Yeah, I have ran into pvp servers like that. They say it doesn’t influence decisions when it comes to server rules violations, but if gray area, they tended to always side withe donators…
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Shrug, servers especially 3 of them can get expensive.
So I give donators ability to vote for dawn, day or night doesn’t seem bad. And to use cost Pippi coins so its not free.
I used to give /return to donators but I gave it to everyone recently.
There might be another command I give, but can’t recall off-hand but does not really imbalance the game. The vote, could go against them (although when it was used in the past, they voted in favor). Return did not always work anyway and having /home already on the server plus Extended Cartography Obelisks, its not a big need to have either.
Lastly, their rank on the server will show as VIP.
If you gave too much to donators, yes perhaps. So depends what the gifts are. I only give Pippi commands which is very few that people do not have already. Other commands are admin / moderator only of course.
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I was a server owner for about 6 months. I paid directly out of pocket, no donations. But That was me trying to really test out what the settings could accomplish to get feedback on things I wanted to see on officials. But the basic settings on consoles was so sparse in controlling what I wanted, I abandoned the test.
What I found were 4 things I wanted most in settings that weren’t there:
- Offline protection (dbd is available now, but buggy…step in the right direction)
- Controllable NPC spawn points (Even just 25 would allow for cool admin dungeons, treated where I also tie in a special loot table.)
- Hot bar and armor no drop (There were settings but never worked). This would allow for less completely loss and more engaging pvp during raids. I would balance by reducing durability to make it costly to continue to fight without repairing armor/weapons regularly.
- Admin no destruct except doors/hatches/Chests. (ALLOW FOR DUNGEON DESGLIGNING!).
I was willing to pay a DLC as well, 19.99 to be honest. Worth it for the creative outlet.
Hey your profile is hidden, I wanted to message you about playing together on pcp officials (Siptah). I don’t play as much, but I have 2 clan mates that are chill, and we would love a 4th. We would have to rebuild some, but hit me up message wise if you are interested. Will give you my steam ID, the server we were on etc.
If you want to call months of unplayability an investment, we’ll have to agree to disagree there. Some on these forums (well many) would call that a moneygrab.
There has been no “months of unplayability”. A lot of Xbox users had some issues yes but not all, and I’ve been playing ps4 since release and it’s NEVER been unplayable.
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The fact they invested time to fix, especially outsourcing to get Xbox running, means that consoles (whether you like it or not) are a viable business model. Funcom would have pulled the plug long ago if not. You have a skewed view based on your disdain for the console market And that is your right. But I just want others who may see your post to understand how those numbers you throw up are attained and not 100% accurate.
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There is something too to be said for the low cost of entry with a console. I have played both ps4 and pc. Ps4 at $400 is a better experience by far than on a pc that cost $400. Yeah when you spend $3000+ on a pc its better, but it better be…
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Those are points why I have both as well. But I really don’t want to start with pc players about whose hardware is better tbh. My point is consoles have a voice, and Funcom allows it. Which means it is a viable business.
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Not really…I have tried modded servers, they really only up the easy. I prefer officials, more tension for pvp. Just need a few basic tweaks, dbd on, decay of high end mats, and a better claim cost mechanic.
Then try Age of Calamitous or Extended Endgame Weapon Arsenal. For me the base game is far too easy.
I’ve played & donated on a few servers that have the option, and it goes a ways toward calming this particular anxiety (which probably sits at number 2 on my personal list of issues with private servers below boosting/settings tweak that suck the survival aspect of the game out entirely):
…but it’s not an infallible measure for prolonging the life of a server. I don’t hold a grudge against the owner of the (hella well managed and hella fun) server because I get that sometimes life happens, but the lesson I took from that (at the time - the permanence of our belongings loses significance over time for most of us I think) was that the safest option for not losing all of my things overnight was to get better at finding hiding spots on official servers.
Some folk really don’t like this being an option, but there’s not a single server I’ve played on that has this available that I’d consider the owner/admin properly compromised by way of ‘owing’ players that have donated - even the “pay to pitch in on server rules and settings” flavour worked out pretty fairly when I encountered it.
That’s not to say it doesn’t happen, but I’d honestly lump this more broadly under admin abuse.
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which a rating system (which doesn’t have to be officially rolled out, but could absolutely be thrown together by the community) might actually help with, and possibly add a whole new layer of stuff to the (excuse the corporate junk a tic) “experience” of playing the game.
There’s a huge difference between “competition” and “really just the same thing as a bunch of other stuff that exists, but different”.
Give people a focal point - even a judgemental by design, almost definitely prone to spurts of exploitation - like a rating system and numbers will gravitate towards those that feature high on the list - then shift around as individual preferences change based on that experience and counter-cultures develop to distance themselves from whichever astronomically high rated servers become the Conan Exiles equivalent of the GTA NoPixel server.
I started playing on my first private server just this weekend and so far my experience far exceeds that of official already. Settings are vanilla for pvp. It’s only 10 slots so no crazy land claim, no getting wiped in the first couple days. Community building with a chest full of schematics that the owner has double of etc. I swore I’d never play on one but it turns out I was wrong. The right server with the right admin and privates are awesome.
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By all means, start it up.
A friend of mine from a few decades ago once said, “If you don’t have a solution, then you don’t have a problem.” This was in reference to many complaints in an organization we had for some online league play in those days. Mostly from newer members having issues adapting to the level of play we were in.
The gist of it was they couldn’t really identify their own problems and wanted everyone else to do that, and fix them for them.
That is kind of like what is happening here. We have players who want to start up private servers and see other private servers sit there at 70/70 24/7 for literally years. While theirs sit at 1/70 (or however much they are paying for). Its ‘unfair’ obviously if there is two servers with the same ruleset and the same theme, it should be split evenly right?
No. Absolutely not.
Being a server owner is a second job that doesn’t pay anything. Its a 40+ hour a week payless job. Those servers with the high populations have them because of the owners and admins they delegate are putting literally dozens of hours a week of work.
If you don’t want to believe me on this. Go ahead, go to one of those 70/70 servers and ask their owners yourself. They’ll talk to you. That’s what they do every day, they talk to their players. But just don’t waste their time. They get pretty irate (rightfully so) when you do that.
But yes it is competitive. You have to offer something others don’t. Because why would I abandon builds, characters, recipes, materials, friends, enemies, etc to go start at level one on a server with the exact same rules and such to go play on a server that has no one on it yet?
Better question is, why are you starting a server with the same ruleset as another? Just play on that server, the work is done and there’s plenty of players to play with. Otherwise you’re poaching and that might be why no one is playing with you. As poaching players is considered a grievous offense in the private server communities.
Also if you do decide to make a unique experience. It has to be something players want. I’m sorry to say, but every great idea you all think you have. Well it isn’t. Otherwise you’d have vibrant server communities. Its not like advertising isn’t a thing you can’t do. You’ve got a forum section, you’ve got dozens of mod discord servers with channels dedicated to those (if you run mods). You’ve got social media platforms and various other tools and probably some I don’t even know about.
So if you’re doing all that work, and you still don’t have players. Then the idea isn’t that great. On that note. What is your server settings and theme you’re going with? Lets see what you all are doing, and see if there’s any issues with it. I mean you have a server open to players, so this information isn’t going to be secret. So open it to discussion.
If I’m reading this correctly, it’s coming off (at least towards the end) as a bit of a personal attack; might just be my interpretation. I don’t believe the OP was in any way complaining about things being ‘unfair’ because other servers have more people than him. In fact, I don’t think anything he was posting was a complaint but more a way to reach out to others that have the same issue with low numbers. Again, my personal take.
Moreover, the assumption that a server owner has low numbers because of just the two items you listed (not using enough available resources or bad ideas) is rather dismissive. While it may only be anecdotal, I can tell you that when I was a new player actually looking for a server to play on, I don’t recall once ever seeing an advertisement and saying, “well that’s a stupid idea.”
If you would like to see my ‘stupid ideas’ than be my guest. I do utilize the various resources available and continually post on this forum so it’s rather easy to find it. I will not, however, randomly throw out my server name as that too is considered bad form in the way of cheap advertising.
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Speaking only for my own server, most of the mods I use just add more character customization options and armor/accessory stuff. Hell, I even recently made the decision not to use the Riverboats mod, as much as I love what it adds, because all the empty houses made the early game feel too easy.
I’m currently contemplating also adding the Severe Weather mod as well, though I’m trying to avoid adding too much stuff to keep it streamlined (…even though nobody else uses it anyway).
As bad as they are, with all the claim spam, toxic players, almost no moderation, etc…official servers will still be there years from now, as opposed to private servers that shutdown randomly and have alot of favoritism going on.
A while back, I tried a private server and the rules were giving you around 40 reasons why you can get banned. Too much moderation and too many admins with a happy trigger finger on the banhammer can turn the game into a stressful experience.
On top of all that, It’s enough for 1 mod to turn the server into an average experience as compared to classic Conan Exiles. With so many combinations of mods, there’s rarely a perfect server out there.
Overall, I enjoy official servers more because of the freedom they give you with very little moderation, unending server lifetime, no wipes, no favouritism, no mods.
I do agree that Conan Exiles PvE has no endgame and once you collect everything, you’re pretty much done with the game and can join the ranks of weekly resetters. Things would be different however if we would have more competitive things to do between players.
If you try to organize events, dueling arenas, etc, most players will outwright ignore you because it’s not part of the game. In this regard, endgame needs some “hold your hand” systems like an official arena with automated rewards, or vault speedrun competition, etc.
At this point, even an upkeep system on buildings would keep people more enganged with the game.
One mod that would convince me to try private servers would be raidable NPC bases. As far as I know, this mod doesn’t exist yet.
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Not much use for console players. Alot of us have servers also. At least for Ps4 looking at amount of people on a server rarely works.
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