That is why i said the npcs are more of the issue. And yes, stamina is now less spammable, which makes it a strategic technique and not just the easy meta mechanic it was.
As far as fast and furious, that is way less of a combat dance than flowing thru different mechanics. I know it is not super fluid, but thinking and putting together multiple mechanics (dodge, attack, turn, back off, move forward) is better than roll pike roll poke imo.
Well, we disagree, but I do appreciate you actually giving a reason for the change. I understand the desire to make things more interesting and engaging. I’m just not sure this change does that for everyone. I certainly found combat plenty engaging without the roll poke thing you mention. Is that a PvP thing?
And I’m suspicious about why it was just slipped into the update with no fanfare. It wasn’t a part of the Testlive and is not mentioned in the patch notes. Why? It is definitely a huge change.
Inquiring minds want to know. Well, at least I do.
The developers have completely killed dodges. They broke the balance and added extreme discomfort in battle. I tried all the weapons in pvp and pve… The spears pierced the bottom with sweeping blows. Short spear registers one hit out of four
I like that NPCs respond and target much better, but yeah, I don’t think I like how it affects players (especially the camera changes). I tried Andy’s workaround, and that does help, but I think I like Chapter 2 player combat better than chapter 3 player combat, while I like chapter 3 NPC combat better than chapter 2 NPC combat. Something needs fixing.
As I keep pointing out “Q” still works that way. It’s not a matter of easy, we still have the easy button. It’s a matter of felling interactive. People that are complaining about the change don’t use the easy button because they want to fell like they are actively engaged with the enemy. This new system makes it fell like I have an interrupter between me and my enemy. That feeling of active engagement is gone. Yet another increment of enjoyment removed from the game.
Every update this game is just a little bit less fun.
This is my main complaint. I can adapt to the combat change without too much hassle. But it makes the game less fun.
Umm… okay, here’s an experiment for you 
Engage a NPC, let them attack at least once, but instead of staying there in range of them till they die… run away from them a tiny bit, but in the direction their back is facing so they can’t continuously attack and have to chase.
I agree with your point, @Xevyr. But “better” does not mean ‘beyond improvement.’ The AI needs improvements and this chapter 3 was a step in the right direction for NPCs. I don’t think they have “arrived” yet, but simply gotten better.
No, it’s actually much worse
That’s my point… a lot of people simply don’t notice the issues due to their playstyle… They run up to NPCs and kill them. 
So no, it’s not better, in fact the AI hasn’t changed at all… they simply changed the attack animations to allow them to rotate during… but they overdid it to the point where they rotate at ridiculous speeds essentially tracking you.
This got rid of a complete playstyle where you attempted to step out of the way and counter-attack instead of relying on the “1 trick” dodge spam in case you wanted to avoid an attack.
At the same time they forgot to allow them to rotate again after they finished attacking… so if you do the above scenario that I suggested, you’ll notice that the NPC will proceed to chase you walking backwards…
Now, if all you do is run up to them in heavy armor and just keep hitting them till they die, then obviously you won’t notice any of the above and the only thing you’ll notice is that they suddenly are “better” at hitting you
Ofc you can still kill all of them, since they weakened PvE to ridiculous levels in the previous patches, it just became more annoying in a way imo. for any other playstyle than the face-tanking kind (whether it’s you or a thrall doing the facetanking)
Merry Christmas. The whole post above is 
.
I feel that these changes are not so good because my toon lost again grace and style on battle.
@Xeryr - thanks for that detailed explanation. I’ll have to go back and check the NPC performance again and see if I can identify what you’re talking about. It sounds like I may have missed some details due to my playstyle. So, thanks! You’ve given me something more to consider.
Something I’ve notice that may be a disconnect in playstyles and views on the changes. I am currently using agility 20 and authority 20 and play on controller. If no one had told me, I wouldnt even know about most of the complaints people are having because my thrall draws aggro. When I go thrall hunting and leave my thrall at home, I wear master skelos and szeths so npcs go down so fast any facing changes dont really matter.
Hey, the upside is that they finally found a legitimate use for infinite rolls. It takes a bout a dozen rolls to dodge a whole Stygian Soldier sword combo.
Ill post a video tonight, but i can defeat the siege stygians with a stone 1h sword at level 10. I use a controller on PC. So maybe is now extremely hard to face tank a group with m/k? If so, then mayne FC is leaning more into the console market. Who may be buying more bazaar items than PC players due to no mods?
It could just be for parities sake on pc so that input methods are all functionally equivalent. Making changes to m/k dont impact consoles afterall, except in crossplay environments.
From what I’ve read of comments here, people on console don’t even notice any difference, so why would they change anything? No noticeable change is not going to attract anyone.
Is there crossplay in Conan Exiles?
To be fair when I did my testing a week ago. It felt like Controller and Keyboard were similar enough that I believe the game doesn’t really see the difference between devices outside of changing the UI to accommodate. So I think changing one will have effects on the other.
I can’t say for sure since I have no way of trying it on a console though.
Adjusting which way a character attacks being divorced from the point the camera is looking is very common in games on console. Its not normal for those of us on PC though since Mouse is usually how we aim. First Person and Third person games are played with near identical control schemes, where they are different on console.
No and if they did, it would probably have appeal only to funcom servers unless they also add mod support for consoles, but even that would be a stretch because of the cert requirements for console. A lot of modders probably wouldnt bother making sure their mods were console compatible because of the hardware limitations. Dennis mentioned he was looking at mod support in some indeterminate future, and these problems are probably the biggest hurdle. Crossplay would need all players on the server having the same mods (or no mods) and being on a level playing field for controls in pvp would be a big concern.
As a console player i can tell you that’s not the case.
The quality of CE was always worse than pc, but since AoW it got even more worse with each chapter.
I can barely bring myself to play it. If FC doesn’t fix all the game breaking bugs i think i‘m finally done with CE.
I can’t speak for everyone but i definitely noticed it.
But i also can’t compare it to PC.
… as if i would buy the same broken product twice! 
