No patience left, stopped playing. Y’all ruined CE for me, won’t give you another dime until you fix it. I have lots of money - you just have to do the right thing and you can have some…
3 Likes
lol, looking? , ill rather be more a “doer” than a looker. (just saying)
also, allow me to ask what happened with black corsair and their table ? are you also comtemplating at the tables? or is a fix in progress? you do know they are now impossible to KO and it is a faction wide problem? this bug is affecting a very LARGE portion of the NPCs at siptah. it takes a few minutes to fix, so please fix it.
thank you.
3 Likes
This is why I’m not going to go deep on this one.
(Yet another thing we agree on 
)
And this is why I’m not going to disagree hard with you. However, what I will say is that a lot of your earlier argument seems to come down to ‘the employees need to work overtime, no matter who’s fault it is that the issue exists’. If upper management sets unrealistic targets, then upper management should be the ones that take the hit. But all too often, they set the targets and then expect others to meet them irrespective of whether or not the targets were realistic in the first place. Software/programming is an industry where this is particularly true - ‘crunch time’ before release is an abhorrent practice, instituted by bad managers who expect 20 people to do the work of 40 in order to hit a deadline that was often arbitrary in the first place. If the target is unrealistic and the current workforce is not going to be able to meet it without extensive overtime, then it is managment’s responsibility to hire enough workers to meet the deadline, it is not the workers’ responsibility to work extra.
But the data isn’t related to what (I think) Pugilist actually meant. You are treating it as though we have had 6 months of ‘maintenance’. We haven’t. What we have had is an announcement that the cadence of release will be slowed to allow for fewer mistakes. Until that has actually had time to operate as the new system, we can’t judge anything about how effective or ineffective it is being. The ‘game is dead’ crowd inevitably have used this 6 months as ‘evidence’ that ‘the game is dead’, because there have been no new major releases. That certainly is on the customers (and upper management for setting unrealistic expectations in the first place without being willing to hire enough workers to meet the expectations they created). But it isn’t (yet) evidence that the new system is failing - we haven’t yet seen the new system in action. What Pugilist appears to be calling for is for managment to prioritise maintenance/fixes over new content - arguing that the game with less new content but more polish would retain more players. Player numnbers may have dropped since the announcement of new cadence was made, but that is because the maintenance hasn’t yet been done - the game has been in one of its buggiest and most contentious phases for the whole of the period you are talking about. I would argue that any downward trend in player numbers is down to the bugs not being fixed - certainly it is not evidence that spending man-hours fixing things rather than churning out new broken content doesn’t work.
And that’s me tryng to be brief. Dammit.
9 Likes
Again, they don’t. They might “demand” or have expectations about prices, and customer service, and quality, but they don’t demand exploitation.
“They” also don’t want to work 80 hours a week in a sweatshop or have their kids do so or to be paid in company scrip. Imagine how much the prices could drop if we got rid of those labor protections
Yeah, that sounds nice, but everything else you wrote (in this line of discussion) has been apologia for exploitation. So which is it? Is it “I deserve the full brunt of accountability for fuсking up” or is it “let’s make the grunts work 60 hour weeks until my fuсkup is corrected”?
Anyway, maybe I should shut up. @Kikigirl summed it up nicely and you seemed to agree with her, so perhaps there’s no need to continue arguing about ideological differences.
5 Likes
Accountability is who messes up needs to correct it. If that goes down to individual quality of work, that that individual is at fault. If it’s due to competing priorities, bad planning or not providing the resources needed to complete the task, that falls on mgmt.
If the individual feels they are being pressured to produce shoddy work, then they need to leave and mgmt needs to cover the spot and eventually deal with their decisions. The end result for promotion of shoddy work always ends in failed business everyone loses out.
2 Likes
You have utterly and thoroughly exhausted the patience of your player base. At every turn. We are fed up.
You will investigate NOTHING, and you will communicate NOTHING. Stop bothering with the platitudes. We know better.
9 Likes
In fact - why not go ahead and lock this and unlist it. That is what you do with anything when the players are attempting to share their frustrations with you. You simply won’t hear it.
2 Likes
This man, my Brother, has 10,000 hours in the game.
His name is The Elf and I stand with him.
9 Likes
A small part of me feels kinda bad for dogpiling on the person who has the unpleasant job of offering us corporate platitudes. This is the kind of thing that certain people on these forums use as an excuse for Funcom’s abysmal communication: “See? When they do as you ask and communicate, you treat them badly!”
But there’s a reason why that part of me is small, and that reason is that the rest of me understands that the aforementioned excuse is bullshіt.
So far no one has crossed the line of abuse and insults. Yes, the replies are unsympathetic, but the company deserves them. No one is attacking the person. We’re just communicating back.
And I agree with the replies wholeheartedly: the official reply we received on this thread is a perfect example of why we’re criticizing Funcom’s communication in the first place. It’s reactive instead of proactive and it’s nothing more than a platitude.
The issue this thread complains about is serious enough to have merited an announcement, yet the players have to prod Funcom for updates. And the only thing we heard back is “we’re still looking into this, thank you for your patience”.
Yeah, no. That’s completely unsatisfactory.
9 Likes
Please, let us not shoot the messenger.
While this one does also wish to express dissatisfaction with the state of affairs, in strong terms…
It accomplishes naught to meet the messenger with clenched fist and bared teeth.
Also, it’s July.
Regardless of anything else, and this one sees justification in raging about it when the game is said to be “Live Service”, Funcom doesn’t really accomplish much during July.
Pitchforks and torches, yes.
But let us target our anger in a productive form. Rage is too precious a resource to waste.
Sarealac is doing their job.
They probably have life expenses, like food, mortgage or rent, perhaps even family members to look after. As this one understands it, they aren’t the ones making the decisions that are provoking discontent. So let’s save the snarls for a more opportune time and circumstance.
Perhaps a Devstream?
2 Likes
Yep and I’m seeing that announcement is driving people away. Technically we saw the trend initiate at Chptr 4 AoW. This could have been considered fatigue over the AoW but then as they switch things up, we have this new environment where focus on fixes and quality is key (BTW they gave us very limited new content, no BP items and how many bug fixes were in this latest game revision?..the initial start is already on shaky grounds) we see the rate going down faster.
3 Likes
Honest question: is it okay to meet the message with clenched fist and bared teeth?
I reiterate that I don’t envy Sarealac their job and that my reply isn’t directed at their person. It’s not their fault that their reply is infuriatingly unsatisfactory.
But I also don’t think we should just shrug and say nothing. The whole point is that “we’re working on this, thank you for this patience” is not an improvement we’ve been asking for and should be unacceptable, especially given that it’s been a month since the last communication about this problem and the players had to bring it up to get this response.
And this is not a hair-trigger, knee-jerk reaction, either. It’s literally been years of back-and-forth on the topic of communication, with a whole gallery of different representatives following the same pattern: promise better communication, fail to follow through, post a reply when prodded, get “thank you for communicating with us” replies from people who want to encourage change with positive feedback, rinse and repeat.
12 Likes
Whereas I’m seeing the unfixed major bugs (in addition to the unwanted and widely disliked changes) as driving people away. Added content has no value if it doesn’t work, or people can’t play because they are inside the foundations. The announcement was only made about a month ago, it hasn’t had time to be the cause yet.
5 Likes
Those aren’t mutually exclusive reasons. Both could be true. Some left from the announcement and some left because they can’t stand the unfixed bugs anymore.
4 Likes
I appreciate the attempt to find a middle ground - and sure, it’s possible that some of the apparent decline in numbers could be down to people responding negatively to the announced change in cadence. But the problem with declarations that the reason for a decline in numbers is because of time being spent on fixes rather than new content, before that has even hadf a chance to be attempted, is that it risks convincing Funcom not to focus on fixes and to go back to pushing out unpolished content. We need the fixes, and I just think it would be good to at least give them a chance to adhere to this new cadence before declaring it to not be working.
2 Likes
I hope you’re right. Actually what I truly hope for is that all the new content is scrutinized more so the bug bleeding stops (crazy I know but sometimes you gotta say “No. It’s not ready. Have a horse skin instead” to sales and marketing )AND that we get fixes to the current list of issues.
2 Likes
Oh, I’m not suggesting that it will result in improvement. The ‘game is dead’ crowd could be right for all I know. I’m just suggesting that declaring failure before it begins is the most likely way to ensure that it doesn’t work.
4 Likes
Shameless plug. The wiki is telling me there is a new outfit coming that is called the Ophidian Cultist.
Headgear looks interesting.
it is this kind of treatment we are getting that let people think the game is in “maintainance mode” i have never seen the lack of communication as bad as it is now, (and its been bad for a long time) , no devstreams now, only a 3 minutes video with @AndyB responding 3 or maybe 4 questions. and again body language was lacking the usual enthusiiams i have seen from him before,
if the game is in maintanence mode, TRUST ME, they are not going to say it, because that willl hurt their Bazaar income, (which seems basically the one things they want to keep, as it generates money) .
support has gone bad.
communication i think its worse than ever.
bug fixing has been bad, but not as it is now.
there is almost no interaction with the community. despite of them having quite a few community managers, what are they doing? anyone knows? pretty sure you will find a lot of activity with dune. and almost nothing with this game,.
they ask us with patience. yet, they are rewarding the patience with more expensive bazaar items , you know … “to keep the lights on.”
my theory is that they have reached the point they cant do much more in terms of development for conan exiles… so they are moving out to other stuff.
1 Like
Exactly this. The Holiday Act entitles all employees to 25 days of holiday leave (vacation) which Funcom has decided is easiest to have this happen all at one time than to have people randomly choose (and fight over) when they want to take their 25 day leave. The individuals can CHOOSE to split their 25 days up into smaller chunks if the company does not have a structure such as Funcom does, and they would get paid for only the time they take when they take it as opposed to the full amount at once as they would in this type of situation. But for the companies say, it is simply easier to have everyone take their 25 day holiday all at once (though workers over the age of 60 receive an additional 6 holiday days, and Saturday’s are considered to be part of the days counted).
So @erjoh maybe you do not see this as being acceptable due to cultural differences, but this is not only acceptable but legally mandated by the government of the nation in which they are headquartered. Yes, they are a multi-national corporation, but they must adhere to the law of the nation where they are headquartered first, and then the laws of the local where their other offices are located. So in the sense of vacation time, since Norway mandates vacation time where as America does not, they have to follow the Norwegian laws on this matter even in their American offices as they require the longer length of mandatory vacation time (25 days is more than 0).
Granted, I am not a lawyer so do not take my words as facts. However I do believe that this is the case in these situations.
Absolutely agree. Worker health and safety has been so completely ignored throughout history and it has lead to so many tragedies and yet there are still calls to “buck up and work harder” just so someone else can have what? Something that ultimately is trivial in the grand scheme of things work slightly better, for a short time, before it begins to work far far worse because those people working on it have become so mentally and physically fatigued from the grueling hours of overwork that their quality slips well below what it was that lead to them being overworked. And then what, demands of working 80’s? 100’s?
Decisions come from the top down, but those who would be forced into those grueling conditions are the ones down at the bottom, not the ones at the top who made said decisions. So perhaps some bug or two might get fixed, but the horrid decisions would still continue and things would still go down hill.
Ahh, so yet again as pointed out above by @CodeMage the problem lies not with the programmers / developers but with the people up top making the decisions. But then again, there is also a bit of culpability with the community as well. How many threads were posted in June about the game being “abandoned” because there hadn’t been any updates (even though there had been a patch sometimes earlier that week)? As the community is in an ever constant state of demanding updates, bug fixes, new content, how far back do you want Funcom to stop putting these thing out before their vacation time to ensure that nothing has been dropped which could possible “go wrong”? Because sometimes their bug fixes go wrong and cause more problems than the bugs they were intended to fix. So should they just stop putting out any updates at all in March? April? Would that give them enough time to satisfy you?
I can guarantee they do not PLAN to shoot themselves in the foot. They just have a lovely knack of always doing so.
Why yes good sir, do you know understand how a false dichotomy works? 
I believe you meant to say non-existent. 
Only the really s.h.i.t.t.y ones actually WANT that. I am sorry, but no. I for one would NEVER want any such thing for any reason what so ever. And to use your horrid example, I would, and gladly do, pay more to go to a local store, or frankly any store, than to ever step foot inside of a Walmart. I would rather go to a local hardware store than a Home Depot or a Lowe’s, and I will every time. So no, not every consumer is a souless as you make them out to be.
Yeah that’s just the spoon fed lies of capitalism which is an extremely exploitative system by nature. Sorry but no, you do not have to sacrifice your physical and mental health just to “do better”, and to believe that this is the way in which things should be in disturbing. Then again, this sort of mentality could be a reason for this ranking of nations which has been tracking how generally happy their citizens are since 2002. Norway ranked #7. Can you guess where the good old hard working USA ranked with it’s ZERO mandated vacation days and it’s mentality of “work more because this needs to get done by this time”? #23. Yeah, 22 other nations ranked higher than the US. I wonder why that is? 
Oh and here is a little tidbit for you:
The United States is the only advanced economy that does not mandate any paid vacation time for workers and it is one of the only countries that does not require employers to offer at least some paid holidays.
Yup, that’s right. Even China, the land of Tencent has mandatory vacation time (not much…seriously not much at all, but more than 0).
LOVE IT! Hell, I even said keep the old DLC system and make it $25 and I’d still take than 100% over this BS Bazaar any day of the week. Instead we get sets that are not finished, items that do not work, items that get nerfed as soon as they are off the bazaar page, and sets of 3-4 items that coast more than the old DLC’s. It’s insane.
Would be rather hard to fix something if you do not identify where the issue is, which would require this little thing called… looking.
Well unless you want them to just randomly tweek lines of code and HOPE that does the trick and possibly break other things vastly worse in the process. But personally I would rather they look first.
Bingo! It’s the whole “pass the buck” mentality.
And…now you are on to the right step here. More hours in a week are not what is required. More time for adequate testing PRIOR TO RELEASE is what should be done to ensure proper quality levels are being met and thus not requiring an exploitative environment. Does it really matter if “thing A” is released on August 1st in a broken state, or on August 15th but in a working state? I can guarantee that the community would greatly appreciate option 2 there.
The “game is dead” crowd has been singing that same old song for the last four years. Eventually it will happen, but that does not mean they were ever right.
How often have they put out dev streams when they were not releasing a major update? So considering that @AndyB just told you in that video you mentioned that we would be getting information about the next age in August, which is only 1 week from today, why would you expect a dev stream to have been put out? And August is 31 days long, so do not sit here and cry “it’s August 1st and we didn’t receive our promised update yet” either. Also, get it up already about his “body language”… you are really reaching for any straw you can grasp at this point.
Lets take a look at Age of Conan. That game is in Maintenance Mode. That game also had an “in game store” set up well before Conan Exiles was even in Early Access. When Age of Conan went into maintenance mode, that in game store stopped seeing updates at all. What was there was what you got. Conan Exiles is still getting updates to the BLB on the regular, and will be getting a new age shortly, with information about it to be released next month. Does that sound like “maintenance mode” to you? Only if you are willing to completely and utterly twist the word to fit your own delusions.
That does not mean that Conan Exiles will be their “top priority” game and receive as much attention as it once enjoyed, but that is not the same thing as being in “maintenance mode” either. There are gradations in between those two extremes.
Was support ever good?
It was never good, and it has been pretty abysmal for a while now.
Could that be because they had never been forced to put out new major updates every three months before in the games life cycle? 
Do you also think that this could be the reason why they have changed said life update cadence to be once every six months, with small updates in between?
NAH!!!
Well, I mean if you would rather they shut the game down…
Well then you are not only using the word theory incorrectly but you are also just making a baseless accusation without any substance to support it. Kudos! I mean, why else would they be hiring new staff to work on the game when they are moving onto other stuff? Surely you can do better than this?
4 Likes