Continuing the discussion from Increased Decay Timer on Official Servers:
Uhm…
Well.
I think 10 days would have been better with stuff abandoned on 9th and disappearing on 10th day.
What is everyone else thinking?
4 Likes
They’ve said that they’ll re-evaluate down the road. But given how the official PvE and PvE-C servers are already chock full of random junk buildings and people exercising their temporary “vision” of the perfect base that defies the laws of physics … not sure that this is actually a plus, particularly given the current state of server performance.
Which is why a decaysystem is rather unfit of clearing the map. People will just connect everything and thats it.
I would rather see a much more agressive purge with a multiple of the current max purges per day value.
7 Likes
I’d like to see purges work that way too, but I doubt that’s in the works. To my mind, purges should be less random, more focused on taking down the plethora of spammed buildings. Of course, right now because of the purge mechanics it actually encourages people to spam buildings in the southern/central desert to work as “purge bait” in the hopes of getting the rare named thralls that come with them only in those locations.
I think purges should be something players absolutely fear and work hard to avoid and/or defend against, not encourage and try to trigger because they can score “phat thralls” as they’re attacked by waves of nude humans.
1 Like
Nuria, I say this for months. Funcom puts all their coins on decay system as the only and most important tool to wipe out abandoned structures, when its clear Purges should be just as important as decay.
Think about it…player abandoned structures are not the main problem… those will be gone in a week. When a player decides to leave the game it will decay. 1 week, 2 weeks, 4 months, 1 year… it doesnt matter how long the decay is set, it WILL decay because the player will NOT come back.
The main problem are semi active players, players that have lost almost entirely interest in the game but manage to keep their structures up for months logging in once a week. Unless they have a problem and simply cant do that its quite easy dedicate 15 minutes once a week to refresh all their bases.
If Purges were harder, more frequent and intense semi active players would constantly lose ground, they would be forced to choose dedicate more time to the game or reduce the number of their bases, clearing room for more active players.
Purges should be extremely important when it comes to control abusive overbuilding or semi active buildings that never go away.
3 Likes
The problem I can think of offhand, though, is that by making purges harder and more frequent, you’re also ■■■■■■■■ over the solo/duo players on public servers (which I suspect is a large part of the population at this point). Of course, if thralls would actually defend bases when they’re being attacked, that could be mitigated somewhat. But with the currently broken thrall AI and malfunctioning purge system … you get the idea.
I think they actually did take a step towards targeting the more active, larger clans by allowing the purge meter to reduce for smaller, less active clans / solo players. But as with all things purge related, that seems to be on the fritz as well.
2 Likes
Not really. I agree about thrall and AI in terms of defending, but purge becoming a huge problem for solo/duo?
You did get that being hit by purge happens extremely rarely these days?
It was horrible on launch. A few lucky people had been purged but then again, purge was bugged. (We had undead hyenas spawning on top of our maproom. Back then the maproom couldnt be damaged at all - pfew!)
Number of placed items might be needed to have a huge impact on purge as well. Looking at landclaims to hinder people from raiding one… 
Or those people spamming the land with their builds - even more horrible if they are a pain to look at.
Edit:
Ever since full release we only experienced 8 purges I think. We havent been online during 6 of them. Last two were once a bugged hyena purge which spawned on top of our maproom. I think the second one was with frost giants.
A massive army needs to come swarming down from the north, and the jungle, towards to center.
This way they will be chewing through the advanced players before getting to the desert. And even then, they won’t go to the noob river.
Think that’s fair. I for one wouldn’t mind a horde assaulting my base. 40 thralls per wave, against my valiant well equipped garrison of 10 thralls. Either build proper or get wrecked. That’s what I want.
After 7 month of playing CE official, i am actually in maintenance mode right now, taking a bit of a break from CE cuz there’s nothing to do with purges not working at all.
There is this dude on my server who only logs on to refresh the many dick structures he built next to everyone’s base just to annoy the hell out of people. He spends all the other times playing on his private server.
The decay system is completely ineffective.
6 Likes
I kinda like this idea. Expand on it. Instead of official wipe. Maybe once a month for 3 straight days during purge times, the Reptiles from Well of Skelos, Kinscourge Army, and all bosses (regionally only) decide to purge the exiled lands. Night falls, and ashes thicken the air…The Siege Army of Skelos’ is upon the exiled lands. Prepare to defend!!!
The spawns would start randomly in the Volcano, and continue to spawn every 30 minutes in well known building areas, attacking any base within the “region” of there spawn. Only the noob river and sout are safe.
3 Likes
Except for the fact that your “valiant well equipped garrison of 10 thralls” will just stand there and watch the descending horde just beat on your walls. Because unless you’re standing right next to them and taking damage from said horde, they will do absolutely nothing. It’s a fun game overall, but the AI in Conan Exiles is laughably bad. Any proposed solutions need to factor that into account.
Your idea would be fine.
If…
Thralls were working properly. (Attacking anything at any time which is no owner. Except for players outside of raid hours.)
It wouldnt hurt server performance. But I cannot think about it NOT affecting it in a really really bad way.
Then I prefer agressive purge which comes a whole lot more often.
I voted 10 days as well in the poll.
From 6 to 7 makes very little difference in my opinion, whoever will take a 7 days vacation will find his base demolished, unless he will not clock to the second his return.
At the airport arrivals:
- “Darling you take the kids and I go retrieve the luggage ok ? …darling ? …darling ?”
- frantically running away “the base is decayiiing…”
5 Likes
I’m very thankful for the new 7 day timer. I will definitely be playing less with RDR2 and Fallout coming out, and now I can pop in and refresh every tuesday, instead of trying to remember when I last logged in.
That said, I agree that ten days would be ideal.
1 Like
Not exactly, maybe I didnt make myself clear. I never said semi active players should be wiped out. But many semi active players have lost interest in the game, they hardly play, not because they cant, because they dont want to. These players might own several locations, some may even be privileged locations but have no use of them.
What I think its fair is let people have what they can own, that also means how much time they wanna invest in the game. If a player loses interest they should clear SOME room for newcomers or active players. That doesnt mean losing all their locations and gear, just own what they are really willing to keep.
Purges could be the key for this equation.
If somebody owns 30+ bases and have to constantly repair then, replace lost thralls, rebuild etc… that wont be a problem if they are really active players. But as soon people stop having fun and only come online 15 minutes to refresh… that should become a hard job. What would they do? Choose what bases they wanna keep, they dont need 30 bases after all. A few well defended bases require almost no interaction, but several small outposts would be gone.
2 Likes
I am glad to see that the decay timer has been increased. I do however, think it should still be even longer. But I will take what I can get.
Just want to remind Funcom of one basic fact.
I spent several months at this point working on my base. I would hate to lose ALL of that work over the span of one week of being unavailable, or uninterested. To me, that is not fun.
The first time my base got wiped, I took a three month break from this game. Not sure how many more “defeats” I can handle before I go waste my free time elsewhere.
Hope you guys figure it out so you can stabalize the population and have a BIG player base.
I saw the point of the 6 days aggressive timer when the game launched and the servers were littered with all kind of contructions.
Honestly now I am struggling to understand why Funcom keeps this aggressive policy.
The majority of official servers are deserted, and there is plenty of space for new comers.
The aggressive timing of constructions decay right now hurts only the few active players that keep loving the game, and as Shadoza pointed out, CE is becoming a time management game instead,
With every update the game needs more and more time to be simply maintained.
Don’t know how this game policy can improve population, since many players have already left exactly for these reasons + bugs issue.
Honestly, you and I have different visions about the game. To me the game should be as its meant to be, a survival game in a hostile land. The more people build the less immersive it becomes.
You are not right saying structures are not harmfull, many players (including myself) consider overbuilding a problem, it ruins the landscape, immersion and gaming experience. Before the game was launched I used to play in a server where people built bridges, highways, towers to shoot bosses all over the place… it RUINED the game. Many people left the server because they couldnt deal with this, there was safety highways and elevators with signs connecting every corner of the map, there was no real danger. it was terrible! Ruined any fun and the beautiful landscape with structures defied gravity.
Not all agree with this vision and I dont think that is even Funcoms intention, its a sandbox game yeah but its survival, when people build too much you take away the survival aspect of the game. Remember, others play in the same sandbox you do, and as you mentioned, payed the same money. Even if you are not blocking anything and actually building easy access to some parts it may not be welcome by all, you may be ruining their gaming experience. Some shortcuts are always welcome, but when there are shortcuts, highways and shooting towers all over the map it becomes a serious problem and that will ruin the gaming experience to a big part of the community.
3 Likes
I think purge is off by default on singleplayer.
If they turn it on, they should be prepared.
Actually in terms of purge, singleplayer is at advantage if he wants to experience one.
Thing is, seeing how exessive some people claim land to hinder others from raiding them on pvp - or griefing on pve by blocking resources… Well.
There are a lot of options for singleplayer or private servers as you can set the settings to anything you are fine with. This includes turning purge off completely, lowering the difficulty, rising the cap of points and how often they get counted to reduce purges per day overall and so on.
Also you ask about what happens to builders on singleplayer? As far as I know, those builders are in charge of setting up thrall defense as well as building the p(a)lace.
If purge destroys everything they are themselves to blame for that - given that happens once thralls got fixed properly. Like having thralls defend properly.
Also singleplayer players are at another advantage regarding purge: Purge can only happen while the singleplayer player is playing - unlike how it works on servers.
There is no need at all to consider singleplayer at all when it comes to purge.
Btw. Having purge happen more frequently (like forced purge upon hitting 150% of the threshhold) wont mean it’s harder to defeat.
But those might deal with those exessive landclaims people keep going on eighter pve (griefing) or pvp (antitreb).
2 Likes
Exactly what Nuria said. Open servers are suffering from this problem, its not targeted for solo players like you are. Purges could be used as an important tool to control abusive server buildings, griefing and server dominance by alpha clans. And, as the suggestion I made, reduce the number of buildings semi active players have, players that no longer feel like playing but simply cant let any location go.
2 Likes
Purges are meant to do that! Its not an event to have fun and capture thralls, its meant to wipe bases. If Purges didnt exist PvE servers would be completely taken by player buildings all over the place and thats not the idea of the game, this is no Sim City.
Purges are like a break on players, so they cant rush areas are not meant to be played at lower levels or build more than they can keep.