My wife and I just started playing on an official PvE server, to see what it was like to play with others, after level capping and building out on our own private server. What we both noticed is that even in the starting areas, there are buildings everywhere, ranging from 100% sandstone to palacial Turian, Argossan, Aquilonian, and Nemedian estates. And of course, OMG, the building around Sepermeru lol.
I have to think that many of these structures were made by players who have since left the server. Is there any mechanism by which these structures are periodically cleaned out to make room for newcomers?
official servers have a 10 day decay timer, those people arent religiously playing at the moment which is why you dont see anyone out there, but all they need to do is find 10 minutes once a week to log in, take a lap around the base and then log off, and that resets the 10 day timer. I myself am at that place right now, im finished with the battle pass and have gotten bored with the stygian castle already. So usually one night after i get home from work i log in make sure everything is all right around my base and thats it, i probably wont see it till next week sometime. Sometimes i do my weekly log in really late too like 2am, so just casue you dont see people doesnt mean no ones there on the server, everyone just logs in at different times or just rarely at all.
Ah, ok, so the people who have actually left or quit, their properties will decay away, that’s good.
When I see a server in the server browser and it has a population number like 7/40, I assume that means there are presently 7 players online, with a 40 player cap? And I also assume that the 40 player cap means 40 simultaneous players, not 40 total? So there could be hundreds of players, but only 40 online at a time?
If it’s simultaneous, then what happens if there are 40/40 and I try to log in, am I put in a queue? And if it’s 40 total accounts not necessarily simultaneous, I assume that I won’t be able to join that server?
Many questions, thanks for the answers. I just did the Funcom survey from the launcher and when it asked about the Community, I told them that was one of the reasons I decided to play this game, the community has been awesome.
PVE and PVE-C are where you going to see a lot of builds since there is no building damage by other players.
The only thing that resolves those builds, as @NesterT2 has explained, is the decay system.
What I do when I visit a server then decide to go elsewhere is remove my builds so it is not impacting the server by taking up unnecessary space even for the 10 days. But that is me.
There is quite a bit of controversy on what is considered “serial refreshing”. So only logging in the refresh your timers and not actively playing, just taking up space “just in case insert reason”.
On official servers take a Repair hammer and stand next to a structure. it will tell you the time left till decay. Once that time has expired you can destroy the structure and loot anything that drops from containers.