This question the title states refers to new and veteran players. Currently, and I am not sure if this is by design or not private servers are much more desirable to Offical servers for PVP mode of play.
Its possible that this is due to the customizable offerings of modded servers and tweaked server settings. The fee to run a server (G-portal sub) or the need for a private server build (custom built server) hardware (purchase private hardware) doesn’t seem a barrier if the population number ratio between the two is any indication.
Given the choice of a free server to play with no non gameplay input over a private server with added effort to maintain the experience players seem overwhelmingly to desire private servers over Official ones whose access is provided with the purchase of the game.
The question(s) is/are this:
What makes Private preferable to PvP Official servers?
What makes PvP Official servers undesirable for player new and vet alike?
I’ll never play privates though. Prefer officials they don’t wipe and I’ve only ever had 2 bases wiped since full release of the game in 2018. 1 from hackers early in 2020 and 1 a week ago by funcom. 7 Bases left full of loot from full release. Crafting thralls with old skins ect.
I find it fun bouncing from official to official building up then raiding everyone and hoarding the loot and keeping it…
So you like officials for base raiding and then defending a base against players taking the loot back? Sort of like a dragon on a pile of gold in a cave waiting to fight all comers looking for your treasure?
So, low population kept low by low population on officials would be one the reasons for players desiring private over officals?
And Private server offer superior server performance to players over Ofiicial ones?
You prefer Officals very player run servers. Is this because of different experience. How is the pvp experience different to you on officials over private ones. You said that private servers offer unrealistic pvp meta. Am I understanding you correctly?
Some of the privates I’ve been on are gobsmakingly worse than officials in terms of both performance and settings! 100% full time rubberbanding for hours per day and more than a few days of the week - even when no one else is connected. Some weird settings that make your stamina drain 5 times too fast - can’t even climb 5 blocks high. Weekly roll backs because the admin or one of their friends made a mistake or got off-lined and wants an undo. No “going offline” message - just poof - disconnect - in the middle of a boss fight, a raid, or whatever. Building destroyed because the Admin likes the looks of that location without your buildings there - or because their friend wanted to build there. Building spam 3 years old because it’s set to “No Decay” on some PvE servers, Purge settings where purges happen 2 or 3 times per day - everyday… and on and on.
Some are really great though. At least with Officials it’s consistent and you know what to expect.
The cost to play on a private server is actually zero out of the gate. The tool for running one is a free download. The machine required to run one can be done on the same machine that you play CE on. This is how I played Conan Exiles at first with a couple of friends. A few hundred hours that way even.
If you’ve got a spare old PC or Laptop laying around, you could even host a 10-20 player server (assuming your network/ISP is good for it). You’ll even likely see better performance than an official because you’re running one instance on one machine (thread) rather than stuffing dozens on one in virtual machines.
They’re kinda of the same question, so I’ll just group them together.
Private servers have active moderation. Some of the more popular ones will have 2-3 admins online at any given point in a 24-hour period. This means if you have an issue, you can get it resolved in minutes, not weeks. Hacks/Exploits are typically caught in real time, and don’t need extensive screenshots and videos to get action. Or if they do, it doesn’t take dozen of reports.
Rules are better tailored to the experience. Because of active moderation, the rules can be a bit more specific and their enforcement is done in a more personal manner. If your base is out of line for example, an admin will tell you, and give you time to fix it. They will even help you if you need it.
If you lose stuff like buildings, items, or character progress. An admin can rectify that. As I said, usually in minutes rather than weeks. No automated replies.
Trolls are rarer on privates. All it takes on official is for someone to randomly pick your server and then they run amok. Then it can take weeks for them to be stopped. On privates, they may not even be able to login depending on how the server operates. And even on open login servers, they likely get kicked off relatively quickly.
Better hardware, or specifically not running too many instances on one machine. G-Portal saves money by stuffing as many instances on a single machine as possible. This means a 40 person official server slugs along when at only half capacity. Meanwhile a private on a dedicated machine will laugh at 70 players even with mods. Privates are usually capped at 60tick/s. Officials are capped at 30, though you’ll never see that when more than 5 login. Self hosted are uncapped, and can see over 100 (depending on your hardware, though I’d say you can’t really tell past 60, this is server ticks not graphical framerates).
As for PVP experience, there’s no way officials can compare. They simply have too small of a player capacity. I have been in fights where there were more participants than an official could hold (50-60 players). Where there is literally a dozen trebs per side taking shots at each other and all sorts of mayhem, explosions, and death everywhere. You can literally have a siege and actual wars in private. By the accounts of most forum goers. PVP in official is when you login naked in the desert. That’s getting PVP’d. Or doing it to someone else.
Because of many rulesets and the culture of PVP in privates, PVP is more personal and engaging. PVP extends beyond just clicking each other to death and stealing stuff as well. I’ve had instances, where reputation alone won a ‘fight’ and the other side submitted and paid back things they stole just so there would be no retaliation. There’s more talking, more politicking, more extortion, more nuance, and more intrigue in PVP on private servers.
Mods. I played Conan for my first 1100 hours without them. Once I put them on, I never went back. The QOL changes by Pippi, Fashionist, LBPR, and Pickup+ alone change nothing about the lore of the game, but make it so much more enjoyable without modifying the difficulty. Automatically the go to mods for anyone playing with mods. Content mods then add a dizzying array of new content that breathes a ton of life into the game.
Savage Wilds alone as a custom map has more content than Exiled Lands and Siptah combined, with unique features of its own. Even if you don’t mod, you should try this map (it only requires itself to play). I’m sure other custom maps do as well (I just don’t have experience with them yet).
Wipes on privates are a bit of a myth. There are some private servers with maps as old as officials, running since beta. These are only needed if you run too many mods and it degrades over time, have a mod that breaks that is a requirement to keep playing as you do, or you have a sickeningly large player base (a 70/70 server typically can have communities of 300-1000 players with their buildings and stuff still in game even when they’re not online).
Usually wipes are from the playerbase asking for them. A culture of wiping has developed over time where players do look forward to a fresh start. Playing new characters and making new buildings is quite fun for them. This is due to optimizations that are now present weren’t originally. So some had to wipe due to that early one. Many however do not and may wipe every few months anyway. You can find privates that do not wipe. In fact the server I play on has never truly wiped. Only switched maps. Giving access to the old maps for those who wish to keep their stuff for SP use. Something Officials will never do.
But at the end of the day you do need to find a good fit. This isn’t as simple as logging in to a random number and going at it. But if you don’t like the passive moderation of Funcom, their implementation of the rules, offline raiding, small numbers of players, restrictive build limits, no reimbursement, or even disagree with their rules. There’s likely a server out there that would fit you. There is even the option of playing on what I called Official-Likes, where they are private servers with the same settings as officials and play like them, but have better moderation and a better ruleset. I’m surprised many disenchanted with Funcom’s application of their rules don’t simply play there. I mean its run by one of your own, if you don’t like and trust Funcom, then who do you like and trust? Pugilist runs such a server, I don’t understand why there isn’t just an exodus to there. He seems capable of running a decent ship. I haven’t seen any indication he can’t do what officials do.
But to put it shortly, nothing beats private for a true PVP experience. You need more than 40 players. Plain and simple. Duels are not PVP, and scattered fights don’t show a players true mettle. Its when you can show your dominance over dozens of players at a time through grit, will, and force of personality is when you can truly ‘win’. There’s more to it than simply clicking each other to death.
But then again I enjoyed the massive battles in Archeage and played Planetside 2 for a number of years, so I might be a bit biased there. If Conan Exiles could ever host hundreds of players at once on a single map, it would truly dominate the survival scene.
My only issue with private servers is (1) the servers that just go away because the admin doesn’t want to pay anymore or doesn’t want the hassle (2) servers that are running way too many mods because I guess they can’t tell their players no?
Other than that, they’re great and everything you’ve said is spot on.
Toxicity of veteran players in what way on officials? Why do you think player toxicity is not the fault of the toxic players? The lack controls on officials bred toxicity on the servers because of frustrated players?
Why would a new player want to trigger purges sooner while they are still learning the game?
I have heard that you level even quicker on most private servers than on officials. Is that true ?
Not exactly. The lack of controls largely drove away the players that aren’t fundamentally toxic people.
Purges are fun and if they don’t happen early enough the player doesn’t know how to take them into account and then they get wrecked.
You’re right, you do tend to level more quickly on private servers. But in general I was limiting myself to what I find lacking on official servers with respect to new players.
So the addition of new controls or rules would maybe bring more non toxic players back?
I wonder how a new player would handle one of the very large purges , though, I would be afraid that it might discourage them if they lose too much too fast?
Personally, I don’t think official PvP servers can be saved at this point. We need to return to the ship and nuke them from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Re purges, that’s sort of my point. Player experiences a purge fairly early on and realizes they need to take that into account when selecting a base location.
They would have to refund a ton of money if they did that and/or torpedo future sales of their products if they wholesale with no new mode removed one.
I highly doubt that. (a) That’s not how their refund policy works and (b) official pvp generally seems to be a dead mode anyway from what everyone says here.
I think he was more stating a full wipe of official pvp once they figure out how to make it less about laying 8 hours a day and more about siege and melee.
Players don’t like things taken from them whether or not they used them or not. ToS doesn’t save a company from angering customers and damage future sales.
I personally would not mind a wipe, but they said they would not do that and you know how players are about “promises” on games. I agree with the full job feel of pvp on the game presently with the lack of viable defenses and offline protections.
I will try answer both at the same time for non modded servers.
Regular wipes.
Pvp as is now is all about, leveling up, build up, gear up, raid a lot, as soon as player count goes down significantly wipe the server, do it all over again. This way people always have a clean map, something to do and always something to raid.
Higher farm rates, faster decay.
Since number one (regular wipes) is how pvp is played on privates in most cases, xp and harvest rates are higher. mostly x3 is standard (at least on european servers). To make it easier to catch up if your late to the party and also to free up building space, decay often times is only about a week. Since people love to loot bases, the fast decay lets them open up unused or partially raided bases from people that are no longer playing on that server.
Adjusted Raidtimes.
A lot of servers offer shorter raidtimes over the week and longer raidtimes on the weekends. Some only have weekend raiding. Depends on what the server is aiming for, more casual and newbie friendly or more hardcore. A lot of server offer raidfree days inbetween for recovery purposes.
No gods, no bubbles.
Most people that play on private servers hate gods and bubbles. People wanna actually lets say physically raiding each other. And by physically I mean using explosives. Where they can´t they use trebuchets. Gods and bubbles are just something that feels unbalanced and totally unneccessary. Since most servers have active admins to deal with problems that can´t be solved otherwise gods and bubbles are obsolete.
special rules/settings and raidprotection.
Most private pvp servers have adjusted rules and settings. Rules and settings that have been around for years and have proofen as good for most in the pvp community. This includes building and raiding rules, but also include pvp itself. Rules like: no obelisk, dungeon or spawn camping, no horse pvp, no cat pets, lower thrall and/or animal counts. Certain forbiden weapons that deal too much damage, no building during raid etc. Additionally some servers started to give people raidprotection when they start out or got raided so they can keep up with others and build up again.
active admins
If you play pvp you will run into issues and problems with others sooner or later. This is inevitable. Admins can help solving this problems quickly. Something you simply do not have on officials. Can admins cause problems too? Yes. Can they abuse their powers? Yes. But in the end for most it is bettern then have no admin at all and it has not much weight to the player if he gets kicked out of a server in the worst case scenario, since most pvp servers have regular wipes so you can simply start over.
See this is the weird thing . Server wipes used to make players come out of the woodwork to complain about a proposed server wipe. So on private servers that is a wanted feature?