Giving Conan another chance, but asking one more time about Purges

Recently, I went on a tear on Twitter about quitting the game because of offline purge damage. And I meant it; I nearly let our buildings collapse and had started to recreate things in SP.

But I read the patch notes, and there are so many REALLY good changes coming soon to Console Conan (whenever we get that patch, which is a whole other can of worms… anyway) that I softened my stance a bit, so I went in to start making repairs and resetting timers and such.

But that still leaves the biggest problem for us: Offline Purge raiding.

I’ve shouted into the wind on this and I know that the Devs will never change it, for whatever dumb reason. But we really, really need something to change to make Conan the perfect game for my group.

So I go back to begging the devs to at least add a manual trigger mechanic. And I believe that I have worked out how to do it.

Add a horn that we can blow to start a purge at the base we want it to come to, and after it is defeated your meter will be reset to zero.

And to add a bit of a risk versus reward to it, handle it like this: If you blow the horn when you have less than a full bar, it will basically be the lowest tier possible for that area and have half as many waves. Blowing it when the meter is at or just beyond the first tick will start a normal purge, with normal options. And waiting until it is at max will increase the chances of special thralls and reward creatures spawning.

And here’s the risk- You can still have a purge randomly happen, at any base, while your meter is between the tick marks.

This way, if you just do not want to deal with it, you can go somewhere set up to fight and get the meter out of the way. But if you want a shot at the best loot, you have to risk the random roll and wait it out. This aught to satisfy the hardcore while giving those of us that just don’t care (or don’t have the time) a way to manage playing.

I am begging the community managers to respond to this topic and pass it along to the Devs. Many of this patches changes show that they might actually listen to us and have a bit more respect for our time. They just need one more step to knock it out of the ballpark.

And while this would not be that step, at least it’s not a strike.

I am for on-demand stuff, however, I am hesitant about an on demand purge that limits “purges”.

A big part of the purge is removing structures. If someone builds walls all over the map, the purge will slowly break those down if someone isn’t there repairing and babysitting them. (Good thing for everyone else)

If a troll can automatically pick where purges will be, the likely hood of him giving up on some of those trollish/excessive walls is remote. He can safely over-build and negatively affect the server performance/experience. It would be a boon to trolls, and foundation spammers.

Thralls got boosted, you can use them to defend against a purge if they are placed correctly. Might take some base redesign to keep building pieces intact.

Apparently there is a legendary sword that does 97 damage. Put it on a thrall and he will slay a dragon for you.

Keep thralls inside your buildings, as well as outside your walls, and in the midst of your courtyard.

So, in summary, I like on-demand content, and anything purge related is cool to think about, but I believe this would limit part of the purges intended purpose.

I could support this, if it did not prevent random, or offline purges, and if it made the purge occur at random places (troll walls for example). So people still had to maintain their behemoth creations.

I’d love a manual trigger. Playing solo, I’m hesitant to leave my base alone for any length of time while my purge meter is on purple (new feature - the bar turns purple when the meter reaches dangerous levels), so it would make my life easier if I could just push a button, be done with it, and go look around the Unnamed City or something.

That said… At least my server settings allow me to choose how many people need to be online for a Purge to happen, so as long as it’s one or more, my bases won’t get pillaged and burned while I’m at work or asleep or painting miniatures or GM’ing a tabletop RPG. Would this option help you, or are you playing on an official server which, naturally, need to be purged offline to get rid of clan property whose owners have abandoned the game?

Hey Hotaru!

Thank you for giving the game another shot after all that updates :slight_smile: We’re very glad to have you back and hope you like the changes we’ve made.

I can’t give you a simple yes/no answer to your suggestion, but I will pass it along to the dev team.

If you and your friends are playing on a private server (or if you’re in single-player) you can always turn Purges off for the day/night when you all log off. Or you can set specific parameters for when you want the Purge to attack, eliminating offline Purges altogether.

Being able to choose when to get purged would certainly be convenient, but there’s something to be said for getting surprised. Of course, you’ve already suggested a solution that satisfies both those camps, so that’s pretty cool. The only thing I can think to add would be to maybe have a narrow margin around the existing threshold mark where you could still manually trigger it and get a full purge before it slips over into the zone where you risk the purge triggering automatically.

In the meanwhile, I’m pretty sure there’s a server option to only purge clans when at least a certain number are online. While the Official servers have this turned off, it should be possible to find a private server with the requirement set that at least 1 player from a clan be online in order to get purged. I realize that’s not exactly what you’re asking for, but it might be a good starting point.

I think the purple is just for contrast as it was difficult to see if the white bar had passed the threshold mark or not. My evidence for this is that I got purged on Sunday. After the purge had ended and the meter depleted, the little bit that started building afterwards was purple. Clearly a purge meter with only a small amount filled is nowhere near the danger zone, so I think purple is just the color they chose.

PVE Official 2501. We’re the only “day one” clan left.

And I am glad for a response, but that last bit is honestly why I’m pessimistic about Funcom developers. There is zero player-friendly reason that setting is not how it is on Official servers. The only way it makes sense is to drive players off servers that Funcom pays for so they can eventually cut costs by dropping empty ones.

My plan doesn’t prevent this. If a clan is purge eligible and they don’t start it, eventually it’ll start itself.

But as to the structure clearing, the purge is awful at that. Let’s say a clan is griefing with building, and you want a purge to take care of it. This assumes:

  • A Purge will trigger on the structure you want gone
  • That purge will be strong enough to foundation wipe said structure.
  • The clan is active enough to avoid timer decay and
  • They don’t notice the purge happened, or the damage caused in time to repair.

I’d go out on a limb and say this has never happened.

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I play Official. And as I said above, the decay timer does a FAR better job clearing abandoned property than purges ever will.

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Strange, I’m reasonably certain* that my bar was white when I logged in and turned purple when it passed the threshold. Haven’t got a Purge yet, though, so I’m not sure what happens afterwards.

*I remember reading on the forums about purple, so I paid some marginal attention to the bar’s color when I logged in. But it’s still possible that I’m mistaken, and the bar was very close to threshold at tat point, so it got purplefied pretty quickly.

So it’s been a couple days and we’re only 1/3 of the way to our next purge. At the rate we play, it will probably take another 3-4 days to hit the threshold. So clearly, we’re not in any danger of an imminent purge attack.

The only thing I can think of that might tie the color of the bar to danger would be if its color is based off of the severity of the purge your clan can expect based off how extensive your clan’s holding are (if that’s actually factored in). I suppose the way to test this would be to check the purge meter of a freshly created character after it’s had a few hours to start ticking up… :man_shrugging:

Weird…

My bar is white again. It was purple while it was over the Purge threshold, then got hit by a Purge today (a cute little group of starved - but clothed! - Exiles that was basically beaten by a single T3 Lemurian fighter thrall) and the bar dropped down to what you see here… and white again.

It may be that one of the mods I’ve installed is affecting this. I kinda hope it stays this way - it’s much easier to see when I’ve crossed the threshold when the bar changes color.

Interesting, mine was still purple even when it had only half that much progress. And yes, I agree that it would be great if it would change color after the Purge threshold had been met — blood red would be fitting, right? :slight_smile:

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I’m hoping things improve with it. I’m kinda done with purges. I know they have a purpose.

But I kinda wanna go out some evenings. I dunno. Maybe for dinner. A drink with some friends. Watch a movie. Have an existence.

I see the purge hit like the first tick and there goes my social life until the bar goes back to 0

Do you often have to wait long for it? My clan (it’s just two of us now, and we’re generally on at the same times) typically get purged within 1 hour of hitting the threshold mark, usually sooner.

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Sometimes it can take days. We kind of seem to get hit right after the second tick. I have seen it hit when the bar is all the way full. For the clan I am in (3 Strong active players in total) it can take forever.

I tore down a lot of things to just focus on defendable areas and shoring up my defenses.

But we can wait a long time. Usually it likes to hit at the very end of PVP time. 10 minutes. Usually I have to go to bed before it happens because of work.

If you want a great place that i have accidentally found that can’t be purge then set up on the southern aqueduct, I have tiled all the way along it and even have a bridge built going into the north and with all the purges i have had for over a year all i have lost is a single brazier that i set up near the bottom of the stairs

How strange, I wonder if it’s a case that your server has more active clans than mine (~10-15 people on most evenings), or if the use of PvP hours (mine’s PvE) tells the server to deprioritize purge scheduling. I wonder if moving to a server further east (so it’s a couple hours ahead of your timezone) would help so that it’s at least happening before bedtime…

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I love my clan mates more than I hate fixing broken things. So I’ll stick it out. They are good people

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Blasphemy!!!
As conan tells you:
Stay, and be the hero of your own story, or leave, and risk losing it all? The choice will be yours. Choose wisely.

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