70% of People left the game!

Conan Exiles General Discussion
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Hello Everyone,

We just had a restart of our Conan server world and people did not really come back to play. I have noticed that there is almost as many servers as there are players left in the community.

This is from steam and Conan server statistics. It looks like almost 70 % of the people that played the game on release day have left the game and will not return o.0

The most common reasons for leaving is that the game, is that the game is to bugged and many mechanics don’t work properly. There are also people saying that the game is not fun in pvp/pve, since there are to many balance issue and bad decisions in the game. This is from my community FuryOfConan and steam.

There is also reason to worry since he game has not really been bug fixed since july and devs are now only focusing on new content(Pet system, no mounts yet).

You might think that it looks better in the mod community for this game but no. The mod system requires to many steps to get to work and modded server are really hard for the normal player to find.

In my opinion this game is now getting close to being dead. It was not a slow death but a rater fast and sudden one. I’m getting a little tired of bugs returning and not getting feedback form the devs.

It will not be long before i also look to another game for more people to play with.

How do people feel about the current state of the game and what do you think will happen?

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1,500,000 Copies Sold - I’m guessing that 1,000,000 sales on Steam and 500,000 for other platforms.

Today, at peak, Steam had 6,800 players online, for their Flagship product, it doesn’t look good.

Edited, as my Maths were way off :slight_smile:

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Ouch, you really did one sort of misconception there.

Added PM:
You are using a peak player number not a unique players number.
For example:
10 players bought a game and peak player is 1 in 24hrs. Does that mean 90% did not play the game?
No, because player one plays then go offline, then player 2 plays and goes oflline, continue this until player 10 plays and goes offline. So 100% of the players played with a peak player count of 1.

The number of ~75% is mostly correct refering to steamcharts and it seem very plausible looking at the start of EA in February and the release in May. Of course, it doesn’t include Consoles and non-steam players, but it is surely a representative source.

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I just bought the East and West DLC’s.

The best option would be to encourage new players to run the Administrative tab to get a feel of the game. They really need to work on their advertising perspective and boost up the game more by supplying mounts that can move as fast as a human sprinting and that can carry additional weight, avoid small obstacles (rocks) and not really run out of stamina.

The mods need to be addressed and mod makers need feedback from Funcom to help diminish any bugs they may have that interfere with the game.

A mount system should be free and a new addition to the game.

I am not too happy about spending more money for cosmetic DLC’s. It feels like Funcom owes us a little more for presenting their game with all the bugs (making us play the finished product with all the bugs feels like we were guinea pigs testing CE in a beta format).

They really need to make an announcement to encourage players to rejoin but they need to introduce new material for added impact. They also have to go over what people have complained about at http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/conan-exiles. We need to see the developers speak and avoid the over creative free dress code. This is serious stuff and watching developer feedback when they brag about their vacation and answer weak questions is a big turnoff. I wish to see them on video and broaden the marketing spectrum. It needs to address the differences between Skyrim and CE without mentioning Skyrim. They also need to admit that the game has had bugs and in a way introduce the mount system as an apologetic gesture and excite their audience.

I really want to make this new game my home, I love the game. It just needs a way to direct and inform the players about the infinite possibilities. In addressing the difference between Skyrim and CE it would be grand to keep the building aspect short. We all know the building is amazing and that presentaion should not leave the audience thinking that the whole entire game is PVP with survival aspects. I think the game is best in relating ideas to what many already know in other games such as Skyrim. What was once frustrating is no more.

Maybe include a mount for free if you purchased the Barbarian + West and East expansions? Entice people to come back and join in!

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lol, no they got that part covered pretty good, maybe even too good, 1.5 Million copies sold remember. Problem is not the amount of copies sold, the problem is the 1.4 Million misled consumers who are no longer playing and have abandoned the game already.

When did you ever get to play ‘the finished product’?

They should start going over the complaints on this forum first tbh.

I think it will require a stable base game with working mechanics and decent performance in order to entice anyone back in I’m afraid, mounts and pets are useless as long as they are based and built on broken mechanics.

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After having over 800 players visit my server since launch, listened and spoken to a good percentage of them, many will return.

The feedback I have been getting generally falls into two categories.

One group have played many hours in the game and feel they have exhausted it for now, they have gone away to play other games whilst more/new content gets introduced.

The other group simply hated the bugs and have put the game down to wait for it to get fixed. Many of these claim they monitor the forums and are just waiting.

I don’t think we’ll see the mad rush we had on launch day, but Im confident that 1000’s of players are just waiting for Funcom to sort out the mess.

General feedback about the game has always been great, players do love the game, they just don’t enjoy the bugs.

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I have also been looking at steam charts and have a few issues with it.

First off, 1,5M copies and not even 100,000 playing online seems strange, but I can accept 90% of buyers are playing sp offline. Hard to believe for a game that in my view aims for a multiplayer online game type, but ok lets accept that.

You can see two clear trends here. On early access release a huge boost, and on official release, huge boost as well, and after that… from 50k to 30k to 20k to 10k down to 7k, in months. If I were in Funcom’s shows, I’d be a bit worried with these figures to be honest. Following the “almost cut to half” monthly trend, you’ll have a few hundreds playing by the end of the year IN the same year of game release. Something to worry about, or not.

What I am wondering is how this steam chart work, what does it take into account?, only official servers? Both official and private? Only players that run the game through steam? (No idea if you can run it outsider of steam).

So, if the majority of players are playing SP, and I was a dev, I’d think I had miserably failed on the multiplayer aspect. And if I took the chart as, lets say accurate to a 90% degree, I would be really worried thinking where are the 1,4M players that bought my game. In both cases, not a good look at the result of my work.

The ones that can be really happy could be the money team at Funcom, and the marketing and advertising team. Those did a great job indeed, no wonder they are most likely thinking of a new project to come, while the devs at Funcom (which I have no doubt love their game and their work) struggle to keep up with the bug fixing and really want THEIR game to succeed and prosper.

On a side note, I am very inclined to think official servers are a pain por Funcom, they don’t want them, too many of them, no staff to even moderate them, they are just draining money from the company and at one point, sooner or later will be mostly shut down.

In my view, the future of this game lays in private servers with the always incredible contribution of modders, who will eventually solve or circle core game issues, and keep adding new content and functionality to the game.

I have played since early access, with outs and ins, and will keep playing as long as I keep finding awesome and nice players that love the game as it is. It’s the community that keeps me hooked, the rp I enjoy with them, and the content I find in mods. If I was to play sp or on official servers only, I wouldn’t have gone past one or two months after release. But then again, that’s just me, I’m sure others have their views.

Still I am unsure how accurate steam charts can be considered as a global Picture of the state of the figures of players actually playing the game. I mean… figures just don’t match, no matter how you look at them.

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I agree with you but 1.4 million purchases is not enough when there are over 3.4 million players on World Of Warcraft’s new expansion. They need to broaden their market and reach a wider audience. Give an incentive to invite their friends. Make the game free to play for 2 weeks time. And direct the players to view the administrative tab with all the cheat codes. People need a feel for the game.

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No, they need to fix game breaking bugs. Period.

No, people needs a working game. Without stuttering, without items teleporting through walls, without in-mesh unraidable bases. Simple as that.

They know it. I just hope they’re working on it for real this time, and not like before relase telling people “it’s fixed on our development version” for us to find out they where telling lies, or if they weren’t lies firing people who couldn’t merge properly the fixes with the stable branch.

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The steam counter is not counting the ‘online’ players, when you are playing SP you are also ‘ingame’ in steam. The numbers that steam does not reflect are the ones from PS4 and xbox, but judging by the posts in this forum I would say those platforms are even worse off.

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Well, first off its impossible to get any true numbers out of steamdb because the playerbase differ in terms of use.

There are also clear lines between other survival games that people just play a lot and then have a break until new features and bugs are fixed.

I had a look on both rust and ark, alltho they have many millions sold now, between 40-80k online right, but they have sold over 5-8 million copies!

So, when those games started the graph was just like in CE, started high wich means a lot of interrest, but slowly dropped down, then they implement some new feature and the playerbase pulled the numbers up again.
This happened for a few years actually untill the numbers got high and stayed high because the shere numbers of copies sold, and the time spendt polishing the game was enough to keep most of the players interrested.
Not saing those 2 games are polished, as they most certainly are not, but they have sold so many copies that the active playerbase have hit critical mass, and therefore word of mouth is enough to keep pulling the sales going forward.

That said, you can still see how the active playerbase drop over time, and then peak again if something ned gets fixed or an expansion is released.

This is the nature of these games, they will not be different, it`s us, the players that decide what we like at any given time, ill give an example:
I have played numerous roads to 60 now, on both vanilla and other private servers.
I think the road to 60 is the most fun, and i have stated i want a full exp pack with new levels and items/recipies in the works, because that is the only reason i have for playing less then before right now, there are not a lot to do after your castles are full of named thralls and you have no one to fight.

So i have a break, log on to trigger the decay system, talk to people and then log off again waiting for new stuff to go live.
This means the hours will drop a lot, and so will the active playerbase counted by steamdb do of course, this doesent mean that i wont come back the same instant new features go live, in fact i await them eagerly as id like any reason to play the CE universe yet another time.

The implememntation of the pet and new combat functions will for sure pull players back, if not all then quite a few i think.
I recon it will be good enough for release at the time because the players are testing and reporting a lot on testlive, so lets hope the things do work at the time of patch release.

After this funcom must monitor the ai after 2 weeks time to see if the thrall decay is helping server performance and most players experience better gameplay, if so then there is nothing more to do then give steam users a free weekend to test Conan exiles and see what they misss, as i am sure many builders and survival fans still havent tested because of the mixed rewievs so far.

Then you will see the exact same thing as in ark, rust etc, playerbase will stabelise but it takes time and are not done over night.

Look at the early numbers in the games i mentioned and you will see how alike the graphs are.

Me for one are looking forward to the time when new stuff are implemented in the game and we can enjoy the fantastic world Funcom have created here, sorry to say i just want more and more.

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Am I the only one who has bought 3 copies of the game for my personal use? :grin:

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I don’t imagine there are many in that camp lol
I too have paid for 4 copies, one for me and I gave 3 licences to family members.

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Every single game I’ve ever been a part of forums’ people site these same exact drop in player numbers like it means anything.

We’re on the 4th month of the title since official release. Of course the numbers drop. People have played the crap out of the game and have grown bored and moved to something else. Some people played it and decided it wasn’t for them back in May. And others simply wait til there’s some new content before coming back.

This happens with pretty much every title.

But Funcom should be worried?

Hell a game like Destiny 2 lost around 80% of its players in the first couple months, they released a major expansion yesterday and people had to queue to get on their servers.

Release new content and people come back, shocking, I know.

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15 active characters and counting :smiley:
It’s fun being a GM!

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Well, yeah, because there are many other games people like to play. No matter how much fun Conan is, it’s not like it’s the only game people play. That’s why many come back when new content is released.

I find it funny and curious how you came to that conclusion :stuck_out_tongue:

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Bullseye. This is me, for now. After putting over 500 hours in the game, I haven’t played for over two weeks now. I honestly don’t care one way or another about pets or new content. I simply want the existing content to work properly before I invest any further time into the game.

In the meantime, I watch these forums waiting for some news that the bugs have actually (honestly, for real, we mean it this time) been fixed. Once they have been, I will give it another go.

This. So very much this.

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I disagree. If all of the games you play offer “half” of the problems CE offers (or have the potential to offer) since its official release date as a complete game, I could try to agree to the thesis.

As we are not talking about a game that is working properly and satisfactorily, I believe that there are much more serious (and logical) factors involving the decrease in the number of players. In my opinion, the root of the problem is not a “natural or predictable decrease” in the number of players playing for “n months” (this seems at least naive to me), but rather because of the current state of the game since his birth. Incidentally, certainly no one needs to play that particular game for weeks to get to know some… “anomalies”… throughout their gameplay, much less consider that this is “tolerable” or adapt to it. When these problems are part of a game’s daily life, the natural tendency is to think that some people may have no interest (or patience or hope or etc.) to wait for consistent long-term improvements, if at all.

As for Destiny 2, I believe that Bungivision went to great lengths to betray and extort its own public for different factors. I do not intend to go into too much detail about this game, but its recent past is rotten. They have lost a considerable amount of public due to their own priorities, such as damn microtransactions / dlcs. Additional problems involve repetitive activities, poor story, little really additional content, little variety in the loot (at least in your standard game) and this goes on. A common criticism involved the fact that D2 simply recycled the contents of its predecessor (1.5) and sold the project as a new version for the full price. Even youtubers who once blindly supported the game began to take a more critical and cautious stance on what they were seeing. In that sense, the game itself contributed to its own losses and Warframe - which is free - thanked the “contribution” to receive part of its fans. In summary: it is better not to bring this example to contextualize the situation of Funcom. Oh, and even D2 collecting controversy, this game - unlike CE - managed to offer stability and “normality” to its players. Bugs, performance crashes or other similar adversities are not part of everyday of D2 (but other problems are).

Additional content may be excellent, but this will not distract players’ attention from more elemental problems. What is the point of attracting old / other players if they will have to taste old (and possibly new) problems? Fix the game first and then Funcom will have more freedom and peace of mind to invest in expansions without dealing with full-time maintenance.

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And some people thought I was crazy when I had 4 characters on a server. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I was okay with the bugs myself. Hell I have been playing since early EA. They turned a dedicated player and supporter into a rabid anti-fan due to there terrible customer service that is akin to being In a knife fight. I would share the details of this incident but Funcom likes to ban my account when I bring up there crappy service then send me PM laughing about it. Funny thing is most of these people are just undoing all the hard work of people creating the game whilst enjoying there “power” just a little too much. You can have it Funcom … And good riddance …