Conan Exiles is becoming a joke in game community

That’s the major problem: good players leaving the game. The server I play (PvE) used to have about 20 active players (and many other casuals). It used to be nice to explore the map because great buildings were all over the map. Arena, Castles, fortress. For little more than 1 month, 2 toxic players started to block resources, closed the brimstone lake and built foundations all over the map.

Today it’s only me and other 2 players that are trying to protect the locations that they’ve not blocked yet. All the other active players left the server. It’s sad to see great buildings decaying after months of work, just because 2 toxic players entered the server.

Our last actions were to build signs with warnings all over the nobbie river to alert new players about those toxic ones.

Yup. That’s why I said there are alternative solutions, but I had to get back to my work and didn’t have time to elaborate.

I absolutely I agree with you – perfect is the enemy of good. If Funcom set down some basic rules and started checking those, they could probably do it with 1-2 people. Let’s say it’s undermeshing and that Funcom relied on other players’ reports to pinpoint the location. That would cut down the time drastically. You shouldn’t need 30 minutes to check whether an undermesh base is where someone reported it. On top of that, they could improve the logging, so that the server would flag stuff that might be an exploit for admin to review.

Another option would be to have community members in charge of “interfacing” between the general playerbase and Funcom. They wouldn’t have the powers to ban or punish anyone, but they could do the preliminary investigation to pass on to the moderator(s). That would also cut down on the number of people they would need to hire and pay. These community intermediaries would have a thankless job with no recompense and yet I’m sure there would be volunteers to do it.

Then there’s the option a Rust fan proposed (sorry, I forgot his forum name): unofficial-but-endorsed player-moderated servers. The community bands together to have a group of private servers moderated by trusted community members. Funcom would then be able to add an option to their in-game filter combo box to list those servers. They would make it clear that those are not official servers, but they would be there as an option. The difference from the “regular” private servers would be the ease of discoverability and a uniformity of configuration and moderation.

Finally, there’s an option to take 50 or 100 of these 1000 servers and make them “premium subscription” servers: pay $X a month and you can enjoy a server with an admin.

So yeah, it’s not like nothing can be done. It’s simply that Funcom – the company, not the Conan Exiles dev team – does not want to do anything about this. The reasoning is simple: why invest into something like that, when the current approach is working. Enough people are buying the game, the DLCs and playing actively.

Ironically, the idea of putting financial pressure on the game by voting with your wallet isn’t something likely to work out, either (as @Barnes would hasten to tell anyone who proposed it :wink: ). It’s a catch-22: if profits are rolling in, there’s no need to improve things; but when the game stops being profitable, then it’s easier to kill it than improve it. :man_shrugging:

Sorry if I sound pessimistic, but I’ve seen this kind of discussion many times already and guess what? It’s always the same end result: the perpetuation of status quo.

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Youre math is correct, but you could cut ou 9950 of those servers with populations under 5.

They don’t need policing.

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As much as I love this game, I agree with the OP’s premise that the lack of support from the top to enable positive gameplay experiences on the game’s gateway servers (i.e. Officials) has a depressing effect on the community’s morale. Indeed, the lack of in-game moderation, the unwillingness to prioritize minor QoL and accessibility features (i.e. camera shake, motion sickness, repetitive strain injuries), and the ability for people to build ridiculously close to one another on Officials are a big part of the reason why I decided to shell out a significant amount of money for a private server.

Do I feel like I should have had to do so? No, though I am enjoying the game a lot more now without the anxiety toxic players bring to the game…

Except that math assumes that all servers are having problems, which they clearly aren’t. During the course of a week I usually see no more than a couple dozen servers being complained about. Also, if the same clan is creating problems on multiple servers, then if you take care of addressing the problem players on one (i.e. limiting them to a Bad Sports Zone, etc.) then you’ve likely just taken care of the issues they’re causing on other servers as well.

Even someone with free money to throw around may still be given pause if they keep flushing money down the toilet because all their paid sock-puppet accounts keep getting banned or their system/console itself becomes blacklisted.

I’d at least like to see Funcom try implementing moderators on, say, perhaps the top 50 or 100 Official servers for each platform, just so we’d have an actual basis for comparison. The additional revenue that could come from a higher player base ought to be able to pay for such staff.

Regardless though, there have still been plenty of ideas floated about ways to make the decay and landclaim systems more equitable and more resilient to griefing. At the very least, it would be nice to see some of these developed and the applied to segments of each game type’s server base so the community could see what they like best and what yields the best results over a longer time than what’s possible on Test Live.

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That’s true. I guess I’m too used to thinking about how things scale, but there’s no need for them to scale if banning enough people succeeds in transforming the official servers from a game of Russian Roulette into something decent.

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Thankyou donbzm; you made your point factually and constructively, and it looks like many people are now starting to come out of the woodwork to support you on it. Look Im going to be forth coming here in saying that I personally dont play online. However, I have been on the forum long enough now that I have seen some of the fallout from these issues. And I can tell you now, I have seen it turn good constructive members into bitter and resentful ones, and I have seen it drive good players to leave the game through sheer frustration. Some of the biggest concerns I have been hearing about for god knows how long now are cheating and exploiting (on PvP especially), and blocking locations on PvE.

So I guess it ultimately all boils down to what should we do about this. I am not going to pretend to be an expert at managing online mediums and affairs, and as most members have come to realise over time, I have a very black and white, clear cut perspective in the way I analyze things. So if any of these sound like stupid or far flung ideas, well…I did give fair warning.

*I would like to see Funcom (who I respect and care about more than they realise) assign either one, or a handful of dedicated employees to investigating reports of online cheating and exploiting on a week to week basis. I dont care how many or how few they get through in the course of a single day or a week. It is not about catching every single last troublemaker, as such a thing is beyond their scope as a company. It is about saying the nonsense stops here; we will be checking claims and servers at random, and if we find proof that you are cheating or exploiting, you WILL be punished!

*For anyone found cheating or exploiting (or on PvE blocking off locations), do just that. Punish them accordingly and consistently across the board. My suggestions? You get one (1) warning. Accompanying this warning, the offenders should then recieve periodic checks, and the offenders characters skin colours are changed to fluoro pink, baby waste brown, or some other aesthetically reprehensible colour for a fixed period of time. Not only will they stand out like a sore thumb in PvP, the rest of the server can more easily monitor them accordingly. A second offence should be a mandatory ban from all official servers. All cheaters and exploiters should be eliminated without mercy. People will say but…but we will lose a lot of players. We have been and are continuing to lose a lot of players now because of these issues! And ask yourselves: if we must lose one or the other, which class of player we would rather see go…??

*Create a clear set of rules and guidelines for each mode and add them to the games menu. Set a date, and make it abundantly clear to all players on officials that if you are in violation these rules after that date, you will be punished accordingly.

For the record here, I think that Funcom is a great company, and they doing a great job proportionate to the size of their company. They actively listen to their player base, are very approachable, have a great business model as far as new content goes, and take feedback and suggestions onboard. And I love this game sooo much! I dont claim to have all the answers. And this may seem harsh, but it has to start somewhere, it has to start sometime. Draw a line in the sand and follow through with it.

PS-sorry for the wall of text…

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If they are exploiting coding issues, that is one thing. Being ‘mean’? Come on. Granted some of these clan dominate PVP servers as their own personal server that can make it not fun…or you could get creative and figure out how to beat them. One thing that most alpha clans have is large amounts of hubris. Exploit that. Exploit the fact that there are other players are having the same issue and unite them Figure out the game, where to build to be unnoticed., how much explosives you are going to need. The only fair thing Funcom can do is a 6 month reset of folks …ever six months. That way there isn’t an alpha.

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But… there is already a fallout mechanism. It is called gods. But, it is disabled.

not only in pvp, pve c and pve have their fair share of toxic and troll players.

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does not work in pve c and pve

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First of all thank you for posting this issue, because I tried to post the same issue several times but I didn’t have this contribution you allready received. So bravo for this.
Now to the topic. No, you don’t have to pay more money to play on a private server. There are thousands of them to join and a great percentage of them are really good. Be careful, i don’t say to you that you ain’t gonna find toxic players there, but the admins are there to listen your issues and react fair. I am a great lover of the game too. So every admin i’ve meet always assigned me a construction in their server and i was really happy to contribute in their wonderful effort, for others to have fun. Please don’t get disappointed, this journey has very nice experiences and wonderful persons. I finally found my teammates for pvp and a wonderful pve server to relax from the pvp madness :joy::joy::joy:. The most important is that the pve server is official. I am an original pve player, so i like it straight, no Xtra farming, no Xtra xp. I play pvp, first because i like the persons i play with and second, because team effort on this game really rocks.
Like i said to the beginning
Tottaly agree for the chaos on official servers
Don’t loose faith because of toxic players
Keep playing in every server you want and finally you will find everything you want and more.
Keep traveling exile and one day the exile lands will become your home :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Well said. Couldn’t agree more. It amazes me that they don’t see the problem with clans abusing the rules and emptying out servers. They hide behind the company line of “blah blah blah, not a traditional MMO… blah blah, can’t police all the servers…”

They are basically telling the cheaters it is ok to abuse the rules because they don’t care enough to investigate people cheating. It’s like telling your community that the criminals are not going to be arrested because you have too many neighborhoods to patrol. WTF?!

I see a lot of suggestions to single people out. Has anyone considered a reputation type scoring system driven by players? You could have servers which require minimum reputation scores to join. It would be a positive reinforcement method of a more mature community without Funcom getting involved. Would need to be balanced well to avoid abuse but could allow for those who prefer a cutthroat experience to take it to the cutthroat servers leaving more mature pvp servers to flourish.

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I assume you mean a system where players do a +/- on another player.

Those systems rarely work. It just encourages the ■■■■■■■■ to make other accounts and downrate everyone.

See how toxic Reddit can be with downvoting on legitimate questions or topics. It would just engender a new form of trolling for them.

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imo ppl should play sp before online, seems like common sense. also automatically assume everyone else is a troll/greedy/thief/dipshit (lol go play gtav for proof of assumption). i made the mistake of underestimating the dipshitterey, the last server i admind was sooperdooper easy settings with welcome center and outposts everywhere.yet ppl still found it in their hearts to grief at every opportunity and steal everything in sight.
i muse to myself that the term should be PVD (choose ur own abbreviation lol)
also i feel like consoles were an afterthought to the devs so im only holding my breath if i go to the online shitshow.

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Im a new player of 2 months. My buddy who was new also decided to pick official so we could learn the game without getting destroyed by a god fast. Now, my base is slowly being destroyed by a team that is “undermeshing” in a mountain. I cant even hit them back. Reading how funcom doesnt even care is disheartening. these kids even have a youtube video of them doing it. I told my friend this is too much grind for a company that doesnt police servers.

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After reading all this and other similar topics about online player behavior, I am of the idea that such an aggressive and barbaric environment reflects quite well the universe of Conan, of which this game is about. XD

All jokes aside I have never even tried playing online, I am more afraid of performance issues and bugs rather than players.

Don’t worry, the bugs are alive and well in singleplayer, too. Just go look at the bug reports for the new TestLive patch – some of them were generated by people who only play singleplayer.

At least Funcom’s testing their updates in TestLive first. That’s a step in the right direction.

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That it is. :slight_smile:
Yes everyday there is a new bug I encounter in singleplayer. But I always hear about peoples’ bases vanishing because of server restarts and all. I know bases vanish on singleplayer too but I always back up my saves on usb, thing is, does that work online if you recopy data from a usb…?
Otherwise I would like to try the online some time. I just do not want to lose all my crap XD

Fact.