I love this.
I think it should be implemented in the next year’s hotfix patch with 0 changes.
There’s no need to fix anything. It’s just perfect.
@den Please don’t listen to any haters. Your combat system is flawless.
It only makes sense to force players into roll poke via hyper armor windows and stamina changes, force them into spamming the same rolls because npcs now have 100% lock on, and then punish players for rolling.
It’s great. I love it.
Normally I avoid the cliche of going “skill issue” because it’s not really a good way of addressing a mechanical problem, but in the current PvP environment where you can kill someone in three hits, have running attacks, and can abuse Q-lock there’s literally no reason why 2.5 seconds of not being able to avoid damage shouldn’t be a death sentence, let alone 5 seconds.
Keep in mind, I hate the roll-poke meta. I think it’s antithetical to the trade gameplay that Conan was founded on. That said, the better method of addressing this would be to just bring back meaningful stamina management like we had in AoS.
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I think there’s no need to roll back.
You and me both play on private custom servers that will remove or change it on day 1 via server mod.
I say let console players and official players enjoy the new “improved” combat.
It sure brings more entertainment than the new PvE raid.
This rule makes a lot more sense in a meta where heavy attacks also benefit from good hyper armor coverage. However, in Age of War why would you ever risk a slower attack when you always get stunned at first contact?
The reason spear played so strongly in this meta was because it has a long reach and Age of War stripped the gameplay of factors that mitigated that advantage. It used to be easy to just use a 1h sword or another trading weapon with starting hyper armor to break through a spear poke and out-trade them. Moreover, without endless stamina it was more difficult to just mindlessly roll-poke. You could also RISK trades without also risking death on failure due to cranked up burst damage.
Rules for designing/changing PvP are fine but they need to be considered against the backdrop of actual game mechanics, otherwise you end up applying arbitrary standards that worsen the state of play.
You want to build a robust system that rewards people for learning its finer points, and a big part of that is acknowledging when changes just aren’t working as intended. There are a ton of players that can offer meaningful insights into what made PvP more fun pre-AoW. You’ve just got to ask!
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Tbh these issues would definitely be mitigated if there was a proper standalone overhaul mod on the workshop, instead of everyone leaning into their own server mods. A mod wouldn’t have to do much either, just restore the old hyper armor and turning speed for weapons. The biggest change really would be going through and editing movesets. I’d even do it myself via the devkit if someone could provide me with the right values.
Things like burst damage and stamina regen can be adjusted server-side.
The existence of those mods alone should ring some warning bells in devs heads.
It’s one thing when someone creates a custom weapons mod with its own balance etc.
The moment when the most popular mod on Workshop is the “Combat fix” mod after you just dropped an update…well that sure hits differently, but I doubt devs will even care. They will just roll out another batch of out-of-touch changes and wait another 3 months.
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Honestly I’d hoped that these changes would induce demand for an open-source reversion mod, but thus far it’s been no dice. Traditionally, problems with Conan PvP have always been as simple to fix as going “No using this busted weapon”, but now the mechanics themselves are what create the imbalance. I’m hoping that eventually someone builds a mod that just focuses solely on reverting changes without adding anything unnecessary or being localized to a specific sort of server.
Nah. the Lead Designer is the problem.
Game mechanics were in a good place before someone decided to change everything.
Yeah I did mention it in a stream, but we have only started cursory testing internally for it, so I’m not sure it’s going to be THE fix, but it’s something we’re trying.
I watch the entire spectrum of content for Exiles, and believe it or not PvP is my personal favorite aspect of any game. Ever since highschool I’ve played games against people online at a high level in countless games that have come and gone - mastery is where I usually find the most fun in games and mastery is only ever truly tested against other people.
On that same stream I spoke up because I was criticized for not knowing how to open my inventory on the official Exiles stream (Andy uses different key bindings than me, and playing on streams for me is more about talking and showing than performing in combat!) - there’s a narrative that we don’t play the game. Exiles made up 40% of my play time in the Steam recap this year, that’s on my personal account, and it doesn’t account for the hours I work and test in our editor. This is getting long winded, but the point is - yes I care.
The most difficult aspects of PvP and Exiles are:
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Exiles is not purely a PvP game. Because of that, we can’t make changes that ONLY benefit PvP all the time. We can pick and choose, but we (the design team) have to be considerate that there are other types of player in the game, so not every PvP solution will gel with the rest of the community.
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Everybody has a different opinion of what the “right fix” is for any given situation. Even if we were to “listen to everyone” today to take the steps that would “fix the game”, revert stamina to the old system, change rotation to be pre-AoW or match Chapter 2, there would be another thing that comes up that everyone agrees makes it imperfect.
I don’t mean to be dismissive. I monitor discussions in various places, but I usually don’t reply to these threads because they start counterproductive arguments about who’s right and what’s a braindead take rather than leading to constructive discourse about the changes. The most important thing everyone can do is to keep telling us when you’re not happy. Through dialogue, we should usually be able to agree on the problem, and the outpouring of feedback we got from this update was invaluable in signaling that something had come up that needed our immediate attention. That type of feedback is extremely important for us, thanks to everyone who has taken the time to post about it!
There are some changes in this chapter that should have been tested more before going live, both by myself and by the community, and since Exiles is a live service game, we have the luxury of correcting those mistakes. I’m auditing all of the changes that took place between Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, and will let you know once we have more information about the fixes. I’m sorry to anyone who was inconvenienced by these changes, it’s never our intention to upset anyone.
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I don´t know how to feel about what you wrote. You say you and the team care, you say that our feedback is important and valuable and I wanna believe that but yet here we are again facing the same problems as with the last ages. How come? How does it come that people report on testlive and yet, the same bugs go on liveversion because it doesn´t got fixed. How about in general that bugfixes are lagging. How about throwing out updates short before the weekend knowingly that there will be major problems with the update and don´t say you don´t know, because we never get one lately that hadn´t any major issues. You left people banned over the weekend and beyond and while those peoples bases decay the Funcom stuff is taking weekend breaks. That is not acceptable. Bazar items have ridiculous prices and yet most of the stuff stays unfixed and unfinished. Some of the stuff like the additional sandstone building set still has not seen triangular pieces. And that is almost a year. Armors and Weapons with wrong stats and clipping issues all over the place. Instead of fixing skybases you remove the ability to teleport.
Its not that we don´t wanna believe you its that you and the rest of the team doesn´t show any signs of learning from past mistakes. You just keep going on with the bs while you guys try to stale us with nice words. All questions regarding pvp that where ask during the last year in your livestreams where completely ignored. Nobody had a problem with stamina but yet here we are with a complete bs rework of stamina, nobody needed. This time could have gone into serious bugfixing. Would have helped a lot more then creating those mess of combat you call “improvement”.
People are not only not happy, they think the game is getting more and more unplayable. And yet you keep going with the nonesense combat changes. I doesn´t look like you care. It looks like bazar sales is the only thing that matters in this game. Months since you introduced golems and claimed further development. Nothing happend since then. Same with the mannequins.
Purge has not seen any major updates. They are bugged, they are stupid and you and I know it will stay this way. I just wonder who you think will believe Funcom anymore if you guys are keep going like this?
At this point I am too fed up to be polite. I am sorry. I play this game since 7 years. I am used to a lot and had more patience with that game then any other ever, but their comes a time where it is enough. Other companies with that record of failing updates and gamebreaking bugs wouldn´t have survived. You are lucky that we love this game so much that we endure even the bullycrapiest update you are forcing on us. And that is the hard truth. And as a result of our loyalty we get milked like cows now from Tencent.
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hat’s how I think about pvp, that’s why they want to destroy it completely so that no one will play pvp anymore, only pve 
and by the way, they would have to go back to the times before trebuchets that penetrate the shield to fix pvp
Breathe in. Breathe out. Everything is going to be ok Winthor 
I do not speak for the rest of the PvE community, afterall, to each their own affinity of combat, but as a PvE player myself, I did not mind the change in stamina.
I liked fighting with the bow and hammer a lot before the change, sometimes the daggers too for a boss with a high stack of PV, and I was using a one hand weapon when I was riding a horse or at night (to hold the torch in the other hand).
If anything, the damage dealt by the folks in the volcano is considerably noticable in PvE, but the stamina change? Not so much.
Does the new system of stamina bites for the PvP players? It looks that way. Is it because the PvP servers use spears more compared to the PvE servers in which the use of weapons is more diverse and the use of rolls less important? Maybe. Old stamina, new stamina, I would go with either honestly.
Just this, I will have to disagree. The fact that you can both select the time when you are having the purge and choose the level of purge you want to get regardless of the biome you built your base in… ARE major updates.
We are talking about players getting to choose how they use their game time without having to endure imposed setting sequences just because their real life agenda does not match the agenda set by the server.
The fact that you finally have an enemy camp in front of your base with chests as rewards and NPCs to save and recruit ARE major updates too.
We are talking about the “reward” notion for your efforts. When you fight any other boss on the map, you get that special reward (key, chest…), not just the loot of the dead minions. Why was it that for a purge, which lasted 45min, no reward was planned and nobody even cared about it? We were only farming the purges for their thralls, being blind to how bland that was. The new purge introduces the notion of item “reward” (how useful that reward is to you is debatable, but it is still a mechanic which belongs to this kind of event).
As for the recruitement without the use of the wheel of pain, I will not explain why it is a crucial feature, threads have been made for it alone.
Let us be honest, had it been reversed… with the camp system from the start, and all of sudden you were introduced with the old system of purge for Age of War, who would not complain? The NPCs popping out of nowhere and destroying your whole base rather than just focusing on how to access your riches? That is what I call “bs”. The old purge was only “fun” because we knew no better.
I agree with the fact that the new system of purge needs its bugs fixed. But honestly? The new purge is fun. Minus the bugs, the way it is conceived looks more like what a finished game would give to its players than what we had previously for years.
Thank you for the explanation.
I still don’t understand why it is necessary to rework core mechanics like stamina, hyper armor or turnrate in this game. There was only one rework in the history of Conan Exiles that I agree with: the long dodge roll being removed with the horse patch, because horses would’ve never been able to hit players in light armor.
Why are you not working on making all the other weapons viable for PvP? I am talking about the Javelin or the 1h Mace. Instead you added this infinite roll patch, which made even more weapons useless in PvP.
You should’ve also predicted that it’s gonna be poke and roll with 2h spears again. Especially when you added the ability to turn during attacks, which in combination with target lock is basically an aimbot.
Just too many why’s.
Right now, I am setting up an Age of Sorcery Chapter 3 server and am downloading the client, because this patch is just superior to what Age of War is.
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Problem is that they making it worse and not better each time. That’s what confuses me if they care so much 
Polishing the game since 2019 and the game would probably be totally different than it is today. Instead of removing and remake a game that has been out for 7 years.
Old walking style still looks so much better than the new one. Weapons worked better, different debuffs had a purpose more than today and so on.
I smell BS from far away from this guy.
I also know they got a lot of feedback and suggestions that would benefit everyonr from their testers. But they pretty much got ignored.
This brings me hope, and honestly I really appreciate that you took the time to write all this out. I know you mentioned “long winded” but in this environment long winded is a good thing. It helps a lot when players understand your thought process and feel like you can be spoken to.
This lets me know that my posts have been read. Admittedly, some of my phrasing hasn’t been the most constructive and that’s definitely something I can fix.
Strong words aside, I think the reason behind why the feedback process is so difficult is that Conan as a game has so many aspects that impact one another, and describing how a set of changes effects a set of mechanics holistically is difficult. This problem compounds when players really don’t know what lies ahead. You also have players that will fight tooth and nail for the status quo because that’s their comfort zone.
This is definitely true! I also agree that you can’t always please everyone, and that’s okay. Some players really want the spear to be the end-all weapon, others feel that way about the bow. Personally, I feel that the game works best when there isn’t a hard meta. In both 1.0 and Age of Sorcery, each weapon felt like it had a place (except javelins but we don’t talk about javelins).
Trading weapons like the 1h sword and 1h axe had good hyper armor and damage so they could out-hyper and out-trade chasing weapons like daggers and the spear. Heavy weapons like the greatsword and maul had slower, heavier movesets and matched trading weapon hyper to out-trade them. Chasers were fast and did enough damage to punish heavy weapon use by hitting during gaps in their hyper armor.
You couldn’t just run in with one weapon and win, you had to consider both what counters your opponent in general, and how to go about stopping them from recovering after a lost trade.
This sentiment is understandable but maybe PvP and PvE don’t have to be viewed as mutually exclusive. Hyper armor was definitely used by players to turn stunnable NPCs into milkshakes. I’d be lying if I said that the Mounds of the Dead couldn’t be cleared by just diving into groups of Cimmerians and spamming the 1h axe heavy spins until they died. The same goes for other hyper-heavy weapons.
That said, NPCs had hyper armor as well and that could be made a lot more dangerous for the player under the right circumstances. Giving them a dodge roll and a check for attack animations could potentially make them more reactive in a fight by allowing them to either disengage from taking damage OR avoid an attack entirely and reposition themselves for their own strike.
A lot of the issues with NPC difficulty is that players quickly learn how best to out-path them. The changes with Age of War definitely made it less viable to chainsaw them to death with an axe, but didn’t change the dynamic of PvE combat beyond slowing it down a bit. In a 1 on 1 fight, NPCs still lack a meaningful counter to me keeping them stun-locked. Imagine if they could just disengage from my attack spam with a roll then hit me later in my combo during a gap in my hyper armor.
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This is the valuable communication and feedback that I think many of us want to see den, I have asked for this and appreciate it so much given your very busy schedule.
I may have the reservations of @Winthor and @SirDaveWolf but also the clarity of @Glatix to lean on as well.
To lend my voice to the 2 former: I agree that perhaps instead of reworking these systems that addressing bugs would have been a better use of time and given more satisfaction.
But one big thing -skybases- they absolutely need to go. They’re a bane to PVP Officials 
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I think you are right in that people are clinging to their own interpretation of what will “fix it”. The only thing I think I have for you in feedback is I would love more detail on what the intentions of these changes are. You do a stellar job at explaining the intention of new content but the updates to current content could use work on what the intention was for the change itself.
For instance, a comparison.
update 3.0. You reworked the ENTIRE attribute system on top of introducing sorcery. You gave a great reason for this that we could all relate to. In previous CE, we were not the stars of story. We were heavily dependent on thralls to tackle NPCs and that isn’t your vision of what CE is about. While people did gripe, the majority of folks totally were on the same page with in and accepted the changes. I can remember this in your dev stream from last year no problem
Update 4.0 You reworked combat and the stamina changes. I had to rewatch the dev stream to get an understanding of what the intent was and then find out that you wanted stamina drain to pause spam attacking and while that may have worked for PVE, it definitely had the exact opposite effect on PVP (but that was due to one particular perk) but I digress. It wasn’t memorable . Also I found it interesting that these were part of the larger aspect of AI improvements that I missed in that first dev stream for the age. That makes sense that we are seeing the our characters appear to get limited while the NPC’s appear much differently. But once again, I didn’t take notice back for AoW then but can very easily tell you the reasons for the attribute changes in AoS even if it’s been well over a year.
Maybe I’m rambling here. But there is a difference in how AoS and AoW are coming out. Maybe it’s because AoS was done and dropped at chapter 1 for the most part as far as attributes go while AoW combat is being piecemealed to where we lost track of your intent when you did the age’s first dev stream but it is different. It could be chalked up to AoS was developed for years and AoW was developed in a year. I don’t know but I think I can speak for everyone here in that we have noticed a difference in how these two ages are being implemented.
If I can give you one suggestion that would help me is that you type up an Age intention memo and post it publicly so that we can all refer back to it.
Also just as on exPVPer I would say you need to fix the perk exploits over tweaking the weapons. You can’t tell me that rolling thrust was designed for bows. The name has thrust in it and should be limited to melee only (and that gets rid of bow meta). Also I would make a subsequent roll after the rolling thrust attack to have the same stamina drain as the attack had added to the subsequent roll so your droideka spear holders aren’t meta anymore. Last stand? No one can tell me that its purpose was to tactically retreat to a war pyramid to hide and heal. It should limit your mobility since the name implies you are making a last stand…not a last “run away”. finally the quick footed perk is about logistics, not combat. Make it so it is only active in the same sense as passive healing meaning if you get hit, it turns off for a second or two. These are the perks that PVP abuses and most of the calls to action against bows or spears or whatnot can actually be addressed with adjusting these perks slightly so that they are god level perks but retain the core purpose of them.
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It’s wonderful, i really enjoy this topic!
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Just throwing a few suggestions here. It won’t make the system perfect but, from my perspective, it will make it a lil better than what we have right now on live client.
Current stamina recovery, hyper armor windows and weapon swing stamina cost force players in a certain playstyle we all know as “roll poke.” Starting from lvl 1 a player is forced into using only 1 or 2 attacks before disengaging from a fight via roll or simple run away tactic. Combination of fast stamina recovery and weapon swing stamina costs basically “teaches” a player to use “roll poke” tactic to keep the momentum of the fight and avoid damage and stunlocks (extremely bad situation due to lack of hyper armor) from npcs.
My suggestion is to decrease of weapon swing stamina cost and stamina recovery, with the possible addition of “Grey stamina” status back into the game.
Lower weapon swing stamina cost with lower stamina recovery will increase the importance of the Grit attribute and at the same time will decrease “roll poke” and general spam of attacks due to “grey stamina” debuff.
Players, by no means, should be punished for avoiding damage via roll. Especially during an opening window, they get between NPC attacks. It’s counter-intuitive and will just push every into full heavy armor health potion chug fest where people just stats trade everything in the game.
Attributes are fine in general but a specific list of perks needs a slight adjustment.
The biggest “elephant” in the room is the “Quickfooted” perk from Agility tree.
In pvp environment, it’s a mandatory perk that forces every player into 15 agility even if their entire kit is strength weapons only. Quickfooted shouldn’t have 100% uptime and must be active only when a player is under 50% or 25% HP threshold.
Turning it from mandatory perk for both running away and attack into a “run away and heal” optional perk.
Remove no stamina cost from Rolling Thrust. It will decrease “roll poke” problem and the perk will still stay relevant due to the sheer damage-related bonuses it gives.
Last Stand damage mitigation should be either removed and replaced by 25% healing burst or lowered to 30-50% mitigation. Currently, Last stand perk breaks the flow of the combat and forces people to disengage from combat and wait out the mitigation window.
The Stout perk from Grit tree is poorly designed and needs a complete rework or replacement. Currently, perk increases your armor by 1/5 of your current stamina, which means the moment you do any stamina costing action be it an attack or roll your armor bonus goes down. Making it a very…very bad perk to pick up. It should be replaced by something new or better or at least it should increase armor by x/x of your current maximum stamina bar number, just to keep the number static and applicable during the entire fight.
Hyper armor windows should be adjusted to provide greater hyper armor windows further you go into the combo. Light attacks and first heavy attacks won’t have great hyper armor values but 3rd and finishers should have almost full hyper armor windows to give the player incentive to use full combos and decrease “roll poke” meta.
Now…weapons and weapons animations.
Javelin needs a complete rework. Currently entire weapon class has no place in both pvp and pve. It should be something akin to a short sword with ability to combine it with a shield for shield specific combo and special throwing attack.
Highly recommend the application of the “Returning” weapon perk to entire weapon class to make legendary and drop javelins useable for special attacks.
Expand both Two Handed Dual Axes (str) and Two Handed Dual Swords (agi) weapon types. We need craftable and more legendary variants of said weapon types to expand both str and agi trees weapon selection.
Two Handed Claws light should be faster with greater forward movement to make it a bit more viable in both pvp and pve. Currently Claws lack any forward movement and speed to be worth a slot on hotbar.
One Handed Mace first light and heavy should be replaced or made a little bit faster. Both openers lack speed and reach to make viable weapons in both pve and pvp.
Throwing Projectiles offhand weapons, only str-based throwing axes rn, should receive a new type of throwing weapon: Throwing Daggers (agility), both craftable and legendary variants.
Damn mine was only 16% this year, though it was my highest played game (on steam… probably had more on my NES since I’ve been on a retro craze this year). 
This has been a sore spot for me for a while. And I definitely think that once they get some of these combat bugs fixed they should look into it.