You are one of a few people I really respect in this forum @stelagel. My respect for you has nothing to do with whether we agree or disagree on things.
You do not need to fear that I respect you less if your opinion differs from mine.
This said…
Purges shouldn´t happen during Raidhours. You are absolutly correct about that. Its a flaw in the purge system. Although I have to say that admins on private servers have control options for the purges.
I am a builder myself and I understand what you are trying to say. But again, its an official server problem only. Something Funcom needs to work on. On privates you can lower the damage done on your buildings, you can even turn damage off completely. You can avoid the purge alltogether or turn it of during building sessions via admin menue.
Funcom could easily make a setting that allows a player to deside if he wants to get purges or not. So people that have no interest in the purges can set purges to off and be happy.
In my opinion, the purge shouldn´t become something the player can fully control (except from turning it off and on and raidhours) because it defeats and negates the whole purpose of the purge. They are bandits roaming the land, seeking for treasures. If they find you they attack you, no matter if you are prepared or not.
As much as I love building in this game, and god knows I love it very much and spent a lot of time with it, the Exiled Lands are a harsh place and it should stay that way and not turn into Lego and Barbie Land where the player has full control over ever aspect of the game. A purge should surprise you, should hit you when you expect it the least.
I also have met a lot of great people in Conan Exiles over the years. I found my big love, and he really is the love of my life, in this game. So yes, I have a very emotional releationship with the game. And I can´t stand it when the developers f… stuff up. It makes me angry. Because we are the ones that have to deal with it at the end of the day.
With time the game became more and more simple. Stuff gets changed back and forth all the time and every time they promise big it will all be good and beautiful and in the end its not.
I don’t want to smear honey around funcom’s mouth anymore. They are always promissing a lot and then f… it up to a point where they need to remove whole features because they can not make them work. And the new purge will be one of them. So yes, I am personally not looking forward to their new “Age of purge”. I rather keep the buggy version of a purge I have now and be happy before I get something that is making more problems or even gets dissabled completely at the end.