I think either side of the argument benefits from this statement. The advent of private servers means you can get the environment you want so if officials wiped, you could go to a private. If people dont like that officials don’t wipe (like myself) we can go to a private (which I do). The status quo of non-wipes is set in and switching to wipes would drive official players out or onto privates, but I highly doubt private players would return to officials (just a guess…). So regardless of the merits of wipes, it would be a huge risk to official populations with a very dubious argument that suggests a positive outcome.
I consider myself in the persuadable column… I’m pro-wipe in the abstract and think it would have worked long term, but the ship has sailed and if you asked me to decide to implement wipes for officials today, my choice would be “no”.
The only two good arguments for recurrent wipes on official servers IMO are - They serve to mitigate the effects of cheating, by eventually striping ill gotten gains and diminishing the value of obtaining them in the first place. It’s a boon to new players in that it creates space for them and lowers the wealth gap between them and a veteran of a server. These would be applicable to both PVP and PVE.
PVP seems to me to be moving towards a free for all. Everything is made up and the points don’t matter. They have either given up on being able to stop rampant cheating or deemed it no longer worth trying to balance for PVP players and instead just want to make “fun stuff” with disregard to balance. Which is a shame because the first week on a fresh vanilla PVP server is AMAZING and I am not convinced balancing late game around that experience is impossible.
I don’t have any experience in PVE so my opinion is purely pontification. It seems to me though that once a server fills up that’s kind of it until someone quits the game. No space for new people and no way to encourage people to go somewhere else. I would imagine that FC would need a PVE server slot for every PVE player for this to be ideal, which they don’t nor ever will. PVE players have no real reason to care about that though, nor should they - its FCs problem, and will always be against wipes. Why should they give up their stuff for other people?
All that being said Blitz servers do provide a valuable data point in the lack of popularity for wipe servers. Granted it was EA. Official servers being permanent is their biggest advantage over private, in every other measure I think they fall short. As a result of that, wipes will likely not happen again.
While I think there are some good “pro-wipe” arguments, blitz failed for a reason. The two reasons I find compelling are majorly a result of how FC handles balance and servers, not necessarily that they are in theory good CE design choices.
I can assure you this is not the case. Its just more difficult than it seems.
Also a lot of new purchasers of the game don’t think about private servers as an option. They just see a list of servers and click join on a couple. They login, join a server and if they get put off by it, official or otherwise, just move on. First impressions are very important.
Your optimism is encouraging. I genuinely hope you are correct.
Honestly, no. Not a large chunk of people. Most people who are against periodic wipes will share their reason when prompted, and many will do so even without prompting. Just look at the latest thread by They Drove Me Away, and you’ll see that more than half of the people who said “no wipes kthx” also offered their reasons.
Yeah, the ship has sailed a long time ago, and not just because people have come to rely on the fact that the official servers don’t get wiped. It’s also because, as @OctaviousWrex pointed out, the game design itself has been influenced by that assumption.
And changing those game design decisions is by no means trivial. The overreliance on RNG is one of the main problems with periodic wipes, but the solution isn’t as simple as “well, then, let’s tone down the RNG”.
Just look at the way people are complaining about the skeleton key bug. Now that anyone can get a Brittle Bastard, it’s the end of the world, apparently 
But on a more serious note, try explaining to someone who has been busting their ass off trying to get the Final Breath of the Red Mother that they should be okay with quarterly wipes.
And that’s just a freaking torch, no imagine how PVE players on Siptah would feel? The whole map is a giant slot machine. That kind of thing works great for roguelikes and rogue-lites, but Conan Exiles is neither.
Yeah, that’s actually a big problem on official PVE servers. That’s why people have been clamoring for things like a building limit, or an upkeep system, or stronger purges, etc.
And, of course, most of those suggestions are also meeting strong opposition from the players. Nobody wants to be inconvenienced, but that doesn’t mean all measures are equally inconvenient. If an upkeep system is like a kick in the shin, a hard cap on building is like a baseball bat to the knee, and quarterly wipes are like amputating your freaking legs – and one arm for good measure.
Well it does work on certain private servers for a select group of people. So to me, its kind of just a question of how FC wants their players distributed between private and officials, but again, the cats out of the bag and changing it now would just drive people away as you say when their official gear gets nuked when you joined the server for the environment it offers as of now. I completely understand that someone would be livid at a wipe of a previously non-wipe server and they would have every reason to be upset. That’s not the environment they invested in and it would be yanked from under them. Also its not as easy to say “well add some servers that get wiped to officials” because that costs money. So for better or worse, the current state of play should not be changed.
Much of the weapon rebalancing with move sets and combos in conjunction with animation/wield unwield canceling was done for this purpose. They just can’t do it all at once or they risk completely borking the game with a ton of bugs and the time it would take going dark to make all the changes land at once. “Balance” for pvp is a moving target for FC and its informed by the way people play the game as time goes on. They need to see how people use the changes because reality and theory are often in conflict.
I can respect gradual change over drastic. I guess I just don’t value weapon animation cancelling as detrimental to PVP as a broken siege/defense economy or offline raiding being the primary conflict tool. Perhaps FCs vision of what they want PVP to be is just different than my own, it would be neat if they actually relayed that to us so we don’t have to be disappointed.
I think it would be very interesting to see a live stream of pvp only design thoughts from someone like Alex (I’m fully prepared to be ignorant if he did this and I missed it!). It is quite possible that some of it is intentional and has a clear reason behind it.
While I can see why this would be interesting, and that having a clearer picture of where PVP is intended to go might help people to understand changes that are a stepping stone along the way - I can also see a danger with this approach. One of the biggest problems this game suffers from seems to be the fact that it is PVP, PVE, multiplayer, singleplayer, PVE-C, RP, etc and the enormous complexity of balancing these modes. Any attempt to establish ‘PVP design thoughts’ ignores the other modes, and would likely not be achievable as a result - any design thoughts have to take account of all game modes or they will inevitably lead to ideas that are damaging to a game mode that wasn’t being considered at the time.
IMO there is already too much of this kind of thinking at Funcom - with devs in streams talking about ‘exciting upcoming PVP changes’, when what they mean is combat changes that affect everybody, but may not have taken that into account when being developed. I’d quite like to see the devs lay out an approximate road map of where they are trying to go with various of these changes and how they see these changes impacting all of the play modes, not just focusing on any one. As I say, I can see why such focus could be useful as well, but I think there’s a lot of hazard potential to that approach.
In Rust you build bomb shelters.
In Conan Exiles you build homes.
Of course a PvPer does not care if his Bomb Shelter gets wiped. He was expecting it all along.
Of course a PvEer cares if his Home gets wiped. Not expected, not wanted.
PvP servers are a mess because the people playing in them are really just there to attack one another and take each others things. I mean, it’s no wonder the servers are toxic and full of “clutter” as people come there to try the server out and promptly leave after a proper mugging. The only ones that stick around are those “Alpha Clans” which are really just the people who stole the most loot and now stomp all the noobs perpetually. Many, not all, PvPer’s are less attached to a single server, moving on to a new one once they realize they are not the alpha. They roam until they find a server where they are not at the bottom of the food chain. The players that actually like PvP servers and stick to one long term are the Alpha’s people cry about all the time. The ones crying about alphas are the same ones migrating server to server making clutter that the Alpha’s then cry needs wiping. (That and all the casual players that just quit entirely or switch to PvE servers.)
PvE servers are filled with people who are looking for a more long term place to build, make friends, and just grind rocks and logs all day.
**** Disclaimer ****
Trolls exist everywhere and ruin servers where ever they go.
There are exceptions to many of the things I said.
My opinions are my own.
Have nice day.
I’ve got a LOT to lose, but it’s only schwag. You’re righter about this than anything you’ve ever posted, and you’re right a lot. I’d give it all up for first-month fun. 
I’m not complaining about bias, I’m complaining about willingness to engage and discuss. There’s a difference between shouting at and past each other, and going back and forth.
This is what an ideal (i.e. unrealistic and unachievable ) discussion would look like:
- A: We need periodic wipes, because they level the playing field and get rid of claim spam, overbuilding, and duping.
- B: I disagree. The game has way too much RNG and that will make starting from scratch a pain. There are less painful solutions for claim spam and overbuilding. I’m not sure what to do about duping. Perhaps adding new servers with wipes would be better? That way people can migrate there and they can add more if it proves popular.
- A: Adding new servers is complicated, because the money has to come from somewhere. If RNG is such a big pain, shouldn’t Funcom address that?
- B: I would love to see that, but I think it will require massive effort, and I don’t think Funcom will want to do that just so they can make the servers “wipeable”.
- A: I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.
This is the other extreme:
- A: Conan Exiles is dying! We need periodic wipes on the servers, only that will save the game!
- B: No, I don’t want wipes. Go play something else if you don’t like the game.
Yes, there are people on both sides of the discussion who behave like that latter example, rather than the ideal. But if you look at past discussions of the same topic, you can see that more people in favor of wipes behave like the latter example than people against wipes. And if you look at those discussions and can’t see that, well, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.
What makes it worse is that the pro-wipe side is the one requesting a change in status quo. The least I would expect in a reasonable discussion is for that side to start by providing valid arguments for their suggestion. “I’m bored with the game as it is” or “official servers are empty” or “the game is dead” are not valid arguments.
Well I’d like to hear all the design thoughts! 
I think naturally such a conversation includes “Thats off limits cuz PVE”. I think the pvp challenges are greatest in order to maintain a good pve experience.
May be we can mix a 3 months PVP servers wipe + the server transfer feature. Each month 33% of the servers wipe (3 groups A B C).
Fews days before the wipe you can escape to a temporary server with tools, weapons, inventory and all your feats. Then come back after the wipe 
You do not loose your feats, precious items and you can set up your base fast with your tools.
So? May be you can build your base even better!
I would like to add an anecdote. The worst servers for clutter Ive seen were official PVE servers. No raid means no one to try and clean up the mess. And Crom it was a mess.