A job I would do

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
,
1

Greetings,

I am writing this post to make a suggestion for a potential job that I would do if it existed at Funcom.

I am a homemaker in North America, with lots of free time. I no longer play on official servers, mainly on my own private server and occasionally single-player. If it were possible, I would be able to work from home live moderating official PvE servers in the North American region. I think a job like this would work best on a salary rather than an hourly wage.

I would do it if there was a Remote Official Server Live Moderation position at Funcom. Here is how I imagine it would go.

I would have a list of all the PVE servers in the North American region, and systematically go down the list. I could log into as many official servers as possible in a Mon-Fri work week. If I could be undetectable by the players that would be ideal, as I could fly around the map on each server checking for TOS violations. Upon seeing a clear violation, I can implement admin actions accordingly and upon the next server reset, my changes would take effect.

If by Friday, I had for example- 4 servers that I could not get to, then on Monday those 4 servers would be my first visit before starting all over down the list of servers, ensuring that all the PvE servers in NA are being checked.

If the requirement for this job would be that I could never play on an official server again while holding this job, then I would be completely fine with that. I would not care if my characters on officials were even deleted to ensure that I had no connections or potential bias. I do not ever see myself returning to official servers again anyway, so I have no attachment to them and therefore can be removed from any potential conflict of interest.

I think this would severely cut down on the player’s frustrations about having their reports go unresolved, as they would not have to file nearly as many reports if they knew that a live mod would be visiting their server to inspect it personally. It would also cut down on the number of Zendesk tickets hitting the report center team.

I am ready to be flamed for my suggestion now. Take care, exiles.

3 Likes
2

Why only PVE?

3

I’m retired, would do it on the public server I’m on for free

4

That’s what I personally know best, and there are a lot of servers. If it were possible for one person, I might be able to add PVE-C to that list. I do not have knowledge of PvP and would be not suited for that role.

1 Like
5

Biased. Job application denied.

1 Like
6

That’s what I’m trying to figure out…what makes PVP different in terms of ToS? It’s literally the same game and the same basic rules with the only change is available interactions with other players.

Maybe this goes back to this whole PVP vs PVE and everyone believing there is a difference and if so I don’t want to derail this thread over the taste great/less filling arguments but a breach in the ToS is a breach in the ToS regardless of server type. Sure I have more options in a PVP server but no. Why should my time in playing the game be regulated to removing, brick by brick, someone’s BS tribute to their boredom if it’s illegal?

7

I’m not trying to favor certain servers over others, Erjoh. I think a position for PvP servers could just as easily be opened and someone who is familiar with finding sky bases and mesh bases and can recognize normal pvp building defense tactics vs abnormal would be a better person to handle those servers. I think PvP-ers also might agree that a PvE-er who does not know how to find hacks and exploits on PvP should not be moderating pvp servers. Would you agree with me on that?

8

Because if some one’s build hacks me off I can blow it up. Or at least that is what the PVPers are saying.

9

I forgot to add- There are many official servers, and my original thought process was to have a reasonable amount of servers to effectively patrol each week. If I were responsible for too many servers, there is a likelihood that my work would be poor. Some servers might not be inspected for a long time until I could cycle back around my long list.

This could mean that by the time I get to a server, the amount of Admin action time spent on that server is taking time away from my next server inspection. Ideally, I would like to keep a healthy rotation of servers that each get checked at least once a week so that I may keep up on problems as they arise, rather than let them stack up which the current system has as a problem.

10

Ah yes. These are unique issues to PVP. Not hard to find as admin but still there is a knowledge you need to help your searching.

11

I hope you see my point of view on that. If I can focus on what I know, I could jump in and be effective immediately. Taking on PvP servers would require me to take time to train myself on what to look for, when it would make better sense to have someone who has played pvp and knows what to look for handle those servers.

12

Knowing when the build is “purely decorative” relies on understanding what function it could have. For example, until recently, I didn’t know what a “war pyramid” was. Had I been an official server moderator, I would’ve applied unnecessary administrative action upon investigating one.

1 Like
13

? War pyramid is a building with no true purpose…at least from my POV because it’s cheese building to escape combat. These structures need to die from servers because it encourages weakness, cowardice, and overall sloppy combat. The fact that so many PvPers are now dependent on them when they weren’t 2 years ago is telling on how damaging it is to the play.

14

And therein lies half of the problem with this idea in general, not only when it comes to PVP. My POV, your POV, @Tystin’s POV – who’s to say whose POV is the right one? And I’m not just talking about the fact that you’re injecting your own personal bias about “weakness, cowardice, and overall sloppy combat”, which has nothing to do with the actual server rules. No, I’m talking about the interpretation of the rules themselves.

If a war pyramid is built and used as a staging area, rather than just to “escape combat”, is it still “purely decorative”? Why shouldn’t players be allowed to build it and use it in their campaign against another group of players?

Which leads me to the second half of the problem with this idea. Imagine, for a moment, that we agreed that a building used as a legitimate staging area should be allowed to stand. How do you actually check whether it’s a legitimate staging area? Yeah, I guess you could trawl through the logs, or hang around during raid hours and observe for a while. There are ways to do proper investigation, but it’s hard.

Sure, if you have the proper tools and/or know the proper techniques, it might be easy to find sky bases or undermeshers. But there’s much more to server administration than that. Even on PVE, it’s not going to be as easy as people imagine.

For example, let’s say I built my base right on the edge of someone else’s claim and then reported them for claim abuse, saying that they built their stuff to grief me and stop me from building my own. It’s not as simple as flying up to that point, looking around, and going “hm, it all checks out, let’s wipe and ban the culprit”. It’s not an insurmountable task to investigate that, but it’s not trivial like people make it out to be.

And let’s not even go into accusations of hacking and exploits and whatnot. There’s a reason why those reports are slow to resolve.

So yeah, enforcing the rules relies on your interpretation of them, and it’s also freaking hard. We’ve already seen complaints and rumors about players who “know one of the admins” and abuse that power. Imagine if Funcom handed this power to another player. It wouldn’t matter if @Tystin played on official servers or not. All that other players would see is a player, like them, but with power they don’t have. Which, naturally, would lead to ceaseless accusations of abuse of power, where “abuse” means “anything I don’t agree with”.

Sorry, @Tystin, this isn’t the first time someone proposed the same idea. It’s not gonna work, for the same reasons as ever.

EDIT: Tried to make a clumsily phrased point clearer.

1 Like
15

I mentioned this in my body post

I appreciate the contribution just the same.

16

I know. It wouldn’t change much. Instead of accusations of abuse based on what the players actually saw, there would be accusations of abuse based on what the players suspect and surmise. Just like now, with actual Funcom admins, but worse, because you’re a player they know on the forums :wink:

The only difference between your proposal and previous ones is that you’re proposing to be under contract with Funcom, whereas the others offered to be unpaid volunteers.

Oh, and please don’t take this as an attack on your integrity or anything like that. All I’m trying to point out is that if Funcom can’t sort their own shіt out, having help from a player isn’t going to work.

17

Fair. If I were required to delete my Forum account prior to beginning work, I would do that too. If I need to be as far removed as possible from bias, I am okay with that.

I’d like to talk with more on this, but I think I understand your position enough to not go into it further for both our sakes.

No offense taken!

1 Like
18

Greetings @Tystin,

We appreciate your interest in becoming part of the team. Currently, there are no open positions, but keep an eye on our website for new openings. :smiley:

Best of luck!

4 Likes
19

I am, and it’s me :wink:

And offer up the nvideo game video capture of them hastily dismantling their hut to run around and get in front of the direction you are obviously building in, then moving the foundation to as close as the can to drop it?

Wouldn’t there be some sort of foundation time stamp? If there isn’t, why not?

But is it really? If some ones build looks like they looked at the example of how not to build, and decided “hey I want to build that”.
Or lets say a rule is pretty specific, yet still ignored by the admin?

True.

nother thread we’d like to see some presence in.

20

The closest thing I can find in the database is the ContributionData blob in the properties table, which seems to have a serialized property called lastInteractionTime inside it. I could probably deserialize the blob and see whether this would serve the purpose. If not, then you’re probably down to looking at logs, if logs even contain that info.

But that’s part of my point: to be able to investigate that stuff, you need proper tools. It’s not something you can see with an in-game UI.

Sorry, I phrased that poorly. I wasn’t saying that interpreting the rules is freaking hard (although it probably is in some cases), but rather that enforcing the rules is freaking hard. I should go edit that to make it clearer.