please don't undo pillar changes

[Mendoza]

2 minutes ago, DinoMinions said:

This only works for PvP and the pillar problem is primarly a PvE problem. You cant just say "You are killing metal spawns or dino spawns and now Im going to wipe you"

True True....

So really there needs to be two solutions implemented for the two styles of game play....?

[DinoMinions]

7 hours ago, Mavrick said:

Why do you need to secure land?  Do you feel people need your permission to build somewhere?

You build a beautiful base, you worked hard on it. You wake up one morning and someone has built a base right outside your front door and you can no longer so much as put a species x plant out front because you are too close to an enemy foundation. You wake up the next morning and someone has built on your right side, and you really cant tame anything else because you have no room and you can no longer expand. So you get smart, you pillar whatever you can near your base so you can plan an expansion for that shiny new giga and all its friends.

This happened to us. 

 

 

[Sh4rk]

10 minutes ago, Mavrick said:

They already have in game protection for resources.  They need to just ban griefers.  Nobody cares if they dont play, they already got the money and the eula should say 'no refund if found to be griefing'.  Ban people who grief, problem solved.

Then why can I place pillars around metal/crystal spawns? 

 

2 minutes ago, Mendoza said:

True True....

So really there needs to be two solutions implemented for the two styles of game play....?

I agree with this. But I am fine with the way the patch stands now, it helps get rid of lots of unforgotten pillar patches but the people who care about resource sites just need to visit the location from time to time to keep the protective pillars refreshed.

[Mavrick]

2 minutes ago, DinoMinions said:

You build a beautiful base, you worked hard on it. You wake up one morning and someone has built a base right outside your front door and you can no longer so much as put a species x plant out front because you are too close to an enemy foundation. You wake up the next morning and someone has built on your right side, and you really cant tame anything else because you have no room and you can no longer expand. So you get smart, you pillar whatever you can near your base so you can plan an expansion for that shiny new giga and all its friends.

This happened to us. 

 

 

Now explain why you need to secure land on the far side of the map where you don't have a base.  That's what everyone is doing.

[DinoMinions]

Just now, Mavrick said:

Now explain why you need to secure land on the far side of the map where you don't have a base.  That's what everyone is doing.

Not everyone, I certainly dont. If I have plans to build a base in another area, I pillar then start building. Not next week, not next month. But thats why I suggested earlier that make pillar refreshing time consuming. If I had to take care of my pillars every two days by hauling around wood, thatch and fiber and each pillar took 5 minutes to refresh I would be able to do that no problem around my base. Now people who have pillars all over the map just to be trolls, they wouldnt waste the energy eventually. It would interfere with their taming, chatting, base maintenance, kiting gigas to other peoples bases  too much and eventually the pillars would demolish. They would miss large chunks of them because someone got bored of refreshing them and poof, new land for the needy. 

I dont think having attached buildings is the answer because you will have a map full of 4x4 wood houses that will kill dino spawn.

[Mendoza]

51 minutes ago, DinoMinions said:

Not everyone, I certainly dont. If I have plans to build a base in another area, I pillar then start building. Not next week, not next month. But thats why I suggested earlier that make pillar refreshing time consuming. If I had to take care of my pillars every two days by hauling around wood, thatch and fiber and each pillar took 5 minutes to refresh I would be able to do that no problem around my base. Now people who have pillars all over the map just to be trolls, they wouldnt waste the energy eventually. It would interfere with their taming, chatting, base maintenance, kiting gigas to other peoples bases  too much and eventually the pillars would demolish. They would miss large chunks of them because someone got bored of refreshing them and poof, new land for the needy. 

I dont think having attached buildings is the answer because you will have a map full of 4x4 wood houses that will kill dino spawn.

 

So the pillar/foundation problem is two fold...

You got the issue of re-spawn nodes and the issue of being able to build close to other players structures...  The current mechanic is kinda trying to do both tasks with the same radius information or method... These probably need to be separated into there own solution methods...

Firstly ---- A while back someone mentioned the idea of claiming territory with some kind of placeable flag ... If the territory flag is limited to one per tribe for a Main Base with an allowance of 1 or 2 extra flags with smaller claiming area of effect for mining outposts) This kind of idea could go a long way if properly implemented...   ( The flags would not stop re-spawns, just prevent building in the area by other players )  Any building placed outside of the flag effected distance will have a demolish countdown timer that is not able to be renewed at all even if the flag is moved to the new location after the fact (This would prevent any flag renew timer exploit).

If a spammer doesn't lay down a territory flag, any structures they place will demolish regardless if they log on, pass by the area, or whatever... They would have to constantly go back to the area they previously spammed and spend more resources...

Flagged territories could be contested by other tribes with notifications to the original flag owner if no buildings are placed within the zoned area with some kind of count down timer...

Secondly ----- Halve or more the area of effect the pillar / foundations have on the environment so that less nodes are effected by them and so that players can hide their bases better in trees and rocks (rely on flags to control players placing building too close to your base NOT FOUNDATIONS)

 

Another stupid crazy solution would be to simply get rid of foundations/pillars being able to destroy re-spawns altogether -- Sure our bases would be a total mess with trees sticking out everywhere and boulders jutting out of buildings , but hey ! on the bright side, we wouldn't have to go far for resources !!!  

 

 

[Insomniak]

13 hours ago, Mavrick said:

Why do you need to secure land?  Do you feel people need your permission to build somewhere?  Wildcard's a bunch of spineless developers.  Anything they do in the future will just get complaints and then reverted.

You sir don't know what your talking about. If you can't see how this can and did temporarily break some pve servers you are either too new to the game to have an educated opinion or never have played pve to any extent and do not tell me you have because your a liar. Don't blast the Devs for fixing something that they wanted to try out that for an issue with land that isn't really a problem except with "I want my toy and don't want to ask" people like yourself. They make single player for kids like you. You should try it out I made my 8yo his own server and he loves it ..

[Mystalias]

18 hours ago, ciabattaroll said:

Owners of those pillars can remove them regardless of the time.

As for the latter body of your post, that is indeed an issue, and one that is currently the heart of the debate. While it's  undeniable that pillar spam does prevent griefers from creating a wasteland with thatch spam, it also alienates new survivors because they have to seek out a spot (which is few and  far apart) to claim as their own,  or ask  permission from someone in order to have a place where they can put down something as basic as a campfire.

Low build zones around the spawn areas and procedural generation extending the map areas will help this in my opinion. Proc gen by creating more space than can realistically be claimed and rewarding going out from the center area to find your own place. The low build/no build auras keeping certain areas from becoming wastelands.

(In my opinion, these should be pushed to the forefront. They are high mileage features that will really extend the life of the game. Even if you can't extend the map out super far with proc gen, the addition of the gateways will multiply the effect of adding it by the number of servers with it enabled. Using your hand generated map as the center area and extending proc gen out past the force field spots would probably be the most interesting to be honest  )

[Frozenhole]

Make pillars back to foundations effects this helped some but make it this way now pillars are just double stacked and some have ceilings on them tough for some but it ruins the game as it is now.

[Novarae]

The whole situation is a mess. But people are looking at the symptoms and not the cause: 

It is wholly a design and implementation flaw that Wildcard cannot resolve, seemingly.  The primary issue is limited land resources and the desire for people to play together creating this vicious cycle. 

The whole game's design revolves around Dinos, land, and resources.  All of which are finite to varying degrees. The game thus wants to encourage players to play on servers and the more popular it becomes, the less available the above mentioned resources become. In other words, this is a contradiction that gets played out in various degrees over and over again on different servers.

Essentially ARK is unsustainable and that's not going to change without drastic changes to the game and design philosophy.

And the more that Wildcard plays this tennis game back and forth with band-aids on this brain tumor of a problem, the less favorable the game is going to become.

 

[GramOfMayo]

Why not just make it so you can't place pillars or any structures anywhere near a metal spawn? I mean some good areas will be blocked off to build but whatever. spawns shouldn't be blocked by stuff anyways, therefore everyone can get metal and there's no problems.

[Mystalias]

2 hours ago, Novarae said:

The whole situation is a mess. But people are looking at the symptoms and not the cause: 

It is wholly a design and implementation flaw that Wildcard cannot resolve, seemingly.  The primary issue is limited land resources and the desire for people to play together creating this vicious cycle. 

The whole game's design revolves around Dinos, land, and resources.  All of which are finite to varying degrees. The game thus wants to encourage players to play on servers and the more popular it becomes, the less available the above mentioned resources become. In other words, this is a contradiction that gets played out in various degrees over and over again on different servers.

Essentially ARK is unsustainable and that's not going to change without drastic changes to the game and design philosophy.

And the more that Wildcard plays this tennis game back and forth with band-aids on this brain tumor of a problem, the less favorable the game is going to become.

 

Exactly this.  While in a pvp environment, the limits increase the chance of conflict, they also do so in the pve setting.  Remove the limits and people won't feel the need to block building at all the 'essential places' and around would probably just pick a small area around their home base.  All the limits proposed would fight the player's ability to move around and achieve as much as they can which goes counter to people's natural desires. I am hoping the gateway, procedural generation and other things reduce those pressures so they can stop trying these 'fixes' that seem to make everyone angry...

[NukeZX]

On ‎13‎-‎8‎-‎2016 at 9:15 PM, Mavrick said:

Please don't undo the pillar changes and give in to these whining babies.  We hate that you have to beg people to remove their pillars and that nobody can build anywhere.  We want new players to come and stay.  Our server has been, thanks to this patch, cleaning out pillars.  Also, you should run the auto-destroy lone pillars and foundations on pve also.

If they can find a way to keep  spawns intact so I have a nice plot with wood, berries and stone intact, and prevent other players from building Little Manhattan close around my base, I agree.

(And if they can code the destruction of lone pillars, not that whole bases come down because ALL pillars get deleted lol)

Seen coding mishaps happen so only if they can get that right.