Tethering...Really?

[IronSides]

It's incredibly frustrating that you and your girlfriend buy a game both get high powered gaming laptops on high-speed internet and if you want to play together you are tethered and can't go off and do separate missions. I understand games like this being Tethered on the switch but why is this a part of the PC version.
So your options are to pay even more money to rent a server or go on public servers where everybody has bogarted all of the land and block people off.

[Pablo Croft]

You may as well be a player-thrall on follow, yes lol.

[Xevyr]

It's like you're already married aint it? :D

On a serious note, the game does the tethering since your computer is not a dedicated game-server so it only bothers calculating physics and "running" the part of the map around you in a radius, there is no way around that in co-op mode, however you can just download the dedicated server app and run that separately. Modern PCs can usually run both on the same machine fine.
That way the server will be taking care of the entire map so you can go your separate ways :)

Edit: You can either get the one on steam (Conan Exiles Dedicated Server), it's free, however requires manual configuration through editing .ini files and manual starting / stopping.
Or you can get an app that they wrote which installs / manages the dedicated server on your machine https://forums.funcom.com/t/conan-exiles-dedicated-server-launcher-official-version-1-6-2-beta/21699

[Solomon Hawk]

If you and your GF are too cheap to rent a server, maybe you're not so cheap that you can afford to have your very own high powered gaming laptops on high-speed internet.

I know the gaming rig I built wasn't cheap by any means being in excess of 2 Grand. Yet, still I can afford to rent a server a full year in advance at a cost of less than 2/10 of what it cost to build gaming rigs for both me and my GF whose rig I also paid to have custom built.

So on that note, why don't you figure out how to build and set up your very own server machine.
I've done it before, but alas, my server machine is outdated with a server mobo over 10 years old which will not upgrade to Windows 11.
Still, even with that, there would be issues in trying to run this server machine with my GF on the other side of the world... specifically, LAG and LATENCY.
So renting a server in a decent location compatible between both our locations was the best answer. Surprisingly... it costs less than $200.00 for a full year to rent a good server.

Think it over.
Don't shortchange your GF to save some money.

[Narelle]

I love when people show off with their gaming rigs but are too cheap to pay 10-15 EUR a month for a server. It’s like buying an expensive car but not being able to afford the fuel to drive it.

[pApA^LeGBa]

Originally posted by Xevyr:

It's like you're already married aint it? :D

On a serious note, the game does the tethering since your computer is not a dedicated game-server so it only bothers calculating physics and "running" the part of the map around you in a radius, there is no way around that in co-op mode, however you can just download the dedicated server app and run that separately. Modern PCs can usually run both on the same machine fine.
That way the server will be taking care of the entire map so you can go your separate ways :)

Edit: You can either get the one on steam (Conan Exiles Dedicated Server), it's free, however requires manual configuration through editing .ini files and manual starting / stopping.
Or you can get an app that they wrote which installs / manages the dedicated server on your machine https://forums.funcom.com/t/conan-exiles-dedicated-server-launcher-official-version-1-6-2-beta/21699

Still no reason to have tethering mandatory. 7 days to die is way more demanding for the hardware, has a fully destructible world (fully, wich means if there is a mountain you don´t like you can get rid of it if you are willing to spend a lot of time on digging) and yet there is no tethering.

Funcom is partnered with G-Portal that´s why tethering will never go away unless you use a tool or rent a server.

And to all the people saying someone is cheap because they want something that a lot of games have as a standard i can just say: White knights. It´s a standard feature for a ton of games to be able to host a game on your PC without tethering. Funcom is making money with tethering, that´s all.

[Xevyr]

Originally posted by pApA^LeGBa:

Still no reason to have tethering mandatory. 7 days to die is way more demanding for the hardware, has a fully destructible world (fully, wich means if there is a mountain you don´t like you can get rid of it if you are willing to spend a lot of time on digging) and yet there is no tethering.

Funcom is partnered with G-Portal that´s why tethering will never go away unless you use a tool or rent a server.

And to all the people saying someone is cheap because they want something that a lot of games have as a standard i can just say: White knights. It´s a standard feature for a ton of games to be able to host a game on your PC without tethering. Funcom is making money with tethering, that´s all.

That is inaccurate on multiple points.
Those are 2 different games made on two completely different engines. 7 days to die is made with Unity that has a very simplified physics system compared to Unreal and while the graphics have received updates over time, you can pretty much tell that it's very "minecraft-ish" underneath.
The game to compare this one would be something like Ark - which also has a tether distance to the host when not playing in dedicated mode.

It also has absolutely nothing to do with G-portal, since in co-op where tethering is a thing in the first place... game servers are not used, so we can't even talk about G-portal in this context whatsoever.
And I get that you're trying to imply that Funcom is deliberately doing this so you go and buy a server from G-portal.. but that's really not the case lol... else they wouldn't have made the dedicated server software (that I linked above) available for free to download...
So you don't have to pay G-portal a dime if you don't want to.. you can just download that piece of software.. run it on your computer and you essentially have co-op without tethering..

The main reason is like I said... in order to enable and make the entire world available, the host game would require 2x the RAM and more CPU power and would simply no longer fit into the system requirements.. or simply couldn't supply the quality of game needed, because the host acting as the server.. is also a player playing the game.. so they need hardware resources to render their game as well. that's why the dedicated server is a separate app with its own system requirements.

[Multigun]

In the time that they have spent ranting about false conspiracy theories, they could have just set up a freaken server to host from the "powerful computer". Takes 5 minutes, its free.

But gamers today are not interested in doing things for themsleves, or in understanding the tech, just spouting lazy conspiracy theories.

[Xevyr]

Originally posted by Multigun:

In the time that they have spent ranting about false conspiracy theories, they could have just set up a freaken server to host from the "powerful computer". Takes 5 minutes, its free.

But gamers today are not interested in doing things for themsleves, or in understanding the tech, just spouting lazy conspiracy theories.

Yup 100%

[eram]

rent a private server for $1 per person.

[Aapef]

It's here because they don't expect everyone's computer to be able to go through multiple characters loading different cells. It's a technical limitation that's understandable imo.

What you should do is set up a dedicated server if you and your gf play on the same lowal network. It's free.

If not, you may wanna get a private server through a third party host.

[Rokalm]

Originally posted by Multigun:

In the time that they have spent ranting about false conspiracy theories, they could have just set up a freaken server to host from the "powerful computer". Takes 5 minutes, its free.

But gamers today are not interested in doing things for themsleves, or in understanding the tech, just spouting lazy conspiracy theories.

yeah they would rather repeat ♥♥♥♥ they heard from a streamer like a parrot

[cattibria]

The reason for the tether is to prevent one party from literally running off the map. The game in the Co-Op mode only loads a small portion of the map, i.e., the map segment you are in and the surrounding map segments. This is because the host machine acts as the server for both players. It is a method to conserve resources on the host rig. If you do not want to follow each other around, your best option is to rent a server. Building one can be costly.

[Xevyr]

Originally posted by cattibria:

If you do not want to follow each other around, your best option is to rent a server. Building one can be costly.

I pointed out above that modern computers are capable of running both the dedicated server software and the game client on the same machine, so there is no need to build one, especially if it's just for 2 people with the only purpose being to bypass the tethering.

As long as you don't make it into a public server you'll have like ~2GB of extra memory usage, with minimal CPU load.
You'll get the benefits over co-op of not having any tethering AND crafting stations / taming pens / wheels etc continuing their progress even after you close the game as long as you leave the server app open.

While renting is a fine option, I really wouldn't bother for this scenario unless both me and the other person have really old potato computers / laptops. Having the server locally is also much more convenient for a scenario like this - it takes less than a minute to rollback to any backup for example in case you accidentally demolish your base by removing the wrong piece :D And you're also not stuck with a contract in case 5 days later your gf decides this game just isn't for them :P

[hades]

Originally posted by Xevyr:

...

Unfortunately not all PC's are actually capable of it (despite what people like to think), it's not just the map data that needs to be loaded, all NPC's, their decision making, collision data and pathfinding logic is also controlled by the server, once you have a few players running around in the bigger areas activating lots of NPC's, your high end gaming rig soon starts to resemble a potato, although admittedly most high end "modern" (modern being the key word) CPU's could do it that doesn't change the fact a bunch of people still use potato's, laptops and consoles.

And as cattibria pointed out the map is loaded in sections, by default the engine doesn't allow to switch between world composition (sections) and loading the whole world, core engine components would need modified/tested/QA'd to do that and to be honest it's just not worth it, at least IMO

[Xevyr]

Originally posted by hades:

Originally posted by Xevyr:

...

Unfortunately not all PC's are actually capable of it (despite what people like to think), it's not just the map data that needs to be loaded, all NPC's, their decision making, collision data and pathfinding logic is also controlled by the server, once you have a few players running around in the bigger areas activating lots of NPC's, your high end gaming rig soon starts to resemble a potato, although admittedly most high end "modern" (modern being the key word) CPU's could do it that doesn't change the fact a bunch of people still use potato's, laptops and consoles.

And as cattibria pointed out the map is loaded in sections, by default the engine doesn't allow to switch between world composition (sections) and loading the whole world, core engine components would need modified/tested/QA'd to do that and to be honest it's just not worth it, at least IMO

No... a lot of that is just not accurate.
Like I pointed out earlier.. in a scenario where OP and their girlfriend (2 players...) want to run a dedicated server on their own PC.. the cost of that would be roughly ~2GB of RAM and not much else for smooth gameplay that beats any hosted G-portal server provided they had a decent connection between them in the first place that allowed for fine co-op play.
Typically any modern PC (here's a definition for you then) that can play the game well and has at least 16 GB of ram and a CPU from this century will be able to run both the game and the dedicated server app simultaneously for 2-3 players without any issues.

Now if you want 20-40 players then yes, that's a completely different scenario and the above no longer applies to that.. but we weren't talking about that.. neither were we talking about consoles or potato laptops (though OP did say they have laptops but called them "high powered gaming laptops" which if true would work just as well, if their description was inaccurate and it's a potato laptop, then that's not my fault... we have these things called words :P )

Edit: You might be wondering why am I so sure of it... Well because mine is running in the background as we speak, see? https://imgur.com/a/AJZiNrg