Can we please get armor stands

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
#23

Okay it took me a bit but Im back now. It looks as though some of my fellow members have already made several key points which I was going to make myself. As such I will reinforce and strengthen these points where relevant, then contribute some further points and potential solutions thereafter.

PART 1: PRESENTING A CRITICAL DISCOURSE

@CodeMage and @CurtChan this is a key point which I had intended to raise myself. If people really want to show off 50 suits of armor then make no mistake they will simply use thralls. So as CodeMage said what is worse for performance; 100 thralls or 100 armor stands? Let us examine this. Both have an inventory and are also a visual display for armor. However Thralls are also an inventory and display for weapons, have mobilty functions, attack animations and commands to process, solicit responsees (ie-agro) from nearby NPC mobs, in addition to changing numerical values in their health and levelling bars further compounded by food in their inventories for healing, and damage output and values. The game must also remember and display their own unique appearance from the default model of ‘old white guy’ (no virtue intended) to say caramel skinned Lianeele complete with dance animations and erm…physics. now multiply that factor by say 50 to 100 thralls in a base. By comparison, an Armor Stand would have no AI, remain static at all times with no movement capabilities, and all look identical without armor added (unlike thralls).

Thus I ask you, which would be worse for server performance; 100 thralls or 100 armor stands? Sure you could argue that this would be just substituting one bad outcome for somewhat better outcome. But that is what harm miinimisation principles are based upon! If a person utterly refuses to quit smoking, then it is better he goes from smoking 30 cigars a day to 30 4mg cigarettes a day.

My point exactly, thankyou CodeMage.

If memory serves me correctly the thrall limit was also created due to the implementation of the Thrall Levelling System which would see them become significantly stronger; it became a quality to substitute for quantity as balancing measure. But I digress.

That is a very reductionst mindset Testerle. By that logic we shouldnt add the upcoming hands-free light source, or add additional biomes to the Isle of Siptah, or create additional crafting stations, or more placeables as they would negatively impact server performance. And the same could be said of vrtually any upcoming feature. You are catastrophising. Again…almost anything has the potential to negatively impact upon server performance. And much like real life we cant live in fear of what might happen, or wrap our children in cotton wool and prevent them from going outside because they might hurt themselves! At some point in our lives we must be responsible for our own actions, and part of that responsibility for individuals includes making a conscious decision to exhibit self-control in their singleplayer or private server game, or move from an official server to a moderated private server (which record numbers of users are now finally seeing the benefits in) if someone is making their playing experience unenjoyable.

2 Likes
#24

I broke my contribution down into two posts so that ot was not a single monstrous wall of text.

PART 2: SUGGESTING POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS

Other members such as @CodeMage have already offered potential solutions to the issue, and I shall now present three other ones of my own.

1) Have Armor Display Stands count towards the Follower Limit.

Tag the hypothetical Armor Display Stands as a follower, even though they would not be of course, and have them count towards the follower limit. In the event that the limit were ever actually introduced, I personally would happily drop back to 90 thralls and pets if it meant I could have 10 armor stands. Do not ruminate over the numbers here as they are only examples, instead focus on the concept. I would also add that as armor stands dont have AI or other functionality outside of their intended purpose, server performance may actually improve somewhat for each thrall substituted with an armor stand.

2) Make them only accessible via the Admin Panel.

I have suggested this one before and it was not especially well recieved, however I shall restate it for the purpose of compiling a complete list here. Add the Armor Stands to the Admin Panel, then users on private servers and singleplayers can still use and enjoy them. While people on officials would miss out, it comes back to agency. If people on officials still want to use them, they may start a secondary singleplayer game or make the move to a private server. (least desirable solution, but just putting it out there)

3) Make Armor Display Statues instead:

A different concept I devised entirely, and I shall do my best to explain it here so bear with me. An Armor Display Stand is a storage device of sorts which holds and displays 5 pieces of changeable armor. An Armor Display Statue however is different. Instead visualise either the ‘statue of Ymir’ crafted at his altar, or the ’ Khitan Legionary’, or ‘statue of conan’ from the Riddles of Steel DLC. Now conceptualuse a stone, wooden or steel statue the size if a thrall which has a matching set of base armor as its model (for example, a full matching set of standard heavy armor, or a full set of vanir fur armor), however the 5 armor pieces are purely cosmetic and not interchangeable. So hence the Armor Display ‘Statue’ is in the sense a placeable (ie-does not hold items or alter its appearance) just like the aforementioned Ymir and Conan ones, and as such has no inventory or ‘moving’ parts. While I am sure this would destroy many peoples dreams of combining a set of fluorescent yellow coarse leggings with a bright pink silent leigon pauldron, this may or may not be as good as it gets. And I would sooner take matching sets on a Statue than nothing at all. Just some food for thought. I am happy to further explain this concept if it is still a bit unclear to anyone.

4) Already covered. See CodeMages great idea listed above in Post no.17. :wink:

3 Likes
#25

No, it’s more like an exchange. Add one OR the other. Both will not work. That is the main challenge with all additions. What is the price for the addition and can you pay it from your budget (and we have no idea what else is on funcom’s shopping list), and this is something funcom has communicated several times: too expensive for the little added value. Unlike the mods, the budget for funcom is that of the consoles and not the PC one

And otherwise i’d rather stick to talking about a game. analogies to real life are silly, completely out of place and will never really work

#26

Well I have no idea how these things work but allow me one silly question please. The pcs can handle mods but they cannot handle an armor stand or a mannequin? I am sorry, but all this time I find excuses very well performed about this issue. The last 13 months to many players suggest this, but always a very well performed answer is coming just to destroy the post. I believe that you and @Croms_Faithful that maybe you are here from day one might seen this suggestion 50 times at least. In the bottom line Minecraft has it in ps4 too and animated and Conan exiles can’t, really? I believe that we all agree here.

#27

I think the discussion got a little muddled here. Since you replied to me, I’ll try to offer an explanation. If I get something wrong, I hope people with more knowledge like @Testerle and @The7thCrest will correct me.

First of all, the thing about mods is that you can only have them on private servers and in single-player mode. In single-player, you’re responsible for not bogging down your computer. On a private server, there’s an admin, and it’s expected that they’ll be responsible for making sure that the game stays reasonably playable for all the players on the server. Some admins will establish and enforce rules that deal with that, some will let people build whatever they want and only step in if there are problems.

This is why Funcom’s reasons for not adding armor stands have nothing to do with mods. As @Testerle already explained, the main concern seems to be the performance on consoles. The performance penalty of armor stands is primarily on the client, not on the server, and that’s where consoles are especially vulnerable. Funcom doesn’t want to be in a situation where new (or even existing) players log onto an official server, run up to a base, see their frame rate drop to single digits, and declare that the game sucks.

Like I said, I understand these arguments and disagree with them wholeheartedly. Yes, I agree that the dev team has a limited “budget” and I understand that they don’t want to spend this budget on adding something that might backfire like this.

However, players keep requesting armor stands, despite these explanations. It’s clearly a very popular request. And we all know that the players who care about a feature always look for a workaround as long as the feature isn’t there. In this case, the workaround is to use thralls, which is actually worse for everyone, because thralls affect both the server and the client performance. So now, instead of a specific player having problems with their frame rate, we get everyone on the server having problems because the server FPS tanked from trying to run the AI for a a whole bunch of thralls.

The difference in detail level between Minecraft and Conan Exiles is insane, particularly for some DLC armors. This really isn’t a useful comparison.

2 Likes
#28

@CodeMage, I say it before, I say it once more, I am a plumber dude, I guess it is difficult after all, but I believe that is a great miss for the game not to have armor stands. So if it is a budget issue I am willing to pay a dlc with armor stands. I believe they have brilliant minds in their company, even a fool like me can understand this. Since there are so many posts requesting armor stands, they should invest this budget, I believe they will win after all. Thanks again for everything m8 :+1:.
Ps I am gonna cry to my corner once again, I want armor stands so bad, or mannequins but female and gifted OK :wink:.

2 Likes
#29

I beg to differ on this matter. As I outlined earlier I believe that this has the potential to lighten the load on servers even if only marginally. Furthermore, myself and other members have also offered other potential working solutions. The demand is more than already there, I can only hope that it will generate further consideration.

No that is an important point which I am more than willing to acknowledge. Funcom does indeed have a limited amount of their total ‘income’ remaining, to continue with the metaphor, and must allocate it wisely. My assertion is not that they should simply add Armor Display Stands right now to the detriment of all other potential features. But rather that in an ideal world they should keep in mind that this is undoubtedly one of the single most requested features in the history of the game. And we can only hope and urge them to try their best to set asside some their remaining paycheck for Armor Displays at weeks end before moving onto the next paycheck (ie-towards the end of the development cycle before it eventually ceases and they move on to other games), in addition to examining any potential solutions offered up by the community and unearthed from within their own ranks.

This statement is grossly out of context to the point where it hinges upon outright misleading. What Scott stated in the Developer Stream is that they are expensive, NOT too expensive, while also acknowledging that they are an often requested feature. He did not explicitly rule them out, or for that matter state that they were trying to include them.

2 Likes
#30

CodeMage has already summed it all up Stelagel, and likely better than I could. Just one thing I should clarify for you, and I will try my best to keep it in the simplest terms possible. When we talk about ‘budget’ and ‘expensive’, we are not reffering to monetary expense or the actual financial cost of adding them. But rather that they can be taxing for the servers, consoles especially to display, which may cause the game to run at sub-optimal levels In other words it can be ‘hard work’ for the server to display them, especially if users spam a whole heap of them. From here, simply refer to the using a Thrall vs using an Armor Display Stand to show off our armors argument which CodeMage outlines above in post no.27.

1 Like
#31

I believe it all falls into what is the real value for all styles (PVE/PVE-c/PVP)? It is worthless to PVP. And would be another forward movement with no PVP value. IF you think about everything in the game, The PVE centric stuff far out weighs the the PVP centric stuff.
All place-ables are useless to PVP. Every single one of them. The only PVP use over the life of the game has been for exploiting of some sort.
The only useless items I can think about for PVE are Explosive Jars (could be used for star metal, but I will list it as PVP only) and trebs (which could be pve because they look cool in building a fort). So we are looking adding yet another item that part of the community has no use for. There are literally 2 feat tress i never use, the trophy and the planters. Waste of effeciency. In all after doing a quick check, there almost 90 in game items that are PVP centric. And that is assuming every weapon has a PVP use (they really don’t because of power leveling being the only way to get a foot hold). Add them in and there 163 feats useless to PVPers. Compared to the 2 I listed. PVeers can use pretty much everything as a decoration outside of the exploding Jars.

Yes ,you could argue that all items are useful if applying RP logic. On official PVP, the way the economy is structured, to be competitive you do not waste anything for decorating or “fun” RP time.

IF they add it great, but it is of no use to me as a PVPer. It would only serve as a way to target players on official PVP that are more than likely naïve to the PVP officials and the harshness of them.,. I call them donators. They will also have windowed walls (frames) more than likely. OR worse, they will become a spam tool for the exploiting players because of the extra draw on performance compared to other decorations.

1 Like
#32

@WhatMightHaveBeen, The game is giving you multiple ways to do things. Some are less effective than the others, but the history of all online games, not just conan, op some and nerf some others. I believe that gaming companies do this to keep the interest alive. A good example is the new crafting stations, to make them acceptable they op the new bences and nerf the crafters. In a few months everything will be back to normal or better I suppose, crafters will gain back their value for sure :wink:. Still I have to say that explosion jars are not so useless in pve. If I remember correct they are the only place able through purge. Explosion jars can be used as a defensive mechanism too. Imagine a purge of really strong npcs, a cimmerian berserker purge for example. Placing some jars around the perimeter of your house you can exlpode them with explosive arrows and use some acid arrows to give another good hit but terminating the fire at once. Most of the npcs will loose a great amount of their hp so it will be very easy for you to get rid what you don’t need and focus to the npcs you want to capture :wink:. About the decoratives on pvp server again, except the officials there are the private too. The private servers must be attractive to the players so admins make sure that they will have some buildings beautifully decorated, or map rooms fully decorated. A beautiful private server is based a lot in admins efforts. If I’ll find in my archives photos of some map rooms I fix for a private server you will understand what I am talking about. Thanks for your time m8, always a privilege to speak with you :+1:

1 Like
#33

Whether you want armor stands or not, have fun debating that. I do find it odd that people keep insisting that Testerle is wrong though.

Of all the people not to say to someone “you are wrong” on this particular subject, it’s Testerle. You all realize he has more experience working with Armor Stands then everyone else in this thread combined, right? And that’s not including his thousands of working hours with code for Conan Exiles and UE4.

My personal opinion:

Should they add stands? Ya, probably. I wouldn’t consider it the #1 on people’s list, or a super duper needed feature, but since people keep asking for it, fine.

What will happen when or if they do? Oh probably non stop complaints, just like mounts.

What should happen before consideration? Placeable optimizations, assuming there is more to squeeze there. Maybe a visitation to instance tech, but instance tech wont work with things like crafting stations.

Bottom line, Funcom has the internal data on where their performance hits are. Armor Stands would be more then achievable by their team. If they haven’t done it by now, there is a valid reason for it. Budget of performance vs benifit of the feature. Funcom obviously thinks it’s too much of a cost.

If armor stands are that much of a must have immediately, play on PC on a private server or single player with mods.

3 Likes
#34

how about armor stands beeing just a placable like the decorative plants, wouldnt need to put actual armor in it

1 Like
#35

Yes that is another possibility which I offered above Grunt, although I think I did a lousy job of trying to explain it:

Honestly I could quite easily settle for this if I had to. Not being able to mix and match dyed pieces is hardly the end of the world as we know it.

1 Like
#36

Yeah, but I don’t think he’s wrong about the technical aspects of the discussion. I think he’s wrong about whether they should add the armor stands, for the reasons I already explained.

Or building. People keep complaining about “massive builds”.

Hell, people are asking to limit the number of fish traps to 10, their inventory size to 4, the stacking inside them to 200, and to make them lose 1% of structural integrity (i.e. health) per hour if they’re not baited with bugs. You can’t make this stuff up.

Or they had a bunch of more popular things in the pipeline and don’t have unlimited number of people to work on the game :wink:

Yeah, I know they mentioned performance concerns in one or more streams. That means it’s a factor, but you know prioritization in software projects is really messy.

Or just spam thralls :smiley:

3 Likes
#37

I actually liked the suggestion of the armor stands being part of thrall count…if they implement it.

But aside from that, would it be better to maybe add a command for thrall to not aggro, and have 5 or 6 static poses. this way you can “turn off” most of the AI. Then if you ever wanted to you could reactivate if you wanted for purges. There is already an attack nothing. Just have a chase nothing and then sub menu the poses.

3 Likes
#38

I like the understatement.

1 Like
#39

Bottom Line: Armor Stands are Definitely Doable. Armor Stands would be less resource consuming that many of the placeables already in the game.

Now. Armor stands would be less performant than chests, and some crafting stations–If implemented in a method that considered performance. That said. From my understanding, FC has a pretty limited dev team on Conan and odds are that this feature has not been added because more dev work keeps having to going into 'content" (i.e. DLC) to keep the game alive and making money. I think this hasn’t been done simply because there are more “pressing” matters on FC’s schedule (I mean, why else did a vanity table take so long?)

Really I think FC should take a look into this, because with as active as this thread is, there is clearly a lot of interest in seeing this happen.

1 Like
#40

Fully agree. As a lover of Conan I would love to see armor stands, but there are other features that I feel would be more important… like better clan management, thrall AI icon for showing the current behaviors of thralls, mass deconstruction, and/or AOE thrall commanding.

2 Likes
#41

Agreed

#42

This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.