This thread is about solutions. The fact of the matter is that you do not have the staff to moderate servers efficiently and in turn it is damaging your potential revenue. A heavily exploited game with lack of moderation is NOT a good commerical for the Isle Of Siptah Expansion.
Console players read this forum. Do you believe they are looking forward to everything we are dealing with?
Solution:Create a prompt that players can see once they login with the list of current players on that server. Have players cast their vote for whoever (that is not part of their clan) they believe should moderate that server with admin priviledges (regulated to a certain extent).
Elected moderator(s):Will receive a prompt stating that they have been elected allowing them to accept whether or not they choose to be a moderator. If not, the election rolls over to the next player with the most votes.
Funneling the reports via one person = less work for Funcom and allows for better moderation: Moderators can then on behalf of the server report to Funcom regarding issues on the server. Based on the reports, Funcom can chose to âunlockâ admin priveledges for the server moderator to execute whichever agreed upon punishment/remedy needs to be applied to the scenario.
Currently, your system is overcumbersome for your staff and in turn is affecting your possible revenue. Though you may not want to admit, this is the most cost effective and overall EFFECTIVE solution.
If this system gets implemented and I get elected, Iâll probably ban everyone withing an hour.
Jokes aside, this will never work. Thereâs alot of mass reporting and angry mobs already, for simple subjective reasons like âkilled x playerâ or âyou skinned the monster I killedâ, or even more often than ever âyou claimed MY landâ. Thereâs going to be alot of abuse if players will be empowered, especially players who are annonymous and might not have a sense of responsibility for a role that requires it.
Your system is more suited for a lobby type of game.
(that is not part of their clan) Emphasis on this as I assume your âOh nonononoâ is you trying to communicate a worry of bias. If I am wrong in assuming that, then go beyond âOh nonononoâ. Like, why even reply.
You donât get to give power to random people. Even when they are allegedly nice.
Aside from the potential exploit when voting, they might turn a 180 and start doing shady stuff after being âelectedâ.
Look at these forums, for instance. To earn a regular title takes a lot of time invested, likes given/taken, only a handful have it. Yet some people flag incorrectly posts that donât fit their view, when it obviously should be about flagging harmful content in general.
If on this mere forum we already have people messing up, imagine servers, admin powers, and so on. Its not going to work.
Well, if you read through it youâd take notice that it is more so about funneling reports through one person (taking into consideration that Funcom lacks staff).
Rather than the current moronic system of Funcom weaving through 50 billion reports with only a handful of employees doing so thus allowing cheating/exploiting to run itâs irreversible course. By all means, what is your alternative as it is always super brain dead easy to point out flaws especially when not reading through.
Cost effective would depend on it being effective, and it ainât gonna be.
You are basically suggesting that Funcom should let a popularity contest decide whoâs going to have the power to screw with everyoneâs gaming experience on a server. There are so many problems with that, I donât even know where to begin.
Off the top of my head, let me toss out a few:
On a PVP server, having admin rights gives a player an unfair advantage over other players. The player with admin rights can scout out other peopleâs bases and thereâs no way he or she can âunseeâ and âunknowâ this information.
Even in real life, you often canât know how a person will handle power until you hand it to them. This is much, much worse online, where itâs much harder to get to know the real person behind an online persona.
You could choose the nicest guy on the server that everyone loves, and he could turn out to be completely incompetent as an admin. Not because heâs a bad person, but because he just doesnât do the job well.
Letâs say you choose an admin by popular vote and they turn out just fine. What happens when they canât deal with it anymore? Maybe they got burned out by being an admin and trying to play at the same time. Maybe they donât like the game anymore. Maybe something happened in their private life and they donât have enough time to do this anymore.
Thatâs just off the top of my head.
Those are private servers. Moderating official servers needs to be a job for a team of people. As a company, you donât let randos represent you.
How about no? Your solution isnât a good one. Thatâs not our fault.
You have to come back to first principles on why people like the official servers over private:
Brand Equity. Its reasonable to assume players who start the game for the first time associate Official Severs as being moderated & maintained by the game publisher. Trust is assumed.
No Admin Abuse. All games that move over to private servers eventually trip the âAdmin abuseâ cycles. No matter how pure or good intentioned the owners are, the feeling that the moment a loss or unfair outcome occurs⊠admin abuse. You could be an admin and not play and still suffer this fate. You could be an admin, raid or fight someone, win and automatically distrust kicks in. Reptuation is hard to maintain this space, no matter how balanced the admin may appear⊠All it takes is a few players to cry foul and the cancer of âAdmin abuseâ spreads.
3rd Party needs skin in the game. That being said, if the admin cycles were to be relegated back to say GPortal (original partner) and they have folks on the payroll who administer basic cheat outcomes (undermeshing, land claim spam / abuse) then this would actually stop the bleeding a lot more than waiting for a patch that will never really truly fix or arrive anytime soon. I feel thats all thats being asked, hire 1x FTE to administer the servers for the basics of cheating behaviours and the player base would be a lot more forgiving on this topic than currently.
Player Democracies fail. Have a look at Eve Online for the CSM ⊠want to see upclose how badly this idea turns into a political zerg event. All you need is a troll clan to get the popular vote and theyâll in turn hold the server hostage. Same with a person who goes dormant or fails to act etc. You essentially can still have a dormant effect and if anything youâve added an additional layer of protocol to a non-existant one.
Moving this over to a player run movement would just utterly fail. Too many emotional triggers at play, especially if the admin involved favours Funcom over Player or vice versa.
Hell no, dude. Miss me with that responsibility shâ stuff.
But, as you can see, thereâs no shortage of those who are dying to do it
On a more serious note, if I ever had to recommend someone to moderate official servers, for real, there are a few people on these forums I would trust. Hell, one of them already runs a private server and does a great job as an admin.
Thing is, I wouldnât wish that thankless job on them. Theyâre nice people.
This would result in abuse that wound render the game unplayable. Essentially every server would have a âadminâ and in many of those servers, they would begin to develop an ego. Donât forget the butt-suckers of the world, how quickly they would rally around a perceived leader⊠and other players (solo) who donât show a certain level of respect, would suddenly become the newest victim. People in games, with anonymous protections, can get really mean and vindictive. As much as I would like to see Admins, I would only support it if they had literal jobs to lose and were baby-sat by Funcom.
Better option would be an in game utility where players could tag individuals or objects in the map. Chat logs would automatically be provided as relevant, coords automatically provided, screen automatically provided. Easy for Moderators to teleport to said coordinates and deal with potential issues of varying kinds. One mod could serve dozens and dozens of servers. Limit âreportsâ to just a couple a day at most. Punish harshly people that report needlessly. âHe blocked a singular rock spawn!â - Ban the complainer for an hour. âHe walled in the entire center tower on Siptah.â - Ban the waller permanently.
My solution would be to keep increasing their moderation team in respect to Conan Exiles player base size. Also, giving moderation rights to players who have distinguished themselves in the community. But, Funcom is already doing that, so no solution required anymore.
I have moved this thread to the General Discussions subforum, as it provides a suggestion for Official servers in general -and does not concern an in-game feature-. Your thread will be seen regardless.
Iâve played online games with âplayer moderatorsâ before. Itâs really not the magic wand to fix all the problems you make it out to be.
In an ideal situation, it could help a little. In a less ideal situation, the Funcom Community team would have to deal with constant reports of moderators abusing their position, on top of the usual stories.
Furthermore, with volunteer work you get only so much done as the volunteers are willing to do. Theyâre not full-time employees, nor even part-time employees. If the crap going on is half as bad as the forums make it seem, youâre going to burn out those volunteers very quickly. You canât expect volunteers to carry the responsibility of representing the company in the customer interface.
Also, with the limited populations of Conan Exiles servers, âfixingâ the elections wouldnât be too difficult. Democracy isnât an optimal solution for finding a competent person to do a job.
I can view that per player and per clan. I can use that map to teleport DIRECTLY to the area I want to look at. So if someone is accused of foundation spam, resource blocking, obelisk blocking, undermeshing, or whatever. I can login, heatmap the clan/person in question, even if they arenât logged in. And then see at a glance what they are doing. If I need to, I can ctrl right click and teleport directly to a reported area, ghost through the terrain if needed, and see what offense they are commiting.
The whole process would take under 5 minutes.
Meanwhile the current system requires irrefutable video and screenshot evidence (Pippi does not), and if they decide to check (which they likely wonât). They have to login, and go into ghost mode and search around using screenshots or landmarks given as a guide to slowly find the base. This could take 20 minutes to an hour. Hence why they donât commonly do this and why action isnât normally taken.
With Pippi and a team of three. They literally could service all 500 something PC servers in a week. Assuming all servers have tickets that need addressing.
