What to do with report abusers (official server)

Whether the servers in general are better off now, I can’t say, as I’ve only been playing on officials for about a year.

But this is what happened when the hacker who paid Ruin System to hack us over and over again (literally pulling stuff out of locked chests and vaults without breaking them, dropping bombs on us from vast distances, speeding around, passing through mesh, etc.) reported us apparently and Funcom suspended our clan.

Our clan left and these hackers attacked every other clan, and at least 4 other clans that I know of left the server in disgust. You can see the server was doing great before this. Now - it’s a dead server.

Instead of solving the Ruin System hacker problem, Funcom punished the people trying to create a community of players having fun. So, the entire community left.

It was incredibly disappointing.

30 day 1544

5 Likes

Sorry to hear about your server experience.

2 Likes

I’ve heard about this on many servers plenty of videos out there about it to.

2 Likes

Well, yes. I’m not surprised that people would leave. I certainly wouldn’t want to play the game that way, staying to fight against paid hackers or those who paid them.

If you think I was saying that hacking wasn’t a problem or that your story was wrong, then you read me wrong. I was replying to the claim that what happened to you somehow meant that people who said their servers were getting better thanks to the TOS were lying.

It’s perfectly possible that your server had problems and that Funcom’s enforcement of TOS made them worse, and that other servers are getting better thanks to the TOS.

1 Like

Just as an added point of anecdotal statistics, I have seen zero difference in people’s game behavior, server performance, building locations, building styles, or really anything at all. If there is any change it’s in player’s in-game social behavior. Players seem worried about getting reported so they seem to be offering each other more kindness, understanding, equipment, and materials. But even that is barely enough to notice and could very well be in the margins.

  • People still build MASSIVE megabases over 100 foundations long and/or wide - same as before.
  • People still cover or wall off resources - same as before.

After the various rounds of consolidating and merging servers I see an increased number of players per server and on average. But the increase in rule enforcement doesn’t seem to have produced any noticeable affects. People get banned and wiped more often but that’s all.

1 Like

This is something that needs to be pointed out more often until Funcom does something about it:

My anecdata disagrees with your anecdata about whether it produced any noticeable effects, but I agree 100% with you about how the rules and their clarifications aren’t accessible and discoverable enough and how that is holding back Funcom’s efforts to change the way people play on officials.

That’s cool. Better experiences are umm, better… So no riffs there!

Oh, the post on that closed thread? Yeah…

1 Like

Define better. The servers that I see get hit start out at 40/40 then maybe 15 after dev wipes doesn’t seem better to me. I’m not talking about dead servers where a clan spams junk all around as nobody wants to go to a dead server to begin with.

2 Likes

Agree with you here. Generally low pop or dead servers are ignored by report meta.

But CodeMage is correct that since ToC we’ve been seeing less of the game breaking elements that created its need in the first place.

3 Likes

Completely agree I’m glad the foundation spam is gone and people are less likely to claim all the meta spots for themselves but that’s it… that’s all it should be yet there’s more to it that’s getting people banned and not knowing why.

4 Likes

Yep, that one too. I agree with it wholeheartedly.

How about:

  • When using ToggleDebugHUD to inspect the server FPS, it mostly stays in the “green” range, at or close to 30, whereas it used to be in the “orange” range most of the time with frequent long dips into “red” (i.e. single digits).
    • As a result, the server that used to lag horribly most of the time, doesn’t lag much or at all.
    • Another consequence is that AI that doesn’t move or do anything and “follower can’t reach the target location” don’t happen often anymore.
  • People don’t wall in other people’s bases anymore.
  • People generally don’t even try to mess with other people’s claims – e.g. by building right on the edge of the “competing” claim – anymore. And when they do, others remind them that this might get reported and they rethink it.
  • People generally don’t build on top of important spawns anymore. And if they do, others either convince them to change that or they get reported and wiped.
  • There’s still sandstone spam in form of unnecessary bridges, roads, and stairs, but it’s much less common. If it gets out of hand, it will go away.
  • We don’t have any edgelords building swastika-shaped builds to troll others anymore. Nobody has been called “n-word” or any variation of that since I came back to the server.
  • The server used to have between 0 and 5 concurrent players at all times, even during the weekend. Now it has almost 20 over the weekend. The weekday occupancy varies.
2 Likes

I hear ya. We know that legitimate devwipes are what they are and the rest are what we’re having problems with.

My clan and I last night were wiped by the same hacker clan for a second time. Already did my due diligence 2 weeks ago now but what can you do?

I feel punished in this game for doing the right things.

2 Likes

Yeah you are missing the point obviously. No one is doing that anymore and servers are still going from 40 to 15 overnight due to reports. Agree to disagree and move on

1 Like

I wasn’t disagreeing with you about the servers you see. I fail to see how I can be clearer when I say that it’s possible for some servers to be worse and some servers to be better, and nobody is lying.

“Your” servers are going from 40 to 15 overnight. “My” servers went from 0 to almost 20 since Funcom started enforcing the TOS. Both can be true, especially when you consider that you play PVP and I play PVE-C.

I’m not disagreeing with you, I’m disagreeing with the implication (not yours, but the one I originally replied to) that people like me are lying.

1 Like

Yes, I’m not disputing that. As I said, I don’t know what the situation was before a year ago. I only know what happened on this server. And the fact is, the other clans who left didn’t leave because of Ruin System. I know this because we all talked about it on discord at length. The Ruin System thing was upsetting, but they all felt the rules were clearly too arbitrary and none of them wanted to watch everything get lost over some nebulous rule they supposedly broke.

I was reminded of Kafka’s “The Trial”. I mean, it’s only a game, but still, we were very sad to watch the whole server get destroyed. Everyone but this one jerk was having a blast in there. Really.

1 Like

What do you mean “move on?” This entire topic is dedicated to the opinions people have on this subject.

25 people is definitely a lot to lose on any single day, but whether your numbers are exaggerated or it was simply 3 clans, either way, it was rule breakers being removed.

@Palm522’s disdain was directed at my comment:

If we are swapping anecdata - I haven’t noticed much in the way of a “report” meta on console officials. In the past few months I have been on populated IoS servers and mid to low pop EL ones with a large group of curious PVE/C players I met on a private server to share the fun of official PVP with.

Could be that it’s worse on PC. Could be I just haven’t seen it.

I can’t be bothered to spend my playtime reporting others, but I was told of reporting on the popular IOS servers. Even then bases I was sure would be removed (spammed fireplaces for heat anticlimb) if reported, were not. (Could have been they weren’t actually reported - I cannot verify)

We blew into a refresher a few days ago, they have webs of land claim. I could report them, but I won’t. Mostly because despite IMO being very familiar with the TOS and it’s enforcement - I do not want FC coming and looking at anything we have built. Not because I fear we have broken any rules (I am like a street barker with the rules when anything is built), but because FC’s moderation “seems” more nebulous than my understanding.

Whether that “seeming” is earned or not - It’s there.

2 Likes

And to clarify, I’m not saying these rules should not exist. I think they should! They seem sensible.

But they need to be clear. If they’re going to SUSPEND or BAN people for “content blocking” then shouldn’t they clarify what content was blocked? Because we blocked nothing but a few (very few) iron nodes (in an iron-rich area, with lots of iron available.)

And when there is clear evidence of hacking - even by paid hackers using Ruin System - there is no question they are hacking - then they need to really take real action to help. Like logging into the server during raid time and WATCHING it. (Especially the most popular servers with multiple current reports of hacking.) Like filing a lawsuit against the creators/sellers of these hacks.

PUBG just won a $10 million lawsuit against people selling hacks, why can’t Funcom go after the folks ruining this game for others? They can and they should.

I care because I love this game so much.

1 Like

Yeah, I’ve seen that happen on at least two servers over the years I spent playing Conan Exiles. Both times I’ve been forced to abandon everything and move to a different server. It sucked. Both times it was before Funcom even published any TOS.

That’s why I was one of those people clamoring for rules and moderation on official servers. The fact that I don’t have to go through that crap anymore is a net improvement in my corner of Conan Exiles. It’s pretty obvious to me that Funcom lived up to what PVE(-C) players wanted from the rules, but they’re not living up to what PVP players want.

I agree they should improve there and make PVP players’ experience better, but I disagree with all ideas that try to achieve that at the expense of PVE(-C) players.

EDIT:

Yes! Definitely, emphatically yes!

I’ve been saying this for a long time now. This is one of the biggest problems – if not the biggest – with their system right now.

1 Like

I say that because it goes around and around every time. 1 group doesn’t believe the other. If you haven’t noticed there’s been dozens of threads about this and even threads that just evolve into this topic. What happens in the end? Nothing no word from FC just the same people going back and forth and then the thread gets closed due to misinformation. The will repeat until something is done by FC. The new people coming into the threads every day with report issues far outnumbereds the handful of folks who can’t seem to grasp that there is a fundamental issue in the system.

3 Likes