Conan vs Non-Conan content, possible solutions?

I see this as a common thing that comes up. There’s arguments for both sides, and I can easily play devils advocate for each.

Keep it 100% pure Conan (if not in the books, it isn’t in the game)

  • Keeps it different from other games
  • Makes it immersive to people familiar with the books
  • Very unique atmosphere

Non-Conan content (either allowing conan-esque content OR allowing “kitchen sink” fantasy eg Skyrim)

  • Appeals to a wider audience
  • More flexibility for devs
  • “Funnitivity” can be more easily addressed (and less “No, because of cannon reason X…”)

I think there’s a way to please both crowds, though. Of course, Funcom has the last say, but here’s a few ideas.

  1. Have a few “unsupported but official” Age of Calamitous servers. I don’t think the mod is anywhere near “perfect” or “amazing” but it would at least help some players scratch that itch (and some would move onto private AoC servers). Basically, this would be the equivalent of Funcom paying for a couple of “survivalservers.com” boxes and listing them in a special section (Kind of like how Ark has official servers with different maps running).

  2. Create a “Branch” product. Call it something like CE: Fantasy (Removing Conan from the name, effectively). This “Branch” product is still 99% the same game and launcher… going back to the Ark analogy, it’s like a different map. However, it can use the same map(s). The difference is, on “Fantasy” you are just a generic human, but you can buy a DLC that has skins for fantasy races (like one of the other current suggestions). You can buy a DLC that has saddles that fit all kinds of other creatures (literally already exists in the game devkit, but I was told by a community manager it wasn’t included because it wasn’t Cannon). You can buy a DLC that adds magic-y things. To keep with current Funcom policy, each “DLC” would have to have some basic item everyone on the server has access to (Like a fireball shooting staff) but the DLC would add different ones (Staffs that shoot ice, lightning, etc. but are equivalent to the fireball staff).

The second option would require a few other changes that (in general) would be good for Funcom to have. Like the opening cinematic should just be skipped on the “fantasy” branch… but that option is long overdue in general.

Both of these options only make sense if it can bring in enough money from new purchases and DLC, to justify more developers working on the game. If either option did bring in more players, I would think that would also help the “cannon” game grow, as they’d still be 99.8% similar.

Anyways, it’s an idea I had after seeing so many “Why can’t we have X?” or “Please add Fantasy thing Y” posts both here and many other places.

I personally just want the game to thrive, whatever it takes. I like it far more than most other survivals I’ve played… it’s the #1 for me in the non-voxel category, even over Ark (despite it’s popularity).

Btw, I do know you can remove the opening cinematic, which I have done. I meant it as a checkbox in the settings menu, type deal. It’s a common complaint in reviews and on the steam forums…

Minor nitpick: the Wheel of Pain isn’t in the books :wink: Neither is the riddle of steel.

Isn’t that what mods are for? And isn’t CE’s support for mods a really important factor in its popularity?

Take Age of Calamitous, for example. I personally dislike it and don’t want to play on any server that has it, but it’s extremely popular. For a mod like AoC, you don’t really need “unsupported but official” servers – it’s already on loads and loads of private servers.

Game studios generally don’t do that, for good reasons. Even a 1% difference will still come with a whole bunch of costs for the studio. So you have to look at the cost-benefit analysis: what would Funcom gain from doing this?

Again, the whole concept of mods was invented to address this kind of a thing. Want high heels in Skyrim? There’s a mod for that! Want elves and dwarves in Conan Exiles? Someone can make a mod for that :slight_smile:

I’ve yet to see someone say “I was thinking of buying Conan Exiles, but it didn’t have tauren, so I changed my mind” :wink:

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As indicated by this, the game already makes a pretty reasonable compromise between “pure” Conan and non-canon Conan by allowing any Conan lore. There’s actually a lot of stuff in Conan Exiles that isn’t in the books, but comes from other Conan sources.

Also remember that Funcom does not own Conan; they only acquired the license to develop this game. They may be limited on what all they are permitted to do with the license, and pulling a bunch of non-canon dung from a dark cave somewhere may go beyond the scope of the license.

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As I’m a fan of the 70’s/80’s Savage Sword of Conan comics, I would be pretty sad if the game was limited to book material only.

Who does own the Conan license anyway?

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Apparently Cabinet Entertainment currently owns it.

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Muito interessante tudo que falou… Eu super apoio… E acho que essa questão dos (já tem mods para resolver isso) mas os mods só funcionam em PC, no caso as pessoas que jogam em consoles fica como? Eu acho que a analogia de ARK que fez, foi muito boa… e até em ARK os mods que são criados no PC, muitos se tornam canônicos nos consoles. Assim, não divide a comunidade em classes, todos podem desfrutar de boas coisas criadas por fãs. Acho que Conan precisa se espelhar sim, em outros games de sobrevivência que usa por exemplos “eventos” para manter seus jogadores jogando. Uma coisa que Conan para mim é muito bom… e o sistema de construção, que não se vê em outros jogos comparativos. A construção em conan é muito boa, e possibilita muitas criações épicas. Porém… acho que elas também precisam de mais atenção. No mais… gostaria que os desenvolvedores pudessem realmente levar a ideias aqui do fórum mais a sério e ver que os jogadores amam o conan, mas clamam por melhorias e mais conteúdos.

It Depends…

They’ve stated before, its needs to be part of Conan Lore, (and what they have rights to use) and what can be implemented.

Certain things… that I don’t see point to. (vampires) People want Vampires… but like… those Vampires. Not the “lore comic” vampires. Or maybe some do…
I don’t care for whole vampire thing.

Or Magic… theres how magic works in Conan world… and how powerful people can use it. And then there gameplay version… which sounds insanely boring and frustrating.
How I want magic to work… (gameplay + fun) wont happen…

You look at how the menus and system work… I don’t see it happening with out a weird overall.

I wouldnt mind some lore breaking events honestly, with temporary items that go poof after event is done. (deleted, and no even usable offline)

Then again… the games barely playable on ps4. My luck, we’d get meteor event back and wont get any use of it. -_-’ (again…) lol

Heck… I can’t even get a non-working crom altar for Journal steps. And have to admin panel cheat one and then earn a religion to bypass other and pretend it never happen. XD

There also plently of stuff in-game thats not even fleshed out, that could be before new stuff happen.
I’m abit on fence in all directions, lol…

Can you elaborate on why do you need unsupported but official AoC servers? What do you expect from these servers? Officials are not exactly the most popular servers right now.

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Once again, it’s no loss for me if other people get something that doesn’t interest me. Having servers with weird stuff doesn’t matter, as long as people who don’t like the weird stuff can still enjoy Conan as Conan.

The real issue is licencing. Funcom doesn’t have a licence for copyrighted stuff owned by other companies, and their deal with the owners of the Conan brand probably limits what they can add into the game made under that licencing contract. So it’s entirely possible that Funcom can’t host “unofficial official” servers with non-Conan content.

Modders and private servers aren’t bound by these contracts, which is why unofficials can go hog wild with their content

I’m on an RP server with this mod. We “Suggested The Idea” of removing it and replacing it with some other mods that would make up most of the content that would be lost. We lost half of the player base just from talking about it as a possibility. I hate the mod. It is way too combat oriented and basically hijacks the game to make it it’s own game. Wish someone would make a Conan lore friendly mod that would dethrone it.

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So I think that being faithful, being canonical when talking about Conan doesn’t make any sense, IT IS NOT A POPULAR CHARACTER, it’s not a POPULAR character, not at all popular, people like the game because they like the game and not the Conan, of course there will always be those 1% that will emerge, but the 99% does not care about Conan’s story, or knows, or is interested in it.

I play the game for 3 years every day, more than 3,000 hours and I am not at all concerned about Conan, I am concerned about the game.

I think it’s kind of ridiculous and “small” for a game to stick so much to a story that didn’t create “so many things”, on the contrary I think the game should expand this universe, like yours, and not like Conan’s, of course always with responsibility, I I’ve already talked about it, I’ll take ARK as an example too, everyone always does.

What is successful in ARK, of course especially the fact that you fly on animals, this is clear, obvious and easy for everyone to know, so if in ARK there are dinosaurs that fly and people love it, this is popular and it SELLS what will I do, I have conan here and I don’t have dinosaurs, will I add flying dinosaurs? NO! OF COURSE NO !, I’ll get the idea that it’s good, that it’s popular and people like it and SELLS a lot of games and I’m going to bring it to my universe.

So folks, we don’t have pteros, and weyvers, BUT … we have giant owls that fly just like pteros, we also have flying eagles here, we have dragons here, and we’re going to make a lot of incredible dragons and renewed structure to be able to fly, and now you are going to collect them on their bases as animals, no one wants to spend their “space” of a few slaves taking these silly animals from Conan, but people would certainly endeavor to catch a dragon, or animals really amazing that you fly, that you really fight with them, taking advantage of them now that Conan already has a mount, so why not only do horses not have other really amazing animals that everyone would go crazy to walk and fight over them ?, not with weapons but guiding them too, it doesn’t have to be a dinosaur, create new creatures, take the Conan universe and mount ideas on the basics, 3-headed dragons …

Another thing that Conan leaves a lot to be desired is in the aquatic part, the aquatic dungeon even gave us hope, but the game is very lacking because it has an aquatic boss such as a giant octopus, there is even a giant octopus god, having marine life, sharks … funcom has an absurdity of things to explore, but they were very “lazy” for a long time creating DLCs that didn’t add anything to the game, dungeons that used the same NPCs that already exist just placing them there, so the game is so empty, because in 3 years many new “creatures” were not added, when funcom launched the aquatic dungeon really surprised me, I soon thought, wow how the guys who did this here, these same guys did that “makeover” in Supremeru so “lazy”, and I expected so much from this reform at the time.

I praise the game a lot, but I don’t leave aside the constructive criticisms, I hope that now that the game has a new producer, and that apparently it came wanting to work, and after December 2019 with high billing funcom see that the The biggest villain in her game is herself, that when they cheer us up, when they do what we want, like horses and slave levels, we also invest in the game and everyone wins.

As I already said I hope that in the coming months with this new management it will not happen as it is happening now 3 months and 9 days with 0 new additions to the game, it even had an “error correction” but error correction is not an addition, nobody plays error correction, it is a repair of a wrong job and not something new.

I am excited to see what will happen in the next 2 3 months, not least because Scott Junior needs to be given time to work, for now I am still giving him credit and I hope I will not be disappointed.

I think you have your number backwards there friend. Everyone I play with bought the game for the Conan experience. The PvP community may only care about a game they can power threw but the majority want to plat Conan Exiles.

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I need to add something, I said that you were lazy and relaxed about adding DLCs that didn’t add anything new to the game, BUT when they create things they do it in an incredible way.

I can’t deny it, the horses were amazing, the animation, the look, riding on the horse is very nice, they just missed putting the guide on the keyboard and not on the mouser, the last Boss added in the tavern dungeon surprised me, a new gameplay, me it surprised us a lot, they do a lot of good things, I love the design … the look of the armor is incredible …, the lazy people went on adding new creatures and not new building blocks of another color, just to clarify!

I believe that with “Conan 2” this “empty world” problem is being solved, and any way the “biome” interacts with each other, I kind of got used to the idea that the map " old “will not be improved because they said it was made with a technology that doesn’t” help “to have this world filled, alive and dynamic there in 2016, I just hope they don’t make the mistake of now in 2020 making the new” map “with the same technology that they talk about so much that they do not allow to make the game in the 'modern” molds.

As I said, I am looking forward to seeing all of this and I will certainly buy the DLC, I just hope to be surprised by the good and make sure that funcom took the opportunity to “invest” and of course this DLC will sell insanely to show us how it has evolved , how it improved, how it applied improvements and new technologies in “Conan 2” as we all call it, I will definitely be one of the many who will give this credit and we will hope not to be disappointed.

I’d just like to state here that it’s not so much a conflict of something not being in the books as it is something directly contradicting the lore.

Vampires, for example since Sera mentioned it, are in the lore. It is within reason that there could be others, or that your character could become one. (I’m just speaking in the context of lore right now, not gameplay.) But if you cover those vampires in glitter, have them go sunbathing and make them vegetarians, well now you’ve got a problem.

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I don’t know but going with the logic “if it isn’t in the books then it isn’t in the game” doesn’t make much sense because, would Conan Exiles as a game even exist if we followed this logic?
The game should stay true to the original lore and not add too many “immersion breaking” elements (like orcs, evlens or “fairy tale” magic like in Harry Potter") but the deva should have a bit of freedom in that regard.

Holy smoke, dude. Presumptuous much? “Didn’t create so many things”? Howard is literally one of the “founding fathers” of the sword & sorcery subgenre.

Like other people have already explained, there are plenty of things, just in the original lore of Conan books. On top of that, the comics and even the movie add new things that can be used.

It’s not about staying small, it’s about staying coherent and cohesive. If I logged in tomorrow to find Vulcans beaming down to Exiled Lands and scanning people with tricorders, that would be ridiculous. If, on the other hand, there was an elusive NPC sorcerer with pointy ears, weird eyebrows and a penchant for a strange salute, that would be an easter egg, a homage or a crossover.

Continuing in that vein, but getting closer to Conan’s setting, adding dinosaurs to the game would actually be completely fine: in “Red Nails”, Conan fights a “dragon” and manages to kill it, but the description of the “dragon” makes it clear to the readers that it’s a dinosaur.

And that example was just from one of the book. If you delve into the comics, I’m sure you can find more fun stuff to add.

The point of this rant is that cohesion and coherence take a bit of an effort, but they’re not an insurmountable obstacle. As @Glurin pointed out, vampires are fine, “Twilight” vampires are not. It’s not such a horribly high bar to set. It’s merely the refusal to bow to what you call “popular”, but happens to be a rehashing of the same old tired tropes with minimal effort.

Regardless of what percentage of people care about Conan per se, I’m absolutely sure a lot more than 1% that would notice the game devolving into an incoherent mess and be disappointed by that.

I guess what a lot of people in this thread were too polite to say is: there are lots of games out there with flying dragons, elves, dwarves and fireball-chucking wizards, and if that’s truly something people can’t live without and they want it in the core game (as opposed to the mods), they are free to play those games.

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I don’t know where this story of adding “vampires” really came from, adding vampires has no logic, when I talked about adding popular things, popular mechanics, and molding them to your world, your reality, I left it WELL CLEAR that it wouldn’t be add dinosaurs, let alone vampires, why would vampires be added to the game? it would make no difference.

I agree with the guy above, everything has a great margin of reimagination, and as I said, take a mechanic and mold it to your identity, and not apply “vampires” to the game, if it was “necessary” and it is not, I would create if an animal with the identity of the world of Conan would suck blood, this is taking a “popular” mechanic, and vampires are not currently popular, and molding it to their world, not putting a guy in a suit with a white face and pointed teeth flying and screaming i’m a vampire i will suck your blood.

So when I talked about the mechanics of ARK, as I said everyone always quotes ark because it is probably the popular game that most resembles Conan, it would not be to catch dinosaurs and add to the game, it would be to catch animals from the CONAN universe and not from ARK and give them mechanics that work and that win over the audience, the game needs to periodically reach new audiences to stay relevant, it is certain that even if it will be very updated, people will always get sick, and new people should arrive to balance who enters and who leaves, that is, at all times the game needs to reach new audiences to stay alive, like those people who didn’t buy the game because they couldn’t ride a horse and when the horse was added they bought it way if one day dragon mechanics, taming and even flying on them … people who are not interested in the game are added will also do the same, it is always this movement if you add a the new interesting mechanics always a portion of the population will look at your game and think, 3 years I don’t want this game, now go, now I’m going to buy because THAT won me over, wins the “fixed” players I am part of the fixed players and win new players who will have the opportunity to know everything the game has to offer, and it looks great when the game fills with new people, I even like to play, because the game is very empty and lonely for the vast majority of people who play.

When someone takes a text about innovating respecting the universe of the game, adapting the innovation to this reality and simply says that someone said to add vampires in suits it is completely disrupting the game, you have to think big, think about masses, we are in 2020 when hundreds to thousands of games come out a year, thinking small, thinking traditional at that time DOESN’T HELP, that’s how I’ve been saying I’m expecting a lot from Scott Junior, his introduction to the game pleased me a lot, it seemed to me that he came with the advantage of help, with clarity and frankness, I even wrote him a “letter” and put it in the steam comments and here on the forum, I hope he has called.

I really hope that he is an agile and modern person and that he will balance the game in the molds he needs, the game is incredible I love playing it even with all the flaws I always quote, but even so I still love the game and for sure I visualize better things for him and the production is also responsible for that, so I hope so much from “Conan 2” because for me this is where they will give us the answer of how prepared or “hard” they are to enter 2020 with the game is still relevant and modern, after all we are close to turning the generation and Conan has to leave 2016 and go to 2020 and that includes many mechanics that in 2016 were innovative and today are overtaken, the world of games evolves very fast and I DON’T WANT TO FEEL PLAYING SOMETHING OUTDATED, I don’t want to and nobody wants to invest their time without feeling current, and I hope that Conan still lasts many years is that thought I have, how healthy the mechanics of the game o to stay alive?

Twilight doesn’t have vampires. It has glittered up emo kids pretending that they matter.

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In all honesty, glittered up emo immortals are the least of Twilight’s problems…

02-18b-homershudder1

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