I would say the same thing I’ve said over a year ago. The ‘Official Servers’ are a bonus feature that to be honest, I’m surprised they are still kept up. They are meant as a convenience, rather than part of the product that you’ve paid for.
I think thats where many of you are getting confused. You bought the game, see official servers, and think they are part of the game you purchased. I can tell you, that’s not the case. If you look at the majority of Client/Server games in the past, the amount of official servers has always been low and I would say for most games, they’re not existent.
It used to be you used to have to use third party services like M-Player or MSN Zone to be able to see player servers. And official servers were not even a thing. And even when you used services like Battlenet to play Diablo and Starcraft, all it did was act as a browser for Peer to Peer connections.
But the problem is you all login to an official server as if its apart of the game. Like this is some sort of MMORPG. Conan Exiles is NOT a MMO. It is not maintained like one. It is not generating monthly revenue like one neither. But lets say they tried. Lets what would be needed.
There’s 21 shifts in a week. That’s assuming 8 hours each shift over a 24 hour period. Though in Norway I think their laws are a bit different. But we’ll use American laws for the sake of argument. The skeleton crew needed for that is 5 people. This is so that you can have at least one person per shift and not work more than 5 days per week.
That’s bare minimum and its going to suck because its going to be shift work that they may have to work a dynamic schedule. Ideally you’d want about 11 or more to cover for sick days or what not. Min Wage (in US) would say that would require 165k a year at 7.25/hr. That means about 24,000 (24k instead of 16k because steam takes a 30% cut) units of DLCs would be needed to be sold per year to pay for just the salary of 11 min wage pees. That’s on top of what they need to pay Gportal.
Of course for such a task, these people aren’t going to be making minwage, and in Norway the minimum is about $20/hr. And that’s not taking other fees (again in the US, that would be SS, Healthcare, and other taxes).
So you got about 11 people. Working 2 to a shift on average. Doing what? 400 servers? The results of that would be very similar to what you see now. You would just simply get a faster response time. Instead of it happening the next day it could happen in 15 minutes, or several hours. Depending on load and time of day.
But here’s the thing. Its still going to be the exact same response as you see now. Exploiters that aren’t caught in the act or using vagrant methods that can be easily seen are going to go unpunished for a while. Because here’s the problem with the ‘official’ tag. They have to be unbiased, and VERY sure when they ban someone.
That is the benefit a Private server has. They can ban off of the hearsay of the playerbase. I’m not saying they SHOULD. But if 90% of the players on a server have an issue. A private server can ban on the principle that its disruptive.
Funcom cannot do that. They can’t ban someone on hearsay. That person, no matter how toxic and detrimental they are. Has every right to be there as everyone else. Imagine a restaurant has a bunch of patrons complaining about a couple being noisy. Every time the manager or staff enter the dining area the couple appears quiet. But 90% of the people there are complaining. So they do what you all want Funcom to do and ask them to leave.
Couple posts their experience on youtube, showing THEM being bullied because of ethnicity or some other nasty issue by the other patrons. Video shows the entire uncut experience, where they’re being quiet. And then they get asked to leave. That restaurant is in serious trouble. And that is what Funcom is trying to avoid.
Private servers don’t have that problem. They’re akin to clubs, lodges, and fraternities. They don’t come under the same standards.
So for them to actually give you all the experience you are requesting. They need enough server managers to monitor the servers in near realtime. That doesn’t take one person per server. I’m sure one person could actively monitor about 20 servers at once. You just need equipment and software that works to allow them to catch problems when it catches their eye and they can investigate.
But at 400 servers, you need 20 people if they monitor 20 servers at a time. We’re starting to look at a company with 140 employees nearly doubling their workforce for a two year old game. So the question is, how much are you all willing to pay to make that happen? Its going to have to be more than what you pay for DLCs. And all you’d see for it would be the extra moderation.
In fact I’m going to withdraw that question. Why? Because its cheaper for you all to get your own server. You could easily have the experience of an official server for the price of a MMORPG subscription (or far less for some of you lucky enough to have upstream data rates) and keep the toxicity out by your own rules.
But that’s why they won’t appoint more people. Its cheaper for the players to have them do it themselves.
