Can we talk? Developer letter June 15th

It is true that nobody outright asked us to increase the stamina cost of attacks,

Never known no one asking for something to stop funcom from putting it in game. Or to take it back out when we hate it.

To address this, our first order of business for the Age of War was to remove the system that made combat feel inconsistent and buggy.

For whom? How?

Our goal was clear: to create brief moments in time where you were starved of stamina. In order to take your stamina away, we also have to give a lot more back. So, the two major changes you will see in Chapter 1 are that attacks are much more expensive, but stamina comes back extremely quickly.

And as such the change cancels it’s self out.

After you’ve mopped the floor with your enemies, you get a kick of satisfaction from the relief that the challenge has been overcome!

Challenge :face_with_raised_eyebrow: Most of the time it feels like I’m swatting flies with a shot gun. I’m sure people in chat may have read my rants about how super soft the game is, how easy it was do things at a low level with tin weapons and cardboard armor, that I never aught to have been able to do.

People know my opinion of what a super soft warm and fuzzy game this has become. It’s starConan valley now. I expect to see purple unicorns running by and song birds to land on my shoulders at any time.

I’m just really really hoping this super soft PG version of Conan isn’t what goes live.

When exploring the world, it felt like there was little reason to clear a point of interest after you had explored it once. The rewards for the effort you put into clearing the camp were not worth the time and cost to do so.
Once we obtained legendary items, our desire to explore and repeat content went down dramatically.
When adventuring, some enemies posed little threat and had very high health pools, which led to boring encounters with no contrast in the action.

Sounds like a YOU thing to me.

We want you to feel like a warrior capable of chopping off heads and limbs as enemies attack you. When fighting a few enemies, you should have to use some skill to dodge, block, or otherwise evade attacks and weave in your offensive. For difficult encounters you should have to plan your approach. Ideally you should never walk up to a monster and stand, unmoving, swinging your weapon into it for five minutes to defeat it. We needed to reduce the slog and ramp up the action!

Felt that way before, or at least that is how I played. But then that just begs the question why did you make this update just that?

I’m sorry but maybe it’s just the test server settings. But ths build is super soft, boringly easy.

So, we made the following changes:
A new weapon balance scheme that allows us to increase interest and value when looting.

Do tell?

All this said, we are aware that the breadth of these changes has some people worried

So far I have no issues except the warm and fuzzy feel of a PG extra soft version of Conan exiles. My biggest fear is the massive player let down of this age’s sad lacking in content. The age of sorcery dropped enough content on us we about drown in it. And with that you set up expectations. Not only is the age of war going to be a big disappointment in that, it also removes a lot of the content added in the age of sorcery.

This may mean additional changes to the cost of certain actions, the balance of certain perks, or items, but it will not mean another major rework!

Which should be done on test before it goes live. But if this version goes live, I expect a forum explosion like we haven’t seen since the server mergers.

12 Likes

Sort of but not entirely? There are many weapons that affect stamina regeneration.

I am not sure if NPCs are really going to have that effect.

But if I am understanding this correctly, and gosh I hope someone tells me I am wrong, it’s going to make daggers of dagon and harpy weapons that much more troublesome… Is Drunkards blade as a legendary also going to become meta?

Whole changes are bogus. But ofc they would never admit that they screwed up big with this update. Its us players that are at fault for not hyping that s…

Nobody needs those stamina changes and thralls and animal nerfs. Actual weapon stats do not even make sense.

I am more then disappointed about this new age. There is no new content to play with, just stupido nerfs all over the place.

9 Likes

Not on test at moment, giving that purge gauge some time to cool off.
Is it me or is that thing filling fast?

I’m wondering if I aught to reset my live characters stats. Right now I am set to tank; to the point the last few days my armor has been a dancers skirt. That’s it. Today I died because those 5 gorillas like me in that skirt far too much :astonished: But think I might aught to change to archer or athletic warrior.

On test I have a Jack build, all stats even.

Like to get Dennis in here but I think I’d have a better chance hitching a ride on that purple unicorn.
I mean it’s not a bad update. The fighting feels off in that most opponents are soft, MOST. But I’m not a numbers guy, as far as damage %s and such :person_shrugging: I judge by the feel. And right now the game feels :cat: :rabbit: :dog:

1 Like

New content is yet to come. The siege of bases, catapults, destroying walls, numerous detachments of Stygians and treasure seekers. Why nerf weapons, thralls, and pets when things get more complicated anyway? I don’t understand.

3 Likes

“Stress and relief” is always caused whenever Funcom announces changes to the game. Stress when they announce the changes, relief when they backtrack and keep things as they should be.

The justifications given don’t apply to my experience with the game. What makes it all tiresome for me is a repetitive system of “do the same thing multiple times to have a small chance of getting what you want.”

Raiding a tribe and not having any T4 NPCs, killing a boss and not getting the item/scroll I need due to RNG, completing a dungeon and not collecting enough materials to craft a full armor set.

To me, it wouldn’t matter the level of difficulty in killing a boss, completing a dungeon, or traversing the entire landscape to knock out a thrall if it was guaranteed that it would be worth it. As long as the game keeps the “do it and maybe you’ll get something good” approach, it makes me look at the Red Mother and question whether it’s really worth spending 5-8 minutes beating on a dragon with the chance of collecting… nothing special.

This cycle of buffing and nerfing thralls, NPCs, bosses, etc., without changing the dynamics of how things unfold, is a recurring mistake that only adds “stress” and drives away players who value a minimum level of stability.

10 Likes

I don’t know as I don’t have time to test :confused: But I’ll pay attention to it when it goes live.

Unlikely right…

:rofl::rofl::rofl:
No player can tank in this game, not really. Go tank the white tiger and tell me how that goes. :smile:

5 Likes

Deacon thanks a million for the upload of this letter, of it wasn’t you i probably wouldn’t notice it, so thank you a million bud :+1:t6:.

@Community for some reason i didn’t manage to submit my email so i can receive marketing news from Funcom , can you please check it if possible?

Dennis! My dear dev thank you for taking the time to explain, yet i don’t believe you had to. Still thanks a million, i personally really appreciate it. For me what’s going to come ain’t new, somehow a low pool of stamina and a really fast regeneration already existed in the game. If someone choose to play sorcerer fighter and go meet all the vaults and dungeons of the game solo, would not feel disappointed from what’s coming, since the stamina pool will be greater and the regeneration faster than the option we already have in sorcery. Low agro npcs? We learn the game this way, nothing new here again. Unfortunately on line gaming can become stressful no matter devs efforts, a bad connection or an overloaded server can create stressful situations. Funny thing that you are responsible for these too in some posts :rofl::rofl::rofl:. Anyway, looking forward to accept the new update and cross fingers m8 that we will receive it without issues on PlayStation :crossed_fingers:. Either way it’s welcome :heart:.
Take care and share my love to your team.
Best regards Litsios Stylianos!

Ok so I sacrificed agility, authority, and expertise for strength, vitality, and grit.

That’s fine, I got what you meant, @DeaconElie . But we can’t tank in this game because heavy armor doesn’t give enough protection. You can use a shield and “kinda tank”, but tanking is supporting sustained heavy punishment for a long period of time and survive. That’s what thralls were for . We can’t really do that. I just found funny how you worded it and decided to mess with you in good fun. Don’t be mad, eh? I’m joking. :wink:

1 Like

To me, the most telling snippet of the whole blog post was this:

If anyone had any doubts or confusion about what constraints Funcom devs were operating under, this should have been extremely enlightening.

And I’m not just talking about the AI here. I think most of the work we can see down the line will be following the same pattern: “doing X is too much, let’s see if we can do something else to compensate”. In this specific case, “doing X” means “making AI smarter and/or more challenging”.

The exact same pattern can be seen in how they “solved” the lack of incentive to repeatedly engage with the game content we’ve already explored. Making that content compelling enough to repeat it is too much work/effort/cost for the team, so they opted for brute-forcing the players by making legendaries unrepairable. Even better, this ensures that, for a certain segment of the playerbase, the engagement will increase drastically, due to the slot-machine nature of the legendary drops.

And, as usual, picking the cheaper option creates its own future problems. We’re most likely heading back to the bad old times of playing as sidekicks for our own thralls, because they can use legendary items without breaking them.

But who cares, right? Those are future complaints. It’s totally fine to keep flip-flopping between different kinds of bad, as long as there’s a perception of change.

Or, to put it more bluntly, pandering to one group at the cost of making another group unhappy is a winning strategy, because then you can later pander to that group for your next big win.

Yeah, I guess I’m a bit jaded.

24 Likes

I knew you were going to comment that part. :smile:
I couldn’t agree more with what you wrote, @CodeMage . Spot on!

7 Likes

I’m not sure what’s going on in devs’ heads. First they talk about how you have to have a tactical approach when fighting several enemies then they reduce their aggro radius and call for help radius so you can pick them one by one.

They want AI to have an opportunity to attack but then they nerf their health, give players overpowered legendary weapons, remove exhaustion and buff stamina regen. In fact, stamina regen i’ve seen in a couple of posted videos is so high you can roll all the way from the desert to volcano without stopping to take a breath.

They want us to have fun so they made bosses easier to kill but then want to lock us up in a visious cycle of re-farming legendary items from bosses to get extra copies of what eventually is going to break so we gonna stare ad nauseum at the same bosses forever.

All of this doesn’t make sense to me except two things: change for the sake of change and more grind without any actual new content.

6 Likes

You know… I really wish it wasn’t the case, but that really describes how I feel about a lot of their announcements…
The most stress this game has caused me in the past year is that… Whether or not they screw something up that’s been working perfectly fine with all their “reworks”… or maybe break all my mods for no good reason :man_shrugging:

And I’m not the only one on that btw… modders are getting increasingly stressed out by the weird and often unexplained changes they decide to throw in along with very rushed and buggy devkits (some are thinking of quitting because of this)

New stuff is always welcome… like… the clan banners… the treasure hoard… the Mek-Kamoses / Kurak storyline… those are all absolutely awesome and people are fine with it… That’s what they should be focusing on…

But I’m not so happy they keep touching things that they have absolutely no business or real reason touching… especially when it’s so obviously just “smoke and mirrors” and doesn’t actually involve any “real work” but rather… “tweaking settings” and taking shortcuts, then creating hype around it to sell it as the next big thing…

I’m just going to casually drop this here…

It’s like they threw all the data in one of those bingo machines and gave it a good spin :stuck_out_tongue:


People who have seen me around these parts know that I really don’t jump to conclusions and mindlessly complain or “bash” Funcom and to be fair I’m not really doing it now either…
I just think they should’ve focused on the new stuff and not try to “bloat” the update by selling the act of altering already existent server configurations and mass-updating item / npc stats as “new content”…

And if they did decide to rework this aspect of the game, then at least they should’ve done it right :stuck_out_tongue: and not have so many missed opportunities… (like the ones we talked about the other day)
If they really wanted to mess with stats, then the ball is still on the floor that they dropped when it comes to pets… they could’ve focused on reworking their stats so that they’re once again viable followers… That’s actually something people asked for :slight_smile:

19 Likes

I agree for the most part. What really gets me though is them basically admitting they’re taking the easy road to make combat more challenging, an artificial road.

What needs changing is the AI, or lack thereof. The enemies aren’t engaging to fight, but other players are. That’s because combat flow from our side is great. Player flow is great. The AI can’t keep up, so they nerf us to fix it. Our original problem is still there. The AI’s still dumb, now we feel like lethargic peasants as well.

And yes better AI is going to affect server performance, I know, which is already bad in 99% of cases. The Official Servers are overdue for an upgrade already. All in all, this problem likely stems from a poor foundation the game was built on & technical debt.

5 Likes

Its frustrating that the devs decided to make a game I’ve sunk so much time in to completely unappealing to me now. They seem pretty detached from what the actual players want, and cant figure out how to make one game both pvp and pve. Its crazy both Reddit and Conan Exiles went to shit on me at the exact same time.

“Conan Exiles is not a 1v1 dueling game”

Some players’ entire concept of PvP just getting a big ol dump taken on it from on high right there.

Gratitude for the link.
This one found the article very interesting.
Regardless of whether this one agrees or disagrees, the insight is appreciated.

The Stress-Relief cycle is an understandable target, but this one does not feel the method chosen to implement is quite a good balance on the Frustration-Triumph side. If the stress source is one that feels janky, artificial, jarring, or inconsistent (and we have had years to build expectations) it’s going to have flight time like a lead balloon.
The Anxiety cycle in and of itself isn’t fun. It’s not a patch for otherwise tedious situations. Point of fact, it can lead to greater avoidance as… Well… Games should be fun. Challenge should be tuned. Deliberately tuning in hard coded anxiety is very risky.
Also, the grind is not fun. It’s tedious. Further forcing grind is not what this one considers a good way to keep people engaged, especially if there are other options. How far afield people are willing to look for other options is often related to how much the option they previously chose has changed, and how much like ice skating uphill it feels… Or worse yet, how much the game has become a job.

That said, this one is very interested in seeing where Hyper Armour goes in Season 2. Light weapons (read: daggers) being stripped of hyper armour while Heavy weapons have it hard coded in makes this one mildly hopeful. While this one would infinitely prefer hyper armour thresholds to be build into Armour weight, having it line up with weapon weight is an ok substitute.
Altho having the combat engine overhaul parcelled out is a little irksome. This one doesn’t like the idea of “Trust us, it’ll be better in 13 weeks”.

In concept, this one prefers lower HP, but higher danger Bosses. Nothing quite as boring as boxing a bag of lead pellets.
This one feels the implementation isn’t quite there on the server formerly known as Testlive, but it’s a start. The bosses aren’t sponges, but they also still lack teeth. Simply put, this one would prefer that, unless one is wearing very impressive armour and has some Vitality spec, bring chomped by a three skull croc should be a body broken in half. However… With lag what it is, when you get it, if you get it, not good you got it… One shot mechanics become unreasonable.
So how do we balance this?
That’s the kind of answer one should consult a professional for. But we can all speculate.
This one considers the current changes on Bosses a step in the right direction, but that the road ahead is yet long. Perhaps having specific weakness would help, currently the bosses are (with a couple exceptions) perhaps too flimsy and definitely not dangerous enough. In this one’s mind they should only be this flimsy if being targeted with the correct solution. Perhaps Rotbranch could be very flammable. Perhaps bears and wolves should be susceptible to poison more than other monsters. But that goes into deeper coding than this one is comfortable suggesting.

“Once we obtained legendary items, our desire to explore and repeat content went down dramatically.”
That’s because the content isn’t engaging. The desire to repeat the content for the RNG drop is the most “Gamey” (a term used in the article with obvious disdain) feces imaginable. If the content is fun, there will be a desire to re engage every so often. If the content is a slog, a rando reward won’t make it better, it makes it more frustrating and tedious.

Much to mull over.

7 Likes

My reaction after watching that:

fKnFcdM1

Not only that, it’s what they literally said they would do when people complained about how they nerfed pets and made them useless again.

And when people like me asked why separating the damage required them to also nerf pets instead of applying a sweeping change that would leave them at status quo, there were several forum users who said we shouldn’t complain so much, since this was only the first step and Funcom would surely buff pets in the future.

That’s precisely the kind of thing that keeps eroding the trust this community has in the team.

14 Likes

Super sick and tired of facing a complete new game every 3 months! Who makes this decicions! And what about the changes made 1 year ago? Were they all false?! And if yes, the employees that made the them then…are they still in charge?

1 Like