Funcom allowing players to indiscriminately spam “auto harvesting” golems on already marginal servers (thankfully they removed the Al’Merayah lagfest but players spamming T10 purges will still bring a server to its knees) was a really questionable idea.
On paper it seems great, but just like with land claim actual players can’t be trusted to use them in moderation. Because, you know, that epic 200 wood they each harvest overnight is more important than the game performance of every other player in rendering range. Not to mention the fact that they turn the world into an unsightly parking lot and deny resources from players that actually play the game. A player can harvest more resources in one second than a golem will harvest in an entire day.
On my server you have players with entire armies dozens of of golems around their base. As soon as you move within a few hundred meters they all start harvesting and the lag is palpable.
So yeah, call me a prick or whatever, but I’ve taken it upon myself to cleanse the land of them. And I thought I’d share my technique in case anyone else has any neighbours spamming them.
Golems take 800% damage from star metal weapons. And who has star metal weapons galore? Our grumpy, furry friends in the north, the Cimmerians.
So I knocked out a berserker and dragged it into the middle of a field of harvesting golems, made some microwave popcorn and waited for the fun. It was a beautiful sight to see, well worth the price of admission. One berserker, upon waking from his slumber, will absolutely obliterate an entire grid square worth of golems. It was glorious.
So if you’re a player that is spamming golems like there’s no tomorrow and clear-cutting the land, beware of the Berserker.
Besides harvest, some of these golems have fascinating things to do.
I think the defend and irritate motives are key. It is something I noticed a certain group of players wanted (and needed). Sure, it is about lore as a background item… or just call it all context for now. I don’t see anything else stopping progress.
You really want to have fun, get corupt, use mass harvest, watch them stop and stand there like me when I get to the kitchen and can’t remember for what.
But, golems are as much land claims as foundations, columns, torches, or brazers. Report them for land claim abuse.
You mean client side or server side?
Once again, sounds like a ToC violation, report them.
Well, the annoying thing about the auto-harvest is this:
You have a player that isn’t even online, spamming golems that harvest a pitiful amount of resources but in a very large area.
If I’m in the area they all simultaneously spring into action and start harvesting. The player isn’t even playing - I AM - and my doing so is gathering resources for them, denying me of resources in a large area around my base, and lagging me as all of those golems have to be rendered, their AI/pathing calculated, and all of the falling trees and other crap effects rendered.
Whoever came up with this idea has never actually played the game.
Don’t get me started on the ability to spam taverns. The next guy over has four bar counters and barkeeps and a steady stream of NPCs swarming around. A player should not be able to craft more than one bar counter.
Honestly, I can count on one hand the amount of people I have reported in 7 years and they have been for exploits or very serious, repeated land claim abuses.
The community is so small, so fragmented already that the last thing we need is to lose even more players over things like this.
Besides, I’m not even sure it is against the TOS. Perhaps arguably the performance angle, but then the same can be said for thralls, no? If someone has a thrall cap of 100, and he has 100 thralls with various emotes concentrated in one area and they all render in at once it will be a performance hit. But he hasn’t technically done anything wrong since there is nothing that states they can’t place as many thralls as their cap allows.
This is a less drastic, and far more amusing way to deal with it. It only takes a few minutes to grab a Berserker and drag it over, and you have time to make popcorn or a coffee while you wait for it to wake up. It’s really glorious watching it obliterate even multiple max tier Crystalline golems at once
I just thought I’d share here in case anyone else is plagued by a neighbour’s auto-harvesting golems and hasn’t thought of it yet.
EDIT:
Just about everything they added in the last two years is a waste of RAM
The game code was already a mess and the servers already suffering from poor performance. So hey, let’s add Living Settlements. spammable purges. auto-harvesting golems. spammable taverns. Al’Merayah.
How so?
Someone that logs once or twice a week is literally spamming golems set to auto-harvest near my base. It is a tangible performance hit for me and everyone in the area, and it is denying resources from everyone in the area.
How is dragging a Berserker to them a TOS violation? I am using the game mechanics to solve a problem.
If you leave your horse or a thrall in some random place blocking a building spot for weeks, and someone drags a mob over to it to clear it out, have they also violated the TOS?
Im not saying what they are doing is right, if they are spamming stuff like that for the sole purpose of lagging the server, it would be a violation. Remember, not everyone plays to your, or my, schedule, and maybe they can only play a couple times a week. Maybe to them, the content of golems farming gets what they need. If there isnt a significant server hit to performance (because remember, people on the forums have claimed to be able to make the server performance with a very very small base) then I wouldnt worry too much. If they were placed there to block you, then its a violation.
What your solution is though, is no different then people dragging purges, or purposely doing purges near another players base. Its griefing. And, Im not saying not to do it. If the first player is being malicious Im all for getting revenge. We did in back in EA against exploiting players from that country we cant name.
All Im saying is to be careful. That other player might find out and report YOU, even though you are doing what is potentially right.
IIRC, taverns have been shown to be one of the most serious performance hogs servers can have, and they intensify issues like the fall under floor bug. Four per a single player is obscene! Especially considering how many others must be active at any time on that server. Really, from what I have read other admins say they do, they should have their own cap in code like thralls themselves.
No wonder official servers are struggling so bad at times when that’s happening; nevermind the golems and whatever else on top of it.
Read the land claim rule, yes golems parked out side your base are equivalent to a mobile land claim. Thralls are the same. As are ornaments, tress, bushes, brazers.
And have some one come on here and blow a gasket. I see this as an exploit, no different then kitting a boss to someones base. So basically you are using an exploit to battle a violation, think on that for a bit.
And for all those mysteriously losing thralls, I think Scooby has solved that mystery.
Most will agree a good part of the poor performance on the public servers is the Gportal public servers. I’ve seen how the game runs on good servers and it’s practically night and day.
100 people on from all over the world, a not built up private server, admin spawning in event bosses left and right, was the most epic free for all till the server finally crashed.
I know there is no reason to believe anything funcom tells us but supposedly they are fixing the spaghetti coding so everything works smoothly and new things can be added with out the usual tonObugs.
Ya but it’s so much fun to pop in a gas arrow and watch the patrons vacate.
And I was told it was maprooms, and had various spells banned.
The servers are sharded, which explains the performance hit. The tangent of such servers alludes to something more dedicated. I mean I would make them more “static” under the hood… in code.
Funcom has been telling us all kinds of things.
What I think we have actually been experiencing is what looks like a systematic dismantling of the team that maintained and produced content for Conan Exiles.
I would be shocked to find out that there is more than 1 person - probably an intern - working on the code, if at all.
I doubt that anyone is even working on the Bazaar even, and Funcom has shown that that is a higher priority to them than anything else. What they will likely do is start re-packaging the old BattlePass items and putting them up - perhaps with recolored textures - in the Bazaar.
Thing is Conan could go through a renascence. funcom could take all that money Dune made and put in back in to Conan that pretty well paid for the making of Dune. I don’t see it happening. But hey what are they going to do with all the extra people now that Dune is out?
Hmm… i didn’t put a constraint on the type, but it matters here. Well… it’s not broken by type, for now. It could be done by a template. That makes this is a hot topic. Just saying. It works.
Since you asked, I thought I would provide you with the specific TOS violation. I am responding to your question, please keep that in mind if you reply to me.
[ Hacks and Exploits
Hacks and exploits are not tolerated.
Hacks are uses of third-party programs that inject code and modify aspects of the game to provide an unfair advantage against other players. Utilizing such will lead to action taken against your game license, not just your access to official servers.
Exploits are uses and abuses of game mechanics to obtain an unfair advantage over other players including creating a detrimental play experience through reduced server or game performance.]
By removing dozens of lag-inducing auto-harvesting golems I am not obtaining any “advantage” over anyone.
The only person creating a detrimental play experience for other players is the one who indiscriminately spammed as many golems as he was capable of creating and then deliberately set them to auto-harvest every single resource in a massive area in a high-traffic location (Mounds of the Dead).
The main problem with this game is that the building system encourages abuse and gamers in general cannot be relied upon to use common sense, or maintain some form of etiquette. About half of players do not GAF about anyone else’s enjoyment of the game and treat Official servers as their own private single player playground.
Funcom really dropped the ball by putting no limits on things like buildings/placeables or - more recently - bars and barkeeps or auto-harvesting golems.
I don’t see anything else stopping progress.
