forums claim to be. But I call it what it is, a falsehood.
In all these threads on the subject, things have been spelled out. In every time, the goalposts were moved. Look at this current discussion. The guy you quoted is yammering on about a rule change. The rules didn’t change. There was some wording changed. And not even on the subject of this thread.
All that changed was their internal policy of ENFORCEMENT of the rules. That’s what has everyone in a tizzy. They are complaining that the enforcement was changed, and that they weren’t warned.
So basically it comes down to, “Oh we’ve been breaking the rules all this time… could you have at least told us you were going to take action first?”
In my opinion, the adverse action was a long time coming.
Personal Responsibility goes a long way. Many here could learn from your example.
Because those were private servers with actual people around to explain and correct when someone did something wrong. Not an anonymous, haphazardly applied ban+delete paradigm.
Is building a massive city being a dick? Arguably yes, if it starts to impact server performance. So far so good.
But how am I, as a regular player, supposed to be able to determine when that happens? For that matter, what if my city is not causing issues but then comes ten new players who also build cities, elsewhere, and suddenly between them the server IS struggling? Am I now retroactively being a dick? Maybe I only play during off-peak hours, and so server performance is actually fine whenever I’m playing, thus I have no way of telling that my build is causing issues. My point is that it’s not as easy as you seem to think to determine when one is “being a dick”, even if there was any kind of consensus on just what that entails.
Seems a bit extreme. “Don’t be a dick” would and should be adequate if, and only if, being able to determine when one was being a dick is viable. It often is - but certainly not always. Which is why I’m saying that it’s not enough as an official server policy. Private servers can, should and always have done as they please in that regard.
I agreed with the bit of his that I quoted, I refuse to be liable tor anything else he said. I haven’t even read it all.
Arguably, de-facto non-enforcement of rules turning into enforcement constitutes a change of, if not the rules themselves, certainly their practical applicability. As such, while it’s true that rules haven’t changed, it’s no wonder that people start asking for clarification of vague/nebulous rules only when said rules start being enforced - it just didn’t matter until then.
You’re supposing that it was abundantly clear to everyone that they were breaking the rules all along. I posit it wasn’t, not always. If my old base hadn’t decayed ages ago, I’d probably be worried whether it would count as breaking the rules, due to its sheer size. I would certainly have appreciated a warning before any action was taken against me, if that were so.
Sure. In the past I’ve been calling for enforcement of the rules myself. Doesn’t change that in a scenario like this, you need clearer rules to refer back to than “dbad”.
Mickey, you don’t need an active admin to tell people that foundation spamming all over the map is going to be a violation of the TOS which has been out for quite some time and is also going to degrade server performance for EVERY OTHER PLAYER on the server. Your just do NOT need someone there to hold your hand and explain that to you. If you can’t comprehend that, then you deserve the ban because you clearly do not care about the server or the other players on it. The same goes for massively stacking objects like fence foundations into tiny spaces.
The same goes for building in places such as around the obelisk or dungeon entrances. These are NOT difficult to comprehend and they do NOT require an active admin to tell you that you were a naughty boy or girl and aught to move. You bloody well know what you did and did it on purpose. Hence you got banned.
There may be a small portion of people who this fits. I posit that the vast majority of people crying about “unfair” bans know exactly why they were banned however. I am never going to claim that there are no innocent people, or truly naive who honestly did not know. But time and time again on this very forum so many of these “unfair” ban claims turn into “oh yeah were were doing X” Well yeah, X is why you got banned.
Please don’t put words in my mouth. I never said that. In fact you’ll find it pretty clear that this is not the scenario I’m talking about, at all. There’s plenty of occasions where one is (or should be) well aware that they’re being a dick.
Another thing I haven’t even tried to defend. For the record I haven’t been banned, or had anything deleted, I’m most definitely not arguing from a “sour grapes” position here. You’re not doing the discussion any good by lumping together obvious and unapologetic rulebreakers with anyone who thinks clarification and easier ways to tell when one is in violation would be beneficial.
So you agree with me, then?
Yeah, probably. But that doesn’t change that it would be a good idea for Funcom to be more concrete in what is, and isn’t, allowed on official servers.
Dismissing everyone who thinks so as whining cheaters only here to complain about their well-deserved bans, and an extra helping of delicious schadenfreude on top, is not necessary.
You mean they have active admins that wrongdoers can see. Its like a cop’s patrol car parked at an intersection causing everyone going 10 over the speed limit to suddenly drop their speed.
No, I mean (for example) a way to query “hey will building here (which the game allows, even encourages me to do) be considered a dick move?”. On official servers you’re (apparently) just supposed to magically know that. And no, I’m not talking about building around an obelisk or over a Journey Step / lore item.
Or alternately, a way to be told “hey, better move that base of yours” from said spot while you’re still in sandstone, instead of letting players build there for literal years, then nuking it overnight because someone reported you.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I really think there could be benefit if Funcom was to provide a few ‘sample builds’ (either as screenshots or videos) that could be explained as test cases. Obviously there could be privacy issues with using real player builds, but a few admin built samples might help provide the bit of clarity that is missing as to exactly where the line is on certain issues.
As I think we can all agree, there are infractions that are obvious and the person involved does know what they did, but concepts like ‘too big’ by their very nature lead to a grey area of sorts around where the exact line is. If Funcom could create a few builds around where they consider that line to be, and then maybe provide explanations of why build A would be a ban, or why build B would not, that might help clarify it a bit for the people that are genuinely worried about whether they have built too big or not.
The problem is that inevitably, some people will then try to treat these examples (no matter how clearly marked) as concrete statements and use them for rules lawyering (‘but my building had the same arched roofs as in the example - that proves it can’t have been illegal’…), but at least it would provide some clearer guidance for those who are genuinely confused.
Like Oduda says, many of the claims of innocence so far seem to fall apart when examined - but of course that doesn’t mean that every case is like that. And there have also been cases I’ve seen where people are quite honest about why they think they were banned - they were reducing base size, but hadn’t gone far enough. That would be an understandably frustrating situation to be in, and it would be good if players in those situations could have access to a bit clearer guidance.
We can discuss till we’re blue in the face why many of the things being called for won’t work (the problems with fixed limits, the potential difficulties of direct messaging players with warnings etc). But it doesn’t change that some of the calls are genuine (even if some of the advocates seem less so). There are always going to be some ‘game is dead’ types who are going to complain, whether or not there is a problem, but there also seems to be enough genuine uncertainty to make it worth doing something.
Yup, I would venture to guess right around 0.5% of users - if that.
I thought there already were? I don’t think there are examples of what NOT to do but I thought I remembered seeing various castles the company was presenting as what was “possible”, beautiful, and acceptable. I suppose I could be trip’en but… No?
Here:
etc…
I suppose it wouldn’t hurt for them to revisit these cuts and reupload a video of just examples but…
One very good indicator if your build is too large is if your friends in other clans repeatedly tell you they avoid your base because of rendering issues. Or, if you get banned on one server, say Siptah, because of issues that you have obviously repeated on an Exiles server. Why yes, these are not just random situations.
I do know players who were banned when the Admin came to see about another clan that decided to wall them in on one server, and noticed their obscene amount of land claim. Consequently, their build in the Exiles was in jeopardy because of the clan ban. The only thing that saved the base was the fact that one member was not on the other server. However, if a report is ever issued against them, they will lose that build as well.
The bottom line is, if your friends say, “I hate going near your build”, or “Your build is pretty big.” You might want to listen.
Lol, the pvp on the forums is more brutal than the pvp in the game.
Every argument that hasn’t come from a disgruntled banned player, has essentially boiled down to your point here. Sure, it would be nice if FC had more concrete rules or a system of “mediation” before banning. No one is really arguing it wouldn’t be nice - they are arguing that those solutions come at at cost. Often outweighing the good they intended to achieve.
Concrete rules/hard limits have a high cost to the player experience. Mediation efforts cost time, money and slow the banning process. Unless the “it would be nice if it didn’t have to be this way” position has anything new to add to that discussion or an alternative solution, it’s really just cyclical arguing.
Agreed, although I think they would resist this as it opens them up to public litigation - which I’m assuming this whole system is designed to avoid. I wish we as a community could organize such examples ourselves to our own benefit, but my time on this forum leaves me skeptical of the feasibility of such co-operation.
I hope you’re going to wipe that down before presenting it in polite company, because I do believe you pulled that from somewhere unsavoury.
Right, so do you agree that it would be beneficial if they were to be a bit more explicit about what you can’t do? What you can do is nice and all, but it is (at best) half of the equation.
Sure. But there’s a virtually endless list of things you can do (that’s a large part of this game’s appeal after all).
There is also, apparently, a list of things you can do, but aren’t allowed to. A lot of those things are indeed easy to see as being wrong, but by no means all.
Asking Funcom to be specific about what those things are should be in everyone’s interest. I’ve yet to see a single good argument against that - only a semi-insulting insinuation that’s it’s “obvious” - and I’m stupid and/or malicious for even questioning it, and a filthy cheater to boot, and everyone who transgressed knows what they did. And hey, maybe they did. I’m certainly not going to question that most people probably did know they were probably doing something questionable.
But none of that is really an argument against specificity, if anything it’s an argument for: if it’s so damn obvious, surely it wouldn’t be at all difficult to write it down.
Are many “illegal” things obvious? Yes. Are they all - such as when you go from “building a large base” to “overbuilding” ? Not nearly as clear-cut in my book.
Sure. But let’s say they don’t. Or you live out of everyone’s way and rarely if ever get visitors. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, after all.
Really? How big is “pretty big” ? 10x10? 100x100? Because that doesn’t sound like a good rule to base bans on to me.
Finally. Yes, I agree with all of that. But I’m not arguing for hard limits - while that would certainly be easiest to enforce, I also agree that it would be hugely detrimental to the value of the game.
But some actual examples of “don’t effin’ do this!” surely wouldn’t be that difficult to create, and it would be easy to add to. The danger of course being people thinking anything not explicitly shown would then be okay - but that’s not really different from today, except it would at least form some basis for understanding.
I do think that players are allowed to express a desire for concrete rules/examples, without automatically becoming suspect, and currently I’m seeing a lot of gleeful Nelson-Muntz-style “haha!” going on. Which frankly isn’t a good look, even if we’ve all suffered from asshats that we’d be happy to see gone over the years.
I’m not opposed to such an effort by FC. I think it opens them up to public litigation by taking the authority from their personal discretion and placing it on an objective notion. It might at least force disgruntled banned players to actually provide pictures of their bases to compare them to whatever FC provides as examples.
However, I don’t think they will do this. It creates liabilities, even if only obligational. Which is why I’ll always encourage us, the players, to provide such examples to each other instead.
Well, the first thing said in this thread was 50,000 build pieces or so. We have 5 builds with 13,000, so that’s pretty big.
On the PvE server, there is an overly large build that is out of the way in an area where no one really has to go. I doubt anyone will ever say a word about it, because most players don’t even know it’s there.
On the other hand, the build in the post I was referring to is right on the river in newbie territory. There’s no excuse for it being as large as it is. They’ve been told numerous times it’s a problem.
This build isn’t any smaller than their Siptah build, and they were banned for that. So, I’d guess that is a pretty good indicator of what “too big” might mean.
Holy heck…we are still kicking this dead horse?! OK if you are building not because of function or aesthetic but because of some meta game mechanic that prevents others from building around that area then you are cheesing the system and no better than those that undermesh (just because you can doesn’t mean you should). Truth be told there is no easy solution to the issue…I for one like the idea that foundations take 24 hours to build up and there is no such thing as land claim. During that time of building the foundation is set but has only 100 hp. If you let yourself get boxed in, then that is all your problem.
This is so true. Fence stacking has forever been a pvp build tactic. Some did it because it also minimized footprint size so they wouldn’t be a dick and cover a 50x50 area with the hp defense foundations, instead taking up a 20x20 foot print. Then it was stated just a few months back that fence stacking is exploiting, and now those people fall into being a dick.