My Siptah Journey: A Tragic Tale

Conan Exiles General Discussion
1

Hey ya’ll. I debated whether I would lose any more time on this game by posting about this, but hopefully my experience will help to shed some insight as to why, in my opinion, the population is struggling so much lately.

Let me begin by saying: I love this game. I started on PC before official release and my account has a little over 7,000 hours logged on it now. But this post is very specifically about my time on Siptah.

I joined an official PVP server on day 1 of Siptah release and played there actively up until 2 weekends ago. It was a fresh start on a new map and although it was way too difficult on release, they’ve made some excellent changes since then. I actually enjoy it quite a bit now.

Now, some of you may remember one of my previous posts I made after suffering yet another of many huge losses to hackers. Reference here as they randomly decided to unlist the post recently:

The basic overview was that a hacker looted nearly everything I owned from locked vaults outside of raid hours at a time when Siptah was at its hardest and obtaining T4 thralls was a daunting time investment. The response to which was “sorry, we don’t offer any in-game support”.

So, I carried on with my journey, certainly worse for the wear and disheartened, but still I pushed on. I’ve watched the population spike to 40/40 and drop back to rarely above 0 players on at any one time as people hopped around to different servers. I pushed on through months where there weren’t any other players to play with nor against, always watching and helping new faces out in an attempt to cultivate the population.

Then, some important changes got pushed out to the map and interest peaked again for a bit. Flash forward to patch 2.4 when they added the lands to the south. Thats when this happened:

https://forums.funcom.com/t/part-of-my-base-went-undermesh-with-2-4/163021

The islands at K7 that I had used for my main base since day 1 of the map had suddenly had their landmass altered with patch 2.4 and half of my buildings were now underground and inaccessible. Again, our cries for help remained unanswered. No help recovering loot, no help removing building pieces from the terrain for an unnecessary and unannounced change. “We won’t punish anyone for having buildings in violation of the rules as a result of the change”. A lackluster consolation prize if I’ve ever seen one.

Still, I pushed on again despite another major setback outside of my own control.

That brings us to now. I’ve seen the message every time I log in about Official server rules and guidelines, I’ve read them and I thought I understood the intent of them. I’ve heard rumors about players weaponizing this new enforcement of the rules against other players, but I was always naive enough to believe that I had nothing to worry about if I wasn’t building maliciously.

How wrong I was. I attempt to log in two weekends ago to the heartbreaking realization that I am banned. This must be a mistake, I thought. Desperately I reach out for information only to receive an automated response that tells me I was banned for land claim spam and building in a way that negatively affects server performance. Not only that, but they manually destroyed almost everything I had owned.

Now, I don’t have pictures to give context but the “spam” I was reported for was land claim around the waters surrounding the islands I was built on at K7, which also happened to connect timers on all of the vaults in said water that I was actively using and had filled at the time. At my own base. I wasn’t blocking resources from spawning or anything else for that matter… As for building in a way that negatively affects server performance? My bases weren’t even that big, but they were nothing anyone hasn’t seen a thousand times before on pvp servers. Lots of anti-climb and a base on top. The server had been stable and hadn’t seen any crashes for over 6 months. Keep in mind that there’s barely anyone playing there to even be affected since there’s rarely more than 4 or 5 people on.

I can’t fully express just how disgusted I feel over what happened, but allow me to elaborate on what exactly I believe happened.

A certain player that had been on the server in the past, came back for patch 2.4 on a brand new account to avoid being recognized. This player ended up raiding and wiping a bunch of smaller clans and PVE players, then when he got to me, he saw the remnants of a base stuck halfway in the ground because of the patch and immediately determined that I was a cheating undermesher because of it, which he shouted in global chat loudly and frequently. The next day, me and a few friends kindly found and wiped his hideout shortly before he logged in to accuse us of undermeshing into his base (we didn’t, and he hadn’t even ran back before claiming we did). I had the displeasure of dealing with this player stopping by every few weeks just to harass me in global chat and announce to the rest of the server that I was a cheater.

Now, it just so happens that the very spot he accused me of undermeshing at is one of two spots Funcom kindly destroyed.

Try to understand just how infuriating it is to have ZERO warning or ZERO chance to defend yourself when Funcom comes knocking and determines that you are somehow at fault for a dishonest report meant only to harm another player, not to help the server.

In just over 7000 hours logged, I’ve never once been punished til now. Hell, I’ve never been banned in any game because I don’t cheat… The population is already struggling and Funcom seems intent on performing a coup de grace.

The rules are completely arbitrary and players have zero chance to defend themselves. There are plenty of occurrences when people should be banned for playing maliciously, and there are also plenty of occurrences where someone is feeling petty and lashes out using the report system.

I’ve tried so hard to persevere through mismanagement of the game and poor decision making, but this one pushed me over the edge.

Shame on you Funcom.

5 Likes
2

That sucks have you tried sending a message to Zendesk to get a explanation from a live person or is that how you got the automated message sorry for your loss.

2 Likes
3

The response I got was from sending a message via Zendesk unfortunately. I should say it was a copy and paste response not an automated one, and a 14 day suspension not a permanent ban. Being suspended from ALL official servers means losing not just 400-something days of progress on one, but every official server I was playing on. For “building too much” on a server where there’s nothing else to do… it blows my mind. Everyone knows precisely what hacking and exploiting entails whereas this is completely arbitrary. They can’t assist you in recovering items lost to blatant hacking but they can take the time to destroy everything you worked for without so much as a warning that you were doing something wrong.

Here’s the response for posterity:

4

I also reached out to Ignasis directly and was outright ignored. Not that it really matters. Even if they reversed the suspension they already destroyed most of my work. Over a year of keeping decay timers refreshed down the drain. Smdh.

1 Like
5

Sometimes life just sucks like that. I bet something like that has happened to most of us - in some game at one time or another. For me it was RockStar. :stuck_out_tongue:
So, you’re out? What’s next for you then? Rust, Valheim, War Zone?

6

Yeah… it’s just so frustrating because Conan is my favorite game yet I can’t seem to be allowed to enjoy it. Now the server that I was helping to keep afloat is back to sitting at 0/0 nearly all day long.

No idea what I’ll try next. Probably back to some single player games for awhile.

2 Likes
7

Are you saying that you land claimed around that whole area in K7?

1 Like
8

this is not isolated case, i have same story, ruinous have been victim of the third party plug in hack from asia, that i have personnaly reported to funcom nearly one year ago, it’s in use on all pvp server, they go from server to server, using multiple id steam. I just wonder why funcom don’t focus on that and seem more interested to erase base of legit player and ban them on pvp server because too big (without giving a definition of what is a massive base exactly…). 20 legit players have been ban on my server while one clan using the hack plug in still plays… and they were reported with evidence to zendesk. all is normal, sure… i am actually compilling datas on what happened on our server and will post it very soon because it’s fun to be a legit players, to be abused by hackers, than be ban, and when you can log again you see them build an aerial base using bug and you see the clan who were really covering server with foundation spamming still here and their stuffs not decayed…

2 Likes
9

That does blow one reason I play on private servers. I rather deal with admin I know

1 Like
10

i started to play on private server, but went to official to avoid admin abuse.

well probably time to go back to private.

11

Yeah I figured my experience wasn’t unique. Funcom doesn’t seem interested or capable in fixing the major client hacks, they won’t reimburse anything you’ve lost to blatant hacking, but they can take the time to get on to ban players and destroy bases going by one-sided reports based on rules that aren’t clearly defined.

It would be one thing if they gave you a WARNING before outright destroying everything you’ve worked for. It’s so incredibly misguided I just don’t get how they could ever justify doing it this way.

2 Likes
12

Regardless of whether you agree with them enforcing these rules now, it seems crazy to me that they don’t give BOTH parties the chance to state their case. You can’t possibly understand intent or context based solely on some screenshots. For example, did Funcom know that I was using all of the vaults that were connected by my land claim? Not just some placeholder junk thrown in, I mean actually using them for storage. Thanks to the decay timer system they have to be connected or they disappear in like 3 hours.

Is there a limit to how many bases we are allowed to have?? Is there a limit to how big they are allowed to be?? They historically have little idea of how PVP plays out in their own game, are these rules the exact same for PVE servers as PVP servers? How are we supposed to know what you mean by “building in a way that affects server stability”? And what do you do to prove that’s the case if you accused me of it despite the server being completely stable with no crashes for the last 6 months or more?

PVE server players don’t have to stack anticlimb. They don’t have to honeycomb and they don’t have to stack fence foundations. They don’t need numerous locations to avoid being wiped in a single raid. How far out from our base are we allowed to claim?? If we can’t exceed the normal perimeter of claim from the base itself, most of the bases that can be built are effectively worthless because raiders can just build jump towers to get on top of your base, bypassing anticlimb. Are we trying to make raiding easier? Attacking a base is already far more one-sided than defending it is unless you have a big clan with highly active players.

These rules and their enforcement seem real lazy and detrimental more than helpful.

13

I feel that they should contact a possible offenders first. Don’t see what it could hurt other than body stacking

14

honestly with what i saw happened on my server, the admin that did have no idea of playing the game on a pvp server

I mean my two bases were encircled by foundation and gates of two others clans that tried to enclose me which mean that they had foundations running at 5 foundations range from my land claim in all directions. except one in direction of the green wall where i had to build a counter spam foundation to keep an access to my base. i reported those two clans to zendesk 6 months ago for spamming foundation around my base and also on the map (more than 10 sqaure map covered) and did a second reminder, and they did nothing. so i spent all this time to use tons of c4 and gods to remove this spam without success, as it was rebuilded,but two weeks ago admin came erased all including my bases in this area, and all bases in proximity of others players. so there is only one thing i can say, the admin either has no understanding of the gameplay or have not checked very closely what was happening and to who was really the foundation spamming, because in this circonstance a ban for abuse of land claim is hard to understand…

15

The best part about this is that we as the consumers of this product are essentially shouting at a wall because there’s never going to be any open or honest communication from Funcom’s side on these forums which is exactly what’s needed. There has been a long running history of them not listening to their own player base unless it’s something egregious enough to get a large enough number of people angry.

1 Like
16

I absolutely loved “Horizon Zero Dawn”… If you haven’t played that yet you might give it a try!

Sounds like RockStar… After I spent 3000 hours grinding the bank heists they took all my money and called me a cheater. Then refused to acknowledge anything about anything. I went looking on-line and the first independent forum I visited had a poll going to see if the same had happened to others. 7,000+ out of a little over 10,000 poll responses claimed the same had happened to them. And of course as most will know, they couldn’t care less about hackers destroying the game for others - funny as that destruction can be at times… :confused: I wonder if this is just a common attribute among large online game companies?

17

Start your own. That was my introduction to EL… Loved it. And the ping-lag compensation is very good. So good that ours had players from China, Japan, Finland, Florida, Denmark and the UK. I am in Japan and my bud who ran the server was/is in Denmark. Ping between 240 and 360. I never noticed much lag unless he was downloading movies and running his AI sims at the same time on the server box.

1 Like
18

This is the way MMORPGs have handled this for over 20 years. The sheer volume of reports and actions needed to be taken prevent them from handling reports in any decent amount of time to be able to do this.

Its always been handled in a Judge Dredd manner. If the evidence shows guilt, then action is taken. No mitigating circumstances or intent is taken into account.

A single player going more than 10,000 building pieces (at least on a G-Portal server, which all officials are), or building a base that covers more than a grid square is a good start. That’s been my experience, I can usually start seeing degradation around there. A better server providers allows for much higher limits.

I thought this was the point of open PVP. Log off, get raided, log on, raid back. Repeat.

19

At this point there are 17 replies and I’ve read none of them. I know you, Ruinous, and I’ve always figured you to be a clean player. I am at once delighted and sad to see you here like this.

Everybody reading this, the paragraph I quote is a synopsis of the honest PvP player. I haven’t played with them, and I don’t personally vouch for game behavior, but Ruinous is not the kind of person to be treated this way. Personally, at 5,950 hours if this happened to me, I’d sail away into the sunset, sleeping a good night’s sleep instead of staying up nightly and sweeping the cobwebs out of my castles.

2 Likes
20

I was part of a group of street-level players on the Heist sweep, Sony side. They called us Regulators after the Young Guns movie. At that time I had moved from finding/exposing dupe glitches to actual heist interventions. Truly if you were caught up in the ban sweep with zero culpability, you are among the handful of people in Japan I’ve heard this from. As you may have read elsewhere, I moved away from R* (2016/bunker BS) when they showed they were actually interested in keeping some of the exploits in the game. And that they didn’t care. I came directly to CE because at that point, Funcom really did care.

2 Likes