Arcos tells you to go north

[CodeMage]

Dude, if you’re gonna troll, at least do it with style.

[Croms_Faithful]

This was a rather disheartening post from someone I have had many wonderful conversations with in the past. It is my hope we can move beyond this to some more well reasoned ones.

@Kanza1

do you laugh thinking of it now ? ( your early excursion in the nameless city that is ) would you have this core memory of your first days if Mr Arcos told you to " avoid the north at all

This is little more than a false positive. And the way I interpreted the in game chain of events is I) irrelevant, and II) does not excuse poorly implemented, inaccurate dialogue.

@Kanza1

Should he then warn you that there is danger in between , like … I dunno the unamed city , or should he also warn you about the thugs and bandit leader in sepemeru , or to not hit anybody that seems nice over there to avoid being killed ?

I am sorry but could you please indicate where I have requested any of those things in my post!? No you cannot, because they are not there. That was a Strawman. Asking for Arcos’ written and spoken dialogue to be ammended to include the word “West” after the word “North” is not tantamount to handholding. This is a false dichotomy. Nor does it means I or anyone else would like a row of dancers and chests containing supplies dotted along a torch lit road. And to suggest it does is a false equivalency. Please refrain from trying to put words into my mouth.

@Kanza1

it’s a slipery slope that leads to games like ubisoft games where Arcos holds your hand and take you to sepemeru . not a cryptic barbarian survival world

The only ‘Slippery Slope’ here is the fallacy you used for expediency in you post. The interactable, non-hostile NPCs in Conan Exiles are in a messy state and need to be cleaned up. Here are some examples of it that I have pointed out previously here on the forum.

• I) Shamalla the Pirate Queen has written dialogue but no spoken dialogue.
• II) Harpagus the Hatcher has no lore, backstory, or written/spoken dialogue like other religion trainers do.
• III) Arcos the Wanderer tells us that there is a whole city of Exiles to the North, but it is to the North-West (Sepermeru).
• IV) I have requested that Conan’s model be reworked as in the lore he is described as being: ‘at least a head taller than most men’, but his NPC character is one of the shortest models available.
• V) I have requested that The Archivist be fixed to consistently spawn in The Archives, as opposed to on the roof above it.

Arcos the Wander is but one example of this. The first interactable NPC players encounter should not be marred by inaccurate dialogue and incorrect instructions, any more than the early ‘Survivor’ Journey Steps or button configuration in the Settings > Controls menu should contain errors.

[CodeMage]

@Croms_Faithful

Arcos the Wanderer tells us that there is a whole city of Exiles to the North, but it is to the North-West (Sepermeru).

Your other examples are all accurate, but this one misses the mark. Arcos tells you there’s “whole cities of Exiles up there” and he’s right: there’s Sepermeru, New Asagarth, and Mounds of the Dead.

Of course, none of these is due north in a straight line from the Sentinels where you find Arcos, but that’s splitting hairs. They’re all in the same general direction: north of the river.

That said, I don’t think that your suggestion to point the player north-west to Sepermeru is necessarily a bad one. It’s more accurate than just mentioning “whole cities […] up there” in the north, and Sepermeru happens to be one of the few non-hostile settlements.

But the problem with that, in the context of this thread, is that it wouldn’t do diddly squat to satisfy @Boulderkin’s complaint – unless he decides to move the goal posts yet again – because guess what you’re going to run into if you head north-west from the Sentinels? Danger. Lots and lots of danger.

“Say hello to the hyenas”, says @Boulderkin, and you ain’t gonna get to Sepermeru without running into hyenas. And they’re the least of your worries, because there’s the freaking Unnamed City in your path if you head directly north-west.

But maybe you’ll decide you don’t like the look of it and swing around. Good luck with that, because you’ll either end up as a succulent Darfari meal or the rocknoses will stomp you into the ground.

Did I mention big-ass snakes that you’ll run into if you try to swing around the northern side of the Unnamed City?

I could go on, but you’re an experienced player and you know what I’m saying: there’s no way to avoid danger if you go haring off in any direction away from the newbie river just because you talked to an NPC.

[Tweed]

Honestly? Over 120 messages just because one player has a problem with flavor text of a meaningless npc and is surprised that a survival game (even as easy as it has become today) can surprise with something difficult in a given biome (north). With so many pressing problems this game currently has, it’s really a waste of time to dwell on something so trivial.

ps. I wonder if the next post will analyze statements made from “magic” stones or other “phenomenons”, like the fact, that you cannot “buy” another advice from Gilzan, since he only has the first, free of charge one.

[Kanza1]

@Croms_Faithful

This was a rather disheartening post from someone I have had many wonderful conversations with in the past. It is my hope we can move beyond this to some more well reasoned ones.

I’m sorry if you read my post in the wrong way , those

@Kanza1

Alright , maybe at that time you didn’t find it fun , yet you still have the memory of it , do you laugh thinking of it now ? ( your early excursion in the nameless city that is ) would you have this core memory of your first days if Mr Arcos told you to " avoid the north at all costs and stay all your game time in noob river" ?

were genuine questions to you that I expected an answer to as I was interested in your experience as a “forum friend” and not me trying to put words in your mouth , I understand perfectly that some dialogues could get improvements and I am completely for the ones you describe there

@Croms_Faithful

• I) Shamalla the Pirate Queen has written dialogue but no spoken dialogue.
• II) Harpagus the Hatcher has no lore, backstory, or written/spoken dialogue like other religion trainers do.
• III) Arcos the Wanderer tells us that there is a whole city of Exiles to the North, but it is to the North-West (Sepermeru).
• IV) I have requested that Conan’s model be reworked as in the lore he is described as being: ‘at least a head taller than most men’, but his NPC character is one of the shortest models available.
• V) I have requested that The Archivist be fixed to consistently spawn in The Archives, as opposed to on the roof above it.

I am totaly for those changes , but the topic wasn’t created in this aim and I quote :

@Boulderkin

What I was told pissed me off, DO NOT GO NORTH!, for the sake of your sanity!

P.S. Do not go north.

and as said previously :

@Kanza1

and secondly north is quite vague , if you happen to be in the dregs region and go north you might cross sepemeru , which is quite better than the other cities in terms of hospitality , but even the summoning place is north enough to be considered north of the noob river the difficulty didn’t increase dramatically , but a city of darfari ( like the one before the dregs ) is still quite deadly for a new player.

I’m not against the Idea of adding the “west” after north to direct you more precisely to sepemeru , but in the aim of this thread it leads you to cross the unamed city hence my questions

@Kanza1

Should he then warn you that there is danger in between , like … I dunno the unamed city , or should he also warn you about the thugs and bandit leader in sepemeru , or to not hit anybody that seems nice over there to avoid being killed ?

it was not to put words in your mouth at all , it was genuine questions as the aim of this thread is to not send folks in the north at all (west / east ) or if so to warn you that there is danger and that you should prepare , to that I say no hence my games holding your hand references !! . (that said maybe you should try to read the thread in it’s entirety to grasp my tone better (just a suggestion though as it may be a waste of your time ))

hope that it made things clearer as english is my second language.

[Lucidique]

I always interpreted the ‘go north’ advice as ‘go immediately north to find other people’ as in people on the other side of the river and to keep pushing north for the whole game. Not ‘Go to the Unnamed City. Go directly to the Unnamed City. Do not pass GO. Do not collect 200 Crom Coins’. When I first started playing, I treated the game map the same way I treated Vvardenfell in Elder Scrolls III Morrowind.

[Kapoteeni]

@Boulderkin

Pretty specific, wouldn’t you agree?

No, I would not, for the reason I already explained in the post to which you replied. But unlike you, I’m not motivated enough to keep repeating myself.

You even quote the whole context, but keep fixating on that one sentence, with a stubborn refusal to understand or acknowledge the rest of the context. You have picked a very fitting nickname, because communicating with you feels like talking to a stone wall.

[Oduda]

@Tweed

Honestly? Over 120 messages just because one player has a problem with flavor text of a meaningless npc and is surprised that a survival game

It would be more accurate to say:

Over 120 post of one player refusing to ever see reason, listen to anything anyone says, speak civilly towards anyone who post on their thread and generally just acting like an **********. Like he does in all of his threads. So you really do need to literally beat things into his rocknose thick skull for him to … I will not say see reason but at least move the goalpost elsewhere.

[mynotaure]

@Boulderkin

Ok, so you think Arcos doesn’t give you bad advice; noted

No I do not think that it gives bad advice because as a precedent of it I am familiar with survival games / rpg / adventure action which all works in an identical way = the more you move away from the starting area, the more the difficulty increases .
The survival games are essentially games for an audience who knows these mechanics, the players of survival games know how to proceed even if the games different by their univer or gameplay.
In addition, at no time does the NPC says : Go to the north, right now, a mantant, he said just : you should go to the north, it does not have an imperative order, just a subject. And then even though you interpret this as an imperative /compulsory order, this is your choice, did not consider that all the players of the same .
You complain because you have stubborn to want to recover your business in a very strong NPC camp, nobody asked you to do that, the NPCs are very strong for you: Take experience, equip yourself and come back Later, this game is a long learning or (in theory) after you with your failure/error. Like all survival games / RPG and adventure action.

[Tweed]

I don’t know him nor his previous “achievements” on the forum, so I just expressed my opinion. However, considering that he is a potential troll, I am even more surprised that experienced forum participants enter into such long discussions with him.

[ikya]

O_o

[CodeMage]

@Tweed

I am even more surprised that experienced forum participants enter into such long discussions with him.

Experience doesn’t necessarily mean we can resist how our brains are wired

[Oduda]

Sorry, you had replied right as I was leaving to go to work so I was unable to respond. But from what I have observed, and take that for what it is worth, I do not think that he comes here with the explicit intention to troll. For example, he did start a thread to express a concern over the bloodletter shield, which was a valid concern (and one that was recently fixed!). He even provided screen shots showing examples of how the bloodletter shield was not functioning properly, which is valuable. How he responded to, pretty much every single person who responded to that thread on the other hand, was less than valuable.

So from my observations he seems to have the opinion that Funcom can fix things as quickly as you or I can read about them on the forum and thus if supremely frustrated when things are in fact not fixed already. He also appears to think that funcom has teams of people who spend 24/7 scouring the game searching for every little thing that might be slightly off and when they find such things have the ability to fix said things right then and there, so that when he finds such things he becomes supremely frustrated by their lack of care and or dedication to doing their job. Also, he seems to think that anyone who has an opinion which differs from his own is somehow attacking him or his opinion (even if they are actually attempting to provide him with helpful advise) and so he becomes hostile towards them and or dismissive of them.

But again, this is simply my observations. I have no actual incite as to their motives or thoughts.

[Boulderkin]

Ok, to everyone:

I do not pretend to be right, as I have stated countless times.

Rebutting someone else’s opinion doesn’t mean the interlocutor is in the wrong and I am attacking him/her, it simply means his/her argument, to me, is not convincing.

I have apologized when I made mistakes and recognized when I was wrong.

I have never insulted or been rude to folk; tho I do respond with saltiness when confronted with hostility.

I have stopped following this thread a while back, this simple argument: Arcos gives you bad advice, is concise and direct. To you, it may be the best advice. You might think I am wrong, and I’m cool with that. I don’t know where you get this “troll that attacks every one that dissents with him” thing, but this is the suggestions section of the forum. I made a suggestion, I defended my point to exhaustion, which I believe it is in the right, and that is that /shrug. Turns out there is an ignore function in the chat. If the big bad monster is bothering you, it is very liberating to simply put the troll in the ignore list. I just learned about it in this thread and I very much recommend it, it feels, like I said, liberating.

So /wave to you all have fun and be well. Say hi to the hyenas for me =]

[ikya]

ok mr passive aggressive

[MarcosC]

Dialogues with NPCs are atrocious in this game. It took me a couple of days in my 1st playthrough to stop giving 2 fks about anything they say.
Players gain experience fast. You can survive anywhere in this game.
The first thing I do when I leave the desert is killing a few exiles to get a falcata (sooner or later it drops) and then I go to stargazer’s crest to steal cimnerian armor. Then, I get a legendary weapon from the UC or demon spider (bc the chest is right there) or the dregs and I am all set. In a couple of hours you get epic armor and a legendary weapon.
New players don’t stay new for long.

[Ciero9]

[quote=“Boulderkin, post:134, topic:271335”]this simple argument: Arcos gives you bad advice, is concise and direct.
[/quote]

I disagree. I think Arcos is not giving advice to begin with. Simply reading what he says is like reading any forum and trying to pick up on a person’s nonverbal communication, be it confusion, sarcasm, or otherwise. If you hear the way he says “you should go north,” it seems clear he’s just talking about what you would see if you went north, entire cities of exiles.

@Boulderkin You also mentioned that his reference to “cities of exiles” seemed to imply the starting area might be there or that they might like social hubs with many other players. That begs the question as to why the game would place you naked in a difficult part of the map out of which you should travel to a safer area. The only answer I can think is that it doesn’t. As @Mynotaure pointed out, almost all RPG style games place you in the easiest starting point of the game. I can think of an exception, but it dates back to an RPG from 1988. Further, in a single-player game, there are no other players so thinking there is a hub to go for socialization doesn’t make sense either since the dialog is for all play styles.