I am also a codger, but if it weren’t for Kevin LaSean (aka XpertThief) I would not even know what this game is. It was VintageBeef who made me come back after I stormed off. YMMV, that’s why this place is so great, and you are too for sharing! 
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Obviosuly they wont ditch one of their modes now but RP is not one of their modes so they should not focus on making RP players happy with stuff that a mod can do instead. But they can still make a turn like they have done before and before that. PVP and PVE should not be that hard to even do. Since what you do in PVE u also need to do in PVP. So if they focused from the beginning to just make PVP balanced and so on, they can adjust hitpoints and so on on mobs to make them fit in it aswell. But right now it feels like they just closing their eyes and hoping it will work out. And to be honest, most of the times it dont, atleast not lately.
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Yeah welcome to delusion land. Population = dorpie.
Hate to break it to you but at no point was this game EVER meant to be ONLY pvp and nothing else. That is pure fantasy.
Neither would I. But they never marked the game as “full PvP only” and so any talk of updates being only PvP and nothing else is absurd. Should PvP be considered? Absolutely. Should it be the only thing considered? Absolutely not.
If they did, as much as I hate the whole “the game is dead” nonsense, the game would “PROBABLY” die if they did. If you eliminate PvP or PvE there would be such a dramatic decline in players that the game would “effectively” be dead. And yes, I did say probably and effectively for reasons that should be obvious.
I can only speak for myself. I have never watched any YT content of Conan exiles based on PvP, but I sure as heck watched a whole LOT of content about building. Sure the builds COULD be used in PvP, some of them clearly wouldn’t be viable there but the point is, it is about building, not PvP. And some of those channels I would guess are fairly popular but since I don’t watch any PvP content I can’t compare the numbers.
What about people who RP on official servers? Or on consoles? They don’t have access to mods. So just because YOU do not RP does not mean you get to dictate if they SHOULD or SHOULD NOT receive support from Funcom or not.
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I’m not even RP person… And I enjoy many of item/animation updates.
This is one of those… people are happy enough… and don’t complain. But if PVE stopped, or they stopped adding in “RP” stuff… I’m sure the forums would get very vocal quickly.
I’m sure if they did better with PVP nerfs, and tried to Keep PVE changes to low. I’d be more happier.
As for 400k for New World… most of them likely did try CE. Still waiting for CE to be “fixed”
New World does nothing new… it was just new game. Most of people i know playing it stopped today, when battlefield beta came out. XD
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Never said PVP was the only one since PVE automaticly is coming with it. But RP wasnt one for sure.
I dont say people not allowed to RP. And if you join a official server (if you are on PC) it’s up to you. But my opinion is still that focusing on 3 different genres is a misstake.
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It’s not just hard, it’s insanely hard. Hell, I’m starting to think it might be an intractable problem with all the self-imposed constraints that stem from trying to keep everyone happy. But I’ll get to that in a moment, there’s something else I want to clarify first.
I keep hearing this idea from the PVP players: PVP is a superset of PVE, so if you balance PVP, then PVE is going to be fine.
The problem with that is that it assumes that because both PVP and PVE players perform the same actions, they value them equally. PVE players and PVP players have different ways of having fun.
Yeah, sure, we both do the PVE content, but where that content might be a chore for a PVP player, it might be the main reason to play the game for a PVE player. You might only fight the Red Mother for the loot or slaughter everyone in New Asagarth in search of a particular thrall, but I do that stuff when I get tired of building and want to feel like I’m on an adventure.
Which brings me to why it’s insanely hard to balance PVP and PVE without making someone very unhappy. Let’s go for what people think is low hanging fruit: mob hitpoints and other stats like that.
How tanky should mobs be and how hard should they hit? This wouldn’t be such a hard question to answer if we didn’t have combat followers (e.g. fighters and archers). Unfortunately, followers exist and they serve two very different purposes. They are used as a base defense from raids, and they can also follow a player to help with the mobs.
If the mobs are too tanky and don’t hit very hard, people complain about how that’s not really a challenge, it’s just a drawn out, boring fight. If they’re not tanky enough, people complain about how it’s trivially easy to bring a thrall and kill them. If they’re tanky and hit too hard, people complain about how players are just sidekicks for their thralls, instead of being heroes.
The problem with all of those is that your thrall has way more health (and hits way harder) than you do. But they also can’t make the thralls too weak, because then they won’t be useful for PVP raid defense. Not to mention that people will rightly complain about the thralls being nerfed when there’s already a limit on how many you can have.
So we’re already seeing a problem because followers are used both for PVP and PVE, but we would still have a bucketload of other problems even without that. Take a look at this recent thread about the change that made damage cancel the healing from potions:
Yeah, I understand how the change was necessary to balance PVP, but it really saps the fun out of solo PVE. Does that mean they should revert the change? Not really, because they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t. And the game is full of “little” conundrums like that one.
TL;DR: It’s already hard to balance PVP and PVE both, because PVP players and PVE players have fun in different ways. What makes it pretty much impossible is that followers can be used for both PVP and PVE.
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Excellent well constructed post CodeMage. And then there is the other factors to consider. If you talk to a PvE player they will tell you about how to many changes to the game have been made for PvP players that have hurt the PvE experience. If you talk to a PvP player they will claim that the devs don’t focus on PvP.
Now, how could this situation even possibly exist that the devs could focus to much on PvP and yet ignore PvP at the same time? Naturally it doesn’t exist at all, yet that is exactly how you see the two player bases PERCEIVE things. Then you get people who have this mentality of “screw RP’ers they should get nothing” and that just compounds the issue (even though a lot of RP’ers do PvP as well… 
).
So how exactly should the devs proceed in the future? 
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If the goal is to make the best game, they should focus and perfect one facet of the game. Probably PVE as that is the most popular (and I’m a official PvPer).
If it’s to have as many players, then it may be to maintain their current strategy of pleasing as many as possible. The first option could net more players long term, but it’s incredibly risky.
While PVE may be PVP with certain settings turned off, as you aptly point out the effects of that are pretty profound. I have seen zero evidence to suggest that “trickle down game mechanics” is a satisfactory way to balance the multiple game modes.
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Or maybe instead a more Balance PVE-PVP game
No need to cater to one or other, They can do both. Like many games before them… they need to really just find a way to separate PVE-PVP changes.
Same way people ask for it in Destiny. But Bungie fails to try it. PVP gets a gun nerf, destroying gun for PVE over and over and over.
They refuse to make separate stats.
FO76 pvp is pretty bleh do to RPG elements. It knows when your hitting a player, and enemy npc.
There max damage limit for players. (so you can never truely one shot someone) Its still pretty unbalance do to stealth, and fast firing weapons and damage stacking.
LotrO has done abit of spilt inner working.
I would love for my bleed to come back to horse riding. (losing that really killed damage solo/sp can do on there own) I understand why it got removed in PVP.
It be nice if they could make PVE servers be there own rule set.
Again… I get why no one does it “truely does it” anyway. Make 1 game… or you make 2-3 of same game, slightly differnt.
One alot easier to do.
I can still wish for PVP to stop ruining PVE. Thou. =3 (thou rare pve ruins pvp XD)
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Lmao 1000 concurrent players is dead people . Cmon like for real? You guys must be high . You defend funcom so much like just accept the fact that they failed completely. Look at all their competitors they’ve been out way longer and manage to find ways to grow the player base and be consistent with updates that actually make sense. Tell me how rust and ark have been out longer and still have a bigger player list. It should be the opposite lmao
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Except that the steam numbers that have been posted many many many times in many many many threads have show consistent growth in Conan Exiles. Something you just can’t seem to comprehend can you? Or are you just sitting at your desk with your hands over your eyes acting as though if you can’t see it it must not really exist?
And for the other matter just because YOU do not personally agree with an update does not mean that it does not make any sense. I highly doubt if anyone cares if the update makes sense to you or not, you are not the only person who plays Conan Exiles. You do not get to dictate how everyone else gets to play Conan Exiles and it is extremely arrogant of you to assume that you are the be all end all of what does or does not make sense in Funcom’s choices.
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The same way they have been so far: do the best they can and stay away from the general toxicity of the forums 
I’ve seen people say that Funcom must be focused on Dune because they don’t communicate that much on the forums anymore. I have my doubts about that, seeing as how the patch notes show that the team is still hard at work. Having seen some really choice nastiness on the forums lately, I don’t really think the “radio silence” has that much to do with Dune.
I’m stealing “trickle down game mechanics” 
That’s because both Bungie and Funcom are very much aware of how doing that would double the work they would have to do.
What 1000 concurrent players? Where did that number come from?
Yeah, I’m sure I’m high, that must be it. It can’t be that I’m looking at the actual chart with the actual numbers and analyzing the long-term trend, instead of pulling out a number out of my ass and declaring the game dead.
It’s really an enigma how a game that has been out longer would have had more time and chances to accumulate more players. Totally a mystery.
Oh, you haven’t meet @Franszn yet? Here:
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I mention that, I also think Both Parties could easily tag weapons with Player/NPC damage notes.
So the react differently when hitting a target.
I am convinced that if more former players and new players gave it a try they’d be blown away. I hear it regularly with new/returning people on the server.
Lately I’ve tried out some city life medieval game, and while I think City Life would be icing on the Conan Cake, I still insist magic would make CE an incomparable experience. We’ve got things to ask for.
But as a complete game? It feels and plays incredibly well, night and day difference from when I myself left last year.
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Oh, so the bugs on your platform are troublesome. Sounds like you would like FC to fix the reason we have so many bugs, on PC. But my task for the same outcome for console was met with dismissal…fyi
The bugs on any platform are troublesome.
Yes, I would. It’s not news, either. I’ve been vocally critical of their QA outcomes before. I even remember saying that in a thread you made.
I’m not sure it was “met with dismissal”, but whatever.
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To be fair, whenever a console player airs a grievance outside of the console specific forum, it attracts a fair number of responses about how it’s not a problem on PC, or that it’s been fixed on PC so just wait patiently and it will be fixed on console.
That aside, Conan is an excellent game in concept. It’s also quite good in implementation with a few painful flaws. These difficulties impact different playstyles differently.
Case in point, undermesh building.
Largely irrelevant (if not quirkily enjoyed) in PVE.
A monster of incalculable scope in PVP.
Updates designed to keep people from crowding around spawn points in PvP suddenly leave PvE structures unmaintainable and diminish the options for building in striking locales or conveniently near dungeons or farm points.
Delightful and pretty placeables for the PvE crowd are durability monsters and can have unintentional impacts of PvP base designs. Yo say nothing of the impact on render/load time certain items may cause if used in mass.
I think the Voidforged Bow (pre-nerf) may be another excellent example. In PvE, it’s useful to not have to farm the best arrows often and instead repair gloves (which one will do periodically anyway). In PvP, especially with server transfers, a supply of explosive and poison arrows limited only by plant fiber for repairing fingerless gloves is particularly impactful.
The bleed (or rather, Incarmine and Grey One) weapon nerf is another example that will be howled to the moon…
But even that is only a tangent to the large concept of dots and how they impact combat, both PvP and PvE. Especially when coupled with Sigils that mess with dots (but are lost quickly in PvP where blood porting to your bedroll and just frequent death in general is the norm, not an outlier) this sort of thing simply has different weight in different play modes.
Is this easy to balance?
LOL nope.
Could some of it be put into admin panel toggles to allow a more clean break between PvP and PvE games?
I honestly don’t know.
But the main idea of drawing in new players is a conundrum. Did the twitch drops help? As I understand the period when the game was free for a month on a console or other caused a temp bump. But how much of that was sustained?
While I enjoy both let’s plays and raid documentaries… One of these I watch in lieu of participation. As with many people watching MMA or war footage. The observance may be more enjoyable than the participation. Then again, combative sports have referees. I have seen lots of complaint about lack of moderation on PvP servers. But that’s seeing complaints, not experiencing for myself and we all know people love to run their fingers on the internet.
What sells the game?
Is it the Conan name?
Is it the status as the T&A survival game?
Is it the brutality and gruesome combat?
Is it the building pieces/prevalence of mods?
Is it the play cycle from barely living to running a massive prisoners with jobs empire, possibly making alliances and war with other tyrannies?
An effective marketing campaign can’t just be in game rewards (but those do help), it also needs to target the players who will want to keep playing. Who are those players and what are they looking for?
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While I genuinely appreciate you giving my thread a shoutout here good buddy, I must politely disagree that it was necessary for PvP balance. Unless I somehow managed to miss them, I saw bugger all threads over the last couple of months with players still complaining that the healing system was still unbalanced. In fact I cant recall seeing any. Personally I feel that prior to update 2.5 the healing system was in the best place it had been in for a long time.
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Actually, I am pretty sure most of the PvP crowd flocked to the forums to complain how the new heal system was designed for RPers. 
As if that was even remotely plausible.
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Aye but I was more referring to during the time between the launch of Siptah and now. Especially following the shortening of the animation, ie-the last 2-3 months.
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