I understand your point. It makes sense, for the day of the wipe.
But the current decay system with elder builds is also unfair on the new players, as some old players don’t play anymore, they just reset the timers. So even without a wipe, the old players who arrived first still have the advantage compared to the new ones.
A wipe would not be a perfect solution (you would have to think of the risks of crashing when there are too many people online for the start , think of unique permanent rewards for those still playing the game during the month preceeding the wipe -because players tend to just wait for the fresh start when the date is close- , deal with the complaints of people whom schedule did not fit the date chosen for the wipe , etc.). But combined together with the decay system, I think it would offer more opportunities to all.
I have ideas to prevent people from just resetting the timers without playing (no wipe involved lol), but it would be off topic too much.
The only advantage they have is their building spot. But in pve that doesn´t matter all to much, because you have all the time in the world to go around the server and get your resources.
There is no need for a specific spot to build on in Conan Exiles Pve. You can pretty much build something beautiful everywhere. But if you insist to get your one and only building spot then you either have to search official servers until you find a server where this spot is free or you can still choose Singleplayer, Privatserver, own paid private Server. If you are on pvp, then raiding is another option.
Its not that you run out of options. To demand a certain spot in an open world multiplayer sounds like you acting like a karen. You either want to play with others and accept that you can not have the map all for yourself or you don´t.
How someone plays the game or if he is online regularly or not is not your problem. That is private business. People are so entitled to always think they have a right to a certain spot and then controll peoples online times when that spot is already taken.
Get over yourself. Mind your own business. That is the decays job, not yours.
The Decay system could be revamped to be more ‘make sure they play the game not just reset and leave’ - but how would that deal with players that play all the time, have played for years, have amazing builds, etc, but also want to play other games? Or go on vacation and have little access to computer. Or are sick? etc. FC would likely have to make the game engine and servers even more messy admin-wise. Let alone catering to private servers and all their settings. Remember, just because someone logs in briefly today, there is no way you can know whether they just fed the animals or whether they did a dungeon or made a ton of stuff. And how would you feel when a new decay mechanic wiped you out after you had just finished your new mega-base?
ps The new Purge coming in Age of War could be an interesting twist…active or not.
Yeah exactly this attitude where players ignore everything (especially if something happens to someone else) and defend developers leads to what is becoming more and more common …
unfinished games often virtually unplayable without DLC , bugs don’t bother anyone anymore - why spend money on QA department when players will test it and pay for it etc…
And the compensation is ridiculous in relation to what the players have lost …it’s about the same as if you drop half your car and the manufacturer offered you a free car wash as compensation
But yeah , if it doesn’t bother you - ok , but then don’t cry next time a bug makes the game unplayable for you …
the straw that broke my back in this game is the “losing stability bug” i was playing a low pop PvE-C online game building up my fortress waiting for the new purge to come and logged in after the age of war update poof fortress gone mats gone thralls gone max temples gone all that i have been working on off and on for 2 1/2 years gone offline single player game same story it killed any joy i had in this game and i was looking forward to this age…
Those of us who have stuck with this game – and Funcom’s blunders – over the years have developed a certain degree of fatalism. Explaining that things have been like this for years and that they probably won’t get better is not the same as defending Funcom.
It’s not your “fault”, but yeah, if you keep hoping they’ll do a better job, you’ll keep getting disappointed. That’s the gist of what @Narelle was trying to say.
Oh, yes, it’s definitely because of what players write on the forums. Sure, it must be that, because that is what drives Funcom’s decisions.
Good thing you’re not doing the same thing you were complaining about.
I have 3 servers. Exiles, Siptah and Savage Wilds. Since the update and it’s problems, my servers are totally empty beside myself. Too bad this happened. Probably going to have to wipe them or shut them down. Pity. Love the Game.
I have same server coverage over Exiled Lands, Siptah and the excellent Savage Wilds. Over the years I have had hundreds of players coming and going, moving to other servers and also playing other newly released/updated games - Conan Exiles is not the only survival game out there (heck, I even enjoy playing other games - that’s the nature of games).
Prior to the launch of each of the new Ages my servers had gotten a little quiet. After each Age landed/lands, there are spikes of new interest and new players. AoW saw the biggest upswing of players, that then steadied back to normal figures. After the mess of the latest Update, some players shifted back to other games and I see the same old patterns of weekend up-and downswings.
A ‘fanperson’? Well I have played thousands of game hours over the years, yes. I still enjoy playing the game, yes. I still play other games I own, yes. I still get very tense when Updates go wrong (remember the Xmas of v2.0 anyone?), yes. Do I love the Bazaar? No comment. Have I bought everything from Bazaar? No. Will I keep playing all the way through the next two segments of AoW? Yes.
At least this sounds like an accurate description of what I’m seeing in the forums.
I’ve only been playing for about 2 and a half years, mostly on single player or private servers. In that time I have lost progress due to bugs a few times. But this was by far the worst for me. I know others will have horror stories from some other update.
I get that bugs happen. I usually laugh them off. But I’m a software engineer. I know what they do is hard. I know what kind of time pressures they get put under. But as a dev, I expect a certain level of quality from the software I use. I know what they need to do is possible. So my expectations won’t change. People have the right to be fatalistic but I choose to persist and do what I can to hold people to a high standard. Usually that means logging bug reports and providing feedback - which I’ve surmised this forum is for. So to me, it’s a bit odd when that feedback is met with so much resistance.
Also, one of the reasons I liked this game was how customizable it was. To me, that meant different people with different play styles could play how they wanted. I’ve restarted a few times. Sometimes it’s nice. But I usually want to keep what I collect and build. I definitely don’t want to be forced to reset. I turn all the decay stuff off. That’s how I want to play. So this bug was a pretty big issue for that kind of play style. Other people can enjoy wipes and decays. That’s cool. Just make room for the different experiences.
Yeah, me too. I started in the industry back when we were called programmers instead of “software engineers”, and I’ve been doing this for 24 years now. I’ve seen a lot of shіt. I guess that’s why I differ from you in the following:
I might maintain a certain set of expectations for my own code, but I’ve worked for too many different companies to believe that I can expect the same from every one of them. Hell, back before SaaS made it harder for users to switch from one software to another, a company could actually go under because of bugs and/or blown deadlines. I’ve worked for one such company and the layoffs weren’t pretty.
My point, rambling as it may be, is that sometimes an organization is simply dysfunctional. They’ll consistently fail to meet your expectations. At that point, you either change your expectations, or you stop working with that company.
I’m not sure if you’re still responding to me, or talking in general. If we’re still talking about what I said and what @Narelle was trying to say, then you’re still missing the point: it’s not “resistance”. Neither of us is saying that you shouldn’t offer feedback about the game, or that you’re wrong to be upset that you lost your stuff.
Basically, what both of us are saying boils down to:
Funcom’s not gonna get better at this. We’ve seen them promise to do better several times, and they’ve never done it. It’s been years now.
Since they’re not going to get better, you might want to take steps to mitigate their future screw-ups. One of those steps could be – but doesn’t have to be – moving to private servers.
Expecting Funcom to delay releases until they’re bug free is naive. No game studio does that. Not even “amateur devs”, as Genadi pointed out.
Speaking of Genadi, this particular exchange started when he or she jumped down @Narelle’s throat because @Narelle dared to write something factually true about the idea that Funcom should have done a rollback.
Feedback is one thing, being actually wrong is something else. If you say that the pilot should have flapped the airplane’s wings harder, and someone points out that’s not how airplanes fly, that’s not “resistance to feedback”.
Indeed my point was that Funcom have no intention of fixing this “bug” as evident from their actions. A rollback without a fix is pointless, it will lead to the same result.
Funcom promised to communicate better, in turn they stopped communicating at all.
Funcom are good at saying sorry but we keep getting reasons to apologise over and over again, there are only this many sorrys one can accept.
The game is not going to get better in terms of quality, it has been years now. Nowadays they even release broken paid items which then take months to fix. This to me speaks volumes.
I don’t know what is going on behind the scenes but I know how many people have come and gone from their staff that interacts with us and we are still here talking about the same thing with no light in the tunnel. At some point you have to access the odds and decide what makes sense for you.
Bug reports are always welcome and they eventually will get fixed but replaced by new ones. It is how it goes.
To those accusing me of having an agenda to defend Funcom, you have failed to read the room.
I’ve also been a dev for over 20 years. I’ve also worked for dysfunctional organizations. When I do, I try to help fix them. And I’m extremely persistent with that. When I finally realize they can’t be helped, I leave.
Right now I’m trying to decide if that’s where I’m at with this game.
I definitely don’t expect bug free. But bugs have priorities. I do believe any “data loss” bugs should be rooted out in QA and stop a release.
So, I don’t develop games. But in my world, if we realized we shipped a release that caused even a subset of customers to lose data, we would rollback the release (because we had a rollback plan), restore from backup, replicate the issue in a test environment, and fix the root cause before releasing again. Of course this would have to be found out and addressed very fast (hopefully at least during our release window and post production testing). And we’d do everything we could to keep any new data in that very small window. If we felt like we couldn’t do that, I’d expect the company to offer a sizable refund. I don’t actually know of a technical reason why this could not have been done here (there might be one). But I admit the fact they did not act fast makes the rollback much more difficult because now you have to weigh the data everyone lost because of the update with the new data they could lose with a restore (assuming you can’t find a way to keep both).
I used to be somewhat like that. You must be made of better stuff than I am – no sarcasm intended – because I ended up with a burnout and it took me a few years to find joy in my profession again.
You and me both. Funcom has a track record that proves they don’t believe that, as an organization.
FWIW, neither do I, not anymore. I spent only 2 years in the game dev industry, and it was an eye-opener. To people like you and me, it can look downright insane.
Unit testing? Integration testing? Hell, any form of automated testing? CI/CD? None of that, at least not when you’re developing a game. Maybe companies that develop and sell engines, like Epic with their Unreal Engine, maybe they have some of that stuff. I would certainly hope so. But the game studio I worked for had none of that, and the people who worked there considered the situation completely normal.
I don’t have anything to add to this, but I just wanted to say that I agree with that. That’s how serious software development normally works. Or at least, that’s how I believe it should work. Apparently, some people in the industry disagree.
I don’t think there’s a technical reason in this case. However, there are business reasons. The biggest one is that the people who were catastrophically affected by this issue are a minority. Funcom had essentially two options:
Roll back the whole update immediately, restoring the game databases from backups on official servers and issuing an advisory for private servers and single-player games to restore their own backups. Then find out what the problem is, “fix” it (I’ll get to that later), and release the fixed version.
Let the release stand. Diagnose the problem, “fix” it if necessary, see if restoring official server game databases is worth doing.
The first option sets a “dangerous” precedent and involves a lot of work they’re normally not used to doing. It also delays the monetization plans for the new Age. The second option is the one they normally take, because they understand their playerbase well enough to know that they’ll just take it, despite all the screams to the contrary. Like I said, those who were seriously affected were (whether they like it or not) a minority, and even among those, there will be few who will actually stop playing.
Please understand, I’m not defending them or even agreeing with them. But that’s the way they work, and it actually works for them. In fact, it’s working better and better, if you look at Steam Charts.
As for “fixing” the bug, it wouldn’t have involved anything we traditionally consider to be a bugfix. See, the problem isn’t that they made an unintended change that they would have to revert, or that there was a unknown corner case in the code that was suddenly triggered by a different change causing the execution to go down that path.
No, what happened is perfectly “healthy” program logic being executed. They changed the collision volume of some building pieces, and the newly resulting collision made the stuff built on top of it disappear, as it “should”.
So how do you actually fix that? Database migration. Write the logic that detects this case for these modified pieces and run it only once, when the newly released update boots up for the first time.
I’m reasonably sure it’s doable. But again, we’re talking about Funcom. If they can get away with not putting in the necessary effort, then you bet your ass they’ll skip it.
This part of your post lost me, I don’t know who you’re talking to exactly, and about what.
It sounds like you’re lost in your own world with fictional characters, and lost me in the process lol.
Has this been fixed yet? My servers are all offline. If this doesn’t get resolved soon, they will have to remain offline indefinitely. Our community has lost too much to go back and rebuild it all. I’ve restored from backup as far back as 06 June.
, think of unique permanent rewards for those still playing the game during the month preceeding the wipe -because players tend to just wait for the fresh start when the date is close- 
, deal with the complaints of people whom schedule did not fit the date chosen for the wipe 
, etc.). But combined together with the decay system, I think it would offer more opportunities to all.
