That was also my opinion with New World - Amazon. “They have the real data, there must be a very clear administrative strategy that justifies ignoring the community.” After a few months, following through with inflexible conduct/lack of communication - and losing their player base, AGS went back and implemented many of the community’s requests (in time to save your game or not). It became clear to me that even with access to data, with teams worth thousands of dollars, it’s still possible to make bad choices.
So I disagree, because talking to those who help keep your product on the market cannot be considered a WASTE OF TIME. Unfortunately, it seems that FC lives under the illusion that it is solely responsible for the Conan Exiles fan base. But much of the success of this game is also linked to the community itself, especially the MODS developers.
It’s also true that discerning those bad choices from the data takes time. Data isn’t magic – you need lots of it before you can even start analyzing it, and the analysis is never trivial. Then you have to figure out how to fix it. Then you often have to convince someone higher up the food chain to approve that.
It’s also especially true that the development effort and time of correcting those bad choices is rarely what the players expect it to be. The players’ expectations and the way they communicate them to the devs often remind me of that Billy Connolly skit:
Look around the forums. Of course it’s a waste of time trying to have a conversation with everyone here at once. Even if you set aside all the vitriol and the name-calling and the entitlement and the lack of basic civility, there’s still the fact that 9 times out of 10 the people who yell the most stridently about a supposed problem can’t even agree on what the problem is.
Every single discussion I’ve ever seen about alleged PVP imbalances has had a bunch of people furiously agreeing that there’s a problem. And every single time people persisted in asking the PVP players to describe what the problem was, the discussion ended up in serious disagreement between those same PVP players. Dodge rolls, lances, daggers, unraidable bases – you name it, it’s “killing PVP” when the discussion starts and yet nobody can agree what the problem is by the time the thread winds down.
The community managers aren’t really here to have a conversation with us. They’re here to collect feedback and keep both sides (i.e. the players and the devs) informed. When there’s information to communicate, they do so. When there isn’t, they don’t.
When they can, they engage with us. And yes, sometimes it will be on a trivial, fun thread like the “abomination thread”. If you think that is a sign of disrespect, you need to chill.
For a pretty good recap of what Funcom staff is supposed to do on these forums, take a look at @Rollotomozi’s thread here:
I understand your point of view @Code - and I respect it very much. My opinion of FC conduct is based on years of following this forum, the topic cited was just a note. In addition, I also understand all the challenges of data analysis, hierarchy and roles performed by the administrators of this forum.
So, if the functions performed by administrators do not comprise a more direct interaction with the community, perhaps the time has come for FC to understand that forming a team for this purpose is necessary.
I like this game as much as you do, and I believe a lot of the authors of these threads do too. So in the end, what everyone is trying to say is “Hey FC, something strange is happening here, can we talk?”
+1 to all of that. Great responses. And 100% accurate from where I am sitting.
Going through twitter, facebook, here… most of the comments are just bile puked out and so many times you can’t even get people who are yelling there are problems to agree what those problems are. They are often problems… TO THEM.
Heck I still didn’t get a consistent answer to what PVP means. According to the server settings, it’s just PVE-C with more risks but heaven help you if you make that known.
Yes cm does PvE C and you are right it’s player damage but no building damage. Unfortunately that doesn’t protect you from poison arrows and other area affect damage… including explosive.
For historical reasons, the modes are named the way they are. I think a better naming scheme would have been “PvE”, "PvP for what is currently called “PvE - Conflict”, and “PvP + Raid” (PvP+R for short) for what is currently called “PvP”.
Negatives will alwyas be the loudest squeek. To counter, should everyone who has not been banned post so we can woegh posts as a data point. Or are we just seeingvthe normal human trait, satisfied keep quite?
Depends if you are talking about active players on official pvp servers or the ones who left the game due to this. I think the amount of players who have been banned under the new rules would surprise you. We are just a very small amount of people who decide to come to the forums. The stigma with the forums is pro pve so I’m not to surprised you don’t see more pvpers here. Although you should already know that
The PVE players who post on the forums are also a small fraction of the PVE community.
The least said about this the better, but I’ll just point out that if one part of the community spends years teaching the rest that the only way to go is to be derisive and yell really loud, they can’t complain when the rest of the community takes these lessons to heart.
I didn’t know it was mutually exclusive. No the reason for the lack of pvpers is the downgrade of PvP play to ‘broh’. Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, the state of PvP rests solely on this current majority of players who believe pvp is just grieving other players. Half of them can’t even tell you what “gg” used to mean and believe it to mean “no offense”
Take it how you want I’m just telling you how it is. Gg went out the door when reporting became the norm and so many hacks that kill the game still exist.
I’ve had a few recent engagements with equally skilled and geared players ending in GG. It was nice. An acknowledgement of the experience and respect for each other.
The rest are a mixed bag. Like a new player to a server getting angry they get steamrolled after their first strike… then complain you have too much power? Or the ones that think you’re hacking because they lost… very common and is much of just lack of game sense. If they’re in the know then comes the threats of reporting.
In a perfect world ya. But there will always be different kinds of people. Like you pointed out, some people have problems with accepting, improving and understanding. Of course there’s the trolls too, the manipulators, the sociopaths.
But ultimately the true meat of all of this is in how Funcom is handling and communicating with its player base. People like me and my friends, acquaintances, Boobie, Palm and many others who have come here and beyond for answers. I feel confused, quite helpless and slightly doomed no matter how hard I try to simply play. I shouldn’t feel this way. I feel punished for supporting this game.
First time yes, 100% understand why, learned from it and moved on. We added a new clan member who refused to accept the new ToC and we were rightfully banned for allowing it to continue. That was 3 days and 1 base devwiped.
Second and third time we were in the middle of a war. Keep in mind if you have been paying attention to my comments that we have done everything possible to keep in line. Preceding the climax of it were threats from the opposing clan that they were going to report us regardless of our situation. Then they got devwiped and banned along with 3 other clans on the server. They came back on alts and reported us twice because they think we reported them. They’ve admitted here and elsewhere that we did nothing wrong but were attempting to show the community that there is a problem with the report system. The supposed “report/ban meta”. In all, that server had 10 clans affected by devwipes and bans in about 1.5 weeks.
When we put in a ticket to find out the actual reason why we were banned it was a repeat of the ban message, no explanation, no reasoning, no clarity.
One of my clan members was permabanned throughout all this after they were released from the 14 day ban. Another clan on the server was bragging that they reported us. He’s in the process of appealing but it’s not looking good.
Since all of this I know a few people who have ran tests on inconsequential random bases and those have been devwiped. I’ve also noticed that reports are taking longer to be addressed; specifically in regard to the resurgence of the hacking problems. Is Funcom listening? I don’t know, maybe?
I’ve added my voice to the group of players airing their grievances and will continue to speak on it.
Now I am barely playing. We were hack raided twice in less than 2 weeks and our initial report to Funcom with video evidence of the hacks took many emails to nudge them to even do anything finally by 15 days. Which means nothing in the end when you consider that alts are easy to come by and there are free 3rd party hacks.
You’re most likely right. Since we already know that they have to prioritize things and that they’ll sometimes leave something waiting to be prioritized, the fact that they didn’t drop everything else to focus on fixing this issue as quickly as possible probably means that they looked at how big the portion of affected playerbase is and decided that it can wait until higher priority work is done.
Yeah, no. They’ve proven the contrary, on numerous occasions. But, as usual, when there’s a slice of community that has a problem that isn’t being solved, they tend to think and say that Funcom doesn’t give a damn about the community at large.
Yes, they can. The world we all live in is full of such rules.
Then you have a choice of waiting forever for your wish to come true or quitting the officials.
They are not going to remove all ambiguity from the rules just because a handful of people like you are unable or unwilling to realize that in the adult world rules always have a certain degree of interpretation.
Clarifying the rules so most people can be expected to understand them if they take the time and effort to think about it? That’s something that they can and should do. Get rid of all nuance and discretion and judge only according to the letter of the rules without regards for the spirit of those rules? Anyone who refuses to play without that shouldn’t be allowed on the official servers anyway.
And I don’t know how many times I have to remind you to read what you’re replying to. Or indeed, what you yourself wrote.
All that you wrote here is stuff that has been discussed and acknowledged, here and in other similar discussions. I’ve already agreed many times that they should make the rules clearer and more accessible, and that they should give people useful feedback when they request it
But what you want – or at least, what you keep saying you want – goes much, much beyond that, into the realm of unreasonable, and when people like me tell you that it’s unreasonable, then you resort to pointing out stuff we already said we agree to.
We’re all tired of something. For example, I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one here who’s tired of the whole “fUnCoM dOeSn’T cArE aBoUt CoMmUniTy” temper tantrum, and yet we somehow manage.
As for letting Funcom use the term, here you are:
It’s right there, at the top of the rules. They said it.
