Says the guy who futily tries to silence FC critiscism on every thread.
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I’ve said in the past that the consoles get ripped off, they only get part of the game for a more expensive cost. This isn’t a $50 game, I’ve never claimed it was, and I’ve did not spend close to that when I personally purchased it. But this (the hack the topic is about) isn’t an issue that affects them (to my knowledge).
So you’re telling me that if your neighborhood is ridden with crime, and police aren’t doing enough. That you’re going to just endure it and plead until they do? FC isn’t a democracy where you can vote in and out people that might have the fortitude to institute change. Its a plutocracy.
And I did identify that as a problem. Developers of hackers are raking in more revenue, then FC is from the victims. Is FC at fault? Sure, they are for giving them servers to participate in.
Putting the thread back on track:
Because so far, Codemage, biggane55, erjoh, and DeaconElie seem to want to take the stance of having confidence and faith that Funcom will be able to patch the game and ban the cheaters in a way that will fix or somewhat alleviate the issue brought up by the OP. If only, they can plead and pray enough for someone in FC to hear their message and have their heart swayed.
I don’t have that kind of faith.
It’s not “faith” to demand improvement. Faith would be to keep silent and expect everything to be resolved on its own.
When official servers had no moderation and cheaters, trolls, and griefers ran rampant, I was one of the many people who came to the forums to ask for moderation. We persisted, and eventually Funcom published the rules and started enforcing them.
Now that the moderation is not working well, I’m here on the forums asking for it to be improved. Similarly, I can see that their efforts to patch the exploits are much slower than before, so I’m here to ask for that to be improved, too.
This is neither faith, nor “pleading”, nor any other belittling bullshіt you can think of. This is simply a way of taking action that, despite your attempts to convince people of the contrary, has had results before.
I have been playing on official servers since 2018. Unlike you, I know very intimately the ebb and flow of the quality of life on those servers, because I’ve actually experienced the stuff you only keep commenting about. I know things used to be better, and I know they can be improved more.
I’m here to lend my voice to those who are asking for the same. What exactly are you here, in this thread, for?
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This implies that one should just move out of the neoghvorhood or become a vigilante and take justice into thoer own hands. Ot also, not surprisingly, shows your inability to consider circumstances that dont neatly fall within black or whote choices. If i have lived in the neighborhood fpr 7 years and like 90% of my neighbors, i will damn sure call out the authorities to fix the crime. I will not let 10% of the neoghborhood ruin my friendship with everyone else. So yeah, unlike you, i can empathize and inderstand what real communial freindships are and voice to further those bonds.
Edit:
Also, I believe you have stated yoir are ex military? If so, then why? You seem to think each individual should takr care of thier own issues (fight or flight so to speak). The millitary is there to enforce views (good and bad) of one group on other groups.
So just think of us you listed as a millitary of those that want FC to do something about thier poor customer service on officials.
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To discuss the topic.
Its been stated, and I haven’t seen anything to suggest the contrary, that their moderation team has grown. I’m sure you’ve seen those same posts. And yet were there improvements? No. Could it be because of a shift in internal policy left things to be less efficient? Sure. But I don’t think so, and even so they would be able to have corrected that by now.
But we got new (relatively by this point) information by others, though anecdotally, that multiple accounts are being used, and people are spending a crazy amount of money on programs to let them do what they do. And thus we are seeing massive breaches in some of the secure parts of the game and with greater frequency.
There’s some nasty facts we have to deal with. The game is old. As many have pointed out, its not the major focus. We’re going to continue to see content and little updates here and there going forward, but things that require going deep into the game to plug all the vulnerabilities it has I don’t believe is going to happen.
Its my opinion that given the issues brought up, coupled with how the game is being handled, and the frequency of things changing, that the justice and resolution isn’t worth the time and effort to try to achieve (not saying the devs shouldn’t try here, I mean the effort on the side of the players).
We like this game. We want to play it. But right now, most of us aren’t playing it.
This is not our fault.
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I have seen something to suggest the contrary:
This would suggest that the team either didn’t grow enough (if at all), or there is some other problem with it.
Which is why I take Funcom’s assurances about “growing” their moderation team with a ladle of salt. If you remember, they also “assured” us that Dune is not taking anything away from Conan Exiles.
That said, I don’t really care what their problem is. This is not the first time I’ve seen people label demands for improvement as “unreasonable” or “futile”, followed by speculation about the internal functioning of Funcom to which we’re not privy. My reply to that remains the same: as a user, I don’t care why Funcom is incapable or unwilling to provide acceptable results, I only care that they improve.
You can ask @Kikigirl about that. She also plays on official servers, unlike you. She can tell you whether we’re seeing these massive breaches with “greater frequency”, or the difference is that Funcom is not doing as much as before to deal with those breaches.
The issue is now even more visible than before, because certain cheaters finally got around to the novel idea of taking their cheats to PVE and PVE-C servers, to make even more players miserable.
So now that non-PVP players don’t have the luxury anymore of ignoring “PVP problems”, the complaints are louder.
Well, if that’s all you have to contribute to the topic, I’m sure everyone else is as glad as I am that you’ve stated it loud and clear, and you no have no further reason to try to dissuade people from requesting Funcom to follow up on this situation. Right? 
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Yes. As a vendor of my entertainment, I expect them to keep me entertained and if they don’t fix problems with their product that inhibits my entertainment, I will move away from this relationship and find a vendor that will. It’s really that simple. However I would be negligent in my relationship with them if I didn’t express my problems, right?
As for the crime analogy. We are literally seeing this real time on the servers as official PVP is now ghetto and definitely not considered “home” for most of us. That’s a problem if this is the introduction into the game.
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I’ve seen new faces since Dune was announced and now, so on the development side of things I would say their assurances are correct. But this just leads to a future of new content and minor fixes, not coding overhauls. I could be wrong, there could be some hidden vulnerability that once plugged has a cascading effect. If that’s the truth then well time is all that’s needed I guess. If I was in your shoes, I don’t know if time would be an acceptable compromise. Especially if it was only speculation. Which is why I say there isn’t much hope over saying just wait till it gets better.
As far as moderation, no I don’t have specifics there. My only interaction with them is when I occasionally get scolded (not admin actioned) for saying hypotheticals. So no, they don’t always agree with me either. I respect them, but sometimes they disagree.
Very true. Before any exploit or hack required PVP on to actually have an effect. Popping on a speed hack and zipping around on a PVE server when you can’t touch anyone makes them look like idiots. But inventory and other things being exposed… yeah… that’s going into another ballgame.
I don’t intend to dissuade anyone. I assume people have free will and hyperbolic descriptions won’t be enough to change their mind. Though if someone did decide to change their mind, what’s the worst that could happen? They find a server or other game that gives them more fun then they are having now. Let’s not act like suggestions I make are universally bad for everyone.
Agreed.
I don’t believe you would be negligent at all. I honestly would not think less of you at all if you didn’t. I don’t think anyone here would. You don’t have a duty. You’ve made no oaths, no promises, no contracts, and no agreements, and thus no obligation.
As sad as it may sound - I think, that we have to agree (or rather finally acknowledge it), that game is indeed getting old, it’s loosing players, FC clearly doesn’t have resources (nor wiIingness) to maintenance it properly - in short it is coming to an end. By any means I’m not trying to troll or anything, steam counter says, that I’ve spent over 5k hours in that game (now, when I think of it, it is madness, but hey - I’m a gaming junkie I guess), so I believe I have some “rights” to express what I feel. I was trying to “forgive” FC after every major setback/mess/fail, trying to belive in their assurances of getting things right, even when I saw my tickets were autoclosed, official servers were (are) a glittering example of breaking their own ToC, official livestreams included bugs (which were at best passed over in silence or even ridiculed by Andy and Dennis), BPs were introduced (labelled as a massive and key feature - and tbh $ generator for FC) only to be removed, because they aren’t really that “key feature anymore” (since FC doesn’t have resources, ideas, content, workpower to do them anymore, so they had to give up on regular cash flow from it) and so on.
|anticipating questions - yes, I know that it was enough to buy it only once, but how many players actually stopped at just this one expense?|
In short - I may disagree with some of Taemien thoughts, but I have to agree, that it would be naive to expect the company to take action. It’s not that they can’t do it, it just because they are not willing to (no matter what the reason is).
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Absolutely. Publicly.
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I think it’s reductive to call it naïve. Sure, it would be naïve to believe that just because I said something on the forums, Funcom will listen to me and do what I said. But that’s a simplistic view, that does me the discourtesy of assuming that I didn’t put any more thought into my choice of action.
Instead, why not look at it from a different angle and examine what options I have?
Here are some of the options that I have to deal with this kind of issue:
- Give Funcom my feedback over one of the appropriate channels.
- Try to find other ways of putting pressure on Funcom.
- Find a different game to play.
For starters, these options aren’t mutually exclusive. Just because I’m here, demanding improvements, doesn’t automatically mean I’m not doing anything else.
So what else can I do? Typically, the same people who can’t wait to tell me that demanding improvements is “futile” or “unreasonable” will also point out that Funcom only cares about profits, and that if I really wanted to put pressure on Funcom, I should “hit them in the bottom line”.
Except that I don’t have the power to hit them in the bottom line on my own. Which means I would have to try to organize other people to join me in that effort. In other words, we’re talking about organizing a boycott, which I find even more naïve than the idea of communicating with people whose job is to be here and communicate with us.
Even worse, let’s suppose I find some way of influencing Funcom’s bottom line. Exactly how do I know that they’ll look at their revenue and say “you know what, maybe there’s something we should fix in the game”, rather than saying “okay, this game isn’t making enough money anymore, let’s shut it down”?
If we’re going to talk about faith and naivete, I personally find the blind faith in the “Invisible Hand of the Market” to be a lot more naïve than trying to effect a change by communicating.
The last option is to go play something else. Let me be blunt here: whether I do that or not is nobody’s damn business. The idea that I need someone to tell me to go look for another game, or another type of server, is misguided at best.
All in all, I don’t think that it’s naïve to want to communicate our grievances. More importantly, I don’t think that it’s productive to keep talking about whether we should be communicating our grievances on a forum designed to communicate about this game. You’re giving way too much credit to this argument, given that it’s consistently brought up by the same handful of people on topics criticizing Funcom, and that it consistently derails most of those topics.
Consider this topic right now. How did it start? With @Lucas_of_Tanith asking a reasonable follow-up question about an investigation that was acknowledged by Funcom.
Where are we now? Discussing whether we should be talking about it.
Is it really helpful to have 20+ messages arguing about whether we should be complaining about this on the forums, whether we should be playing on official servers, and whether we should be playing this game at all?
For all the protestations of innocence, this thread was derailed quite successfully.
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I’m not an expert because I’ve never touched it. I can only give my perspective based on what I’ve witnessed and what I’ve been told.
What I can say with confidence is that this person who caused such upset is not unique, they’re not special, they’re not novel or ingenious. I think the majority have given WAY too much credit, it is not deserved.
Officials are just easy because of the historic and current moderation. So interconnected with the ToC, Zendesk, staff communication, game security and stability, effectiveness of Battleye, etc.,… Privates have been affected as well - while not as easy or without consequence, still vulnerable.
So if we’re going to throw the baby out with the bathwater that will have to include the multiplayer private servers.
The entire process of addressing these problems has been lacking for years. It didn’t have to get to this point and I warned nearly a year ago that it would get to this. How much polite begging do you think is required? It didn’t work a year ago. Or 2 years ago. But less important then, surely?
Of course, doesn’t mean I won’t stop advocating for better security and enforcement. That isn’t JUST for Officials either, because I do actually care about the extended playerbase on privates too.
Isn’t this normal though? And no.
I have 3 historic topics over 3 years created about hacking, 2 of which were outright deleted. All 3 were quickly closed and delisted.
So getting back to the matter at hand:
I’m with @Lucas_of_Tanith and all the others that have come forth asking for better. I still want it.
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The idea that someone would spend $900 to cheat in a game is… beyond words. It is in a whole new level of idiocy and other words I dare not say here that I just cannot fathom the mentality that would lead one to actually spend that sort of money to cheat at a game. I personally would not even spend $1 to do so. There is absolutely ZERO POINT to it.
You also do not see them making posts. Like… at all. So there’s that.
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Its not something anyone here can relate with or even understand. It is strange in the pure sense. I would chalk it up with self-destructive behaviors, it might not be physical harm they are causing themselves, but it is definitely harm they are causing to their own sense of worth. It has the unfortunate side effect of harming others and that I cannot abide by.
Oh my, this is a long one. Perhaps I worded my statement incorrectly, English is not my first language. It was not my intention to prohibit anything or discourage anyone from posting on the forum, also naive was probably too strong word. My point is, that I was like You - I posted here, sent many tickets, I counted on FC to be fair, to fix their problems, waited for so long and I forgave many times. But just not anymore - I’m not angry or frustrated, I’m maybe a little disappointed, but mostly I’m just indifferent and uninterested. If you add to this the very visible signs of “abandonment” (another strong word, You may use “limiting their efforts” instead-no matter if it is because they choose to do so or their chinese owner enforced it) on the FC side, I think it is somewhat justified to finally give up on this game (I speak only for myself of course). Not only they have no idea how to further develop the game, nor they listen to players’ suggestions, but moreover, they are not good at security - a key factor in online game and even todays world. I just can’t pinpoint any other area where they can fail, because they have already failed in everything (game itself, bugs, exploits, crom coins balance, vanishing thralls, foundations and now even hacked admin panels). That’s why I’m just done, I wish I could wish You good luck, but I don’t think it will come in handy.
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It’s possible that it is someone inside or was inside of Funcom or someone that manages the official public servers for Funcom that is the “Blue Ranger™”. Admin level “hacks” being used by only one person is unlikely. The “hack” is frustrating a lot of people and I think it is someone that is frustrated by or with Funcom that is executing the “hack”. The “hacker” also knows that Funcom will not do anything about it, can’t do anything about it, or is extremely slow to act. Is the “hacker” able to hack private servers? If not, it is definitely someone with inside knowledge or access to the official servers.
…and here we go again with a handful of people calling for mass wipes.
If you want to lose half your playerbase in one night then mass wipes are a good way to do it.
IDGAF if some of you enjoy starting over from scratch on a regular basis, or “enjoy building detailed models and throwing them in the trash afterwards”.
Most veteran players would quit in a heartbeat if servers were wiped - it would be the final straw for them - and many of those veterans are the ones that are keeping the lights on by shelling out for overpriced Bazaar crap.
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As for those saying this is nothing new: I’ve been playing for a long time and while there have been many dupes, glitches, exploits and hacks this level of server admin access is completely unprecedented in CE.
The only thing I don’t understand is why this is taking so long for Funcom to fix…
There are records of exactly which servers were hit and when. I’m not a hacker, but it seems likely that the hackers either acquired access to an admin account, brute-forced a Funcom/Zendesk admin password or found some way to spoof or inject admin credentials.
Aren’t there server logs?
And even if for some inexplicable reason there is nothing in the logs, can’t they change the admin login process/credentials/passwords, or even simply temporarily disable remote admin access on Officials? Sure this would mean that Funcom/Zendesk won’t be able to ban land claim abusers, hackers, etc temporarily - but it’s not like they do anyway?
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So to go back to the original topic, this action hack is not due to one hacker individual, but to a new third party program that is on the market that allow to do that and so put under threat the whole online gaming of conan, both private and official.
so this thread ask a communication to know of what this third party program has allowed to do, is no more possible to do ? because until this is not patched, no servers are safe in the whole conan online servers
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