2 years playing destroyed by cheaters

I know, sometimes it makes me just want to give up on video games all together and go back to MLCB (Major League Cup & Ball).

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Marbles are good too.

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or jacks!!!
ggg

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Iā€™m sure Abner Doubledayā€™s contemporaries thought the same thing when he invented his famous game. If he hadnā€™t been so self-assured, maybe the US would be playing lacrosse as a National Pastime instead.

The way the big developers do it is through a series of teams. The largest portion of the teams goes out and watches social media, streams, and plays on servers. They feed the information up through the channels until it gets handled or tabled. If thatā€™s all the average player wants to do for Conan Exiles every once in a while, thatā€™s a solid step forward.

Report a cheater programs have been successful because not only does it provide semantics and context but it also places data into snapshots so that at the time of exploits occur this information can be extremely useful for developers to triage from.

Ignoring the problem only creates further brand negativity and decreases player sentiment with regards to Funcom. People who are affected by these arenā€™t interested at that point in fixing an issue unless there is an element of restorative justice combined with some regression based change ā€¦ neither of these occur.

I will never buy another Funcom game again on principle or show them how 4 new exploits I found this morning (due to researching how I can mitigate a clans behaviour I have had to dig in on the subject) because why should I invest in them when itā€™s clear they donā€™t want to reciprocate.

What astound me is they have community folks volunteer to moderate this forum but apply this to servers??? Nope ā€¦ that ā€¦ alone blows my mind

These programs require robust human staffing, and advanced heuristic support. The last paying gig I had vs exploits was with a large developer whose data tracking had its own artificial intelligence. By contrast, the NPC AI in Conan Exiles was originally outsourced to and developed by an outside, specialist team.

At the big dev, I was given access to simulators that showed the virulence and strength of an outbreak. For Conan Exiles, I bought on Steam and used a game called Plague Inc: Evolved to help plan for intercepting exploits and finding individual cheaters. In other words, I used ad hoc tools to predict the infection level and attempt to stem the flow of the exploit.

And finally, on my launch server, I risked everything (#greyknight) to expose an already VAC-banned-elsewhere cheater. Caught him dead to rights busting into my house after Raid plus other things, I like to think I contributed to his second VAC ban. I lost everything on that server.

Now Iā€™m not trying to tell you this is what people should do, but it is what is done, occasionally.

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Now I thought about it a few days, and I realized a funny thingā€¦ if funcom didnā€™t put the followers limit in the game , the cheaters couldnā€™t do what they did. Because now only 90 followers lvl 20 defended there it was so much easier. Before there was 1500 tralls or more, the defense area was much bigger, all the volcano was covered by defense tralls, half snow was covered by defense tralls. It was much better protected against those cheaters bc they werenā€™t able to come close enough.

But hey we have horses nowā€¦ yoehoe!

Believe me I hear you, in the week preceding the mounts patch we had some cheaters attack the server using every known glitch. Some of them were fixed in the patch, but had it not been for the sheer amount of thralls/pets we sacrificed we would have been destroyed.

Mind you now theyā€™ve made me hate the leveling more than the cap, so while Iā€™m holding out hope for another 50 thralls to be added I donā€™t think I could take another 100.

On a hunch, I think it might be because some gamers might not consider it a valuable contribution to discussion when a player comes to the forums to spam as many threads as he can with ā€œthis is why I already quit earlierā€.

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Join official server 3552 on PlayStation 4 itā€™s non toxic and alpha wipes cheaters

Few points:

  • Given Funcom outsource their hosting to gportal we can ultimately assume they donā€™t even have access to each servers data let alone ā€œlogsā€ in a fashion that would provide such evidence to them.
  • Given Funcom outsource their hosting its also fair assertion to make that they didnā€™t think this entirely through as a long term strategy for player sentiment building and ongoing support. Iā€™d argue that by doing this its more corrosive to their brand vs supportive.
  • Asking players in general to self-select and self-solve issues around cheating, exploits etc is why threads like this are in place. People choose to play games for a source of dopamine, not to become DevOps / IT Pros on how to combat cheaters at the coal face of network and hosting providers.
  • Everytime Funcom bans a cheater by way of VAC ban, that cheater is then required to buy a new license, meaning for every cheater who decides to keep coming back a cash register sound plays somewhere at Funcom. In truth, a cluster of cheaters could potentially justify a full time to casual staff member who does nothing all day but smash down on the ban button once overwhelming evidence is provided to said employee - which most on this forum seem ok to state.
  • For Funcom to come out and say they basically arenā€™t interested in holding exploiters accountable in the way they did, simply gave all hope on existing official servers no salvation but moreover just reinforced the folks exploiting to go deeper and harder without any recourse.

At some pointā€¦ what was the plan hereā€¦ official servers ā€¦ as weā€™re just not seeing it. There was a reasonable expectation placed upon the user to invest in the game experience and servers like this, for it to then be yanked away due to excuses like exploits are higher priority or they have too many servers, is where the cracks emerge. 80-90% of the servers they host are empty. Let that thought sink in.

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First, itā€™s generally a bad footing to start off assuming. Second, why would you think that someone rents a server from someone else, yet canā€™t get access to crucial logs and information? When you rent from g-portal or anywhere else in my experience, you get their fluffy html page for easy management and controls. You still get full FTP, and if not RCON, a semblance of RCON access. In other words, with FTP, youā€™d be able to access the entire directory tree.

Their original hosting provider did very poorly, not only during fugues of new members like big add-ons to the game, but during regular times when youā€™d expect stability and less nonsense. G-portal has done a remarkable job by comparison.

Imagine you were offering a free playing field during Early Access, and you vetted two top providers, one clearly with a price advantage. The clear price winner being the choice, you slowly recognize their assets arenā€™t enough to handle this game, and their virtual boxes are spreading the resources too thin. What do you do? Youā€™re faced with a big price leap either way you slice it. Youā€™ve committed to so many servers. This was the conundrum that I observed with my own eyeballs and playing experience.

G-portal is now our host, and if you look on the Steam Server list, you can easily find out how many Conan Exiles servers are attached to each IP address. If we wanted to attack the resource issue, it could be done by closing two of the servers per IP, so that fewer CEs are playing per server or virtual server. This would also reduce the number of empty servers out there, which I think is a big black eye for this game.

Some players are much more immersed in the experience. Some players dig deeply into the rhythms of the game because visual defects cause them issues with their eyes or headaches. No one asked me to do what I do in particular. I donā€™t like cheaters.

Thatā€™s not how it works. Research and tracking tasked to one staffer would be immense, and whether itā€™s one person or many, those costs eat into the new game sales profits. Most VAC recipients have alt accounts, and even if they didnā€™t, theyā€™d make new ones and buy the game under that name. What we want is a pattern of offenses from an IP address: multiple VAC bans can be used in abuse cases vs Internet providers. The right sorts of actions and pressures can lead to the offenderā€™s internet access being blocked, and if his offenses are great enough, generate affidavits and subpoenas for forwarding to local prosecution.

This begins with eyeballs. A new player starts and heā€™s already got a VAC? You better believe that should be reported.

The statement from Ignasis said, and Iā€™m paraphrasing, ā€œthis is the stance we prefer to take.ā€ That doesnā€™t mean they wonā€™t exceed those actions, or diminish them in the future. I saw no absolutes, and no abandonment.

The plan was for us to continue playing this game together for as long as possible. Theyā€™ve exceeded that commitment by now. If they were to consolidate, cull and retask some servers to coincide with a Free Steam Month, Iā€™m sure weā€™d have a solid influx. The trick is getting our old friends to play the game again, because I think theyā€™ll dig how itā€™s turning out.

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Nothing about the relationship with this provider thus far would suggest they ingest the data into their own systems. Tell me iā€™m wrong, its the one case iā€™d welcome being wrong. Sure there is nothing but possibilities here between RCON, REST or simple Cloud based heuristics processing 24/7ā€¦ butā€¦ you going to say they are doing it or they could have been doing itā€¦ ?

GPortal fan waving aside, its not about GPortal or their integrity, its about why outsource and what benefits does it tigh back to the community and product. Offloading the work to a cloud provider / reseller is great, but when its co-branded as part of the product and its value is attached to said product beyond hosting whats the value proposition here? ā€¦ ā€œWe can stand up a server 24/7 no issues including DDOS attack preventionā€ ā€¦ if the target audience is other game studios or folks who want to buy services such as this - operation successā€¦ to the budding gamer who wants to build giant castles and make their enemies foundations explode to jars of boom boomsā€¦ zero cares?

Moreover, if you have nothing but vertical and horizontal scale due to the partnership that would indicate you want volume of users to support and nurture. Yet here we are on yet another forum post talking about how cheaters etc have kicked over another persons sand castle for socially broken reasons.

Well folks like yourself advocate for the status quo - when an official server gets plagued with negative effects such as cheating etc, move to private or go solo. I feel that as an answer is just broken and filled with so much acceptance of mediocrity that to then see Funcom pivot and shift away from owning such responsibility is honestly the greatest punkd trope todate in gaming. It in turn flips the tables to becoming victim blaming and less people who have the actual power taking responsibility.

We make this out like Funcom are the first to break ground on online cheating. There are plethora of strategies that can be applied here, and the fatigue rates of game / steam evasions arenā€™t necessarily unfix-able. Like i stated, sure a person can re-open a new account as-is but not even using the VAC Ban system to begin with is the idiocy of the strategy so far, then to enable family sharing without limits imposed - well thats just a self-fulling prophecy right there. The more the cheaters spend on being jerks, the more Funcom gets funding to beat them.

They are quite aggressive in fixing known exploits so theyā€™ve tipped their hand at being able to adjust to the dynamics of what cheaters do.

No offense, but thatā€™s his remarks to qualify and having others do it is completely subjective bias depending on how they want to harden or soften such statements. The facts are though that these forums are filled with folks frustrated at the lack of attention given to hackers/cheaters doing their deeds on live official servers with little or no response from entities such as Funcom. If they have the logs/data etc as mentioned earlier and/or they have a stronger preference to removing exploiters from such servers then this behaviour would highly likely be demonstrated more actively on forum threads like this.

They arenā€™t. Soā€¦ What are you advocating hereā€¦ ā€œTake a leap of faith, hope they come through?ā€

Was that commitment a temporary measure one thatā€™s been shelved. If its shelved then is the game in EOL phase?.. if it is, fine, lets have that discussion then. To leave the game in a limbo position of ā€œwhat, you want me to still support the dream i once hadā€¦not fairā€ ā€¦is a hard position for us all to accept.

Either you support your user base or you donā€™t, there is no other way to advocate here other than invest in the users and they will invest back. If they want exploits to be given to them in order to fix, fine, but what do we get in return? ā€¦ as fixing the exploits after a wave of users have left the game isnt the solution.

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Forget itā€¦ Its not worth. Enough have already reached this point (majority of the chosen of Asura), that even with all the exploits and bugs and harassing, the offical servers are in a GREAT state and as the officials are free things, you dont have to use themā€¦ Go offline or private!! :smiley:

Imagine EA said sth like that in FIFAā€¦ Well, yeah, the official servers are plagued with cheaters. We dont careā€¦ Play private, if you dont want cheaters.
Or Rockstar in GTA or RDR2 :smiley: :smiley:

Because thats what they are basically saying and you cannot convince them. So its not worth the hassleā€¦ Play the game until the day comes, where your official server is attacked by griefers and/or cheaters and then quit like everyone else did, because the Devs dont care. The Chosen dont care and enough Fans also dont care.
FC should rename the game from: ā€œConan Exilesā€, to ā€œConan dont careā€

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I didnā€™t say ingest the data. You assumed they have no access to the data. I asked why on earth youā€™d assume such a thing. Now itā€™s obvious you donā€™t know the servers, the system or the provider. Check.

Iā€™m not privy to Funcomā€™s internal dealings, nor am I a particular fan of g-portal. In fact, I was one of their most vocal critics after the deployment of Frozen North: Funcom had crafted an amazing experience, and g-portal had let us all down. This is a fact.

Somewhere down the line, g-portal stepped up their service, and commitment to service. At the same time, Funcom continued to meet its commitment to players by keeping servers, however dead, at least available. I believe this is where the co-branding came in, and if I were to guess, it comes down to at least one stick of memory per Conan Exiles server.

Iā€™ve never said this, nor would I. I play on official (usually PvP) servers, so I have a lot to lose when thereā€™s a cheat or exploit. Youā€™re generalizing me, and I will resist this. Stereotyping/bigotry. Check.

Yet you can mischaracterize him yourself? Unfair debater. Check.

If you run into a problem, find someone who can help. There are quite a few of us who would use personal time to investigate, and help this be moved up the chain. Privacy is key, though. No one needs to be embarrassed publicly simply because they are very good at the game and are thus branded a cheater.

I donā€™t really understand this. My point is, the rest is up to us, the players. If we can return in enough numbers, both good and bad will inevitably spring up. Having a playerbase thatā€™s capable of handling a threat is much like how one might muster a militia.

Interpersonally, to resolve my ā€œchecksā€ above: Look you obviously have a point youā€™re trying to make, so please just come out with it. Enough of the less-than-honest debating. Iā€™m not going to lower myself to it, nor should anybody else.

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True, I am an advocate of private servers, and the excellent hosting tools weā€™ve been provided. That doesnā€™t mean that I think anybody should ever retreat from threats, but you know what? Iā€™ve done it. Once upon a time I was harassed by a VAC-banned server troll, and had to switch servers several times. Thatā€™s part of server life.

As I said above, this is not my position. If you somehow believe that, you clearly do not know that I play official PvP.

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For consoles, due to Sony and MS rules, we get no access outside of a black list and 3 settings pages. No .db or anyother thing that would benefit a admin owner.

Thank you for the reminder that the PS4 user interface is different, and that the raw files are still inaccessible by server renters. Despite there being a wall between us and the PS4 hosted server solution, I am certain those files still exist and can be obtained by an admin on the other side. :slight_smile:

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Nothing demonstrated thus far by Funcom would indicate they have telemetry or heuristics to support and approach the issue with maturity and attention they deserve. Everytime iā€™ve logged exploiters to said staff they seem baffled as to what/where/who and require a lot of effort by the reporter of said exploit to action. To give an example, on PvP 1974 server we had a exploiter actually log out under the mesh (below normal ground level) for several days. If said XYZ position is being logged - and it is, due to the nature or waking up etc - then the very position of the said player would immediately give them away on specifically ā€œwhy are you below ground level?ā€ ā€¦ this specific person still remains on the server and as i type, is still exploiting other players.

If they do have this data, then its either unstructured dark data (useless) or they are ignoring it or arenā€™t actively using it.

Take your pick, but the assertion is validated based on that alone let alone other more specific reasoning. You advocate they have it, but outwardly there is no demonstration of that power.

Youā€™ve implied the status quo is good enough and look elsewhere if its not on several forums. What is your position? you seem to pivot a lot when pressed, do you advocate its good enough and cheating exploiters is just unfixable or are you saying you want it fixed and wish Funcom were held accountable. Where is it exactly do you stand and why since you feel cornered right now.

You opened that door by speaking on their behalf. You continue to do so as well, if youā€™re not Funcom then we agree both are just speculation, neither right or wrong given we arenā€™t Funcom. I prefer to let the company speak not its advocates with special titles.

So youā€™re saying ignasis isnā€™t capable here? as thats where I last left my exploit reports.I have given him a plethora of specific data points to act on. Yet our PVP server remains consistently open to the same exploiters over and over - who often brag in chat about how easy it would be to ban evade and how easy it is to cheat given Funcom donā€™t care.

We have roughly 100-200 active players in Australia of Conan, our community is now so fragmented that its rare you get above 20+ on any given server at any given time. Last week on 1974 weā€™d hit 40 max during raid times, but given weā€™ve busted the cheaters over and over, this has now driven players away and/or moved to private servers - further splintering the audience.

whoā€™s high on the chain? and howā€™s that data access they haveā€¦ i would imagine player dropouts on servers would be a concerning issue would it not?

Its simple and i think iā€™m clear on this point - but to be more specific.

Youā€™re not funcom, so stop advocating for them. Let them speak, and donā€™t confuse your position.

Funcom would appear to be putting this product in EOL, as beyond fixes and patches, Iā€™m not seeing any strong outward movement on re-positioning and/or increasing growth of the product. I feel the cheating/exploit abandonment is a strong symptom that this product has played itself out. If that is the case fine, we can accept that and as a result then we probably as a community need to come up with a new strategy to prolong the life of the product - such as what the GTA community did with FiveM etc.

Itā€™d be nice to get a straight answer from them though less Teflon positioning statements like ā€œwe prefer to focus on exploits not exploitersā€ for example which from a product positioning simply says ā€œcheat approvedā€.

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