Affront to the Gods

[Smilexile]

Disclaimereedoo -This Suggestion is intended for Official servers. Even if it’s implemented, it would be a feature that could be toggled off on Private Servers… because it’s really not necessary for a well managed Private Server. The focus here is to create a system that circumvents the need for frequent Mod intervention to prevent gameplay that violates the TOS. As a side benefit, anything that clears out excess structures will lighten the server load as well.

This is a God-aligned list of intended, but easily abused behaviors as well as unintended behaviors that exist in Conan Exiles. Rather than relying on hard bans, hard limits, or more strict implementation of existing game elements… this system seeks to implement a mysterious system of Soft Limits governed by the existing Deities in Game, to punish players who wield undue (and often against the game’s intended design) influence recklessly. The Goal is to slowly influence people to play the game as it was intended such that when new players enter an Official server they will be impressed with what they see, rather than disappointed.

Each God will have areas they focus on, but all highly effective (not counting flat out cheating) gameplay behaviors will provoke their wrath on some level. Players can appease the Gods with worship, but if their boldness outpaces their piety, they will suffer an automagic call down of that God’s Avatar/Wrath.

Crom- He is the God that requires no worship. In fact, it’s impossible to appease him. He do not care. This also means that Crom is an unavoidable consequence for players who are breaking the unspoken rules. However, there are a few things that set Crom apart from other Gods. First off, Crom’s followers only “worship” him. They don’t waste time with other religions, because if they do, they are no longer Crom’s Faithful. This means it should be relatively unlikely to target his followers and incur his wrath this way. Crom is also deeply stoic and generally uninterested in the affairs of mortals. Only the most bold tyrants will provoke his wrath. Finally, Crom has no Avatar call down… he can’t be bothered to show up. He’ll just hit offenders with a Meteor Shower. Anyone who is nearby can harvest the remains once the danger is passed. Crom randomly picks targets from a territory when he strikes.

Derketo - Fertility, Lust, and Death. Derketo despises players who block resource spawns. If you block enough of these, you will activate a constant trickle of ire from her much earlier than other Gods. Her Vengeful Avatar will target buildings that are blocking the most Resource Spawns first.

Jhebbal Sag - Animals, Nature, Savagery. Jhebbal Sag despises players who block animal and boss spawns. He has a lower tolerance for this than other Gods and will target structures that block Boss Spawns, then Animal Spawns as his priority stack.

Mitra - Right and Justice. Mitra has a low tolerance for players who engage in exploitive combat. If you’ve got lag problems and are teleporting all over the map while attacking other players, you will invoke Mitra’s wrath before other Gods. Mitra will target the offending player or clan’s Highest Density structures (as a priority to eliminate Server Lag).

Set - Serpents and Sacrifice. Set is jealous of players that overbuild… If an especially large building is created but doesn’t incorporate his temple, it will generate his unholy ire earlier than other Gods. Set will strategically target the Temples of Gods he isn’t allied with, Mitra topping the list. He won’t purposefully target his own or Derketo’s Temples, but if he is provoke and has no favored target, he will hit your biggest structures, regardless of allied Temples.

Ymir - Snow, Storms, and War. Ymir is provoked by people who claim absurd swaths of territory more quickly than other Gods. Some might just say he’s looking for an excuse to go to war. He will attack where the most resources are stored as a priority, because he really was just looking for an excuse to raid.

Yog - Cannibals. Yog can’t tolerate people who block Human NPC spawns… you’re messing with his food supply! He also is watchful of people who maintain excessive entourages of Thralls and Pets. He will target structures that are blocking spawns of Human NPCs first when he’s provoked enough. If the offender isn’t blocking NPC Spawns, he’s going to target the densest area of the offenders thralls and grab a bite, so to speak.

Zath - Purity and Service. Blocking off Obelisks really ticks this God off… after all, it abhors Corruption. Also killing too many players within a certain radius of Obelisks frequently will also provoke Zath. Perfectly good sacrafices being ruined by Corruption! Building structures around such Corruptive places displays an embrace of Corruption that Zath will not tolerate. Zath will prioritize targeting Structures closest to an Obelisk within a certain radius of Obelisks. (This may include other things similar to Obelisks which exist in the game.)

All undesirable behaviors or cheesy exploits will slowly provoke each God ultimately… but each God has different thresholds and focuses in their domain. Other than Crom, all the Gods would have slow decay on their Wrath and the ability to Appease them through worship. However, most things that cause you to provoke them aren’t one time increases to their displeasure. Many of these behaviors will start trickling build up, which gets faster the more you repeat the behaviors. You could anger a God, provoke an automagic Call down, but if the conditions that provoked them aren’t changed, another call down will soon be on it’s way. If a God that is targeting an offender doesn’t have access to a priority target, they will target the largest/most dense structures.
There are other gameplay behaviors which can offend the Gods as well. Most of these would probably be intentional behaviors that the community needs to have limits on. For instance, they never added the ability to capture and imprison other players… This can be put in, if by capturing a player, you offend any Gods they are faithful to and risk provoking their wrath. (Multi-worship could result in slower generation of ire for each God… or they could balance that out in different way) Another consideration for something that might provoke the Gods- Use of Maprooms or the future Waystone Feature. This would be a one time cost each time… this way players who have very little time each week to play can use these shortcuts to speed travel up… but highly active players have to balance their use of fast travel (Or other magical) features more cautiously. Jealousy of Magic might be a Server/Game Setting that can be toggled specifically too, since players will have different feelings about Fast Travel. Having this setting activated would represent a more hardcore stance, for instance… at least for players who clock a huge amount of time into live official servers each week.

[RavenSworn]

So basically purges, but with Gods. Cool idea. Don’t know about the implementation but cool idea.

How about just adding Godly Wrath to the list of things that increases your purge meter and needing specific items to reduce it at the temple? The purge was created to limit the players but apparently it has become a place to tame thralls instead. So having an avatar come through and wreck face a place would seem… interesting. Basically giving your own temple God a reason to fight it out with this incoming Avatar.

[Smilexile]

Purges are unavoidable. This system can be completely avoided if you play the game reasonably and don’t engage in cheesy tactics or unfair advantages on Official servers.

I suspect less than half the players would ever get targeted by this unless they were intentionally testing it out… Not counting the possibility of this being used to balance difficult or easily abused game features… and not just exploits, overbuilding, and aggressive landclaim.

I would also hope the system’s Avatar Call Downs keep their aggro strictly focused on their targets… not be able to pull them away and dump them on a rival like players can do with Purge Thralls. This would (hopefully) cut out people provoking the gods to trick them into attacking foes. Damage could also be locked so only the chosen player/clan can be damaged by this sort of Avatar call down.

[Sloegin]

Not going to happen. They don’t have the resources to properly police their own servers much less have live customer support so how do you think they’ll have the ability to create such an algorithm? Clearly battle eye doesn’t work?

[Smilexile]

@Sloegin

The Algorithm I’m talking about is merely based off of data they can already track. Technically, the larger part of the algorithm already exists as part of the game. Typically what they do with that tracked data (Or have been planning on doing…) is putting in place HARD limits on the players. The new Thrall Limits are an example of that.

Battle Eye is for stopping CHEATING, which typically involves external mods. As to how well Battle Eye works… I don’t see nearly as many people complaining about people hacking the game as I see complaints about people abusing exploits. That, by itself, is actually fairly unusual in a forum.

This system is to curb (not stop) exploitation. It’s precisely because of this change in stance that it will actually free up the Mods from the current pressure of having to intervene when people exploit the game’s loopholes.

Consider this: they know how many Thralls a Player or Clan has and impose limits based on the size of the group in question. The limits they are about to enact are hard limits, which will cull the existing (LARGE) stacks of thralls that players have in game. This won’t affect everyone, because not everyone obsessively collects thralls (and pets). However, if the limit was a soft limit… then different playstyles can emerge. Under my system, a player (or clan) could accrue and maintain a larger number of thralls than the hard limits allow for, but they would have to factor in Yog’s reaction… they could appease him with more worship, or face the possibility that he will appear and try to eat the player’s followers. The time he spends appeasing Yog also puts him in a corner on other exploitive behaviors: Other Gods aren’t totally blind to his large number of thralls. He can appease those Gods too, but if he starts expanding his territory unreasonably or stack building his fort with an obscene amount of fences and walls he could easily provoke Yog or one of the other gods to attack him anyway by outpacing his rate of appeasement.

Anyway, this isn’t a Live Customer Support Option. It’s a game feature which allows players to rely less on customer service to deal with sets of behaviors that are considered by the majority of people to be in “the grey area” despite being specifically outlined in the TOS.

[Vahlok]

I like this idea.
Leviathan approves.

[Crompox]

Hrm, having a ‘God-purge’ in general is kinda cool actually.
Provided that it works properly of course (unlike the current purge we have now)

Not sure I like the prospect of being penalised for just building or having thralls though.

I understand you are looking to prevent ‘abuses’ as such, but I find it hard to see this working , personally I think the only real way to prevent people from spam-building or griefing is to just moderate the servers.

I’d rather have less, but responsibly moderated servers , than loads of empty ones just left so people can do whatever they want.

[Smilexile]

Moderating servers is simply punishing people with bans for violating rules that most players are WHOLLY unclear on.

<This suggestion isn’t about punishing people who build or have thralls.
<This suggestion isn’t even for punishing people who build large or have many thralls.
<This suggestion is for people who push the upper limits of these features… and from what I understand, it’s really just a select few and trolls. That’s why it’s a soft limit and it gives people flexibility to modify their playstyle/expectations in a variety of ways.

With Mods you need to rely on people’s trust in the system to report and document the issue, rather than just leave and post angry on the forums.

With This system you get more options and none of them require you to rely on outside interference.
0.) This won’t affect most people’s experience, because the problem behaviors only happen after people hit level 60 and start grinding and putting in deep roots. Some people test the limits out of boredom or spite. Some are just unaware they have crossed a line.
1.) You can spend more time interacting with ALL the Temples to offset any Gods you might be offending with your chosen methods of gameplay.
2.) You can choose what is important to your game experience and eliminate certain strategies that aren’t as effective with the consequences of Gods targeting you… while keeping the ones you need most by appeasing the God who governs it.
3.) Any one who goes beyond what even a reasonable hardcore player would do will be unable to keep appeasement up because it will ultimately get other gods involved too.
4.) Players who aren’t testing the limits can sit back and watch the fireworks. Even players who ARE testing the limits will be fascinated playing with them and having it go off in their faces as the right balance for how aggressive each God defends their domain is… and how aggressive the Gods need to be when defending OTHER domains on the EXTREME end of trollish behaviors.

I think FunCom has made it clear they won’t increase moderation on Official Servers. As far as they are concerned with rule enforcement, anyone who wants more MOD intervention can get it at a private server.

However, their recent Thrall Update makes it clear that not only are they listening to players, they AGREE That the number of thralls was too much. Their reasoning is different from what most Forum Posters feel the issues are and more focused on appeasing console users. Keep in mind, this new rule is a HARD LIMIT… it’s been promised for years, so people who were paying attention knew it was coming… but it’s still deeply unpopular.

On the current path, more hard limits are coming to Officials. I think this actually could kill them, because ultimately, FunCom will point back to Private Servers… and reasonably so when people treat “Moderators” as the solutions to bad behavior.

I want to suggest an alternative path for many issues that plague the game. I want to point out opportunities that are created by those weaknesses to create a deeper experience as well.

[GodlyVoice]

I had a good laugh reading this.
As long as players also receive a message on the screen: “blocking resources has invoked the wrath of the gods”. The game is confusing enough for new players and this system would add to that if not implemented properly.

[RavenSworn]

It’s actually easy enough. You already have zones where you aren’t able to build. Just need to have a border zone that will indicate that whenever a building is made in that area, you’ve essentially ‘invoke’ the wrath of a God.

The purge meter then gets triggered and added, at a rate that’s faster than usual. Hence, it’s great for endgame players to test the limits and make it easier to manage the meters. You can use the trap to reduce the purge meter but consistently trying to acquire the ???essence would then invoke another God’s wrath.

It can even be tied in with seasonal servers, where there is a Ragnarok of events, all the gods are called upon the land and basically wiping face of huge structures to start anew. It doesn’t even have to be nordheimer based, it can be a Vendhyan Kali type of destruction. Just like how the maelstrom used to be.

It’s a great way to reset the map and ensure people don’t just land claim for no apparent reason.

[Lucidique]

Could region lock the gods maybe. Derketo for jungle biome, Ymir for snow biome, meteor showers Instead of Crom, etc

[Smilexile]

Or certain Regions could be stricter for the related God. That would add a very interesting Element of pushing certain strategies or techniques to specific areas of the map.

Another Exploit that needs to be punished is the Notes Exploit. While I would like to think the dev’s would repair that, it might end up too complex since the original devs are gone. It seems to me the game should be able to detect when someone is attempting to trigger the Notes exploit and have all the Gods quickly hone in on them and put them down for such insolence.

[Tselem]

I always agree to features that brings ultimate destruction on the exiled lands!

Damn I would simply make this gods come down even without a purpose: each week (month?) they start to strike down just to remind “humens” how inferior they are ^^