Highly unlikely. The server performance issues with stacking are aggregate. The more people stack more building pieces together, the bigger the issues. Similarly, if there’s very little of it – or non at all – on a server, that server’s performance issues (if any) are not being caused by that.
None of these building techniques were intended. They fixed fence foundation stacking because everyone used that. It was the dominant strategy for improving the HP density of your base. When everyone makes their builds as dense as the fence foundation stacking allowed, that causes server performance problems.
True, but the crucial detail you’re overlooking is that Funcom is the ultimate arbiter that decides what is an exploit and what is an acceptable form of emergent gameplay.
Don’t believe me? Here is a post from Funcom saying that fence foundation stacking is not an exploit. Here is a post from Funcom saying that it is.
The concept of emergent gameplay is what makes these things much more difficult to reason about, especially when you consider that the game has multiple modes. Removing a building technique that allows PVP players to create an unfair advantage for themselves will also hurt creative builders in PVE and single-player modes. The technique that allows you to stack ceilings to improve the density of your PVP build is the same technique that allows you to “laminate” foundations in PVE or to build gradually rising foundations.
By all rights, certain techniques should be considered exploits in PVP and emergent gameplay in PVE, but players insist they would rather have in-game restrictions that ruin innocent players’ fun than server moderation that is only supposed to deal with the guilty.
I understand why. Funcom’s server moderation is subpar at best, and so is their communication. Players who find themselves targeted by admin action are unable to get useful (or sometimes any) information about their infraction and how to avoid repeating it. Coupled with the lack of warning and the summarily heavy-handed nature of admin sanctions, the end result is a lot of frustration and erosion of trust.
On top of that, Funcom’s communication about what the admins will act on and what they won’t leaves much to desire. Occasionally, they will write a detailed post with a bunch of good information and examples, and pin it. But more often than not, they’ll leave an important bit of information – such as the abovementioned rulings on whether stacking is an exploit or not – buried deep in an obscure thread that isn’t easily accessible even if you’re good at using the forum search feature.
However, the solution is not to request more of the band-aid fixes. If we can’t have better moderation, that doesn’t mean we should settle for having people’s fun ruined because other people can’t bother to self-moderate. For example, if PVP players start abusing ceiling stacking to such a degree that it creates widespread performance problems, the cheapest thing Funcom could do is implement yet another bit of logic to make that impossible, but the right thing to do – absent proper server moderation – would be to make that something you can toggle between PVP and PVE. I for one am properly sick and tired of PVE always paying the price for PVP abuses.