Please read chat of attached screenshot (Decay Timer Related)

Conan Exiles General Discussion
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Trying to be constructive here. I really like this game. I am attempting to press an issue I very strongly support with a legitimate example of why I support it.

Player quits over decay

^ Here is why you are losing customers. It’s literally one of the ONLY reasons, the rest of the game is awesome/epic/amazing.

To put it bluntly, this is not the first time I have seen this happen, and just seeing it happen made me have to fight the wife to keep her playing too. As we literally all read it in chat.

I have taken a 2-3 month break after letting all my stuff rot, while waiting for the next patch…hoping for positive changes.

Finally got the wife back into the game. We pushed past the few stupid things that bothered us and reminded us why we took a break. Got a base started up… and really started to enjoy it. Played most of the day.

Then some random player announces that upon his return all his shi* vanished…

…Seriously Funcom.

I know I am a peon, and I don’t matter. I know you don’t REALLY hate me, but you also don’t really value me either. I am a number, and a criticism to you.

But please. Please.

Address publicly, loudly exactly why you can’t come up with a solution to the short decay timer? I view it as a serious problem, I can’t understand how other “fixes” can’t be applied to allow for the timer to be a longer duration.

To me, this is literally killing the game, as I have seen this way too many times, and felt exactly the same way.

You have a sold game, that keeps peoples interest… but you keep ■■■■■■■ them off and making them rage quit! What is with that design? It’s bad for business? I don’t understand how even your investors are not coming down hard on you.

Could you maybe address the truly pressing matter that forces your hand here?

Thanks again for the great game. (Really).

But please, why such a hate inducing feature? (Really).

I have been a Funcom customer since the launch of Anarchy Online. (18 years worth!) I would like to know!

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You could go to a private server or rent one yourself, where the decay timer can be set to a much higher number or where decay can be switched off completely.

Decay on official servers is there to destroy the buildings of people that left the server, so that there is room again for new buildings . Otherwise the official servers would drown in a flood of buildings from those people that left, but did not remove their buildings themselves.

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Private (Solo/offline) is not multi-player. (Which is a main attraction to game-play)

Renting a server for a game you already purchased in a non subscription game… Not ideal.

Decay timer can stay, but it is way to harsh.

The problem it is attempting to solve it is also creating.

We are in an echo chamber on this forum. Many that left were from multi-player official servers and many of them rage quit after losing their days/weeks/months of work.

They don’t post here with their opinions because they quit. The evidence of this, is the extremely low server populations, in an otherwise very fun and good game. Something is driving these people away.

The people still playing, and still posting (myself included), are the ones generally willing to put up with this aspect of the game. Even if it’s not a optimal solution, or in the best interest of growing the player base.

Funcom needs to look at the statistics and address the issue according to them, while accounting for the large loss of playerbase.

(Taking a vote on it now, will be skewed toward players willing to accepts it) Rather than what the general public, or casual gamer is willing to accept or tolerate.

Funcom seems to be catering to a very small crowd, and the crowd is getting smaller. I would like for that to change for the better.

So, to repeat again.

I believe the decay timer is creating the very problem it is attempting to solve, by running off hordes of customers who are dissatisfied with the game after losing all of their hard work.

A decay concept is fine, but it needs to be on a much longer time scale. You don’t retain people if you make them angry. There are other solutions that are less damaging to a players feeling of satisfaction.

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Well, you could go to someone else’s private server, so you do not have to pay yourself. You’ll just need to find one with a higher decay timer (or no decay at all).
That is just a solution personally for you, it cannot alleviate the problem on the official servers, I agree.

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Ngl, i wish decay was lower on T1 and that the sandstorm would damage T1 structures or more if it doesn’t already, because playing Conan Exiles is like being in a warehouse full of boxes.

Infact when t2 and t3 decay, it’d be nice if sandstorm would damage them also.

We need more cleanup mechanics.

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^ 168 hours is max reset on the decay timer, which is 7 days.

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No, there are lots of private servers of various flavors: some of them don’t have decay at all, others keep your things after your death… Morover, you can install your own server (not a coop game but a real server) on a separate PC at home or in some kind of VirtualBox on the same PC with your CE client and play with your friends as well. It requires some admin skills but doesn’t require money :upside_down_face:

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If multiplayer is what you want to play, play in a clan. Even with only a small handful members you should be able to get someone to wander into your base and poke at a wall or something to prevent it from decaying every few days. Isn’t that what multiplayer is for, cooperation? (Or maybe competition, in which case aggressive neighbors will probably get your base before the decay timer does.)

Privately maintained multiplayer servers are probably a better place to play for the demanding customer, because private servers also have ways to police their members, getting rid of people who don’t fit in the desired playstyle. The Servers and Recruitment section on these forums may help you find one that’s suited for you. From what I’ve heard, the official servers are a Wild West where schoolyard bullies terrorize people who managed to log into a multiplayer online game without understanding what sort of people they tend to attract.

How long should the decay timer be so as to be sufficient for your purposes? And do you think it would be realistic to maintain in the long term in a multiplayer environment?

(By the way, I wholeheartedly agree with you that the decay timer is awful, and that’s one reason why I don’t play on official servers. The other reason being that there are other people on the official servers…)

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Just know there are alot less players playing because of the feature. (Week decay timer). The people that would agree with me already quit. (I watched it happen many times.) So they are not here to express their opinions.

I don’t expect alot of support from these forums, but I do expect Funcom to know better.

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They do know better. Thats why the decay timer is a thing. I’m not sure what they could set it to though because people would still be complaining about it even if it was set to six months. And at that length of time, the abandoned building problem would become a really serious issue.

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It needs to be around a month long. Other features can affect the decay timer as needed.

Example. Noob area could have a shorter timer than zones to the north, or east.

Example. Higher levels characters could be allowed additional rot time.

Example. Players with more play time logged on a server would have additional decay time for their structures.

Example. Once purge is finally fixxed, it will contribute to removing structures.

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Ahh… does the horse go before or after the cart…

Here’s a thought, no decay timer unless someone doesn’t log in for a month…
After that, I becomes. Farmable/destroyable for anyone…

Allows anyone to go on a long holiday, or hospital visit, or…
And players to claim the land they want with a little patience…

Decay as a concept is great, in practice, not so…
It adds a ton of variables that every server needs to keep track of.
Needless data, more code that can create bugs (proven), and well, in a cooking show the judges would go, “great dish, but what’s this rubbish on top”

Overthinking a simple problem creates more problems… simple fact of life…

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I will support you in this, and I still play. A week isn’t ok. 2 weeks is fine, one week isn’t. For me anyways, and for what I have been able to tell from other post from other active users on this forum with toons still in the game, many of us were very content with the holiday decay extension.

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I play on a really active official PVE-C server. We have close to 25 to 30 people online. About 15 regulars so that is half of our population right there.

The rest are people who join. Build something and then vanish. We have people who will play for 2 to 3 weeks and move to another server.

The thing with decay is that it is very important for PVE and PVE-C servers. Without the timeing we currently have we suffee from cube shacks or alternatively massive buildings with no owners. This can cause server issues. Lag etc.

During the holidays FC increased the timer to accomodate for the holidays. Which was perfectly fine. But during that time we also experienced performance issues.

Key thing to keep in mind.

Obilisk blockers tend to troll and then fade away. Without decay timer being what it is, people could wait months before the base decays and frees up the obilisk. All it takes is one login to refresh. The 7 day decay can help defeat that issue if they forget.

PVE and PVE-C needs the timer to be where it is otherwise we get foundation spamming. Spiderwebbing (people placing torches to claim large amounts of land.

We also have to think of some other aspecs of the decay.

For example people purposefully blocking routes, caverns, the Broken Highway and entire plot areas like the Ice Bridge.

In my experience trolls tend to do this. But once their mission of being trolls becomes boring they leave. That stuff they built needs to rot away.

I agree that losing your things sucks and that there is a commitment to this game to keep your or your clan’s buildings maintained.

But the consequences are much worse without it.

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First off, a very significant majority of the forum community agrees with you, the results of the latest poll were rather overwhelmingly in favor of extending the timer.

I agree with you, and I didn’t quit. Yet, anyway. I will if real life ever conspires to draw me away long enough for my stuff to decay though. The decay system is an abomination. It is without a doubt the most hostile game system I have ever come across. If there’s no technically viable solution, then it’s a design flaw that runs to the core of the game.

To be clear: I am not saying the decay system serves no purpose at all. But with its current default length (7 days) it’s still pretty terrible. I get the argument that without it, people who quit would leave their stuff behind forever. But people who quit are still going to be gone in 14 days, or 20. If you don’t play enough to defend your claimed land, the thrall/pet feeding system and the Purge together ought to be what gets you, not an unexplained, faceless, purely technical “gotcha” like the decay system.

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I could not agree more :slightly_smiling_face:
Real life, yes most of us have it, that needs attention, you can get sick, be on vacation and all sorts of reasons for not being able to refresh your base weekly, and there’s nothing worse than being a level 60 player having to start all over just because you weren’t able to play for a week or more.
Although there are tricks to keep some stuff safe by using camels or other pets as piggy banks placed in a natural secure place with plenty of food, still the decay system does serve a purpose to get rid of abandoned buildings and stuff, but it also gets rid of people who actually want to play, but just didn’t have the time to keep it refreshed.
I can think of many ways to get rid of abandoned bases or blocking attempts, fx a decay timer based on monthly activity, a marker given to each player to sort of make a bubble where decay timers are doubled or more, but I agree that the best option is to have purges and feeding system killing it if not maintained :slight_smile:

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