Changed my Steam Review to Negative

Realight · 2023-04-16T21:07:25.502Z

As much as I love this game, I cannot condone Funcom’s attitude towards the current state of the game.
The thing is Unplayable in ANY online environment.
Game has been broken ever since this darned Chapter 3 came out, be it on PC, Xbox or PS, game has become such a thing that it disconnects players at random situations, mostly when engaging into combat.
I urge people to change their reviews to reflect the current state of the game, as Funcom seems to be feasting on our tears and playing the hard-to-get game by ignoring all and any posts about it, be it on twitter, reddit, or even in the bug report section.
I made two reports so far but I got no answer beside the automated message that one gets when filing a ticket.
Please. Funcom. I love the game but this cannot go on like this!.

Xevyr · 2023-04-16T23:11:17.189Z

Realight:

The thing is Unplayable in ANY online environment.

That is technically incorrect… and actually very very far from the truth
Official servers are simply of horrendous quality… they’ve been for quite a while as the game grew and the hardware of these servers didn’t grow with it… once you accept this as a fact and start looking at private servers, your gaming experience will be vastly different…

And obviously it would be nice if that changed and they upgraded them accordingly, I am just letting you know since you said you love the game… 90% of the bugs are only present on official servers…

Realight · 2023-04-17T04:04:58.761Z

So you are telling me that we shouldn’t demand that Funcom fixes their broken mess of a game because it works on heavily modded unofficial servers and offline? Playing in unofficial servers is a risk I don’t like taking. One day the owner of the server can wake up feeling bad and just unplug their server for no reason.
Funcom should get their sht together and fix the game we paid for… We didn’t pay for them to half-ass it and keep the game broken for a whole month “just because it’s only broken in OFFICIAL servers”

Xevyr · 2023-04-17T07:42:29.073Z

Realight:

So you are telling me that we shouldn’t demand that Funcom fixes their broken mess of a game because it works on heavily modded unofficial servers and offline?

No… that’s not what I said, was it?
I am saying that the game… the software itself that you bought a license for… is actually fine… and plays perfectly even on unmodded servers that aren’t trash…
Go try it and report back

And no, I never said not to “demand” them being fixed… but you can die on that hill or go and enjoy the game in the meantime… up to you

SirDaveWolf · 2023-04-17T08:00:31.986Z

Xevyr:

That is technically incorrect… and actually very very far from the truth

There are people that only login during raidtime, because of reasons you should know.

Connect it with this topic:

Golems are randomly causing disconnects and players abuse that to kill you when disconnected PC Bug Reports

1.) Have Golems 2.) Have them fight each other 3.) Random player dcs 4.) Random player gets killed by the other party 5.) Exciting PvP experience

And the game becomes VERY CLEARLY unplayable for these kind of people.

Singleplayer is the only mode where the game works fine most of the time. This is also the mode that is mostly used for testing issues at Funcom offices.

Xevyr · 2023-04-17T08:24:46.271Z

You do realize there are servers with 90 online players working just fine, right?
I’m not saying there isn’t an issue, because there is, but it IS mostly affecting official servers as always, because the servers are just bad…

SirDaveWolf · 2023-04-17T09:50:04.415Z

Xevyr:

it IS mostly affecting official servers

Official servers represent the official Conan Exiles gaming experience provided by Funcom.

Hence the name official. And if the official experience is unplayable, then something is really wrong with the game.

It’s like minimum system requirements. If the gaming experience on this specific hardware is glitchy and literally unplayable, the same applies: something is really wrong.

Xevyr · 2023-04-17T10:12:03.873Z

SirDaveWolf:

Official servers represent the official Conan Exiles gaming experience provided by Funcom.

Hence the name official. And if the official experience is unplayable, then something is really wrong with the game.

Well, that’s your personal interpretation
Theirs however is that you’re not paying for a service, there is ZERO mention of it in the license agreement that came with the game and it clearly states that essentially you paid for a license to use the game itself (as in the actual software you downloaded regardless of servers), nothing more.

This “official servers represent how the game is meant to be played” is just a mantra people have been telling themselves to try and “win” arguments… it’s the equivalent of a teenager saying “whatever” and walking away… do you see Funcom being bothered by it? I don’t… the servers didn’t start being bad yesterday…

My point remains though, so just to clarify… I fully agree that they should improve them! I also think that it’s rather embarrassing that they call them “official” and they don’t work… but you have zero rights to make demands about it… we can complain and ask ofc… but if they’re not bothered by the poor performance of their own servers then your remaining options are:
a. Put up with it…
b. Play the game on a server that works…
c. Play something else…

And in this instance I was just informing OP that the game actually does work pretty fine if you don’t play on official servers, in case they weren’t aware… since they said they love the game, now if they don’t want to do that, it’s perfectly fine.

Taemien · 2023-04-17T10:47:39.378Z

Realight:

So you are telling me that we shouldn’t demand that Funcom fixes their broken mess of a game because it works on heavily modded unofficial servers and offline?

You have to determine what you want for yourself. Here’s what I’ve said for nearly six years now:

First thing is they should never have tried to offer their own servers. When this game was announced and entered Early Access on Steam, I knew their provided servers were going to be a disaster. They were. From DAY ONE. But it gets worse, they made a partnership with G-portal. They made legally binding agreements they cannot deviate from. They likely didn’t get enough guarantees. It was a bad choice that players of those servers have to deal with as simple facts of life.

Next was that they offered too many. Originally they offered something like 800 servers. Obviously they weren’t running these on 800 machines. And while using virtual machines isn’t terrible, these were going to be stuffed on as few machines as possible. That’s just how G-portal and some others operate.

Then they doubled down with Siptah and instead of converting servers, they made even more. I think at one point they had 1100 servers on PC alone. I’ll even bet that new machines were not even allocated for this. Just stuffed on existing ones.

And finally the one good decision they made was last year they condensed the servers. Now… its said this was to reduce the load. How much you all want to bet that G-portal simply repurposed entire machines for offering services rather than reduce the instances per machine?

IMO what Funcom should do is buy out of the contract they have with G-portal or do not renew it if its coming up for renewal. Then simply let those servers lapse. Because like Xevyr said, 90% of issues players have, are caused by these servers.

You can look at all the steam reviews that are negative and its always about some server being trash, some glitch or bug being caused by a subpar server. You have to really dig deep to find a negative review about an issue that happens on all servers and singleplayer. I’m not saying such issues don’t exist or hardly ever happen. But they don’t normally happen to the extent or severity to make the game unplayable or a chore.

They cost FC more than they help. When Age of Sorcery released, the number of people on Steam rose greatly. I monitored the amount of people who were playing on Funcom servers. For every 10 players who came to the game (new just starting and old coming back), 12 went to private servers. Once the newness of sorcery wore off and the numbers started dipping. Funcom servers lost enough players to comprise over 70% of the playerbase that didn’t stay.

Player retention on private servers is much much higher and in acceptable rates for any game. Meanwhile Funcom servers bleed players in unsustainable numbers. Months later said servers are ghost towns in comparison. They are not worth keeping around.

Rip the bandaid off, push everyone to other servers and they will be much happier for it. Better running servers, better moderation, and unique experiences instead of the easy mode one size fits all. Do this right before the next age hits and they will quickly be forgotten.

There’s plenty of games that work well without dev provided servers with silly tags. Because that’s all these servers are. Crashy, buggy, sloggy messes that have no hope in hell in improving. They have gotten worse EVERY year for SIX years.

What makes you all think they will get better in the next Six years? Its only going to get worse. If you’re getting disconnected every hour. It will be every 15-30 minutes in a few months.

Once the next age hits, they will literally only have uptimes of 10-20 minutes a day. Ask anyone who went through Age of Sorcery. Those servers are ghost towns now, and struggle with some having daily crashes.

If you play on a FC server, you play on barrowed time. Server transfers aren’t going to be around for another couple of months at the least. In that time you could easily restart on another server that can go days without a restart and maintain healthy populations of 20-40 online at a time with decent results.

Think about that. Even if you all don’t agree with one iota of what I’ve said thusfar. You have to come to terms that the server you play on, if provided by FC. WILL be unplayable in the next Age. Unless you consider less than an hour of uptime per day as playable.

If that’s ok for you, then you have the patience of a saint. Way more patience then I could ever hope to muster. But while you have a virtue worthy of respect. I’ll be rewarded with my impatience with several hours a day of uninterrupted gameplay when those updates come down the pipeline (as well as now until then). Is that worth it to stay? That’s up to you all.

SirDaveWolf · 2023-04-17T10:56:09.419Z

Xevyr:

Theirs however is that you’re not paying for a service, there is ZERO mention of it in the license agreement

You actually do. “Software and Service”

store.steampowered.com

CONAN® EXILES END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT (“EULA”)

LICENSE GRANT TO YOU
THE SOFTWARE AND SERVICE (INCLUDING IN-GAME FEATURES) ARE LICENSED, NOT SOLD, TO YOU UNDER THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT. Subject to the terms of this Agreement and your compliance with other agreements you may have with us, including acceptance of our Privacy Policy, we grant to you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sub licensable license to do the following: […]

Also this is interesting:

FUNCOM RESERVES THE RIGHTS TO SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ANY ACCOUNT, SERVICE OR YOUR ACCESS TO THE GAME AT ANY TIME FOR ANY OR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE AND FUNCOM WILL NOT PROVIDE REFUNDS OF VIRTUAL ITEMS OR VIRTUAL CURRENCY.

azaroth · 2023-04-17T12:19:50.950Z

that false, i play on official server for 5 years situation has degraded only for the last 2 years, i am currently disconnected beetwen 5-10 time by day (connection lost) since few months, and in addition having pack corrupt problem (for last 20 months) when from 2018 to 2021 i had o problem and situation has degraded more than serioulsy in the last 3 months. and we can add to the subject a policy that make loose to funcom a lot of their customer (ie applying a ban policy for building coming from pve server on pvp server, and not making hacking cheating problem a priority (previously it was), which is not good for future of funcom

darthphysicist · 2023-04-17T12:23:42.586Z

Realight:

One day the owner of the server can wake up feeling bad and just unplug their server for no reason.

Well… in all fairness, this can happen on Funcom servers too. It has happened with merges in recent history even.

Xevyr · 2023-04-17T12:35:52.271Z

SirDaveWolf:

You actually do. “Software and Service”

That’s just a generic term, there is absolutely no mention of official servers anywhere It talks about installation of the software and what rights it grants you…
If you can find a single mention of official servers, let me know

On the other hand if you do want to quote the EULA, it does contain this:

THE GAME MAY CONTAIN BUGS, ERRORS AND DEFECTS. ACCORDINGLY, THE GAME IS PROVIDED “AS IS,” WITH ALL FAULTS, DEFECTS AND ERRORS, AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.

Dzonatas · 2023-04-17T12:38:44.508Z

Xevyr:

That’s just a generic term,

Some businesses use the literal dollar as the license.

DeaconElie · 2023-04-17T14:08:58.869Z

Xevyr:

I am saying that the game… the software itself that you bought a license for… is actually fine… and plays perfectly even on unmodded servers that aren’t trash…

Xevyr:

You do realize there are servers with 90 online players working just fine, right?

SirDaveWolf:

Singleplayer is the only mode where the game works fine most of the time.

Been my experience there are some legacy bugs that are quite common in any mode.

SirDaveWolf:

Official servers represent the official Conan Exiles gaming experience provided by Funcom.

Which speaks volumes in and of it’s self. But, I have pushed to call them “public”, give people a more realistic expectation of them.

I have said it, so… Funcoms public servers should be an example of how the game should run and be moderated. Not a good example of what not to do.

Xevyr:

think that it’s rather embarrassing that they call them “official” and they don’t work

THIS!

Taemien:

First thing is they should never have tried to offer their own servers.

Which would have killed the game the first year; IMHO.

Taemien:

Next was that they offered too many. Originally they offered something like 800 servers.

Agree. Should started with 50? and opened new ones as needed. Rather then having to close /merge servers after.

Taemien:

But they don’t normally happen to the extent or severity to make the game unplayable or a chore.

Are we reading the same forums?

Taemien:

Rip the bandaid off, push everyone to other servers and they will be much happier for it.

naa, that would drive people away from the game. It certainly wouldn’t make them happy. Look at the brouhaha from merging servers

Now do you honestly think changing a steam review is going to make a difference? 1K a day might, but not just 1.

Realight · 2023-04-17T17:11:27.258Z

One can only hope, and hope people see I do it and follow suit, if more people went and changed their reviews to negative maybe funcom would listen.

biggcane55 · 2023-04-17T17:39:04.143Z

Keep speaking your mind. Having played on alot of privates l, a high percentage of them offer some kind of payment or donation system for packs etc. So privates really benefit from garbage officials, because it increases the chance to gain another donating member to thier server.

Megaton238 · 2023-04-17T18:20:33.343Z

DeaconElie:

naa, that would drive people away from the game. It certainly wouldn’t make them happy

I’m not sure about that. Let’s be honest, the official servers are a hot mess and that would be true even if the game worked perfectly with them. On PvE you have build spam and a million sandstone box “masterpieces”, while on PvP officials you have offline raiding and “report to win” as the mainstay.

I seriously doubt that the new player who jumps in, starts with a PvE server to learn the ropes and is immediately greeted with a gigantic borg cube at the Shattered Bridge is having a quality game experience.

Edit: I’ll also add that when I watch Conan streams, the people who seem to be suffering with constant disconnects are those who are playing on officials. Streamers who have their own private community servers don’t seem to be having the issue (or it is much more rare).

I was watching a poor guy and his friends playing on an Xbox official server and in the span of about 20 minutes was disconnected 5 or 6 times. I’ve never seen that with streamers playing with their community members on their own private servers.

erjoh · 2023-04-17T19:08:18.290Z

Megaton238:

I’m not sure about that. Let’s be honest, the official servers are a hot mess and that would be true even if the game worked perfectly with them. On PvE you have build spam and a million sandstone box “masterpieces”, while on PvP officials you have offline raiding and “report to win” as the mainstay.

I am. Are we really saying that the new user will buy the game and immediately tag into someone’s server to start playing? No, the majority would not and most would just return the game. If you drop officials, you drop new customers and this would be a dead game walking as the rest of the community just walls themselves off in their own private gardens and then wonders why the game died.

Taemien:

Meanwhile Funcom servers bleed players in unsustainable numbers. Months later said servers are ghost towns in comparison.

This is so very true and attention is needed on this end if you want the game to grow.

Taemien:

They are not worth keeping around.

Rip the bandaid off, push everyone to other servers and they will be much happier for it.

Not really. What you are suggesting is essentially subcontracting out server service to individual games as FC would have to be selective in what servers they would condone to “push” players towards and then those servers would want some sort of kickback from the company to manage the player load that is coming in…it stops being your small scale utopia and starts becoming a g-portal v2.0.

They need to invest in officials, period. It’s good for growth and it leaves privates alone in their utopian ways.

Do any of you private server folks remotely think privates would work in the scale of hundreds of players bouncing in and out in packs of 5-30 players that are non-committal? Do you seriously think the same methods used to manage the players that voluntarily submit to the rules will work for the masses of folks that would come to these servers if officials die off?

They need to take some of the revenue and invest more into the servers to ensure it runs in their condoned and approved servers (Because that is what officials are. They are supposed to be the pinnacle of how the game’s system and function should behave and not the ugly step child that lives in the basement) Truth be told, that mentality had probably far more effect on the relative stagnated player numbers than anything else.

darthphysicist · 2023-04-17T19:20:38.981Z

erjoh:

Are we really saying that the new user will buy the game and immediately tag into someone’s server to start playing? No, the majority would not and most would just return the game.

If there were no funcom servers, they would still have singleplayer and co-op to try out the game. A funcom server is not required.