Conan Exiles Update locks out players for negative currency

R

Ranulfo

2[H]4U
Joined
Feb 9, 2006
Messages
4,023
A new Conan Exiles patch just came out today and players are getting banned from the game because of a negative currency balance of "Crom coins" used to buy dlc items in the game store. Allegedly even people who have never bought crom coins to buy the battle pass or store items. Access to the game is completely linked now to the in game currency system. The picture below would be a debt of $351 with 1200 crom coins being equal to $10 USD (cost of a battle pass). Developers have posted on their forums and on Steam they are looking into the "error".


Via reddit:

ybedya13j96c1.png



Official forums:
https://forums.funcom.com/t/lots-of...ed-for-incorrect-crom-coin-balance/245721/140

Reddit thread
https://www.reddit.com/r/ConanExiles/comments/18i8oot/uh_what/
 
If I had to hazard a guess I bet their internal anti cheat is to blame. I don’t play the game but I bet it does a scan of their inventory, game pass participation, and DLC and does a quick check against their purchase history to verify the numbers match.
Which in principle is a good method, but I’d bet they don’t have it checking against cash purchases from Steam, and other web services that didn’t use the coins.
And as cash based purchases don’t have a coin associated or aren’t reported in their system, (Steam may just unlock the flag on their account) then that algorithm would just show a negative balance.

They wouldn’t be the first to make that mistake, but they would be the first in a long while to get it into a live patch.
 
Been looking for a new game for the wife an i for winter lockdown (just us refusing to leave cuz its cold) gaming. Usually end up firing up ark or 7days, might give conan a look though.
 
Conan is pretty fun; I've run a dedicated server for it before; easy to do using the official ConanDedicatedServerLauncher tool. No need to play on terrible public servers if you don't want to.

Just checked in the server launcher I use, it has a box for tick rate. Server defaults to 30 which makes melee and dodging feel laggy. 60 addresses that; we were running at a100 tick for ~8 players with no issues, though you may have to do an INI edit to bump up the net speeds since those aren't exposed in the server launcher.
 
Conan can be a lot of fun, I've been playing it since early access in 2017. Definately run a server at 60 tickrate or better. I've not been a fan of the patch last summer and combat changes. The building system is pretty good though.

I managed to test the game out briefly. I got no coin error but I can't access any of the previous battle pass content I had on my character, namely a sword and bow (really only cosmetic compared to other same weapons). The in game bazaar/store is offline and so is the new battle pass that came with this new patch today. Hopefully I will still have my 1200 crom coins when they restore things. If not, that is the last money I spend on the game. At least with the Conan battle pass you buy coins via your steam wallet and then buy the battle pass. Once you hit level 60 with it, you get 1200 coins back.
 
If they're looking into it and sort it out, unban etc... that's the proper outcome. As said above,fuckups can happen its what they do to make it right that is the pivotal element .

That said, on Conan Exiles itself I have to say it can be one of the best "multiplayer survival crafting" of its type (it has some neat mechanics, stays pretty accurate to Howard's Hyborian setting including full nudity for both sexes, the ability to take NPC or players as "thralls", etc. I also like that in addition to PvE and full loot open PVP rulesets, they also have one in the middle where player avatars can be killed/looted at any time BUT player built structures can only be damaged during the server's active hours so that someone doesn't spent all night knocking down your door when you go to bed. It also has a considerable amount of PVE content with dungeons and the like which is neat as most of these games don't) , but I am massively frustrated with their decision to change monetization. Since EA well into and past launch, even after an expansion (Isle of Sipta, a new map) they had a great system - the base game was buy to play, and there were optional cosmetic DLCs. On average these DLCs were about $10 and typically added new sets of building materials, decorations, armor, weapons and more , equivalent in strength to things found elsewhere in the game but with a different aesthetic, usually focused on a particular Hyborian civilization - Khitai (ie China ), Yamatai ( Japan), Turan (Persia/Mesopotamia), Aquilonia (Rome) Argos (Greece) etc . These were reasonably priced at around $10 each and content heavy - there was even one that added a lot of roleplay specific stuff.

However, those days seem to be over . Now they've instituted an in-game store where you need said Conan Coins, and cosmetics and the like are sold a la carte. Last I checked, now $10 wouldn't even get you a single armor set depending - if it was priced like it is now, any one of the original DLC would likely have cost in excess of $100! Atop this there's a Battle Pass, which as far as I know so far means lots of stuff you miss out on if you don't buy and/or complete it; I don't hate battle passes conceptually, but the amount of grind and FOMO policies around them creates the problem. The ability to get old battle pass items in other reasonable ways is pivotal, but unless something has changed that isn't the case here. Overall its not that I find the game itself reprehensible and I'm thinking of checking it out again to see some of the updates ( I quit right before the "change over" monetization wise) but its just so bloody frustrating that they went this way when they had a reasonable, consistent, player respecting monetization strategy with the previous DLC packs. Of course that's never enough though, is it?
 
The only upside to the battle pass is that once you buy it for $10, you never have to buy it again as log as you complete the next pass. Each BP gives you 1200 coins to buy the next one for free essentially. That said, it does take time to level up the battle pass. That can be done in single player mode though and using cheats can be done fairly easily over 2-3 weeks with the XP boosts the game gives you.

There is no way I would buy each BP for $10 as there is very little worthwhile in them, cosmetically.
 
This reminds me of the time I was playing a GTA Roleplaying server and they had a system where you could wire money to other players.

Apparently nobody ever checked wiring negatives. So one day I accidently stumbled into an exploit where you could just request a transfer of a negative amount. It had really naive logic to check if you could cover the transfer, like if you had $5000, of course that's a greater number than -9999999 so it would succeed.

So once you did that, it would effectively transfer that amount with no additional checks because it already assumed you were sending money and had it covered. So the victim would have that -9999999 added to their account sending them into impossible debt. Then it did 5000 - -9999999, so the signs flip when it tried to subtract the amount from you.

So it effectively added money out of thin air into your wallet while literally ruining the victim's character.

Except you could just do it with a friend and have them delete their character after you synthesize billions from it and fly under the radar.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top