Funcom apparently doesn’t understand that the players have at least been its customers

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
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It’s just amazing how outrageously Funcom treats players on official servers, yet the players have at least been funcom’s paying customers. Most likely, they will no longer be customers after Funcom arbitrarily gives these players a ban on official servers.

I have tried to give feedback on this several times, but always my message is destroyed from the forum. Obviously the feedback section is completely useless when you don’t even want it and when it lets you destroy it.

What’s the point of even keeping a feedback section on the forum?

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With its ban policy, Funcom has made it impossible to play the game on official servers.

Soon no sane player will play this game anymore when Funcom splits the band as soon as someone but complains about some base.

And the band comes really hard, for example, a friend of mine visited my clan when we got a two-week ban on very weak grounds and after all, Funcom didn’t even bother to justify it in any way.

The same guy then visited another guy’s clan on another server where there shouldn’t have been any ban let alone risk, and then came the band forever. So that guy himself didn’t build anything on the official servers himself and got an eternal ban on the servers.
It is therefore clearly a gross misconduct on the part of funcom.

So Funcom kills its own game when all the players who have built even more bases are banned in turn.

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i see it in a different way, at least on PVE Servers. People claiming immense sectors with spamming fundaments, who don’t play anymore, only log in to stop decay from time to time, are just blocking servers.

Everywhere you see the same. Fortresses as quadratic monsters 40-60 fundaments lxb, 20 fundaments high, many outposts, immense territory claims, and noone plays.
Many are blocking paths or hinder important spawns.

Basically many people behave like total ■■■■■, and even if they don’t play anymore they keep their monsters up which often severly hinder playing people.

Where is the gain for Funcom of people who build enormous bases but dont play anymore? Hindering playing people to play? And is it really too hard not to spam fundaments for landclaiming, block spawns and behave like a normal human being instead of trying to spam 10 sectors with the only intention that noone else can build and play anymore? Is this a loss? I don’t think so. Isn’t it in reality so, that the new generation just doesn’t care anymore about simple rules of behaviour and doesn’t care anymore about anything than themselves?

They understand domination on PVE as building a server to death and don’t let playing people play. ■■■■■■■ those guys.

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I’m not sure if I’m following this right, he got banned for not building?

Is it possible they got banned because something he did on another server or something a clan mate did on another server?

Did you use Zendesk to get more information on why you were banned for 2 weeks?

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I think before anyone on here can judge anything that you need to know the exact reason for a player being banned, not what someone says they think is the reason or what someone who was banned says they were banned for; people are notorious for being liars and spin doctors that turn their bad behavior into a victim mentality and “woe is me, look I was banned for no good reason” even though they were breaking rules left and right.

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As usual, this kind of complaint starts with the same old non-sequitur. In case there is still anyone on these forums who hasn’t seen this conversation play itself out over and over and over again, here’s why being a “paying customer” has nothing to do with the official servers: Funcom is not charging the players for official servers.

If I was paying a monthly subscription for official servers and they were like they are now, I would be the first one to join the pitchforks-and-torches mob of paying customers. Instead, I’m free to grouse and complain about the official servers as much as I want, and Funcom is free to do what they want with them, because I’m getting more than I paid for. :man_shrugging:

I want them to get better, yeah, but this whole “paying customer” thing is a red herring.

There’s a pinned post in each section explaining what the section is for. Here’s a quote from the post explaining what feedback section is for:

Enforcement of official server TOS does not fall under “game’s mechanics and balance”.

Regardless of that, the idea that the feedback section should have some special exemption from moderation is weird. It’s a forum, it has moderators, and it also has self-moderation features (such as flags). That’s normal for a forum.

Impossible to play the game on official server? I doubt it. Impossible to play it the way some of you have gotten used to doing it? Yeah, I can believe that.

The claim that “as soon as someone complains about some base” Funcom bans them is unfounded. And by the way, if foundation spamming, blocking resources, or bogging down server performance is “sane”, then I’m really glad to be off my rocker.

Did your friend request information about the ban? If not, why? Did your friend not know how to do that? Because that would mean your friend didn’t read the rules.

I am getting the impression that by “visited a clan” you meant “joined a clan”. If that’s the case, someone needs to read the rules again. They explicitly state that if you’re in a clan, you’re liable for what that clan does, end of story.

Here’s a different take: many servers are being less laggy now that the most egregious overbuilders are being dealt with. Rather than killing the game, this might have a reinvigorating effect for all the new players that will not have to deal with some serial refresher’s gigantic theme park that slows the server down to a crawl whenever anyone goes near it.

Which one of us is right? That remains to be seen, but I assure you it has nothing to do with which one of us shouts louder.

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Here is a copy of the message my friend got from funcom, and this is a guy who hasn’t built anything on an official server, he’s just been in a bad time when Funcom has been hit mercilessly:

Oct 18, 2021, 11:36 EDTGreetings Exiles, Your account has been permanently banned from Official servers due to building abuse and content block. Additionally to previous offenses.Unfortunately, we cannot disclose any additional information from our investigations.Do not associate under any circumstances with players you suspect are hacking, exploiting or abusing any of the guidelines above. If you suspect any of them are partaking in such actions, please report them to our staff and distance yourself or your clan from these players.You can read more here: https://forums.funcom.com/t/official-servers-terms-of-conduct-guidelines-and-procedures/112678Our team has verified your appeal based on the suspension length, nature of the infraction(s) committed, and the number of incidences, and has determined that your account’s permanent ban is currently non-appealable.Please be aware that although access to official servers is restricted for your account, you may still play in private server and single-player/co-op sessions.

My friend posted this post on our joint steam discussion group, and there are quite a few of us in the group.

I think that funcom standard answer is really outrageous writing and you can’t even complain about it.
A player who hasn’t built anything at all gets an eternal ban on blocking the game, absolutely amazing.

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Yes, that looks pretty standard. He joined a clan that was being investigated for breaking the rules and as a result he was banned along with everyone else. And as it seems to suggest, this was not his/her first offense either. I don’t see what is “week” about it. They are not going to give exact details if that is what you are thinking. Also, it is a ban from official servers. It does not stop you from joining private servers. It does not stop you from renting and hosting your own server. It does not stop you from playing solo/co-op. So you can still play the game which is more than a lot of companies will allow you to do.

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Did anyone on any clan do something like they were cheating 3 weeks ago your friend join 2 days ago but system banned the clan not individuals thus if someone on clan broke rule then he punished the same so the clan he joined last was offended to rules and he didn’t know maybe and thus he got perm ban. Always make sure who you join or let join is/will follow rules at all times if not get rid or leave as told to reduce the chance of being banned. No one here can Truly help him but always be careful what you do

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Apparently you don’t understand that when you join a clan there is no way to check if the clan has any building components so that it doesn’t like funcom.

It’s really unfortunate that Funcom is destroying the opportunity to play a good game with its eternal ban. Such fundalendalism only leads to a backlash, a tiny part of this is my forum posting. On the other hand, reviews of funcom’s actions in relation to the game are made to other forums from which Funcom cannot censor writings that criticize it.

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I don’t know about anyone else, but I do understand that. I also understand that there’s no way for me to check if anyone in the clan has a flying base, or undermesh base, or has duped any items at any point. I understand perfectly that I can’t really verify whether it’s safe to join the clan.

I guess that’s why I don’t go joining other people’s clans on a whim and take my time before doing something like that.

Nah. You can still play the game. There are tons of private servers, there’s single-player mode, and there’s co-op. Oh, and you can rent your own server, too.

Maybe this lingo is why you’ve had problems with your past posts. Calling Funcom “dictators” and “fundamentalists” makes it really hard to take you seriously.

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I also have my own ashtray with 44 modes and that makes it pretty heavy. That’s why I’ve also played on several official servers to practice the game.
Now, though, I’m so tired of funcom’s incredibly brazen action that players encounter on official servers that I’m thinking of shutting it down on my own server as well. Especially if Funcom gets some financial benefit from it?

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They have repeatedly explained they don’t. It’s up to each one of us to believe it or not.

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It’s pretty impossible to believe that, because if Funcom doesn’t get any revenue from it either, then it has to go really badly financially.

I can’t understand how Funcom hasn’t already gone bankrupt when you can only sell pretty easy games and their add-ons?

In some other games there are much more and much more expensive additions for sale and in funcom games some of their own servers like to sell on these servers to players thrills and stuff so called. the donation is responsible.
I don’t like that these scammers raise money for themselves by selling the benefits of the game and that’s why I prefer to play on official servers. Now, this gambling is threatened by funcom’s ruthless prohibition policy, because I’m no longer really afraid to build anything that just prevents you from spawning something.

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I think the elephant in the room is that funcom just doesn’t know how to be server admins, lol.
All the dozens of private servers I played on the admins had very clear rules and even when you logged in you got a message showing where the server rules are (usually discord). Then the private server admins usually give a warning and allow the player to correct the problem. Then finally last resort is to just destroy all that clan’s assets and block the IP (can still be VPN’d, but from level 0 again).

I’m not saying anything bad about funcom - just that they seem to not be good server admins. They probably never planned to be. Maybe they don’t want to be.

Maybe funcom should outsource it’s “official servers” and instead have some kind of “funcom approved third party servers” where the server admin gets some cash to pay for the server as long as they follow funcom server policies. With character porting now it’s possible to start a new sever at level 60.

Or maybe funcom should work out a deal to install PIPPI on all it’s official servers. PIPPI has a heatmap and item count so admins can see each clan how many items they have and where they are.

An item count limit similar to the thrall limit makes way more sense than outlawing land claim. I can land claim with only a few small buildings and not impede server performance, but on the other hand I can also lag all players within rendering distance if I have too much stuff (legal) in my chests.

So we don;t know what the real problem is: server performance (which land claim doesn’t solve) - or play balance (which outlawing land claim doesn’t solve)

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That is your opinion.

And that is fine for a private server. They are not a corporation and are not liable for rules. The rules that Funcom puts out has to stand within the realm of legality which private servers do not.

Private servers also generally have Admins who actually play on the server. Funcom has hundreds of servers if not thousdands across three different platforms. They do not have the staff to have admins sitting around on all of these servers watching things happening and answering questions and all that which private servers have. You cannot compare an apple to a turnip.

Perhaps that is because they aren’t? :woman_shrugging: They receive reports via Zendesk and then investigate said reports. If the people they are investigating are found to be in violation of the rules they take action. They are not however server admins. They are more like police investigators.

And where do you think they are going to magick up the money to do this? Gods forbid they release another cosmetic DLC to help offset the cost for that, I can hear the outrage already.

How will that help PS or XBOX? No, mods do not belong on officials.

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If someone was banned, they were banned for a reason. It might not be a reason they agree should be ban worthy, or it may be over something they didn’t know was ban worthy but it was for a reason.

Actions have consequences, some people find that hard to accept. And I find it highly unlikely your friend was innocently banned on two separate occasions with two separate guilds.

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No I’m saying outright ( you hop on server and clan offers a spot in clan you just randomly got and hit accept right then and there) but if you take something some one offers like this and you know nothing not how many of there clan, players game tags, are they active in game enough are they aggressive and have to much building which you can check if they no cheat. The ban every one in clan no matter who did what is where I feel the should look into it deeper but the way building works now is every one owns every thing of clan with no way to determine who placed what or who cheat with the help of ? Is where the problem gets worse but I don’t know if the game is able to do that without bad draw backs affecting every single player. I wish I had a better offer or way to help but there’s not right now many of us can do or in some cases funcom.

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So basically we agree - they are not good admins (my opinion which you share) because as you say, they are not server admins at all.

They already pay a third party for server space and bandwidth. Do they get the bandwidth for free? I didn’t say anything about it being a lot of money or server admins would get rich, lol. As it is, funcom is spending money on the space and bandwidth (for hundreds of servers that show 0/40 - and now they are adding staff to investigate complaints and ban players. Unless zendesk is staffed with unpaid volunteers?

Solutions don’t have to be universal “all or nothing” to be improvements. I’m not even saying they should even do this with all PC servers. Like all things, gaming companies don’t just jump in all or nothing without even testing, lol. You’re saying it it’s a bad idea, but as you say that’s your opinion. You don’t have any data to disprove my concept and I don’t have any data to prove it. We are just two people without any concrete data or real numbers expressing opinions about something we have no real voice in deciding.

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It is a reality that unless you are in a clan with people you know, you have no idea if they are cheating or not. There could be a huge base under the mesh that you don’t know about.
You might be suspicious, sure. I don’t know any other cheats besides that, so if I joined a server and someone asked me to join a clan I don’t even know what to look for.
The friend could also not be 100% honest, too. Maybe he knew they were cheating and thought funcom had to “prove” he was cheating.

But the biggest problem is that it’s really difficult to be a solo PvPer and a lot of people don’t want to do that, so they team up with people they know nothing about. I completely understand that it could happen to someone twice. We don’t know what % of players are cheating.
I also see the funcom side that just partial banning a cheating clan doesn’t work. The members of the clan that were banned could then just make new Steam ID’s and buy Conan again and re-join the clan and have all their stuff again two hours later.

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