How to make Conan better

Kind of a quiet Saturday morning here therefore I decided to take some time and share my thoughts on how to make Conan a great game :slight_smile:

  1. Deal with the cheating (including undermeshing):
    I see this as the biggest issue right now and most of my friends who played have completely quit the game because of the rampant cheating. I realize this is a complex issue and know that there are a lot of false accusations of cheating (ex. “there is no way my invincible base could have been raided without cheating”…) but most of us have seen examples of real cheating. It feels like it is hit or miss regarding Funcom responses.
    Possible solutions:
    A. Make examples out of cheaters: I realize there might be privacy issues but right now I think most folks believe that they will not get punished for cheating (and sad to say, they might be right). As I mentioned in a recent post, I have Chinese friends who claimed on Chinese forums that players thought undermesh was not a cheat in that the game allows it and that you cannot be punished for it. Would be awesome to have a log of players who were punished in order to let people know there are consequences.
    B. Quicker response to claims of cheating: Hard to do with such a large number of official servers…
    C. Related to B, maybe consolidate mostly dead servers into something more manageable for Funcom.
    D. Premium Official Servers: I’ve heard a number of players claim that they would be willing to spend $5 a month in order to have an official server that actually had some level of real admin support from Funcom.
    E. Random undermesh checks: I’m not an expert on this but could Funcom employees just periodically check the usual undermesh areas in the official servers?
    F. Fix the undermesh! :slight_smile: : I’ve heard rumors that “fixes are right around the corner” but still waiting…

  2. Spam:
    As I mentioned in an earlier post, the economics for players trying to destroy spam versus the spam just being rebuilt do not work. As an example, this week a friend and I tried using multiple trebuchets with demon-fire barrage to clean up an area of spam. We made decent progress but by the next day the player in question rebuilt the spam and even added to it. The cost of a foundation is too cheap in relation to bombs.
    Possible solutions:
    A. Have a real land claim system for clans: Not sure how this would exactly work but have it somehow related to clan size (similar to thralls)
    B. Have maintenance costs associated with buildings: If someone builds massive amounts of spam then they should have to spend a large amount of time maintaining them.
    C. Limit build sites: This should be an easy one. Simply block off important areas from building (the most obvious example being shattered springs).
    D. Lower the cost of bombs and/or increase the cost of building mats: Get the economics more aligned. Also I watched a clan use an Avatar on a massive spam site just last week – it was pretty underwhelming for the effort required to summon the Avatar…

  3. We need something new!
    I agree that Funcom has done some great and amazing things with this game but I think most of us are tired of just getting frequetn reskin DLC… I know the new map is coming and I really hope it adds new excitement into the game but I think Funcom needs to do this more often. Also, while I’ve never been that excited by sorcery, I do wonder if such a change could also add new interest into the game.

Sorry for such a lengthy post. Just thought worthwhile collecting my thoughts on what would really make Conan into a great game that could maintain it’s population. As mentioned I have just seen too many friends leave the game for good (mostly do to cheating though…).

Thoughts?

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According to the upcoming features it’s part of update 42 which has an ETA of 2020 H1, unfortunately update 41 was so problematic that 42 and all future updates are inevitably delayed

The answer is no.

Official servers are not moderated because moderated servers consume the time of employees and costs money.

The reporting system is in place for folks to document issues. Yes, it is frustratingly slow, but it is the process we have.

Then there is:

Please, no. Not merely because it would wipe the builds of valid players but because it would be a nightmare of management.

Absolutely not. This is not a good idea. When folks violate the rules, a ban wipes their efforts. That is the process. It is quiet and effective.

Again, no. I understand other games do this. It’s one reason I do not play those games.

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They could always get off their arses and finish sorcery, but then people would cry and complain about that.

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Well Pugilist, clearly you are not on board with my thoughts/suggestions (which is fine and good to get different viewpoints).

That being said what would you suggest to make the game better? I will continue to argue that improvements are needed especially since I would say in less than a year roughly 80% of my friends that I have played with (>30) have quit playing because of the issues mentioned in my original post.

As for priority, cheating is the biggest issue followed by spam. We have had people submit videos of cheats, etc and in most cases either nothing happens (admittedly to our knowledge - maybe something going on behind the scenes…) or it appears that the person MIGHT have been temporarily banned (no way to know for sure) and came back to cause more havoc. Folks are just giving up and not wanting to deal with it anymore.

While I personally have seen examples in the past where Funcom has taken direct action (a shout out to Funcom for that!) it is just too rare and slow. As a result I would argue the overwhelming perception (right or wrong) is that Funcom just doesn’t care (and thus once again folks give up the game completely).

Apologies if this sounds like a whine fest. Just that I really love the game and getting frustrated seeing so many friends leave. Hoping improvements come and that the new map creates more interest.

And to emphasize the point. On the server I play on (that until the past year usually hit the max of 40 players every night but now is lucky to get 8 players). We have a new solo player who just joined and has started hitting the other clans hard. That is completely fine and to be expected since a PVP server but…

We recently raided his large base which was mysteriously empty and guess what we found? Undermesh underneath the base! As a result we can kill him in PVP, raid him, etc but basically we are beaten because he can take our stuff and we cannot take his or reclaim ours.

We submitted pics and location to Funcom and hoping for the best. Otherwise I think this guy might be the end of what was left of our server.

Better than it is?

  1. Continue to review bug reports and fix issues
  2. Continue to use Testlive to provide “what-if” scenarios
  3. Continue to add DLC and base game content
  4. Continue to enforce the rules through the reporting process
  5. Review the disconnect between Test, Testlive, and Live to determine what is letting the untrapped errors propagate into Production

Item five (5) is the key. The last release indicates there is a significant difference in the Dev, Test, and Prod environments. The issues that arose were not on Testlive, that i saw. The conclusion is the environments are out of sync in a way that causes significant issues on release to production pushes.

The Dev environment will always be fluid but the Testlive and Prod environments should be exact copies. This will reveal issues when a Testlive push is initiated and reduce surprises with a production push.

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That’s why people quit playing and the game will eventually die, because money is more important than the player base.

Yet they never have been moderated and people continue to play…

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My only suggestion would be to fix the database engine.

So I just checked the official server that I play on. Over a year ago it was often at the max capacity of 40 players (especially on weekends). I remember having to wait to log on.

Tonight I’m only seeing 2 players… I would argue (from discussions with people before they left) that the cheating was the main issue.

Some will undoubtedly leave a server, but people are still playing the game is good numbers. Just because one server pop is low doesn’t mean they’ve quit playing. They can be on a different server, their own server, or in single player.

The best way to make Conan better is to shut down the suggestions thread.
They can not fix the mess they have, yet peeps want to pile more on them.
Ive not seen a suggestion yet that I would use If I were in FUncom.

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Except, the servers I play on are more populated than they have been in a year.

So, we will have to disagree.

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Are you playing Official or Private? Personally I see pros and cons to both. Over the last several years I’ve tried ~5 private servers and they all ended badly. Either the servers just never built up enough steam and just withered away, they suddenly got shut down, admin became jerks, and the one case where the server was awesome and even though the admin did a vote and the majority did not want wipes, the admin started monthly wipes anyway (because his friends wanted him to) and within 2 months it died… The positive point is you avoided the hard core cheaters that you have on Official.

The downside with Official is the cheating and lack of real admin BUT at least there is consistency.

Also it doesn’t really matter if some Official servers are lucky and apparently doing well (great for the folks who happen to be playing them). The issue is that there are Official servers that have been more or less killed by rampant cheating and spam which is what I’m trying to address.

Good discussion

So Hyborian_Jones when you say that you haven’t seen any suggestions that you would use, you are against having Funcom do periodic checks (if possible) for undermesh, faster response times, more frequent new content, and preventing building within certain key areas such as shattered springs?

While I agree some of my brainstorming was a bit out there, I would like to think that most folks would find merit in at least some of them? But hey, we are allowed to have our own opinions :slight_smile:

Concurrent player number was at 15k peak, now it’s at 12k. I made my assumption on real stats. You keep dreaming your dreams.

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Nope. Its called summer vacation. So basically the same reason, the game didnt get any updates/patches from middle December to beginning January. The people are not even working :smiley:
Same thing happened last year… And probably the year before too.

I was also 3 weeks on summer vacation :slight_smile: And the same in December. Our whole company was closed :wink:

Except update 41 and 42 were supposed to be released before summer vacation, the ETA stated 2020 H1 and we’re now in H2.

Well, our company also wanted to roll out a certain feature (BIM support - Building Information Modeling) at May and we were not finished until July…

Things can change or be a lot harder, than estimated. And in software you have quite often the 80:20 problem.

It was also discovered that in general the 80% of a certain piece of software can be written in 20% of the total allocated time. Conversely, the hardest 20% of the code takes 80% of the time.

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