Decay timers seem to be the problem

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
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So lurking today through some of the posts and it dawned on me that most of the issues that we face across all server types are decay timers and the ease of resetting them. Those that are active on servers want the ability to play on that server unfettered by some camper that just can’t let go of their stuff and ‘will get back into it’ in some undisclosed time frame.

I suggest resetting should be more painful than what it is. Instead of your presence near an entire construct (IE base) you have an aura of reset around your character and that each building piece is on a separate timer (I’m not sure how that is going to work due to the processing power of individual timer countdowns but I’m sure someone with experience in the forum will smack my nose if it’s unreasonable) . This Could solve several issue in that it means you got to take the time to tour the entire build and ensure the timers reset in each zone of your aura before moving to the next part of the base. It also means that spam building is a pain to reset all of it (and yes that is still going on as the rewards for spam building are being leveraged against the ability of the FC enforcement team to get to the server and taking care of the problem)

Thoughts?

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Sounds like a great way to kill off server populations.

“I don’t like that a guy who has already put in 1,000+ hours is occupying a spot “I” want for myself.”

Try another server, or play on a PvP server and blow up their base.

This game is already lacking end game content. Once you finish a build, most of the rest of the game is… irrelevant.

Build a building, upgrade it, decorate it, collect and max out your thralls… Now you are literally out of things to do… unless you build more.

Why argue to make life harder for the players that are farther progressed in the game than you are?

To answer your question, no.

Terrible idea. This is a game, meant to be fun. It’s not meant to be a punishment. Conan Exiles already does enough of that.

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I wouldn’t consider base timer resetting as playing. I have literally seen if every server I have ever played in regardless of type of server at least one clan that just goes in for 15 minutes a week to reset their base(s) and we don’t see them till next week.

As for the PVP side of things, I have seen disgruntle clans that were raided still just keeping up their ruins just out of spite.

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Guess? :smiley:

Right now, the server needs to do one check for a building that has over 5k pieces. No matter how fast that check is, going from 1 to 5,000+ is going to have an impact. And bear in mind that this check is not something the game does once a day or even once a minute.

I dislike this idea more than I dislike serial refreshers, and not just because of the potential performance hit.

For starters, let’s talk about bugs. We’ve heard from people who have had significant losses from decay bugs, and that’s with the current system, where multiple building pieces and placeables can share a decay timer. Hell, I remember having a statue of refreshment that just stubbornly refused to share a decay timer with the castle it was in. Now imagine increasing the potential to repro a heisenbug like that by orders of magnitude. On the bright side, it would probably help them find the bug(s) in question faster. But think of how many players would keep losing parts of their bases in the meantime.

But that’s not my biggest objection at all.

What I really dislike about this is that it would discourage the wrong thing. The idea is to discourage serial refreshers, i.e. people who log in to keep their stuff intact and don’t actually play on that server, right? Well, with your idea, anyone who built something bigger than a shack now has to whip out a repair hammer and go around checking timers on every little bit of their building, instead of playing.

It isn’t. That’s precisely the problem with your suggestion :wink:

No offense, I really can’t think of many things that would make me run away faster from official servers, and maybe even the game.

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No offenses are taken. This is flat out brain storming so if it’s not worth it, it’s not worth it. Ideas need to be challenged and I appreciate both of you for doing so. I live the motto “Incrementum ex certamine”* and so if the idea can’t hold up to scrutiny, it needs to fall down.

*Credit where credit is due. Ars Magica…fun game.

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I have no problem with people resetting hundreds of hours of work until the next content drop or big update.

And aside from the performance hit the game would likely take, how would an aura even work? How do you determine how big is too big or too small? What about builds in rough terrain that may have a critical foundation block 15-20 foundations deep that can’t be reasonably accessed?

Leave it like it is, it’s not a problem, and the game doesn’t need extra chores.

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I suppose we could start by outlining what we currently have and how the system currently works.

Then we can start analyzing the situation to identify the problems

After that, we can start tossing around ideas on how to correct them.

My example: Currently, you log in within a certain radius of your stuff, and everything attached to that stuff gets reset to the full decay timer.

Issues: 1/week decay resets where the player logs in, sits for a few seconds, then logs back out content that their stuff is safe again. This prevents people who are actively playing the game to build at or near that spot but no one is actively living there. If on a non-pvp server, there’s nothing you can do about it except they forget about it one day

Potential solution: Maybe have the decay timer work gradually? You log in and have to play for a bit (about 10 minutes or so) to get the decay timer back to its full status.

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Before I start I will greet @Rekt, I fail to do it on other posts, nice to have you back m8 :+1:t6:.
@erjoh you have a point, I do believe that this system helps but destroys too.
I don’t know what to suggest here! Because it helps too…
But I believe that something needs to be done too, I don’t know what, something.
I have seen players playing 60 since they started this game and being, literally, afraid to loose the knowledge they have.
They think it is something extremely difficult to gain back :confused:.
I have seen players refreshing, including me, because for some reasons they don’t want to leave what they have there, and play in other servers too for several reasons.
I know that it is wrong to keep an estate in a server that I don’t play but 2 or 3 hours per week!
Some others work seasonal and cannot play a lot…
Many reasons!
But I agree, something has to be done! No matter if I loose again, I literally don’t care, not anymore!

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And what constitutes playing? Just being logged in or do I need to mindlessly open and close work benches? What’s the difference between logging in for ten minutes versus two minutes? What about those folks who are quite busy and all they had time for that week was a two minute quick log in but aren’t “serial refreshers?” You comfortable with them losing their hard work over an imagined problem?

How close do I need to be to my base? Or do I need to sit in each base/outpost for 10 minutes? So all those folks who are kind enough to create public map rooms are looking at half to a full hour to refresh all the multiple structures they did as a public service?

These posts and these discussions are not new. It’s been done over and over and it always ends up with poor proposed solutions to a nonexistent problem.

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You should visit some official PVE and PVE-C servers :wink:

It’s very much a problem there.

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It’s also in PVP but apparently I’m one of the few folks that just doesn’t want to waste time blowing some crap up just because it’s there…although sorcery has made this not as grindy so it’s got me strategizing now.

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Agree to disagree. It’s only a problem when X player wants to play on X server and/or build in X location and they can’t because it’s been claimed.

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The way it should work, is someone needs to complete a number of battlepass challenges (they are entirely free to do) per week or all their buildings and thralls poof.

Serial refreshers are why your G-portal hosted servers are crawling. Getting rid of them won’t cure the servers (as there is more to this than too many buildings), but you’ll see a good improvement. Instead of 5-10 server tick, you’ll get probably about 15-25. That’s the difference between unplayable and playable.

Refreshers don’t care. They’re not playing anyway. Keep that in mind.

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Nope- and decay timer arent the problem.

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Actually got bullied off an area because some bigwig wanted my space. As it turns out i dont need it anymore since thrall nerf.

What comes around goes around. The offender will get his someday

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I would also like to point out that serial refreshing and the buildings taking server performance hits is a problem that would follow a server map file from one server provider to another. So even if a miracle happened and FC went with another provider, this would still cause issues. It just may not be as pronounced.

Culling inactive builds is one of the main ways server admins keep servers running smoothly. Its a shame FC doesn’t have the capability to do this.

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Every single “no” in the known universe, the spirit plane, and the untold depths of hell from whence this idea must have originated.

Every single day I discover new reason to appreciate not playing on official servers.

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I never said that my solution was the be-all-end-all. Just a possible solution to the problem presented. And you raise valid points. How does one measure “playing” a game? What about the people who have insane work schedules and can’t manage more than 2-3 minutes to log in at a time? All valid points. The root of my post was to say this:

There’s been a problem presented. Whether it’s a real problem worth time to fix or not, a problem none the less.

We can discuss the magnitude of the problem, and potential solutions. We can then discuss whether or not it is feasible or even possible to implement those solutions. All in all, fostering discussion is my goal.

Personally, I play on PVP servers, so if there’s someone who pops in once a week to refresh their stuff, their door gets blown in when they’re not online (Also why I’m against DBD, but that’s another topic for another thread. Not here). I toyed around on PVE servers when my clan was wiped and it was a laggy mess of huge structures with no purpose and low decay timers. Then they’d log in, refresh the decay timer, and log out ensuring that there was no escape from the massive eyesore.

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Thanks for the warm welcome mate! I took a break from the forums and Conan as a whole. Didn’t realize my presence would be felt when I came back ^^ Gives me the warm fuzzies

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That’s why I said you should visit some of the official PVE and PVE-C servers right now. It’s not about a particular player that wants to build in a particular spot. Let me try to explain the situation.

Right now, on some servers, it’s hard to find a spot where you aren’t building within rendering distance of someone else. To see why that’s a problem at all, let’s go back in time a bit.

In the first few weeks after 3.0 hit live, those servers had a bunch of people playing on them at all times, reaching 30+ concurrent players during the “prime time”. Those people were a mix of old players coming back and new players enticed by the free week. Everyone kept building, but they also kept interacting, talking in chat, playing, even fighting during the PVP hours on PVE-C. Some of the people really went overboard building, but hey, at least they were there, making things happen on the server.

Fast forward to today. During the “prime time”, you get 10+ players on those servers, and you breach 20 on a good weekend. Most of the people who built their stuff aren’t anywhere to be seen, but their stuff doesn’t decay, because they keep it refreshed.

Now try to extrapolate this into the future. What happens with new people who come to the server? They have to find some spot where to build, and increasingly they have to resort to squeezing in between other people’s builds. It kinda sucks when your loading times are made longer by someone’s big castle, but it sucks even more when you realize that the vast majority of those builds are ghost towns, monuments to players who aren’t there anymore.

At some point, the server becomes a ghost town, with a handful of regulars still playing occasionally, chatting amiably on global when they run into each other. This is not guesswork, by the way. It’s what I’ve witnessed firsthand on these servers, and it’s what I fully expect to see again.

The real problem here stems from the idea that you’re entitled to keep a space on the server indefinitely, just because you spent time on building there once. Sure, you sunk some effort into it. And now you’re denying others the chance to do so, but you also don’t want to do anything with what you’ve built. It just has to stay there, for some reason.

Sure, but you run your servers differently. I agree with you that @erjoh’s solution isn’t a good one, but judging from your servers’ rules, I strongly suspect you agree that serial refreshers are a problem when left unchecked. :slight_smile:

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