It has truth in it, sure. But it’s also a short-sighted knee-jerk reaction thing to say, because unofficial servers are:
Sometimes unpredictable in terms of longevity (server wipes, host’s personal motivation and financial capability to keep the server running)
makes your time investment, and thereby attachment very exposed to the ideologies, idiosyncrasies and opinions and nuances of a (few?) admin(s), who you do not know simply through the reading of a server description. There are a lot of unofficial servers you’d need to “test out” first before you find the right one, and that could take a looooong time, and even then, the things you do not like about it, will only manifest itself later.
Official servers:
Only wipe if it is beyond absolutely necessary on a technical level, and thus best bet for persistance.
Will probably outlast most unofficial servers
Do not judge players for better or worse
are brutally pragmatic about fairness (survival of the fittest)
absolutely no cheating possible, unless via exploit.
Quite consistent within it’s scope. The lack of a human deus ex makes the world feel a lot more authentic.
Is the standard with which all achievements are measured.
I’d play singleplayer, but I simply can’t bring myself to recognize the legitimacy of all that I achieve without witnesses, when access to the adminpanel is so wide open.
Other people add value to all that I do.
Without them, I am but a fool deluded by pixels when the magic of wonder dissipates.
What a dilemma :\
I frankly enjoy official servers, except for the Psychopaths. But unfortunately that is part of the “survival of the fittest” setting. It’s actually a lesser evil than an admin who changes his mind for the worse, because psychopaths can be outlasted… admins… not so much.
So you are worried about the ideologies and opinions of mods? LOL have you ever seen a global chat before? At least with unofficial servers you have moderators who will stop toxic and trolling behavior unlike official servers.
It’s not. Look, changes are made for balance reasons. If you don’t like it then you can play on a unofficial server where they have it turned off. Pretty cut and dry.
You are complaining about the scratch on the arm when the abdomen has a hole in it. It sounds cold, but this is how EVERY SINGLE SURVIVAL GAME PLAYS OUT.
It’s not like this is a brand new premise they forcing down your throat. If you are new to the survival series, then well, tough.
I totally get what you mean.
An official server doesn’t conform to people. People are too different. Individual. So it is the people who conform to the server.
The only types of servers that can offer more variety would be unofficial servers.
Nyeah. There is no such thing as a perfect game. Only ones with the right kind of flaws.
The same applies to servers.
nods Think that solved my dilemma
Gonna keep playing on official servers, because psychopaths are something I can ignore and outlast, whereas the feeling of something belonging to me only conditionally is not something I can live with.
Hm… I want to have the safe feeling of taking possession of what I build regardless of what others think, therefore I shouldn’t be judgmental when someone foundation spams and builds decay umbilicals…
rubs chin
This gives me something to ponder over.
This is the exiled lands afterall… a disadvantage can always be turned into an advantage. All it takes is a change of heart, and there is nothing stopping me because it’s an official server. Playing nice is not a requirement, but survival demands adapting… if being nice leaves one at a disadvantage then…
Advantage of unofficial servers: They change the gameplay in a way that makes the game more fun by adding certain rules. Rules are so to say extended server settings. Funcom could learn from the popular unofficial servers. Good rules and decent admins that enforce them are kind of a huge bugfix. Sadly many admins are inexperienced.
Example step number one (though not even my very personal opinion but from observation): No avatar protection allowed (and gods also). Et voila… totally different gameplay.
Number two: Dedicated servers offer better performance and more than 40 people on a server is also great imo.
In a survival game were people find out mechanics to become invincible: At first you might be happy to avoid the dangers from other players. Ultimately it will result in you playing single player mode on an online PVP server.
I’d prefer playing for some reasons you stated on officials but there are other reasons (related also to my pplaystyle) that make me play on private servers currently. The freedom to do anything you want should get limited on officials for an overall better gameplay experience.
I was thinking about this whilst shoveling newly-discovered dung recipes on TestLive. Your thing today might be gone tomorrow if you accepted a third alternative: a private server (retasked PC) on your own network. You play, build your world, you preserve it and back it up as db files. After a little while maybe you love it so much you open it up to other players on your Whitelist to come join you. Password-gated by your wife, of course.
Which makes him yet another server admin not to trust, right? If you run down that road, no player should ever host any server. Skip the list above. Distrust is the biggest issue.
The question I have is why distrust the admins? It’s not like they are going to be jealous of your build or want your stuff for themselves. Hellooooo they have the admin panel and literally spawn in everything in the game?
I don’t understand this distrust of admins on private servers. I really don’t.
Weeelll no, I wasn’t making any suppositions about Halcyon’s wife or anything, but she might be able to do the one-time Admin duties and keep the password under lock and key. Since the new Server Admin tool build by @Toolguy is so robust, one can have everything pretty much automated these days.
History. The whole idea of being able to Admin things for your pals. I’m playing on one right now I’m fairly certain just had that happen, but I got a sabretooth kitten out of it for a bunch of perfected sets, so from a testing standpoint I’m not unhappy it exists.
Also rollbacks due to exploit use and inattentive Admins. I’ve seen servers rolling back a month or more, just because no backups were being made, in addition to zero effs being given, apparently.
There is a Discord group and a few Steam groups for Admins. Some do as in Strangers On A Train, criss cross!, I Admin someone’s servers, they Admin mine, so I can actually play fairly and meaningfully.
It’s a stranger with the power to delete everything that you’ve built, someone that if you’re new to their server is someone you know nothing about…
Kind of hard to trust a stranger after all, anyways they don’t have to be jelious or want your stuff to have a motivation for deleting your in game acomplishments… They could have any number of reasons such as…
1.They just don’t like you… (Something that may or may not be justified, depending on why they don’t like you.)
2.They randomly do wipes with little to no warning because they’re too lazy to clean things up any other way…
3.They’re poor and simply can’t afford to keep the server running anymore.
4.They’ve gotten bored and or frustrated with the game and have decided to stop spending money on it, and thus shut down the whole server…
Anyways it’s hard to predict which of these could happen when dealing with a random stranger on the internet… (And as crap as Funcom’s official servers can be, for many it’s the Devil they know as opposed to the devil they don’t)
Extremely well put. It’s kinda reassuring being on an official server because it’s “officially maintained”, whereas when there’s a patch, you never know what mod is gonna screw you. It’s gonna take a few days for the modders to fix it, and then the unofficial servers probably get rolled back so someone who lost an entire base can get it back.
There’s a certain back-end convenience to official servers. You just log-on-and-go, where as on unofficial it’s update this and that mod, hope your base is still there now or in future updates… wait a week, u get a rollback if your lucky, or not if your not important enough to the admin or someone else made too much progress meanwhile. It’s always such a clusterfrak.
now mind you, official servers aren’t immune to new patch armageddons as you know… but atleast you know everyone else has been screwed by it, not just you, and nobody else’s misfortune will have a knock-on affect on you further down the road in form of a roleback. There’s this consistence again.
I’ve experienced the following in my journeys on private servers:
Server owner deciding PVE was boring, the server is now PVP
Server owner feels progression is slow, he and his clan (I was a member, but left the server over this) can just whatever they want spawned in
Server dies because owner didn’t feel like paying for it (fair enough, it’s their money)
Server is randomly wiped (due to legitimate technical issue, but it still sucked)
I also started my own server for a while, but I didn’t really have many others playing on it. I don’t feel like doing advertising for my server. Currently there’s more private servers than active players - ie less than one player per server*. All of the above are reasons why I’m not interested in private servers. Others are, that’s cool, more power to 'em. But officials are not “yours” (nor are they mine) they’re a shared resource, and all of us have a say in how we think they should be run.
I’m sure there’s a bunch of good server admins out there, but finding them is not easy - and it usually takes a while before you find out if they’re bad, at which point it’s “start from scratch” time again. Just going for the most highly populated ones usually means there’s not going to be a viable building spot.
*according to stats I’ve seen posted here, but I can’t remember the source. My apologies if this is not true.
Players tend to rankle at active authority. They like for there to be rules in place. But they’re not above breaking a rule once in a while. Nothing major, just little fibs. Kinda like how most people do 5 over the speed limit. That’s technically breaking traffic regulation, but no harm no foul right? But then the local HP cracks down on it, and suddenly its a full on hatred of cops and authority.
Same thing in Conan Exiles, players like there to be rules. They usually follow them, but mostly like to fib them here and there when they feel they want to. But then when an active admin/mod cracks down on it. They flip their crap. Of course when another player does it, and they don’t see similar crack downs, they also get upset. Its hypocritical, but like speeders on the highway, they like to complain about others who speed and cut them off, yet they do it too.
Not every player does this, but a good section of the playerbase does this. But a decent portion does. Most of those tend to get chased off about 2-3 servers onto Officials. I’ve admined two servers so far and I’ve seen most players are pretty decent on private servers. But you always get those few, usually in the same clan that like to press the envelope. They test the admins, they try to see what they can get away with.
Usually if you keep a short leash on them, they tend to conform. But if you let their actions go on without keeping them in line. They will raise a major fuss when you finally do. And eventually they will try to cross the line, even if you do keep them in check. Its not a matter of if, but when.
They always try to creep it by. Little things such as exceeding building limits. Clan splitting (if they have decent numbers). Breaking fish traps on offline raiding prohibited servers. Little to no RP before engaging someone on a RP server.
Eventually they pick one or two guys to blatantly break the rules. When you ban the offender they make threats such as taking their entire clan off the server, giving bad youtube reviews, or some other nuttery. The only thing I can think of to why they do this is some sort of power grab. Maybe a poor attempt to wrest control of a server from what they think is an easy to manipulate owner.
Whatever the case may be, its always been easy for me to tell them to get f—'ed. But those are the kind of players who typically get chased off to Official and tend to badmouth Private servers. Claiming admin abuse or overreactive admins or whathaveyou.
I’ve played on nearly a dozen servers. Never have I experienced the horrors you hear about from private servers. I have heard of one time where a friend of mine was banned for ‘PVPing too much’ on a PVP server. Like he was told he didn’t break any rules, but he was a poor match for the server because his clan was too aggressive. But I’ve never experienced that personally.
One issue I have seen is the fact that private servers will wipe if they believe it will improve the health of the server. But this was only early in the game’s release and I have yet to see that happen in the last 2 months. And I have seen servers shut down due to lack of players.
But truth be told. People are WAY too attached to buildings and shtuff to begin with. When you play on official, and the pop dries up… and it will dry up eventually. You pretty much have to drop your stuff and move to another anyway. So I don’t get what the difference is.
But I mean at 1x exp rate, I can get to 60 in about 2-3 days. I can recatch my named thralls in about 3-4 days and be back to where I was before in about a week. And I am by no means god’s gift to Conan Exiles. I’m not the best at this stuff, as there is quite a few more talented players out there who can do it a bit faster.
But right now there is quite a few servers that have been around since pre-launch. Many host over 40 players at a given time. And one of the benefits of those servers is they can HANDLE up to 70 players. Officials slow down at 25-30. And I dunno about you all, but the map is far too big to only have 40 players at a time. I’ve been on servers with 50 and you still have to go looking for people to find them. You need it at about the 60 mark before you start running into each other randomly.
That’s just something Official can never do. I know, I’ve used Gportal myself. Its good for a server of a few friends, up to 10-20, but past that they suffer. As all Official servers do if they have any sort of decent population. But of course the lag will reduce that population.
Conan Exiles is a different game from other Survival games. If you login, sit in a corner of a cave and grind away without every being part of a community, you’re not playing the full game. On official its just sit and wait for peeps to log off, raid their shtuff, and then have the same happen to you when you log off.
There’s not real player to player interaction there. On private servers, you can have full scale wars with over 20 to a side. I’ve participated in raids where the attackers had 10 trebs bombarding a base while the defenders were counter bombarding with nearly as many.
Got to see my Archey Mod used in massive fights and bows are actually relevant. Enough to cause defenders to form up in a shield wall, forcing us to use a treb to break the line rather then aim at the base itself.
You won’t get to see that stuff on Official. As I said, most of your opponents are likely to be offline. And even if you do catch someone out and about. Its going to be a marathon simulator as they run away and you cannot catch them.
Some of the best fights can only be found on private servers. RP servers tend to have arenas and players or admins will host events in them. Duels, 2v2s, 3v3s, or even many players against a dragon or some other beastie. You know those admin tools aren’t always used to screw players over. Many times they are used to enhance the experience.
On a few servers they run a dungeon mod that has Quests you can obtain that lead you to a admin created dungeon complete with bosses with mechanics. Allowing you to ontain unique equipment and spells for sorcery.
That’s right. Sorcery exists on some private servers. Requires a bit of corruption to cast and adds more corruption per cast until you’re too weak to fight. Requiring rest at an entertainer to continue casting spells.
But like I said, many who are over critical are either paranoid. Or they are part of a group of players that just test too many boundaries for literally no good reason other than to stoke their own egos. Its alright though, the top played servers are all private. They’re here to stay. Officials… maybe not so much considering they rely on DLC’s to keep them afloat, and many Officials are drying up day by day.
Meanwhile many private servers are still maintaining population.
Try saying that after camping for Grrrr Legbiter, and having practically lived on the map for 5 months.
Try saying that after you managed to capture an extremely rare purge crafter.
On unofficial servers it’s probably the exact opposite. Things are easy come easy go. Everything on official servers have intrinsic value because it is an absolute standard across all servers of it’s kind and actually takes effort.
Some people play on official because it’s like Single-player “Legit Mode”. The admin panel is effortlessly accessible both in single-player and unofficial. There’s no intrinsic value to anything you do.
I have a psychopath on my official server, who actually came to my official server because he got bored on an unofficial server. I traced him back to a server called “Edema Ruh”. He’s the one spamming decay umbilicals all over the place. Had a treaty with him after a protracted turf war involving foudnation spamming, blockades and map-spanning parallel highways, until it was too much trouble to ignore me… and this was during summer with the 400 hours of decay…
So we had a peace treaty where i’d remove my blockades and he’d promise not to expand any further. But in the end, it was just a ruse for him to stock up on supplies, then when he felt he was ready, he practically claimed the other half of the map over-night just blitz-crafting another umbilical highway.
On unofficial this simply can’t happen. But if that makes official servers not worth playing, and all the cool unofficial servers are in the US, what makes CE worth playing at all?
Your answer of course is: "It’s your own fault for being such a dumba$$. "
I think the best way to describe official vs. unofficial is “They are both diamonds. One is a blood diamond, and the other one is cubic zirconia.”
I know, but from the view of other players he is still in possession of the server and can change anything at will up to shuting it down permanently. My point was, that the solution of Coop Game is none since you are as guilty as any other server admin form the point of view of other players. If everybody agrees to OP nobody could be trusted hence nobody but Funcom can host a server. A very sad condition in my opinion. I dont deny, that there are some shady admins out there, but to me, the presumption of innocence is still valid in the first place.
As a server owner with a fun community and great admins,I have experienced all kinds of negative and positive feedback. Generally when the game went live feedback was wonderful… as I let my admins handle things… till I learned one of my admins was in a sexual relationship with a member of the community and was helping that members clan as a result. I removed that admin. But instead of having folks be grateful I removed someone who was cheating… they lost trust in me. And initially I was blamed and attacked for it. Then came time to wipe the server and as a result had new blood join the server. I got new admins. At first things seemed great,I could focus on work. I could get on and run events and let the admins handle backend stuff. Then we had a member win a pvp tournament. She was fantastic. Keyword She… oh my the hate began.The sexist crap started to flood chat and flood discord. I don’t tolerate that crap. I ended up banning and punishing a good third of the server… and then I Figured out my admins were supporting that toxic behavior. So they were removed.
Now since then I have 3 admins. One who is a genuis at backend work 2 who enjoy running events and getting involved with the community. And they all have the same desire I do to run a fun active server.
It has taken over 4 months to get to this point. But its been worth it. And slowly but surely folks are learning the amount of work and care it takes to run a Conan exiles server. As a gamer and a fan of Conan I just could not play it on an official server because yes players will try and go for the low hanging fruit and that means they will be willing to cheat or exploit.
Yes not all Private servers are created equal … but if you find one with an owner and a team with their heart and soul into it …its worth its weight in gold.
I think most people distrust admins because of one simple concept; they have the power. Maybe they’ve seen admins abuse power, maybe they haven’t, but just knowing the power is there is enough to deter them. They don’t trust people with something they don’t trust themselves with.
The server I’m admin on is very popular and is almost always full. There are times we’re sitting at a full 40 for hours on end. People have even requested that we open up a new server to help with EU players. Part of our popularity isn’t just the mods we use, but it’s what the admins have done for the server itself(before my time). Much of what they’ve done can be considered admin abuse, or it can be looked at giving the players more content to play with.
They’ve added loot tables to world bosses, so there’s always a chance to get AoC loyalty tokens with each boss kill. They’ve added an end-game dungeon with loot at the end, so if you’re tough enough to make it through then you’ll get nice rewards. They’ve added arenas, town halls complete with portals for easier navigation, thrall cities so people can farm AoC thralls, and even a puzzle mansion with puzzles that change every week. My wife even built a haunted house, just to give people something amusing to play around with alongside the standard Conan grind.
We do use our powers for other stuff, which many could consider abuse. I really love sneaking up on people at their bases and summoning babies around them, or just leaving babies on their doorstep. It always makes me laugh when I hear in chat “Where did all these babies come from!?”. Some just kill them, others squee in delight and horde them until the next server reset.
Other times we help people with lost items. Just last night I was helping someone get thralls in the Volcano, and we found 2 named thralls. Right as we reached his wheel, someone logged in and lag caused both thralls to disappear(I believe that’s a mod issue, but people love the mods so much that they deal with that). I saw it with my own eyes, so rather than just tell him he’s SoL, I spawned in both thralls right at that spot and let him beat them down again. Abuse?? Maybe to some, I’m just trying to help out our players.
It’s sad to hear some people refuse to try dedicated servers because of the fear of admin abuse, but if you find one with the right admins, you’ll have a great place to play.
Quite a lot of people have good reason to be paranoid of “admin abuse”. Those folks have a nasty tendency to do things that are contrary to human nature. They relentlessly play their own deviant game in spite of server rule sets or common sense.
I can’t accurately describe the mentality of those people, but it’s frightening.
A long time ago (before modern medicine and psychology), those types used to be locked up in asylums and separated from the “normal” population in general to keep the normal people safe or prevent normal people from rising up in frustrated fury to simply lynch the offenders.
Anti-social doesn’t really come close but Sociopathic is probably a more accurate descriptor of that personality type.
Don’t fool yourselves into thinking you can help them. We’re not trained for it and much less are we paid for it.
If you feel sorry for them and try to help, you’ll only wind up going down the tube with them as they drag you down to their level.
