Feedback on the changes

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
1

You wrote that you have “listened to the community” and are making changes to the pass. What community would that be? I have seen way more complaints about the gameplay being too easy these days, the events and other updates and additions pointless and unrewarding yet you do nothing about those things. Same bugs in the building system year after year, the view locking bug has been on PS about 4 years now and nothing has been done…

The pass had no problems, it could be completed in two weeks with active gameplay and in a month by doing only the boosted challenges. It didn’t require playing in any certain way as you wrote, you just had to play. But sure, make that easier as well since you have destroyed the gameplay with the recent changes anyways.

In case you don’t know, handing everything out as loot and making every single thing easier (survival aspects, not needing to learn any recipes since you get everything from chests or as loot, stamina regen and all of the other stuff i’ve already forgotten since i don’t care to play much anymore) makes the game very uninteresting, unrewarding and outright boring. And on top of that the fact that you charge big money for things like the Aesir build set but release it faulty and don’t care to fix it in YEARS is just sad. PvP died long ago, now it’s just PvE role playing and building simulator.

I mean who would bother to play PvP anymore when there’s nothing to play for? 4x rates, instant thralls, loads of explosives and weapons can be picked up just by running naked in the fortress yard, chests give you all of the buff meals so you don’t need to go explore for the recipes, snap-on explosive jars so you can’t even build a proper defense anymore, flying bats and whatnot. It’s just complete nonsense.

Events and other activities should reward you with something special. For example the fortress, you get couple of the same recipes as you get from the Archives and hardened steel weapons. Honestly? You have taken everything special and unique away from the game. There’s no point in completing any activities, dungeons or such when you already have the same or better gear when you go there.

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2

People that actually want to fight other players? I may not be :100: agreement but they have set the stage of their intentions with PvP. Easy win/ easy loss as far as mats and building goes and the ability to quick recover to offset the loss of mats…all so that you can actually fight others in a quick way.

3

pvp has no more interest at all, pvp in conan it’s about siege system, raid or defend a base (process in which you fight and kill)

but when raiding require no more any skills and is a piece of cake and when defense become impossible because no siege game balance, and when in anyways you can get more in farming than raiding, there is no more point to play the game

there was may be an other road in balancing the siege system and not make all easy and reduce the diversity of the game in removing a lot of its content…

and the problem is also true with pve where survival become so easy that there is no interest to play once you discovered the main things as no difficilties at all.

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4

But the bump to offense is attempts to balance. Before, what was the balance against the repair hammer? They are still trying to balance that.

5

acid arrows and smoke arrows, fast bombing (and they can play on effect of acid arrow if they want to change balance in a way)

after it depend of topology of a base, but to use demon fire barrage can still be fun to test repair ability of a player.

and in past there was a good way to prevent rebuilding but they patched it and make it not working…
but anyways real situation on official is 95% raid offline.

6

It’s neither PvE nor PvP community they are listening to… Just look what is on the Bazaar and check which youtubers are being featured most often…
These changes are to cater to… building community :tada: which sucks both at PvE and PvP so they push to make the game easier as they themselves are not interested in becoming better as PvE/PvP gamers.

Drown the builders in the Noob River, toss the builders into the Volcano, crucify builders, offer builders as a food to the Darfari, cast them builders into the Jungle etc…etc… :laughing:

7

The builders are the only people spending money on the game.
The avenue of monetization is cosmetics.
With the relatively rare exception of some accidentally utile pieces (remember how the steep Nemedian roofs would interact with bombs?) there is little reason for anyone other than a dollhouser to spend money.

Also, blaming one section of the player base for decisions made by the devs is peak folly.

If the people in charge are making bad decisions and you wonder whose feedback they are listening to… look for who is bouncing up and down to praise those decisions, or look to the people who sign their paycheques.

Some feedback they may be listening to is in regards to certain gaming laws being passed in the nation where their masters keep office. The CCP is cracking down on daily gaming incentives. Tencent is based out of the PRC. The math is relatively basic.

Also, the previous pass system had some hiccups and it was blatant drudgery. It could be completed relatively quickly, but it was still go hit rocks over here or go pick flowers over there.

While this one hasn’t seen the new system yet, only their previews of it which really don’t express what the numbers/time is to complete, this one wasn’t exactly a huge fan of the prior incarnation. But then again, this one hates Battle Passes in total, so this one is not the best one to judge quality.

Regardless, this one is not terribly hopeful for the new Chapter. This reinventing spree they are on, first the combat system and now the inventory UI is not what this one had hoped for at all.

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8

And to a point look at the complaints here and on social media.

‘the game is too easy’.
Ok we bumped NPC reactions and made player actions a bit more skilled based.
‘this is dumb and we hate it. We never asked for this’

“PVP alphas are too entrenched to get out and its no longer fun”
OK we made it easier for you to blow into the base
“Way to kill defense FC!”

‘Getting offlined is hard because we lost everything’
Ok we just made it easier for you to rebuild
‘What’s the point of PVP now?’

‘We need new content. We need a new map’
OK here is Siptah
‘I’m not going to buy it.’

I can go on and on and on. Almost every change to the game came directly to address feedback from the players but since it wasn’t the solution that was wanted we claim we never asked for this that or the other. No we did when we told them to fix XYZ. We just didn’t like how they did it.

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9

I spent 15 years flying WWII flight simulators. Real PvP
Mono de Mono. Sometimes Mono against a pack of jackals.

Hack & Slash PvP is all about gear, potions, jumping around with no immersion. Not much skill, zerging rules the mob.

Agree with the builder, we have every add-on for building we could buy.

As far as changes, ever chapter sux more than the last one. The change in combat is the worst one yet. If FUncom listens to us, the polls say revert back to the old one. We will see.

10

This one takes a touch of umbrage with calling what they did to the combat more skill based.
It’s baked in jank, they made it clunky and more frustrating. It also highlighted the supreme disconnect between what we see happens and what the system understands as occuring, especially in regards to hit boxes vs pixel location.
Making combat more skill based would require both more nuance to the system and a significant overhaul of NPCs AI. In a system where they have said numerous times they will never put a parry system in and with no deflection or right of way mechanics, it’s not really possible to have a more skill based approach. It’s hack and slash. Or roll n’ poke if you prefer. Stagger/Hyper armour being the only real other place to play, and that’s something this one thinks they have baked into the wrong piece of equipment… Either way, it’s stamina attrition management until hp attrition determines victory.

Mind you, this one personally thinks a more complex and nuanced combat system is more than a little discordant with the source material. We don’t read about Conan’s fients and parties and ripostes… Ect…
We read about gritting teeth thru pain and crushing foes thru superior power and simple mastery.
(Mind you, we also don’t read about the use of explosives extensively in warfare, but that is PvP)

Not an easy balancing act. While this one is not shy about what they consider decisions that detract from the playability and consistency of the game, this one does not think they are working under easy parameters, especially when attempting to make PvP and PvE work at the same time.

Perhaps this one may note, they read the feedback but without getting to the meaning behind it, or worse yet, misinterpreting the meaning behind it.
Addressing the symptoms or misdiagnosing the cause.

With regards to PvP, what was noted at the roll out of Age of Sorcery likely holds true today, in that they’ll let the PvP community sort itself out, rather than consider how changes (in that archaic case, the roll out of Sorcery) will impact PvP meta overall.
This one does believe they respond to PvP feedback. At least some of it. Look at the Spear and Sword of Crom nerfs. Those were explicitly requested.
Now, this one considers which requests are actioned upon to again reflect a reactive and less than deep understanding of the realities of play…
Which makes them very concordant with the calls for nerf which likewise tend to reflect a less than deep understanding of how combat works, and a disinclination to learn how to pick up a rock to smash the scissors that just cut someone’s paper.

A nerf is easy and actionable. Digging deep to squash the systems that allow sky bases, under meshing, speed hacking, ect… That is a bit more involved, it’s not easily actionable.

Circling back to Siptah.
It’s conception and implementation were reflexive of the bigger problem. They gave a new map. But they designed it for what they considered post game PvP desires. Many didn’t buy it because it was an RNG hellscape that encouraged the most obnoxious of PvP on non PvP servers. Also, it was (and is) unfinished, obviously unpolished.

Someone ordered a steak and was given an undercooked chicken cordon bleu.
And then it was wondered why it was frequently rejected.

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11

What else could it be? It is cosmetics because it’s either that or p2w. What am I missing?

12

That is indeed very much my take as well. I keep finding myself coming back to a very clear example from a few years back - there were many posts on the forums calling for removal of the ‘Karmic’ effect from the game, proclaiming it ‘broken’ and ‘over-powered’. The devs clearly read and responded to these threads, with the very next update entirely removing the karmic effect (rendering the Nemedian and Godbreaker Boots a lot less meaningful). The problem was that all of those threads had been started by a single vigorous troll, and every other post in them was other players arguing against the idea. Clearly the devs had ‘seen’ the threads, but just as clearly they had either failed to read or failed to comprehend…

Of course, this is just a single extreme example - but time and again we have seen the devs respond only to the simplest most direct demands, ignoring completely any more nuanced suggestions. And as we have seen just recently with the frankly lousy ‘Q&A’ that was put out regarding the removal of QoL features, there is little evidence to suggest they are paying any attention to the actual substance of issues presented.

Except, of course, the vast majority of these changes are unwanted and unasked for by a majority of players - precisely because the devs typically only appear to respond to the least nuanced demands, and in the least nuanced ways possible.

Combat could have been made more difficult in numerous ways (not that I, or many others, ever called for that), but locking players to fighting in straight lines while turning npcs into perfectly-turning heat-seeking missiles was clearly not something anyone was calling for. It is not a matter of us ‘asking for it’ then ‘not liking it once we got it’, it is a matter of some players asking for increased difficulty and the devs responding by making combat comedically bad.

As for Siptah - again, many of us were not asking for new content or new maps and never have (while, it should perhaps be noted, many of those that do call for such things make the same call again within a couple of weeks of new content being released…) - many of us have pleaded time and again for a moratorium on new content until they can actually get the existing content to work. There seems to be little evidence of the devs ever responding to that request… Nonetheless, I bought Siptah, despite being told repeatedly that it is a PVP map, because I was happy to support the game. The problem is, as Lost Brythunian notes, Siptah was released in a very much incomplete state (and remains unfinished).

As for upcoming changes, can you honestly state that you’ve seen people complain about wanting less freedom in inventory management? That they really hate being able to split stacks as they choose and would prefer a longer more laborious method instead?

If you squint hard enough, maybe you can find a justification for the dye change - people have long complained about the size of the dyers bench - but to suggest that the approach taken is really intended to counter those arguments is hard to believe. Complaints were clearly, and repeatedly, about its size, not a desire to make the dyeing process more laborious.

As @CodeMage pointed out to me when I returned to the forums - there comes a time when you have to stop blaming bad changes on the players calling for them - ultimately it is the devs who decide what to do and which requests/suggestions/demands to listen to.

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13

Yes and no. How they implement change is definitely on them and needs critiquing. What to focus on? That’s mostly us crying a river about this that or the other.

My critiques are more larger concerns about the resources and time spent on marketing prep of stuff. This latest upcoming chapter has me very much concerned over the future of CE as it was obvious there was minimal prep time in the presentation of the dev stream. The BP, however, is more akin to the AoS with actual cool content that is more diverse so all is not lost in my mind yet.

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14

Whereas I would argue that there is no ‘us’ making these complaints. There are some players making complaints/suggestions/requests, there are other players arguing against most of these same points, or taking the time to clarify and refine what is being called for. It is Funcom that chooses to respond only to the first category, and ignore all of the feedback from the other two categories. And then, supposedly, they are surprised that by ignoring two-thirds of the feedback and kneejerk reacting to the first third, players are unimpressed.

Marketing wise, sure, they seem to be half-arsing it - maybe the BP is an improvement over the last couple - maybe that draws people in. Or maybe the disastrous combat update followed by the QoL downturn in this next update results in fewer players. In the end, only Funcom will know the answer on that one - but I do think they’d stand a better chance of maintaining/gaining players by focus on making gameplay better (or at least not making it worse), than by focus on slightly improving the offerings of cosmetics in a BP.

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15

This. I believe (and I’m not the only one) that a controller was used as a means to test the changes and therefore they didn’t see the issues that KB&M noticed very quickly. I hope that cements down that testing needs to be done by the playerbase input devices vs dev favorites.

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16

I think you’re kinda cherry picking a bit.

But understandable because it’s a lot to go through since:

The game is too easy because most of the real survival elements have been removed/replaced or changed so drastically with mundane tasks that require an absurd amount of steps that don’t really make me feel like I’m surviving. Instead I am following a recipe and ensuring I place the thing in the oven afterwards… Maybe it’s a result of being experienced but in a survival game while I might be more informed it shouldn’t make it so it’s a cakewalk. I can defeat all world bosses naked, I can survive the cold naked, I can survive the heat naked, I can fight and bomb naked… naked. Dumb.

Most of the examples for PVP that you’ve given are treating symptoms rather than causes - which really is just Funcom’s MO. There’s plenty of us that have explained why the problems are the way they are and not just reeeeeeeing.

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17

Too true but they already refuse to deal with the root cause. That is using an outdated engine that severely limits the game’s advancement and so it’s literal give and take.

The fix is CE 2.0 in UR 5 and not limited by last gen consoles and I’m almost positive that is in the works considering how successful CE was.

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18

There is a job available for an unannounced project… fingers crossed.

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19

This one was noting that calls to eradicate the builders are calls to eradicate the continued development of the game.

Regardless of who the player base is, Funcom has decided who their Payer base is going to be.
In business, the needs (read: desires) of the paying customer come before the needs of those who are no longer paying the bills.
Moral or ethical regardless, the bottom line funds the product and any business that doesn’t have it’s mind on it’s money and it’s money on it’s mind isn’t long for this world.

As far a show they could monetize the game to make transactions alluring to PvE and PvP crowd, rather than just dollhousers…
There are ways, and they are absolutely pay for advantage. But who gives a cluck about advantage in a PvE sense?
A new map, if it were made for PvE rather than as a PvP arena, is an example there.

As for PvP, here’s some low hanging fruit that plays to the current weakness and monetizes a plug for the offlining meta.
For a modest number of Chrome Coins, one can purchase a major domo thrall.
When placed in a throne, they activate Dynamic Building Damage for the structure around them.
They also auto-refresh the decay counter at every server start up.
This thrall is temporary, say, only lasting between 24hrs and 1 week, depending upon how much one pays for them.
See, that would make money, but it wouldn’t give much of an advantage. Only the advantage of being able to not play the game without losing one’s base… A long screamed for upgrade. For those who don’t want to pay, they have to play.

Again, these are sample bad ideas that are no worse than what this one has seen in some other games.

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20

This is true, but if you look at the forum feedback section closely, this is also a problem of which too many players are guilty.

People are good at figuring out that something isn’t working properly. They tend to be terrible at identifying why said something isn’t working properly. This results in skewed feedback.

We see this every time someone is asking for a nerf to spear/daggers/whichever weapon is the current meta. They see how everyone with this weapon is performing better than those who are not, so they demand a nerf to that weapon. But the weapon isn’t the problem - it’s the fact that competitive people always gravitate towards what they perceive as giving them the greatest advantage. Remove the one offending item, and the people simply pick the next best thing in line, which then becomes the next problem to be fixed.

Nerfing a single item does not result in balance, it only shifts the order in which things are unbalanced. However, what it does is give the developers an easy way to do something and feel like they’ve improved the game. Because this is what our players wanted, right?

In a perfect world, the developers look at that feedback, thoroughly analyze the matter, in context, and say “that’s what you ask, but that’s not what the game, or you, actually need.” Then they produce a fix that overhauls the combat towards a better balance.

But in reality, whenever the devs do something like this, the players react with hostility. “We didn’t ask for a new combat system, we just wanted you to nerf the spear!” Obviously, sometimes when the devs try to guess what the players really want/need, they fail - they’re not mind-readers after all, and sometimes the way they thought their update would work doesn’t do what it was intended. And they need to work with the limited resources they have - they don’t have an infinite number of skilled programmers to throw at the community’s every wish.

So they need to prioritize. And as happens in poor project management everywhere, it’s so much easier to focus on the little details one can easily change, rather than admit that there is a flaw in the overall strategy that would be a massive undertaking to fix.