Why are "Mega-Bases" still allowed on PvP servers?

[blurface00]

The biggest and most glaring imbalance that absolutely kills multiplayer is the complete lack of any limit on placeable blocks and, by extension, storage chests.

What we get in practice:

Servers turn into a landfill 3-4 days after a wipe

People build wherever and however they want. 200×200 dirt towers, walls every 5 meters, concrete labyrinths right in the middle of roads - not because it's "creative", but simply because they can. No brain required: drop a land claim, spam 50,000 blocks - boom, you're "safe."

Mega-bases from nolifers destroy performance

One or two tryhards with 3000+ hours build underground or sky monstrosities consisting of hundreds of thousands of blocks. Result: FPS drops to 15-20 even on high-end PCs, constant stuttering when approaching these "fortresses," unbearable lag during blood moons when the server tries to handle 500+ zombies + 400k blocks in one spot. Casual players are left suffering or server-hopping.

Unlimited chests = unlimited resources = complete PvP imbalance

The same nolifer who built the mega-base places 300-500 chests and vacuums the entire map clean. By week two they have 9000k iron, 9000k nitrate, 9000k wood, and over 9000 of stacks of top-tier mods.
A newcomer or someone who plays 2-3 hours a day physically cannot compete. By day 14 the gear gap is astronomical: one guy runs around in 600-quality steel with full best-in-slot mods, the other still swings a 100-quality gray machine gun and a stone axe. On PvP servers it turns into baby-seal clubbing.

In short, the lack of any block/chest limit rewards exactly those who play 12+ hours a day and are willing to tank server performance for their own convenience. Everyone else is just food.

 

[Riamus]

So talk to the server admins about it and see if they are willing to add a rule on building limit and if it is violated, remove the bases. This is something that server admins need to manage. There aren't any official servers, so it's up to how the server admins want to run their servers. If they want to allow large bases, then that's their choice. There are many servers to choose from, so if a server is not being run the way you like, you can choose another.

As far as implementing an actual in-game setting that limits it, that's not really an option. All building blocks in the game are the same. There isn't any distinction over who placed them. And if you tried to say that it just counted what's inside a land claim area, people want to build a base in POI that already exist, including larger ones that could already have more than a limit you might set. Not only that, but people can use multiple land claims to cover an area to avoid the limit, or even not use land claims at all. There just isn't any real way to limit it with how the game is designed. They'd need to start tracking who placed what blocks, which also doesn't work well since multiple people could build something to avoid such a limit. In the end, it has to be up to the server admin. If someone is causing problems, they are the ones who should be dealing with it.

As far as PVP, you might not want to hear it, but the game isn't a PVP game. It's designed as primarily a co-op PVE game. They made it possible to PVP, but it's not designed as that and not balanced for that. If you want a PVP game that is balanced to work well for PVP, there are many other games out there that are going to be much better options. If you want to play this game as PVP, you're going to be stuck with a lot of imbalance. That *may* change some around 4.0 if they decide to do some extra PVP stuff, but there's no guarantee of that and I haven't seen any TFP devs say they were going to do that.

 

[bdubyah]

Example A of why I don't bother with PVP in these types of games.

 

[Crater Creator]

There are some inaccuracies in your description, OP. There is no “600-quality steel” armor or “100-quality gray machine gun” anymore. The progression on armor is significantly flatter than it used to be. There’s primitive armor, and then there’s all the other armor types, from quality 1 to quality 6. The weapons still come in 4 progressive tiers (mostly), though again their quality is 1 through 6, with 6 requiring rare legendary parts.

Secondly, no one is getting anywhere near 500+ zombies in one spot, unless the server is completely modding out the safeguards added precisely to prevent what you’re describing. There’s a hard limit of 30 zombies in one ‘spot’ now, no matter the settings. And I think the engine is pretty good at this point about handling lots of blocks. There are always lots of blocks - tens of thousands of them under your feet all the time. Players are limited to a small set of block textures that are loaded at all times, and with more recent optimization features like occlusion, I don’t think it’s the static blocks that are causing performance issues if that’s what you’re experiencing.

Lastly, I do think there’s a built in way the game modulates people that play on a server 12+ hours a day over those that play 2-3 hours a day. The 12+ hours a day player is by necessity facing 1 or 2 Blood Moons every day, if they're going to get that many hours in. Now, is the Blood Moon necessarily deadly for a PvP player? No. Can a player come out better than they started at the end of a Blood Moon? Absolutely. But the preparations to face every Blood Moon and recover afterwards does take time and effort out of that player’s week. The more casual players, if we can call them that, who only play 2-3 hours a day can skip Blood Moons by logging out when they occur, and thus devote all of their playing time to PvP concerns instead of the big PvE Blood Moon event.

 

[blurface00]

Saying “just talk to the admin” only partly helps. Many admins don’t want to spend their free time counting chests, arguing with builders, and manually deleting bases – and they don’t have great tools to see who actually owns how many blocks in a structure. Optional server‑side settings would help them a lot: for example, a soft cap on blocks or containers per land‑claim, or an upkeep/maintenance system that makes very large builds progressively more expensive to keep active.

I do understand that 7 Days to Die is primarily a co‑op PvE game and not a dedicated PvP title. I’m not asking to turn it into Rust. But as long as the game officially supports PvP and public servers, I think it’s fair feedback to say that the current mechanics heavily favor no‑lifers with giant bases and effectively infinite storage, and the game gives server owners almost no built‑in tools to mitigate that. I’m not trying to remove anyone’s playstyle – I’m asking for configurable options so each community can decide for itself how extreme base size and resource hoarding should be.

As for Blood Moons “balancing” time‑rich players: they can also log out during hordes if they want to, and once you have a functional horde base, maintaining it takes very little effort compared to the extra farming, looting and crafting that 12‑hour‑a‑day players can do. So the time‑gap advantage is still very much there.

 

[blurface00]

Just to be clear about where I’m coming from with this thread: I’m not trying to attack other players, server owners or the devs. If I’m spending time writing long posts about block limits, storage and PvP imbalance, it’s because I actually care about 7 Days to Die and want to keep playing it for a long time.

We’re all here for the same reason: we like this game. Because of that, I think it’s more useful if we don’t look for ways to jab at each other or “gotcha” someone on every inaccuracy, but instead try to turn our experiences into feedback the devs and server admins can actually use.

Pointing out problems (like how mega‑bases and unlimited storage play out on public PvP servers) isn’t about blaming a specific group of players. It’s about doing a kind of retrospective on the current design:

what works well,​

what breaks down on real servers,​

and what optional tools or settings could make things better for more people.​

​

We can disagree on solutions, or even on how serious the issue is, but it would be great if the discussion stayed focused on “how do we improve this?” rather than “your playstyle is wrong” or “you’re playing the wrong game.”

If the community that loves the game doesn’t bring up these edge cases and pain points, nobody will. And if we do it constructively, there’s at least a chance some of it turns into future improvements.