I have a routine for testing builds and it includes creating a new Character. While speed-leveling is exactly the same, many of the early-game tools that made leveling OP are now removed. Great job, Funcom is listening. You can easily get to 18-19 in 23 minutes, but after that the climb is steeper as Legendary and OP tools/weps have been removed from Kurak’s Cave and Asura’s Exiled Den.
Second, the pike has a new and very pleasant weight to it. It is intriguing and also a little satisfying to use it now. However, like all pokers, I quickly figured out Left Click, Right Click, Roll Away is more than enough to peck most opponents to crippled frickin death.
The Stygian Skydrop Event is working again in Sepermeru, and it’s magnificent. No spoilers, but try this with your favorite steel pike and 25 levels. It’s exciting and the payoff is quite tasty.
Creatures turn more naturally now, and while you can still make a croc chase its tail it looks more realistic. Overall, even human enemies have smoother, natural motion. The shalebacks feel like they lock on Robocop style. Canines move smoothly, so do Rocknoses. The Cimmerians laying down in a field of greenery is such a nice addition. Same with the saucy Nords.
Would you please share your observations? I’m interested to test out these new systems and events, but please be respectful of spoilers, at least on my behalf.
My own installation was from scratch as I had to put the Beta onto my gaming SSD vs my C drive.
Even with the rebalance and removal in Kurak and Asura, I was able to get to 60 in a pleasant 2.5 hours using Official server settings, although that was helped considerably by a bracelet return to Kurak that earned me an Acheronian Pick.
I gotta say, the PvE elements are getting pretty fun. Jungle Monstrosity plus Blood Rocknose gave me a run for my aloe.
On my x0.1 XP run, I had that encounter in Sepermeru, too. Was one of the most epic experiences I ever had in Conan. In the end, a blood moon beast spawned - much too powerful for me or my thralls. Curiously, though, the citizens of Sepermeru were hostile to the beast, so I dragged it through the whole town. Wave of wave of Stygians threw themselves at the beast. In the end, my impromptu militia prevailed. Beast didn’t drop anything iirc, but the event was worth it.
Upon looking into this lackluster update I was quickly reminded of the decline this game is on. Deep down I always hope for the best for a game I once loved but with every new chapter/age that comes along the hope flutters away.
Especially the Smoke & Mirrors tactic Funcom has begun to use. They use “fluff” to sell their updates as if it took a lot of work and time. Don’t be fooled. These updates are a joke and an excuse to bring another battle pass and bazaar items to the game to make more profit. Once upon a time Conan Exiles was sold to us as a survival game, it has veered off that course and hits us with a constant reminder their direction of where to take their own game has been lost.
You can pretty much tell they succesfully removed all the good aspects in PVP when 100 of my conan friends on steam now playing something else Including myself. Sad but, this has been their route for a very long time.
I take that as a “no” on the upcoming Battle Pass.
My friends list is considerably shorter, but the majority are former Conan Exiles players. Only about 3-4 regulars are out there, displaying to friends at least that they are playing CE.
There has been exactly zero curiosity from any of them about the upcoming Beta. The ones who are playing say simply “whatever will be” and the others are as you said, playing other PvP games.
I came to Conan from GTA Online as I’ve regularly said. I have played on high-pop Officials in days past, and have more recently taken to the playstyle of descending on a server, finding injustice and scroojing with it, lodging a foothold and becoming a fly in the ointment. Ultimately though, either style ended up with my growing fat and old with castles and anything I wanted.
Personally I don’t know what the future holds, but Conan is better when it’s played together. PvP is a valid and important gamestyle, and Official PvP as the game maker intended should be a showcase of excellent playing and building. But it’s far from it.
Reasonable concerns all around.
This one does enjoy PvP in this game, but feels it has been painfully neglected, especially in the “Age of War”.
Disappointment is the natural child of unrealistic expectation.
The core chassis, the game itself has it within itself to be a solid PvP experience, but many updates feel as tho they are somewhat distancing from that, ostensibly to focus on PvE.
While this one does not feel the two need (nor even should) be mutually exclusive, that almost seems what we are getting.
PvP is an afterthought in this game.
It’s far easier to make a half-backed system with no depth and drop some fomo and cosmetics on top than try to balance the clusterf*ck of pvp this game has right now.
There’s no pvp related thought put into anything.
Just take a look at Battering Ram. Instead of making it a non attribute weapon with set amount dmg and maybe even tiers to justify higher dmg from harder-to-find/craft rams they made its an str weapon.
Means armor, perks/attributes, buff pots etc. buff one swing dmg to a ridiculous amount of damage especially when it’s so easy to mass farm them.
At this point i start to think it’s intentional from game design to introduce game breaking mechanism that will wreck all at each age…
i mean the lightstorm that has wrecked all t3 bases on all pvp server when age of sorcery released, then the dupe of bomb with fiber that wreckied all pvp servers, and now the battering ram that you can acquire at any level and that is able to break any t3 even faster than bombs… command…
…or the game is just changing as they decide what areas they want to add or improve. Games that are under regular development do change over their lifetime, sometime in directions that differ from their original release. It’s happened before to me where a game changed enough that I no longer found it fun. Sounds like that’s where you are now. It’s unfortunate for you, but luckily there are many other games out there. Seems like it would be a better use of your time to spend it on a game you actually enjoy.
Please don’t take this as a silly reduction to absurdity, because it’s more adequately a thought experiment from my standpoint: can we at this point deduce that Funcom is quite against the idea of having big, flouncy bases on PvP? It seems to me they want us to be more roamy. It was Sir Dave’s quite functional PvP base that reminded me riches aren’t everything … maybe Funcom is guiding us into a purge lifestyle.
You earn it, you build it, fight for it, then ultimately lose it.
Yielding the flip-side:
You steal it, hide only what you need to come back, build garbage and act like a nuisance.
What sort of culture are they expecting will emerge from even long-timers who refuse to build any real functional bases anymore?
I have had a lot of time with this TestLive so far, and PvE elements are certainly looking very, very attractive. As for PvP, I’ve had a few lasting engagements, and I just really don’t know what to say without being branded as a white knight, but something feels different with combat.
To delve into it I’ve been playing Batman: Arkham Asylum where the first strike in the engagement feels like Batman is dragging a grand piano, with subsequent strikes achieving full and satisfying fluidity.
I’m not saying we’re there yet, but these recent changes give a lot more weight and gravity to the everyday fight, and a lot of options to stop someone from fleeing. It feels like a direction.
seriously, you can find outside in a cart without having to fight (and to deal with npc will never be a fight on a pvp server), and the battering ram can go up to 20k damage in one swing… i can go through a layer of 10 t3 foundations without problem, that the equivalent of 150-200 bomb but it goes even faster.
I mean seriously, in early access weapons were able to damage building untill t2, it was something like 200hp damage per swing, and they have removed it a bit after release for a reason… but it was another team that was driving the project. but now no after the one shot lightning storm that at least was requiring to unlock sorcery, the battering ram that in 4 swing open a base that you can have for free.
you need to have base able to protect a bit your assets (=that require a bit of time to be open or to be find and open) otherwise there is simply no way to survive.
and i do a bet with you, they will release it like that, and one month after they will nerf it to death as they did with lightstorm.
anyways all official pvp servers are already dead because of errors already done, and another bet, i m sure all private servers will ban the use of battering ram as they did with the sorcery for the raiding system.
I view the battering ram as a good thing. But then, I live the hobo lifestyle on pvp servers - keep only what I can carry; never stay in one place for too long. The ram is a welcome equalizer against folks who squat in their castles. Knock, knock…
And that exactly the problem, because it give no chance to somebody that you loot to be able to get back what you robbed, it’s just you having fun to wreck someone in a not fair gameplay style and no grint gameplay (in which the developer force us to play),but good luck to find castle as 95% of pvp server are empty. oh yes you can find the castle build by funcom i was joking few years ago when i was saying on forum that funcom will have to start to build base to be raided in seeing the ban/suspensions policy of zendesk of legit player on pvp server for simply building a base able to resist a few minutes to a player raid,. but well… think they will have to build more than one castle.
And 10 on 1 fights are or clans having already built up and leveled 60 thralls are combating clans that arrived yesterday? Just throwing out there that it’s always been unfair and has been just taken as part of the game.
What do you think about silent raiding? Let’s say dogs (dagon’s embrace). The others are fighting down and 1 guy sneaked up with a bat and is silently ramming the base from behind.
A bomb you would usually hear when fighting at the bottom. But a battering ram?
Including myself. Sad but, this has been their route for a very long time.