Allright I am done work so can focus a bit more now that I have some room to breath.
This is my story so TLDR: the system is fvcked and Funcom needs to do better.
Where do I start? My gosh this is NOT my favorite topic but certainly something that has taken up too much of my damn time. I choose that so I can’t really complain that much - but it’s mostly because I’ve seen the egregious misuse of this entire system on both sides so I care.
The game is amazing. It’s beautiful and provides an experience like no other both in play and socially. It’s why some still stick by like myself. Yet I yearn for the days of old when I didn’t have to be fearful that I might lose my access to Official Servers.
I started playing shortly after the game was released but put it back down. Popped in here and there but returned fully with Siptah because I saw much potential. So it’s been a few years and I believe going to reach 7k hrs soon on all of my accounts combined. Most of that is not sitting in menus or idle in base either.
The unfortunate thing is that there was a lot of land claim problems much of which could not be addressed at the time. So Funcom revamped the Terms of Conduct and bolstered the use of Zendesk. This was around summer/fall of 2021.
Did you know they used to give detailed explanations if you submitted an inquiry to Zendesk? They even had an option back then for general information too. That’s how I found out what I did wrong with my first suspension. It was 100% my responsibility and one I learned well from. Regardless, I had still taken the extra mile and read the ToC diligently before that. It was something that I and my subsequently added friends took seriously.
See we’re the type to just play the game. We win. We also lose. A lot. That’s ok and is part of the learning experience. It has made us strong and while we’re not the best players in this game, we’re very valuable. A lot of that has to do with the respect we have for the game, other players and what we consider to be commonly fair.
We went almost a year before the next suspension. It was in keyhole and modest by PVP standards. We were careful and ensured we were not doing anything to impact other players. We just wanted to have a place on the server and fight people. Because, y’know, it’s freakin’ fun!
That all came crashing down when we were mass reported during a war - these particular characters stated that they would report us regardless of the outcome. Sure we had outposts, small, like wheel houses and we also provided maprooms to the server. Nothing extraordinary, nothing blocked spawns, resources and it wasn’t laggy. We didn’t even have bridges or what have you. We had 2 players in our group with shit computers so we had to be careful with that stuff for ourselves. Everything was wiped. Our small outposts, maprooms and our main base. Important to note that Funcom has stated that there is no limit to the amount of buildings you can have but you have to keep it reasonable and within ToC.
Sent the inquiry to Zendesk. No reasoning. Nothing. Then on THESE FORUMS the people that reported us admitted to having mass reported us to make a point. They knew their reports would see us admin wiped and stated that we didn’t do anything wrong.
What’s worse? We all had alts and rebuilt. 2 or 3 days later with less that 800 building pieces in keyhole again, no torches, barely any placeables, no courtyard, nada, wiped again and suspended. It is important to note that we were not avoiding a ban.
As a result of involving Funcom a total of 10 clans were actioned on. 2 of which were solos with minimal land claim and weren’t even a part of the war. The server was essentially “cleansed”. It was a shitshow and continues to this day to have been a tragedy, people still talk about it because that server is popular.
We were not the only ones affected by these situations. There’s so many stories that are similar.
This experience was after the absolute worst time in admin wipes. Spring of 2022 it was crazy how many people were being affected. Long standing clans wiped away or so much as having stepped foot in busy server within days.
When you start really looking into the Terms of Conduct, how you make reports through Zendesk, when actions are performed and what the results are you start to see patterns.
Let’s take the fiasco with reporting boss spawns. They were changing boss spawns so that the chests were moved to the dungeons. You can get the keys either by defeating world bosses out in the world or within the dungeons. Before they even told us they were doing this people were still reporting land claim violations for boss spawn blocking and being told the reports were concluded with no action as they were not breaking ToC. When the bell rung about this it was clarified that it wasn’t a violation - the reasoning was due to the bosses’ not being unique BECAUSE of the change. So a lot of wasted time, no communication about the intended change, confusion and misinterpretation of the ToC by players.
While we can get “clarification” sometimes, most recently a lot more frequently (great, but why?), these explanations tend to create more questions rather than resolve it.
Then you have certain individuals on the forum and elsewhere who believe that anyone, regardless of the experience, is lying. I don’t know how many times I was told I was lying. I HAD to have been cheating or blocking or too many placeables or I must have done something to cause this. Because Funcom wouldn’t ever do that to the players.
How many times did some try to ring the bell in winter of 2021 and 2022? They were laughed at, told they were crazy or were making stuff up. They HAD to have been doing something wrong to warrant a suspension/ban. It was terrible to watch. They were driven away by these people and Funcom. Valuable players.
I either know of or are acquainted with a lot of PVP players in NA. I’ve asked them what the worst that has happened to Conan and the most prevalent issue that has driven away so many players, new and veteran. It is report meta and the system.
I watched an acquaintance join a random server and look around. They wanted to test this system since it was a hot topic at the time. They found a small shit shack on noob river and reported it, making up a bunch of lies and the very next day it was admin wiped. This was during a time that reports were being actioned extremely quickly for some reason. I guess “internal policies” or what have you.
I’ve watched a streamer laughing reporting each and every single base on a server. The ENTIRE server was actioned on in the coming weeks. Sure, some were at fault but not all by a longshot.
I gathered posts for months and months and then I stopped. I thought, hey, maybe Funcom calmed-tfd. But no, they didn’t.
For going on YEARS there’s been much discussion on mass reporting. Not once in the entire time this has been a topic has Funcom stepped in and explained. Apologized. Corrected us. How many times has there been Conan live streams and people begged for explanations about mass reporting or for it to be stopped? Almost every one up until the last 6 months. Until the other day, where one of them “disagreed” on the forums that is now being taken as gospel by a few.
The inconsistencies. My god. How long someone received a suspension for, only actioning on 1 base but other players all, how long it takes for a suspension to actually be implemented (sometimes for up to 3 days after the initial admin wipe), the lack of explanation and communication, the removal of the general inquiries option in Zendesk, the miscommunication and interpretation of ToC, the only option in Zendesk BEING to appeal a ban to ask for clarification, why reporting a ToC breaking land claim issue where you’re being walled in makes it so the victim is actioned on and it taking upwards of months for PVE bases to be actioned on.
Why is it that only instances of the database are loaded instead of logging in? It was explained because it would take up a server slot and ping restrictions. I can’t even begin to explain how pissed off I am at this explanation. If it is a save then it is not current - they are refusing to explain because of “internal policies”. Taking up a server slot? Are you KIDDING me? Most servers are lucky if you get 40/40 during primetime and for most servers they are not investigating during primetime. Even then so what?! Let someone go in queue for a hot minute. They’ll live. Ping restrictions?!!???! I’m not sure about console but c’mon man, you can direct connect.
During the worst of the report wars there were certain things that could be done to do reports “efficiently”. That’s all I will say. With that said though last summer they added a little blurb that I thought was interesting, one of which I have taken issue with and doesn’t seem clear:
Now use your imagination.
As for what you can do for this specific situation? Nothing now like I and others have said. It’s a suspension so can’t appeal it. The deed was done and they won’t reinstate anything.
For the future though when you see that things might be going south you have options. BVing being one of them, do that and come back when it’s safer. There’s a couple of little nuances to it to ensure safety though including some of the patterns I mentioned above.
I’m being a bit vague on certain things and I apologize for that. It’s bad enough that PVPers have a bad reputation as it is and some peg us as being default exploiters…
Additionally for the future consider what I said earlier about some of us wanting to push for a better system. If you want to stick around maybe we can make a difference. This includes having active moderation instead of reactive which would address so many things and not just the poorly implemented system in place.
Also, don’t report for land claim on PVP. Ever. It doesn’t matter that the culprits are doing ■■■■■■ stuff. Making a report is a surefire way to cause chaos unfortunately. While Funcom claims that reports do not result in suspensions and bans but investigations, that might be true, but their investigations that result in action often tend to be unfair and unwarranted just like this.
Ok so that is a lot. Sorry, like I said I can talk for hours and that isn’t even all the other little things…
There are some amazing people already commenting here, not all of us will agree with each other but they provide valuable contributions. Take some with a grain of salt as there are ulterior motives with others. Even if they want to go off topic or tell you you’re lying, don’t give into that bait.