The idea of a paid service is a little ridiculous. And don’t take that statement as an insult. I’ll explain what I mean by it. So Conan Exiles is a type of game that a paid server would be far too expensive, at just about any price point to actually justify what you would get. While simultaneously requiring the amount to be prohibitively expensive.
One of the benefits of having the system of moderation that they do is that it is detached. When you make a report on Zendesk, you don’t know who is responding. There’s a filter between you and the moderator. There is a delay as well due to the hours they perform the tickets. And then the results would happen in a delayed fashioned as well, taking effect on the next server restart. Finally the response you get whether you are the one putting in the ticket or the one getting actioned is through either a simple email or a server motd-like message when you try to login.
Is that an acceptable practice when you’re paying for the service? Well no. You want something a bit more hands on. More proactive. More interactive. Someone you could speak to directly, maybe not expecting real time chat (or maybe you all do) but something less detached. If you’re making a report you want to ensure someone is looking into it. If a report is made against you, maybe you want to argue your case, or be given guidelines on what not to do and the opportunity to correct your mistake before the ban hammer comes down (I mean you’re paying now, you deserve that right?).
Well the issue with that is you get to know who you are dealing with. You start to see trends, you start to see (or at least think you see) different opinions. You’re now dealing with a human being with all the benefits, and detriments thereof. Now… you all have always been dealing with a human being. Nothing is actually changing here. Nothing but the perception. The feeling is definitely going to change. Is that feeling going to be better? I don’t necessarily think it would. Its going to feel more like a private server, with the downsides that comes with those feelings (as well as the good, question is, would it be good enough?).
Now here comes another problem. Funcom is partnered with G-portal. These premium servers will have to be run on their machines. I don’t know if FC is allowed to run their own stuff in-house with this contract. But I suspect not. There’s even a chance them running a premium service with the G-portal agreement isn’t even allowed. They would be profiting more from that agreement more than was originally intended. Sure they could try to renegotiate. But they wouldn’t be doing so from an advantageous position because they would be asking for the permission to do so. But we don’t have those details, so lets go over potential favorable outcomes.
First one is they are bound to keep with G-Portal. Can of you tell me that these servers are worth paying to play on? Amongst the private server subsection of our community, its universally regarded not worth renting a server on G-portal. The performance for CE just isn’t there. They could potentially get around that by lowering the server caps to about 15 players. At such a low player cap, I mean you’re better off with Enshrouded like Coop. Not a paid service.
The other is if they are simply allowed to do whatever server they wish to do. Well here comes an interesting issue. For the traffic a FC server needs, this is going to require a dedicated machine. Not a rented virtual server space. So they’ll want to do this in house. They also want to do this to ensure they have control over downtime. You can’t tell paying customers that they can’t play because the server host is working on it. They don’t want to hear that. Nor should they. Look at when FLS goes down, that’s Microsofts fault, but FC gets the blame (rightfully so because they chose to do FLS). So running a server in house requires more people to run that. It needs a dedicated team. That’s not cheap. But this option is what you want if you’re paying.
Now to tie in paying customers to specific accounts, they’re going to need a way to process payment. And a way to communicate with you. That requires storing email and payment information (this could be done through FLS… but it’d be a bit messy). That’s going to require another team to handle that sort of stuff. Adding to the cost one way or another. Either they do it in house, or give more of a cut to Microsoft.
And of course you have the active moderation that is being sought. This requires hiring more people. And likely multiple shifts worth. With a range of language skills to cover most regions. Google translate only gets you so far. And its too slow when dealing with someone in near real time. Or maybe they could just use English, seems to be something most CE players are capable of understanding. But these moderators are why everyone is even willing to pay in the first place, so they can be hired.
Now we get to the real issue. To afford all that, the price points are going to be ridiculous. Either you’re paying for a service that isn’t much different than what you have now… or for you are getting a decent service but the price is high enough that… well you could rent your own server yourself for.
And believe me, that second point of it being priced high enough that you could get your own server for would be the biggest complaint. Even amongst those willing to pay. The whales who buy up everything already probably won’t mind. But the rest of you. Maybe not.
And there comes the other issue. Is there enough of you to justify hiring an extra team of moderators? Is there a profit to be had? Couple that with their potential prohibitions under their G-portal partnership leads me to believe this is unfortunately a fantasy. This topic has floated around for nearly seven years and there has been little interest shown from FC.
This also requires a level of polish, reliability, competence, and quality from a subsection of the community that doesn’t believe they are capable of. Its doomed to fail as those standards are not going to be met in their eyes. There’s no point to even try something like that.
I would point out that blitz servers are requested more often than paid servers, and those servers failed to keep an adequate playerbase. I would also point out that offers from members of the community to run a such program themselves have been dismissed. I am sure there are many who wouldn’t mind providing such services.
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