I’ll throw my two cents in to what I want seen changed to the game.
Overall difficulty increased. Or if I were to clarify, difficulty become more of a complex thing. Right now we can adjust NPC damage. That doesn’t do much though. It makes things tedious, but not engaging, not actually challenging.
So here’s a list of good encounters in the game:
Witch Queen - This one is an interesting fight. Its not a challenge because of what level it was designed for. But it is interesting. If we wanted to improve this for level 60s (current I think its level 25-30 content?). What I would change here is make the beam emitters closer together (maybe make it a 3x3 grid instead of 2x2 right now), and fire off more often. But if its not for level 60, then leave it alone, and use that level of complexity as a baseline.
Thag (Pre-nerf) - This one is pretty basic, telegraphs to avoid on the floor (these are good, timing is tight enough to be a challenge, but not so much that you need pixel-perfect movement and get screwed by network conditions) to avoid. Adds that come out in waves based on health, pretty basic boss style stuff. I’d like to see this unnerfed, and then it would be pretty good. You have two ways to take on this boss, deal with the adds, or ignore them. There was a bug that made the add invulnerable, so we don’t need to take that into account here. The idea is anytime you can make a choice in how to deal with an encounter is a great thing.
Sandbeasts and Corrupted Wolves. These are some nasty creatures I wouldn’t mind seeing more of. Not so much out in the world, but in dungeons. Using their base stats, they do hit hard, but they don’t hit often. You have to time your attacks to avoid getting hit yourself. And unlike giant snakes, you can get a few hits in before having to block or dodge.
So using all those good encounters, helps build new ones. The idea is just tearing down the player for a single mistake isn’t a challenge, but tedium. We want a challenge. Obviously if you make too many mistakes in a row, you should be punished for that. Debuffs such as bleeds, poisons, and cripple help with that.
Could even introduce something like a sunder, but lasts longer and has more of an effect. This means this attack that may not do so much damage itself, or maybe it does. Needs to be avoided, and getting it stacked too many times means incidental damage becomes more and more deadly. This way one mistake isn’t the end of the fight. But 3-4 in a row… well don’t do that.
But things like this would apply to either existing dungeons and areas of the map, or new ones. Like for example, I wouldn’t mind seeing some changes to existing dungeons and bosses in reference to the keystone. Witch Queen, Degenerate, Kinscourge, King Below, and the Arena Bone Dragon. These encounters are pretty simple for the most part (or in the Witch Queen’s case, easy for a 60). I’d like to see them rescaled in complexity to match their level 60 nature (wouldn’t mind seeing unique rewards from them too).
I’ve already spoke about how the Witch Queen can be elevated.
The Degenerate seems like a good candidate for telegraphs. So in each wave of adds, he would also spawn a unique pattern along the floor that blows up after he’s done casting similar to Thag. Instead blue it would be that purple/pink color of the shades. Getting hit would do moderate damage, but also a knockdown.
Kinscourge needs to be able to walk a bit faster and heavily mitigate cripples. Otherwise his attacks are rather interesting. Maybe give him a ranged blood bolt type attack for those particularly far away.
King Below would need something entirely new added to it. Its a basic mob supped up pretty much. Maybe some unique combos are in need here.
The Arena Bone Dragon needs the same work all dragons do. They’re not bad, but there’s issues with them. They either seem ridiculously easy to avoid their attacks. Or occasionally you take a firebreath to the face that wrecks you randomly. Their attacks, hitboxes, and telegraphs need to be cleaned up a bit. Their attack sequences seem to be pretty good otherwise. Dragons in general should in general mitigate the effects of cripples (with the exception of the hatchlings). Pretty much any big creature to be honest, unless there’s a mechanic that makes them weak to it because they overextended.
Which leads to newer encounters in the future. The idea that certain debuffs don’t really work. Until they can and when they do, they have double the effect. Maybe like some armored creature that can’t be bled. Unless it exposes itself after an attack and then bleeds have double the effect. Same thing with sunders or cripples depending on the encounter. Something the player can actively search for, and try to exploit.
To put it shortly, something a bit more than right clicking everything to death. Encounters we have to think through and watch for openings. Not this light attack block light attack block, cheese that we have to do on some things (like giant snakes and the like).
Mixing and matching creature types is also good. This is kinda done with trash mobs with melee, shields, and archers. But do that with a boss encounter, where there is unique attacks and the like, and you’ve got something interesting.
And I wouldn’t be opposed to group content. If needed, make a setting tied to these creatures that turns off certain abilities or reduces their stats so a single player can take them on (so solo players playing single player have this enabled by default), but servers (maybe even officials) can have content that requires a little bit of player coordination.
I’ve personally made custom dungeons with group content in mind, and let me tell you. When you’ve got a shield user, an archer, and a melee hitter, and a healer (mod allows allows for magic). Its a ton of fun. You’d be surprised how much potential Conan Exiles has as a Coop experience. Its there. Its fun. Just waiting to be tapped.