Well to give some positive feedback when we can do.
there is in fact a big positive change for pvp in this update.
I hope this is intentional and not just simply a bug, but now a team mate receive same damage from a blow of you than from an enemy. which mean it will give a more balanced gameplay when you are outnumbered (ie 3 vs 1) and will mean that for large clan fight it will no more be a matter to spam left click but that you will need to analysis the fight situation and position well before hitting (so will be more based on skills than it was, well skill and lag situation)
Sadly there is no more lot of population on pvp server due to all previous change ;( and the actual thrall living system for pvp server is… well not a good idea
If you look at server configuration when you are ingame you could see that damage to clanmates is set on 0.2 right now, so full damage seems like a glitch.
To increase the population of the official servers, what is needed is not more changes (which are also changes oriented towards the solitary/pve player) but rather to end or at least somewhat reduce the number of cheaters, because currently there are too many people with cheats who do not even kill you from a distance or have a speedhak, the thing is that now they can directly empty your base without having to enter inside, when it is not raid time.
if so it means it was probably not intentional and so will be pissed off, but not really a surpise if no intentional…
Honestly there is cheaters using massively third party programs since 2020, and population of servers has started to really fall down not to cheaters, but when in addition there was bug glitch that created havroc on all servers with lighting storm at release of age of sorcery (that was also breaking the balance of raiding system) , and at next update with infinite bombing with fibers (and the speedy crafting of bombs and placement from far away), and final blow was done by the change of stamina and change that make useless some weapons.
you will notice in doing some search on forum that lot of pvp players have expressed those last 2 years that the good time of conan for pvp was before the age of. and when the qlock was not a thing.
most official servers are mainly populated by little clan / solo players. and to have a pvp gameplay that is more based on skills than to easy ■■■■■■■■ at 5vs1 is seen as welcome (which is only of course a personal opinion) and giving a more balanced pvp game based on skill, and not gang bang with qlock feature
large clan pvp fight are mostly seen on private servers, but are very rare on officials
but yes for sure cheaters have an impact, but there will never be a solution to that problem,as cheating software are always updated as soon as blocked, only answer to that is to give quick support to players to suspend/ban cheaters (which is what fc try to do, and is one of the very few of game company that try to do it, i mean talk to red dead players to compare), but that will never be in real time.
as i said it several time sharing my experience, recording all cheaters that i have encoutered(and i have encoutered a lot as i play on no ping server that are worst for that) or searching their bug base to record video and present clear evidence i had a 100% success to make them ban, even if sometime it has took lot of time. i will not express the same feedback concerning the general admin work on pvp server, where i saw often no understandable suspension or ban for land claim that were not a problem or some others stuffs. but when you take the time to record evidence for a hacking case you can be sure to have fc doing something.
The problem with cheaters in Conan is not that cheats exist, nor that cheaters are banned or not, the problem is that they are not banned by hardware + the number of cheap accounts that circulate on the internet (around 20 cents each). So cheaters are not afraid of losing the account, they do not play with it, they do not have recipes or bases or thralls behind them and they play using cheats openly.
yup you are right on that, in asia accounts cost nothing, but still they have to take a little bit time to level up (yeah that no really a problem i know).
but yeah totaly agree that hackers (people using third party program) shoud be banned by hardware, and to share experience, i have saw zendesk also only giving a suspension and not a ban to people using third party program (well it depends of the skill and understanding of the game and of the hack existing of the one behind zendesk)