Q. Why do you avoid Private Servers

Conan Exiles General Discussion
#1

I have noticed a very odd trend as of late, in the event public official servers eventually succomb to cheating etc. Players would rather quit the game completely or uninstall it instead of going to a vanilla private server with the same settings.

Is it just a naming of server thing? Category Selection? issues with private admins etc?

I have noticed this trend specifically with Ocenia Servers. All of our Official PVP servers have been overtaken by the same undermeshing crew. Players have left these servers but they’ve not moved onto private servers, they simply just feel as if they “quit” the game completely.

I reached out to a friend of mine who runs RUST/ARK/Tarkov etc servers for a Game Hosting company and asked if he’d open up a Conan Siptah Server. He doesn’t actively play any of the above but instead does it as a way to test out services etc for his hosting company (essentially will pay to be a passive admin). He only actively gets involved on servers as an admin when people cheat, other than he just doesn’t participate.

Dream admin right?

However, people wont even test the servers out. Is it just a branding issue, is it a server marketing / review systeming missing …what basically makes people not even go near the private server even if the said private server has the same settings as Official.

Openly curious as this is always touted as the solution to problems on Official Servers “Go private” …but… very few actually do. They’d rather quit the game than take that path.

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Green wall reporting?
Green wall reporting?
Why do clans spam landlock for no reason
#2

I don’t see a lot of vanilla private servers in the list. It’s all 5x this and 10x that, or else so many non-cosmetic mods that it’s not even the same game any more, or both.

And if I did see one, two thoughts would be in the back of my mind, since the moderator(s) would be someone I don’t know from Adam’s off ox: (1) do I trust them, and (2) is this server even going to still be here a month from now?

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#3

I’ve tried multiple private servers over the years since the start of conan, modded and unmodded.

Either the server vanishes due to lack of payment, an admin goes crazy and self destructs the server, server rules that change so drastically from the time of joining thats its not the same game I wanted to play, broken mods that are never updated by server admins, low population, the list goes on and on… it’s not worth the effort having been burned so many times.
When I join a server, I’m in for the long haul. Yeah, funcom servers get a lot of jerks, but at least I know the server will still be there the next day. I also like the randomness of the types of people that join officials. What a crazy smorgasbord of personalities…just dont see that to that degree on a private.

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#4

For me fews reasons to not play on private servers :

  • week end only raid times, or only 1 hour raid per day, so not a PVP server.
  • stupid rules.

I am looking for a vanilla private server, old map, EU, max x2 or x3, 17/23h raid times 7 days a week, no or fews mods, simple rules (no blocking, cheating, etc …), fair admin.

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#5

I don’t play on a private server because sometimes they disappear (admins get bored, move on to other things, get broke, etc), or they decide to do a wipe and gone is all your hard work. Official servers might not have the best rules, or the best admin support, but at least they last as long as the game does.

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#6

I avoid private servers because of cheating by the admins (admin panel). I’d rather play official pve where my builds stay up and everyone has to work for there stuff.

#7

I’ve tried several private servers over the years. I wouldn’t say I avoid them. I’m just hesitant to try them, because of my experiences with 6 private servers so far:

  • the first had accusations of admin abuse and drama that spilled over into the official server where I was playing
  • the second had Age of Calamitous and admin’s friend running around ganking newbs who dared run around the Skulker’s End with stone weapons unsheathed
  • the third had ridiculous settings, including no stamina cost whatsoever for sprinting
  • the fourth had a ton of rules you had to learn before applying to join, including building restrictions that were so tight, you couldn’t fit a greater wheel of pain, an animal pen, and all the crafting stations into your base
  • the fifth was really nice, but in Oceania, so my ping never went below 300, ever
  • the sixth was awesome – Larathiel’s Valley of Doom – and I have no complaints about it

In the end, I probably would’ve stayed on that last private server, but then Isle of Siptah hit, and I went to official servers because I didn’t want to miss out. Larathiel is the best and the most competent server admin I’ve had the pleasure to meet in this game, but even he can’t do magic, and every time a major update hits, there’s a risk the server will have to stay down for a while until the mods are safe to use again.

TL;DR: My reasons for generally sticking with official servers are because it’s hard to find a server with no admin abuse, reasonable settings, few mods, and a good ping. When you find one, you can have a lot more fun there than on official servers, as long as you don’t mind risking downtimes that officials don’t (normally) have.

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Responses to complaints
#8

We just hired our own server pretty much for all the reasons listed above.

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#9

So effectively we’re all in this massive stalemate / stall aren’t we.

  1. Either body vault and wait the cheater wave to happen and pass by.
  2. Make a run for a private server and hope you can outlast the doubts above and seed a new server… (however high chance of failing)
  3. Sit on official and shake fist at unfair play and wait for the Funcom police to arrive (which have yet to show up)
  4. Quit.

I feel…we need more options… or i dunno… something else to prolong the “I still want to play Siptah despite all the problems of the game itself” optimism.

Anyway. Was curious as to why thats offered as a solution but so far nobody appears to be succesful with it.

#10

I am not someone who avoids them but I will reply anyway.

I personally have my own private servers (vanilla for testing + modded for playing) but I do play other private servers as well. I have my own with decay disabled where I play with friends and family, I have full control over the experience and I can fix what I feel should be fixed. I can also play when I feel like it without having to worry about refreshing my builds.

I am not a pvper so a large population on the server is not something that matters to me even though I know it is essential for pvp servers. I play other private servers when I feel like socializing and testing new mods that I don’t normally use myself. People are also quite creative in the way they use them, so there is that as well, getting ideas from the experience of others to improve my own experience.

Even though I am pro private servers there is a list of what I find annoying:

  • Admins who have no idea what they are doing but they keep blaming the base game for issues which are clearly mod and/or server related.
  • Servers where I have to wait for days to receive the latest update because the admin is nowhere to be found or can’t be bothered to log and do it.
  • Servers where people block content with no regard for others and admins doing nothing to resolve it and no, I am not talking about an iron node here and there but about blocking unique spawns or blocking entire areas.
  • Servers with admins who keep hating on the game, it creates pretty negative environment. I don’t say be a “white knight” but there is a lot that admins can actually do to make it better.
  • Servers with so high rates that you hit a stone and you build a castle. PvP servers need a bit of a boost but x10 resources ruins the experience for me.
  • Servers with admins who don’t do backups before doing major changes and/or updates.
  • Servers with no discord or way to contact the admin team.

Many admins get burned out pretty quickly because they didn’t realize how much work is to run a server, many servers are created by new players who don’t even know whether they would like the game or not which is why many disappear so quickly.

I guess if you want long lasting vanilla experience, find a server with an established admin team.
If you want a server for fun and to test something new, find a boosted server and accept it may only last 3 months or so which for me is not that bad because I actually enjoy starting over.

When it comes to mods, it depends on my mood. My own server runs only QoL mods which improve on the base game experience. However, I sometimes play on high fantasy servers as well when I want some change. They all attract different groups of players. I avoid servers that run â– â– â–  mods, especially the ones that are no longer supported and pretty broken.

As a general advice, create a server that you would enjoy playing on because an active admin who enjoys playing on his server is very important for the overall health of the server.

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#11

I logged onto an official siptah PvP this evening for the first time in a month. One of the players told me that they thought the undermeshers there had been banned. Apparently they cheaters suddenly stopped logging in and their bases started decaying. Prior to that they’d been on all the time and were very persistent.

#12

I play on private servers with friends only, thus no bad experiences here.
I have an EL-Server, one of my friends has an IoS-Server. Both are PVE.

#13

Yeah i’ve noticed this trend on 6400, 6402, 6424 and 6425. At first i thought “ok they got the first strike” but then when the server gets population again they return. At the moment they are all stacked on 6401 in two clans (20 accounts under the mesh in 3 spots).

A lot of us are fatigued, frustrated and want to continue but spend a lot of our times waiting for Funcom Queue to deplete and action taken. 6401 has sent in about 8 player reports so far and only about 3 of them have said they recieved the template response.

We are at the moment repelling their attempts to raid the last large clan base given its in a position they can’t undermesh and have to instead rely on normal raid tactics to get in. Weird but the entire server has united against the meshers while we all wait for the Funcom moment to happen (which i’m not expecting).

If this fails a lot of folks have said thats Conan for them and will uninstall and i’m attempting to convince them to stick it out for one more round on a private server but nobody seems to find that appealing so far.

Its a miserable existance tbh.

#14

Pretty simple, I know for a Fact the next day the Official Server will still be there for me to play (Unless Funcom Goes Under).

#15

Why I avoid private servers:

  • Admin abuse, cause they pay for the server (not all but its always in the back f your head)
  • A discussion or w/e with one of their friends can get you banned or warned (no equality)
  • Uncertain lifetime of the server
  • Server wipes
  • Their rules (this is a positive thing most of the time but things can always change)
  • Bad mods in use
  • Server updates not as frequent
  • Admins a*** lickers
  • Server settings (official server settings are the best balanced in my opinion I don’t want 4x harvesting and such)

I just want to play on a server which has n’t got a player who owns the server.

Sidenote:
Funcom should be able to visit an official server, see what’s going on and ban when necessary (seems like this only happens based on screenshots and videos… which often gets rated as not enough evidence).

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#17

Exactly. For me to join another private is same as who can join my clan, I need to know them personally.

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#18

I play almost exclusively on private servers. Ps4 for me. Have had a gportal server since about a month after console debut. Partly because of the problems mentioned by others. Playing on people’s servers I have met allow me to play without temptation of using admin. Last time I dipped a toe on a official pve server it was a mess.

3 Likes
#19

Previously We avoided private servers because we like pvp and wanted to avoid the advantage that admins have along with the fact we enjoy longevity in the game. We love conan and dont want to wake up and everything gone. So i did some research after having the agony of too many cheaters and exploiters on official. Tired of the same old conan options we decided to try out some modded servers. We finally found a server that has been very good about the upkeep,fairplay, and has great response time from admins. Server GAMING-EVOLVED PVP with offline building protection, good mods and best of all active players NO CHEATERS

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#22

I’m simply unwilling to put something I put a lot of time in, in the hands of some person I don’t know, and who could do whatever they wish at any time. Anything from the relatively benign granting favors to friends, up to wiping on a whim or just deciding they don’t feel like keeping the server up after they themselves stop playing.

I get very little time to play these days, so it takes me weeks and weeks of real-time to get anywhere in this game, with a half-hour there, and maybe one hour two days later. Some weeks I barely manage more than to reset the Decay timer.

All of that might actually lend itself better to single-player, but I feel the game is stale that way: there’s no significant PvE content, no story to speak of or changes in the world to enact (and that’s fine: it’s a sandbox survival game).

Ultimately, that boils down to Official PvE servers being the thing for me. Not that they are entirely without problems, of course, but at least I have learned how to mitigate (most of) those for myself.

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#24

Twice I rented password accessed private servers (vanilla) and I was the admin of them both.
They both were named, “Leviathan’s Children”.
There was no fees to join, and nobody would have been asked to help fund it. That was all my own expense, which really wasn’t bad for me.
I had strict rules and still had no tolerance of b.s. .
I still have no tolerance for b.s.
If and when it ever became necessary, I would use the Admin mode to take care of uncircumventable problems, then retreat back to my usual self by relogging.
Yet, I rarely, ever had more than two people on either one other than myself and a friend.
One a rare occasion a few came to it (and this was before I set up password access), I was sorely disappointed to find that certain players had walled off a boss and used offensive clan and/or individual names in spite of the posted rules. For that, I wiped the server and set up password access to get rid of the junk they left behind. I know, IF I used the Pipi mod that may have been averted, but I don’t use mods because I ran vanilla servers.

Yet here I am reading that perhaps a few people are looking for vanilla private servers.
By the way, thanks for that kick in my teeth.

Never mind the fact that other private server admins have a very nasty tendency to play “cut-throat” with other servers just to keep their servers from being abandoned by their clients (or members), even to the point of serving up what they want in the form of mods.
My first server was (imho) effectively sabotaged by another admin who I won’t mention here (but you know who it is) by inviting me to come play on their server in complete disregard of the fact that I had already paid for my rented server a full year in advance. Such an incredible arrogance and condescending attitude from someone who I thought at first was just another forum poster. Little did I know until months later I discover that person was the owner/admin of a “popular” server. Thanks for stabbing me in my back you cutthroat ■■■■■■

I found myself surprised by a visitor once, who after a few days confessed to me that they were an admin on their server. Now, why in hell would someone do that? To take a break? I find that very unlikely. So, I wound up resetting the server again.

Well, it was my server and me for the longest time until the new expansion came out. If I used my present wireless connection for the download, it would have cost me over $400.00 in expenses. So, I decided it was in my best financial interest to close the server down and write off as a loss what I had already spent in advance to rent it.

But, what kept people away? In part I think it’s because my server was PVE with PVP enabled and it seems a lot of people are just too intimidated by that concept. They have a preference for either one or the other play style, namely PVP or PVE.

So, I’ll stay away from officials because of all the ongoing troubles and I’ll be damned if I ever join someone else’s little community on their server after what I’ve gone through.
I’ll play solo or co-op from now on.