A Polite Expression of Disenchantment

[Croms_Faithful]

@Community
First I would say I hope you all enjoyed your holidays and are settling back into work. Seeing as though the January 17th extension for the Grave Matters event has come and passed without a fix, I have decided to register some polite feedback and discontent for our CMs, in the hope that this information will be passed onto Dennis and the devs. I am sorry to be negative, but the Grave Matters event was a brilliant concept which was poorly executed. The problem was that it was released with a number of spawning issues. These problems were better elaborated upon in this thread by DanQuixote. But the heavily summarised version of it is that for a number of Exiles, yes myself included, we found the event simply would not start…period, and to this day it still has not. While for other members the event worked a small number of times usually around 2-4, then stopped spawning permanently thereafter. [*edited] For console players, despite providing optimal feedback both here on the forum and also on social media, to date there still has not been a fix for the Playstation or Xbox. So I would ask the question; do you feel that this was a good, and moreover a fair outcome for console players and for singleplayers? Because I would suggest that it was not. Furthermore, this kind of course of action will only likely feed the perceptions that some console players have that their needs are secondary to those of PC players.

With broader consideration in mind I cannot help but feel that if we are going to hold future community events, then all players should be able to access them, and if something is preventing this on a technical level, then this should be corrected. Console players and Singleplayers are a demographic of loyal and passionate individuals who love and support Conan Exiles as much as everyone else. All we ask is to be able to participate in and be a part of these community events like all other members. I would respectfully ask that these points be taken into consideration when planning future events. Thankyou for listening, and I hope you continue to grow this amazing game.

[DelRioServerMaster]

Agreed on all points.

[TeleTesselator]

@Croms_Faithful

the Grave Matters event was a brilliant concept

The only point I disagreed with. It seemed vary small. I don’t want to say small minded but maybe small-idea’d if there is such a word. And the loot reflected this which was even more useless than what is found in common chests. After learning what the loot was I never even went to the locations if I was playing by myself. I didn’t see the point. So, to me, yeah, not really “brilliant”.

[Multigun]

@Croms_Faithful

This issue I am led to believe was on PC too initially, but was patched soon thereafter with an update

What PC patch, is that? If you’re going to dive right into the typical “Funcom doesn’t care about consoles”, at least link this so called patch that came out only for PC.

As I discussed in the many threads that were produced as a result of the Grave Matter event, the one, and only “patch” that PC has received since 2.7 was for the launcher and absolutely nothing to do with the actual event.

[Croms_Faithful]

@DelRioServerMaster

Agreed on all points.

Thankyou both kindly and humbly for your support DelRioServerMaster. All I wanted was an opportunity to PLAY the event for myself and those who could not, and the opportunity to do so with any future ones. Nothing more.

[Croms_Faithful]

@Multigun

If you’re going to dive right into the typical “Funcom doesn’t care about consoles”

Could you please indicate where exactly in my post I said “Funcom doesn’t care about consoles” which you so falsely and dishonestly inferred in you reply, and which you even put in direct quotation marks, further misrepresenting my thread and my intentions!? No you can’t because it is not damn well there! Let me show you what I did say:

@Croms_Faithful

this kind of course of action will only likely feed the perceptions that some console players have that their needs are secondary to those of PC players

So I did not say that Funcom doesn’t care about consoles or for that matter that I personally feel that way! In fact I find it to be utterly untrue. But sadly that erroneous perception does exists among a subset of the community, and if you doubt that then take a look around the Playstation or Xbox threads. Now what I also did say, and the whole purpose of the thread was this:

@Croms_Faithful

to date there still has not been a fix for the Playstation or Xbox. So I would ask the question; do you feel that this was a good, and moreover a fair outcome for console players

@Croms_Faithful

I cannot help but feel that if we are going to hold future community events, then all players should be able to access them, and if something is preventing this on a technical level, then this should be corrected

All I did was constructively express disappointment that myself and others were not able to enjoy the event like the rest of the playerbase, and that if there are any issues with future ones, they be fixed before they are concluded.

@Multigun

as a result of the Grave Matter event, the one, and only “patch” that PC has received since 2.7 was for the launcher and absolutely nothing to do with the actual event.

You know what, I could have sworn that at some point previously among all of the feedback I saw a post by a PC player stating that the issue had been fixed for them. It is possible that I have remembered incorrectly or got mixed up, I am not perfect and I do not have hyperthymesia. And if I am remembering incorrectly, then I am happy to wear that and ammend my post accordingly. But that doesn’t make it cool for you to blatantly lie about my post or its intentions. I don’t do it to you, so I would appreciate it if you afforded me the same level of courtesy and didn’t do it to me.

[Cojonan]

I was able to play the event without any problem, I was able to complete the armor, but it was a disappointment, a light survival armor that does not exceed that of Asura and less gives some special bonus, I told myself this cannot be everything, try to disassemble it, to use the investigation table to see if there was something special, I only found a great disappointment. It is the first so I hope they have more creativity and not continue to manage the story of Conan. Lately I have felt that they implement meaningless changes and deteriorate the game. For example, the healing system, now that so many recipes for food and drinks are worth it, only a few are worth anything. When will the hot pitch cauldron work for something? the arrows, their effects of cold, heat, bleeding. Removing the cut off of weapon animations killed the player’s agility, now any dumb fight. seeing life bars from a distance, I kill stealth. It’s okay for you to see your friend and slave, but only see the bar of the enemy you hit. They are making the game for dummies and killing all the agility and strategy of the game. on the other hand, the control of bans and bases for large constructions, I consider that a clan should not be penalized for its base and defense unless it breaks the bosses or dungeons, if the clan plays it will defend it, if the clan does not play the base will It will demolish by default and if the clan only plays few, it will not withstand the access of an enemy clan. It’s the Conan stage. there are many more things but I’m already getting long but I feel that they are dividing the community, several clan friends and allies have stopped playing.

[Multigun]

@Croms_Faithful

And if I am remembering incorrectly, then I am happy to wear that and ammend my post accordingly.

Take a look at the PC patch note section. If there was a patch, it would be there.

@Croms_Faithful

blatantly lie about my post or its intentions

Not sure where it is that I’m “lying.” You felt that console players were disrespected. And said feelings hinged on the argument that PC received an exclusive patch that it never got. Further, for every person on PS4/PS5 who reported issues, there was at least 1 other across the various social media platforms (forums, twitter, discord, etc) that said it was fine for them on the same platform.

You weren’t able to experience the event, that sucks, I’ll give you that. If there was anything else I could have done in my hours and hours of repeated testing to show where it broke, I would have helped in whatever ways I could (I never once got it to break). However, console players were not blatantly ignored, and PC wasn’t given an exclusive patch.

[Tephra]

It is my speculation that the entire purpose of the event was actually just a test.

I reported an exploit with the event that allowed you to repeatedly loot the same chest on day 1 and they never fixed that either.

Why?

It is my current belief that they didn’t try fixing anything for two reasons. The more obvious one is that the majority of the event took place during their holiday break and they didn’t have the manpower available.

But the second one is potentially more important - because the event itself was irrelevant, the results of the test were what mattered. If I am correct, they wanted to leave the event alone to keep collecting test results and fixing it was never a priority.

They said the reward loot is going to be made available by some other means, so the only thing lost by not getting to play the event is not getting to play the event.

[DelRioServerMaster]

To be frank, I concur with the people who say you didn’t miss much. The event was rather small, didn’t offer much, and was repetitive after the first few tries. Next time, they need to go bigger and implement something with some more impact. Conceptually, I’d like to see just how big they can go with the event system.

BUT.

Everybody, no matter what, should get the chance to experience content that isn’t gated behind skill or time investment walls. I don’t care that the loot sucked or the fights were more of the same. What I care about is that something that was supposed to be accessible was not to a handful of players and what’s worse is that it was time-sensitive. Grave Matters was the ONLY reason I scrambled to get my servers back online after my roof busted because I would’ve felt terrible if my players were forced to miss out because of me (hence my inquiries to FC about extending or restarting the event at will). And overall, I appreciate that FC is trying to wriggle out as much from the game’s abilities as possible because it gives me hope that my pipe-dream of sorcery will be realized eventually beyond a simple “it’s not feasible” tagline. My digression aside, I agree with your core argument: If some players are being denied a chance at participation on an open-invitation event, fix it immediately or assure them a way to experience it at their leisure at a later time.

[Barnes]

@DelRioServerMaster

BUT.

Such a big but.

I will add my friend Crom represents the heart and soul of the regular PS Player: keep to yourself, play the game as intended, want to complete every last thing. He should be given special clearance for that last bit, especially if he’s a Completionist.

He’s already been denied the Twitch DLC, which I proved expressly for this purpose via my 5G cell upgrade was doable but definitely gated. This sort of thing should be fixed, post haste. If he’s experiencing it, so many others are as well.

[biggcane55]

@Barnes

Such a big but.

Sir Mix A Lot agrees…

[Tephra]

@TeleTesselator

Who would think full time health bars were a good idea?

They are great in PvE.

I think stealth in this game needs some major attention though, both for PvE and PvP.

@Cojonan

only see the bar of the enemy you hit.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say you should have to attack someone for their health bar to show, I think having your reticle pass over them should cause their stealth to be broken and reveal their health bar.

Then, perhaps if they can avoid you being able to aim your reticle at them for something like ten consecutive seconds, then crouch, they will re-enter stealth mode and their health bar will be invisible to you until you can pinpoint them again.

I don’t know how difficult that would be to design, probably more than just reveal on hit, but I think it would be a better system.

[TeleTesselator]

@Tephra

They are great in PvE.

Why?

They just get in the way. I think it’s dumb. Every game developer/designer who has developed a popular game thinks it’s dumb. Nah, not buying it…

[Pugilist]

@Croms_Faithful

the Grave Matters event

I am tangenting here, so disregard my response if it is not salient to the issue.

Plus, I wanted to use the word, “salient” in a sentence today and now I have, twice.

I found the Grave Matters event underwhelming, but I believe it was a pilot for the event system and, as such, understanding that, from a programming background, a real-world test of the event system mechanics was critical to future success and expansion of the system.

In a perfect world, there would be a Dev environment and Test environment and UAT environment before anything hit Prod. But, that is rare in the corporate world where inadvertent bugs and downtime have severe financial repercussions so an expectation of perfection is both unrealistic and counterproductive.

An expectation of workable, is not.

My speculation is that a lot was learned from the Grave Matters rollout that will be used to expand on the system in the future, including consoles, or will be the test case that the system is unworkable along the lines of original intent and must be rescaled/reworked or scrapped.

This is my IT/Programming/Project Management experience talking, and I appreciate the effort to continue to improve the product.

From a consumer aspect, it was underwhelming and, for the last 3 weeks of the event, my RNG saw zero placable drops, but I now have enough gloves to outfit an army. A nakkid army, seeing as I only got gloves in the last three weeks of the event, but hey, that’s what T1 fighters are for.

In my mind, the event was too long for the amount of content. Sure, I appreciated being able to stand on a stone wall at the Mounds and wait for my Cim Berserker or Dalinsia to level to 20 in a matter of hours as I pelted them with healing arrows, but that was me taking advantage of the mechanic and not what I would call engaging.

All-in-all, I would give the effort a solid B for the first 7 days. After that, I lost interest.

[DelRioServerMaster]

@Pugilist

I found the Grave Matters event underwhelming, but I believe it was a pilot for the event system

This is exactly what I understood the event to be. It just sucks that not everybody got to participate (which I guess goes into factoring how to iron out the kinks).

[JJDancer]

Once I captured both NPCs and put them on the wheel, received the very underwelming armor set and furniture, I used the event as you did, to level up some of my followers very quickly.

The whole time I was standing on that rock, as my follower battled endless skeletons and I used healing arrows, I could only think of one word the whole time, “Cheese”, and what an evil and unskilled person I was for shooting arrows from a perch, using only my right mouse button, instead of going full tank, showing my mad “skilz” by using my right mouse button and my F3 key, where I keep my healing potions. (and the occasional G6 key to block )
I felt as if I was violating one of the biggest unwritten gaming rules ever. Then I realized that unwritten rule was established mostly by 16 year old geeks with bad acne and I laughed.

[Barnes]

@Pugilist

Plus, I wanted to use the word, “salient” in a sentence today and now I have, twice.

@DelRioServerMaster

This is exactly what I understood the event to be. It just sucks that not everybody got to participate (which I guess goes into factoring how to iron out the kinks).

@JJDancer

“Cheese”

I feel that, no matter what I achieve in gaming, here I’m at least in very good company. I hope you each know that everything I think I find is made so much more wholesome knowing you’re “with it.” And that you’re probably bored by my “discovery.”

[Pugilist]

@JJDancer

Then I realized that unwritten rule was established mostly by 16 year old geeks with bad acne and I laughed.

Ah yes, the gatekeepers.

[Dana]

Thank you so much for providing us with your feedback on the Grave Matters event.

We’ve passed this over to the rest of the team as they are working on future events and want to improve those as much as possible.