Hello all, I have honest question, no trolling intended - is FC doing any server checks/sweeps by their own or did they just react to tickets/complaints?
Today I’ve checked about dozen of official PVE EL servers (was searching for less inhabitated one to start new character) and all of them are littered with constructions abusing official server rules. You can pick whatever abuse type from the rules presented in pinned topic about ToC and here you go, you can be sure that you will find all of them, without even going out of noob river region. Players (pve especially) treat official servers as their own, personal playground/test (instead of doing so on private/solo maps), resulting in huge, pointless constructions. Sending tickets regarding those abusements seems pointless, because of how many of them you will have to send. So again, I’m wondering if admins checks official servers on their own? I get it this is a building sim, but there are so many examples of breaking ToC, that it is just insane.
ps. One more question - does anyone know if FC ever considered introducing building pieces limit ?
They only react to tickets, and only if a lot os people complaim about the same construction. And i think they do it only time to time, some times an admin show up to run the punishments, them we have a long period, till them show up again. Theres is no active adm at all. About the limits they never showed any intention till the moment to limit building pieces, maybe it will negativelly afect the sales of set on bazaar. I believe most of buyers from bazaar ar official server players, due to in private server with mods you can access an near infinite stuff even better than bazaar. By the way theres no much official information about it, and most off people share their personal experiences.
Oh I know this world, I play CE long enough, I was just hoping that maybe, MAYBE there is some kind of active maintenance going on for official servers, yet I’m (not) surprised, it is not the case. Pity.
Me and a friend did the exact same thing, we decided to try out the new update and mechanics shortly after Age of War 2 was released, we tried a few servers and ended up on one that wasn’t too crowded, but still it has some insanely huge bases… Way beyond what is necessary and definitely breaking the TOC in more than one way
Currently it is a bit hard to figure out how badly they affect the server because the recent update pretty much broke official servers, but the server we ended up on has some insanely huge bases around Sepermeru where it is almost impossible to find a spot that isn’t landclaimed even if you want to build a tiny outpost, so many of them have long walkways on the mountains around Sepermeru for likely no other reason than to make sure that they can keep on expanding, possibly also to keep neighbors away from them, but the biggest problem is the insane use of deco, lights and other stuff that will make it a laggy experience to be within their spawn distance.
I have a pretty good pc(I9 9900K, RTX2080TI, nvme drive, 32 gb ram) and just being around Temple Quarters on this server turns my game into a slideshow, I mean this is a npc city with no build zones around, but because I am within spawn range of 2 huge lag bases, I can barely do anything, and a new guy on the server complained that his game crashed when he was there and everytime he tried to reload the game to get away from Sepermeru it just crashed again, it has to be said he did in the end manage to quickly kill himself so that he spawned back at his base, however I completely understand him when he poured out his frustrations in chat, and while my pc could handle the lag there, it also became clear to me that some would struggle even more with such laggy bases
I’ve often thought of just mass report such massive bases where TOC is clearly broken, but what would it accomplish?
I mean yes I could spend a lot of time documenting and reporting to zendesk, they may act upon it and remove them, but experience tells me that new players will come to the server and do the exact same thing, while most people have a decent understanding that official servers are a shared space, still there are many who either doesn’t give a shit or simply don’t understand that this isn’t their personal playground and really should be playing in singleplayer or on a private server that allows them do whatever they want, likely their own hosted server because I doubt many private servers would allow total building freedom
This has been suggested several times along with a possible maintainance cost for large bases, people are very split about this topic, some are afraid that their bases which they have had for many years suddenly would become hard to refresh and keep alive while others feel that strict rules would limit creativity.
I don’t know if devs read these topics or has considered such restrictions, but I do know that the current situation isn’t good, official servers are mostly overbuilt with too large bases and lots of landclaim that doesn’t make sense.
Personally I would like almost any form of change or restrictions to official servers just to get a decent experience.
I also would love to play on an official server that got wiped maybe once a year or something like that, starting fresh can actually be a fun experience, I for one love to do it once in a while
Thanks for your answer, you’ve pointed out many of my own thoughts and observations.
Regarding building limit - I had a moderately big base on official for about 3 years straight, created it while playing solo, all buildings were created with utmost precision and style - I was very proud of it, especially that after much effort and my development as a player, it evolved from cubic, sandstone monstrosity into something with much finesse - but after a while I noticed, that only thing I do is refreshing it. Same goes for most of those huge bases/castles - they are mostly empty, standing there just because players don’t have a heart to tear them down. Not to mention those obvious eyesores with endless pathways or spammed foundations. I can’t say how big was my base, but I think, that it could be possible to set some sort of limitations for players, just like with followers - bigger the clan, more building pieces you can place. 5000 or maybe even 10000 pieces should be more than enough for anyone to fulfill his/hers creativity needs. I noticed once some lad bragging in the chat about having over 300k of used building pieces - and it was a solo player (not even in a clan) - I gave up scanning the map after finding 4 of his “castles” - only one wasn’t empty (workstations and thralls inside). My point is - if someone would like to construct big, without taking much care about others - he should just play “offline” mode - like you said, official servers are for everybody and I don’t see this game going anywhere, when you are hit in the face with enormous bases starting from 2/3 map line…
Hardly anyone does sweeps. Not even on most populated private servers. The process is a waste of time. Some smaller servers may take a gander at each of their players’ stuff. But scouring the map looking for potential violations is a waste of time.
Not to mention infeasible. You said you checked 12. I doubt the actual number was more than four. As scouring 12 servers would have taken the better part of an evening. Especially without fly and ghost admin commands. But let’s say you did. Did you document them? Now imagine if you had to, and imagine you now have 768 servers to go. Even if you cut the time in half because of admin commands. You’re looking at a man-hour cost that is ridiculous.
The process of reporting goes like this:
First thing a report by a player is made. There’s a few things needed here. You need to know what server it is. You need to know where on the map it is. And it helps to know who the violator is. Players making reports think the ticket reader is a mind reader and likely forget to include which server it is, and where on the server it is. Lacking those things, the report is likely closed. And yes, players tend to forget these things. Players even forget what server they even played on many times, losing characters when their favorites are reset.
Second the evidence is reviewed. If this is missing, or doesn’t show anything. I’m not sure they continue with the investigation. I assume they do, but they may close the ticket if there is report congestion. I can say this, players are horrible at giving evidence. So much so that I have had on several occasions had players literally show the wrong evidence. In these cases they would make a report on someone, and their evidence doesn’t show the ‘offending’ party at all, but the very ones who are making the report breaking a rule. “Here’s a video of them doing this…” “That’s you in the video doing that…” “Oh… wrong video…” “Heeeere’s your sign.”
Finally if the information is good on where the offense is, and the evidence is clear enough to go in and check it out. They do so. They’ll teleport to the location and take a look based on the evidence. They’ll look at everything in the immediate area and make a determination. If they see something amiss that wasn’t in the report, they will act on it too. This one is particularly funny because many times people who make reports use it as a sort of last ditch effort after doing things against the rules in retaliation to some thing. Then they get hemmed up too despite being the one’s to make a report ‘first’.
The report system isn’t some ‘game’ like people treat it as. They think its some thing you can play with, get a report in first or get more reports in and ‘win’. No one wins when a report is handled. Its simply handled. Not to mention the process is over complicated by people in the community thinking there is some automated thing or AI or whatever in the back, assigning points based on some arbitrary system. There isn’t. Just a dude (or few) reading reports one by one and taking action on those with enough information to act on.
Its no different then a channel or DM on discord being used to make reports except a little more organized by a web interface.
Yes, and pray it never sees the light of day. Something like that will NOT fix the issues you see on servers.
First of all I wonder why most of your posts are sided with FC/game devs/etc.
Second - assuming what I’ve or haven’t done plus that ironic tone isn’t good for discussion. I said I checked number of servers (of course not sweeping them all entirely, I usually made it till sepermeru, mounds or new asgarth) and I was able to give exact number, because all of “scanned” servers had “favourite” mark on the servers list.
Third - I’ve mentioned, that I won’t be sending reports, because it is time consuming and pointless, because of the number of violations I will have to report. But if I will need to do so, I will mention exact server, location and attach screens, not because I’m so good, but because ticket requires you to fill it with those data. So again assuming that most of the players are braindead and won’t be able to do so is just rude - apart from those, who made mistakes while filling their complaint. Also argument about last resort retaliation method (by sending a ticket) is inaccurate, since (in my case) I’ve just logged in on particular server, don’t know anyone there, so why would I want/need to retaliate? Of course there will be some wrong, stupid or “revenge” tickets, but it is up to zendesk to do the diligence.
I don’t know from where you get your knowledge about how exactly zendesk is working (do they have bots, just a bunch of tired admins or army of them), but it is up to FC (or zendesk as a company hired to do the maintenance) to keep their “OFFICIAL” servers in order - they get good money from this game, set their own rules (ToC), but fail to “enforce” them. I get it there are so many servers to check and it will need a lot of work to scan them all (regularly or not), but if current system (sending tickets) isnt working, it is up to company to find better solution (idk - more people, some kind of automated checks/bots, put more pressure on zendesk to actually check received tickets (my friend was walled in his base by some asian named clan on pve-c, just because he won a duel with one of its clanmates - sent a ticket, get 3 automated responses, last of them saying the matter will be taken care of and after 2 or so weeks of waiting for anything to happen, he left the server and whole game)).
Last thing - I would kindly ask you to share more about why building limit won’t be a (at least partial) solution to the number and size of mentioned bases/constructions on official servers? Because from my point of view, if set correctly (number of building pieces needs to be carefully calculated, not like with followers limit, which is a bit too high for me) it could limit excessive (and I mean excessive) building.
I was explaining how players typically deal with reports from my own personal experience as a server admin. As well as someone who has worked in customer service in some form in the past. When players make a report, frequently it is because they are blinded by frustration and either due to that don’t file great reports or describe their problems effectively, or they tend to lack the general knowledge in the first place to solve their own issues. In the latter case players who do, don’t likely need to make a report. This experience comes from helping customers, helping players, answering reports, and even dealing with friends or guild/clan mates.
Zendesk is simply a 3rd party suite that allows an admin to order and organize tickets from their clients. You can even use it for private servers if you’d like. However it would be overkill for that as a single owner may only ever have 1 server or 2-3 at most. For Conan Exiles, and for FC themselves, its a fancy method of getting reports handled efficiently, since having a discord server for 780 servers would be a nightmare.
So all Zendesk does is make tickets and then an admin goes in and handles it. At that point they use the very same methods as private server admins do. Login, enable admin mode, and then take a look. They have some nifty tools to supplement the fact that they don’t have Pippi or ToT! Admin. From what I know they would be cumbersome for single server owners, but necessary to ensure their admin actions reach all 780 of their servers.
Excessive building has more to do with area, than it does volume. If you cuberoot the number of building pieces an excessive build has, then square it (basically removing the height) you end up with half the number of pieces… but then still end up with an excessive build that covers a wide area.
So if you have a 5,000 wide area build which can cover a ton of area and then half what that group can use to 2,500 they still have quite a bit of area they can cover but now you have an incredibly low limit that is stifling to most. But if you leave it at 5,000 (or in this case, set it), then you don’t really change much.
You are also requesting a decent amount of dev time, public beta time, and then hotfix time (anyone believe this willl work out of the box?) for 780 servers. There is around 12,000 servers total on PC, I assume another 8,000 on console, so why make a game adjustment for what is a very small percentage of servers’ problem.
Instead wide area excessive builds are NOT a development problem. They don’t affect singleplayer, and they aren’t a problem on private servers. This is an admin issue to be handled by admins.
And if you are worried about performance, these large builds need to either be in the 100,000 building piece range, or need to cover such a large area that it is causing weird things to happen when loading map chunks. The later can be done with a hundred building pieces.
In that case, a limit on Placeables is the better option. And one that is generally wildly accepted as a compromise by those who are normally against building limits, as it will have real positive effects without having a ton of consequences for legit builders.
Thanks for your answer. I still have my doubts as for the building limit - my point (hope) is, that when you know, that you have a limit, maybe you won’t build so large base (in the matter of area coverage), because you will have to keep in mind, that either you build wide or either you build tall. For example popular
“pyramid” design - either won’t be high (which I think will force it’s creator to make it smaller) or either won’t be enormous like the one I saw few days back (about 100x100 base level foundations). Yeah, it’s not the perfect solution and can still be “dodged” by building wider but lower bases, but it is at least some solution. It will for sure need a lot of work and tweaking all those servers, but every major update do that, so it’s not impossible (for example removing purge meter or adjusting map by repositioning legendary chests in current one).
I also want to thank you for mentioning placeables limit, indeed it is a problem - this time I think it is more about server performance (or overall game performance), while excessive bases affects more my immersion and “fun” of the game (allowing others to build and play is a key in such games) rather than computer performance. Although game is behaving noticeably worse (performance wise) around those huge constructions, even without much placeables.
Anyway, if you or anyone else could bring any idea (apart from sending tickets or changing server) how to deal with those enormous bases , with endless pathways, I will be very grateful.
After some consideration I feel, that building limit WILL be some solution - otherwise players build high AND wide, instead of only high/wide. (screens from 1030 official EU, PvE)
If my character is thirsty I get a popup warning.
If my character is hunger I get a popup warning.
If my character is overloaded I get a popup warning.
If I place too many thralls I get a popup warning.
Since the game keeps track of that and I see a building piece, placables count, the game is obviously keeping track of that so obviously I’ll get a popup warning when I hit my limit, right?
heh…
Well I don’t mind big constructions as long as they have purpose or are built with some taste. Big bases are tolerated by me, hell even when my gpu fries because of placeables amount I can live with that, as long as construction is decent and fits to rpg climate - but this (screens above)…?
There are things people do quite a bit that makes 0 sense to me.
If you have to put in a gate to allow access to a POI or a path, why build there?
If you have to put out signs to label various parts of you compound, did the thought that covering a third of a map square may be a bad thing, ever enter your head?
I have no idea why some one would use a maproom, pop up at an obelisk, see 2 maprooms and think “you know what this obelisk needs? A 3rd maproom”. Then when they get it done, pop to another obelisk, see 3 maprooms and think, “you know what this obelisk needs…”
Seriously the sink hole on my server has 4 open maprooms around it.
If you have used so many radium lights your base looks like a warp core ready to blow, maybe you’ve used too many.
I have no idea the thought process behind “hey, here’s a nice island with a king kappa, lots of eggs, aloe, true blue indigo, lets just pave over it”.
You want to see PVE building at it’s worst? Go to sinners refuge, either it is owned by one person or you have several people built as close to each other as they can get and you can’t get to the cave with out going through some ones base.
PVE public servers are to be shared but some think seniority grants you privilege or generosity forgives rule breaking. Just because you have been on the server since it opened doesn’t mean you’re entitled a map square. Just because you insist on helping all newbies; whether they want it or not, does not give you the privilege of build Camelot sized bases at every obelisk.
Or have a fake full clan so you can have 100 thralls to man all those bases.
Welcome to PVE home of the entitled and privileged.
It is almost completely report based and while # of reports on the offending clan helps, your own reputation with reporting as matters. If you are spam reporting, the teams will catch on and your reports will not get the attention like someone that does it only periodically and with the details that make investigation quick and easy and explain the PoV on why it’s harmful to the server.
HOWEVER, these folks are like cops. If you call them into your house to remove a rude guest, you better ensure everything is fine with what you do as well. If they spot that you or an ally are also breaching ToS then you will be enforced on as well even without a report.
What irritates me are the clans that have some many builds that they can’t keep up with them and so when I demolish the ones they forgotten about, they get all pissy and immediately claim it back. I normally just demolish anything that is decay status to help the server out.
