FunCom: Please Stop Nerfing the Combat

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
21

It’s also not very often that you’ll see a story about Conan whittling down a supernatural monster’s health down cut by tiny cut. Defeating those, in stories, usually requires trickery or supernatural aid or a special item.

Honestly, if Conan could defeat a powerful monster by inflicting cuts with ordinary daggers and dodging attacks until the monster died, it wouldn’t be out of character at all. Of course, it would be described as a heroic and cunning deed, and Conan would probably be in danger in some other way, because that’s how the medium of stories works.

And it goes the other way around, too: if you could defeat some of the bosses the way Conan does, everyone would complain about cheesing. Luring the boss up a big slope you constructed and then demolishing the floor underneath it so it falls to death? Cheesing.

This is why it’s not very useful to compare two different mediums too literally.

As I already said, whether it’s more “lore friendly” is highly debatable, but it doesn’t matter half as much as whether it’s fun.

Fighting (most) bosses already isn’t very fun. Their AI isn’t very challenging, so the most fun you get from fighting them is while you’re still learning their patterns. After that, fighting those bosses is a bit of a repetitive chore: the longer the fight, the less fun it is.

I’m pretty sure that very few people will just grab a pair of daggers and only attack the boss every 20 seconds. Why would they? That just makes the fight longer, but it doesn’t really free them to “sip a margarita”, like Glurin claimed. If you want to go “sip a margarita”, bring a thrall and have it fight the boss. If you’re actually fighting the boss yourself – with or without your thrall’s help – you’ll do everything you can to minimize the duration of the fight.

This whole trope that “PVE players just run in circles with daggers” smacks of “how PVP players imagine PVE is for PVE players”. I imagine you would find it just as chuckle-worthy if I suddenly started giving you advice on proper zoning techniques. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Fortunately, it looks like the point is moot in PVE. I didn’t want to download TestLive, so I did the next best thing: I fought a couple of bosses in live and timed 8 seconds between “window-of-opportunity” moments. It looks like I can still fight the boss with a variety of weapons and not have to stick to just running in with daggers every 8 seconds, so that’s nice. As long as I can inject some variety into boss fights, I’m fine, and it looks like the devs either tested this or got lucky :wink:

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22

Actually that was more of a PvP reference. It’s right there in the patch notes. “This should allow bleed effects to be shed easily in PvP while still allowing for the same damage potential in PvE as long as the effect is maintained.”

Basically the thinking is if you don’t have a way to get rid of the bleed in PvP right now, you’re just kind of screwed even if you do manage to kill your opponent. Reducing the duration gives you a greater opportunity to let it expire without winding up dead yourself. This is doubly important since in this same patch they are also removing that very function from healing potions.

But in PvE it won’t matter so much because, as you said, you should have ample opportunity to refresh the duration and you’re normally attacking pretty often anyway. The only place where you might notice a difference in PvE is if you take a big hit and back off to heal up a bit.

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23

So here’s a question. Are we kind of on the same page that this is Siptah related with the proliferation of bleed weapons?

I waited to mention this until I confirmed it, but with sigils, bleed lasts approximately 3 seconds. So there is already a built in bleed duration reduction, same with poison approximately 3 seconds. For me its still a totally unnecessary change, and I wonder how he sigil mechanic will be affected.

24

No, I don’t think so. Not exclusively anyway. It’s not like they’re only reducing the duration on one map but not the other, and they’re also changing those bleed weapons so the bleed effect is functionally just a single extra stack. If all they wanted to do was nerf those bleed weapons, they would have done that and left the base bleed effects alone.

25

No… more… margarita’s :cry:

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26

No biggcane55 is correct. This is the world of Conan’s adventure. Poison was the way of assassins and immunity was the defense for it. So I guess we should just build an immunity to poison as we play the game then, Cool.

27

You agreeing with him is just further evidence he isn’t correct.

It’s the universe Conan lives in, he is but one person in a land of many. If you want to mimic his heroics, whatever that means to you, feel free to do so. That doesn’t mean other players want or need to play the game the way you think it should be played.

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28

You are wrong. This is in fact Conan Exiles. This is Conan’s World and mythos. Read the novels as they base much of this game on it when possible. Sorry in this case you are simply flat out wrong.

29

You realize Robert E. Howard created a universe that has been expanded on and developed tremendously right? At this point in time, Conan isn’t just a character, it is a brand. Get out of here with your nonsense.

Go back and actually read my post, you’re simply taking this stance because you don’t like me. Which is fine because I have been quite vocal in my opinion that all of your ideas have been terrible.

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30

I don’t see a reason for the bleed nerfs.

  • If it’s the Grey One weapons, nerf their damage, not the bleed effect. Their damage is what makes them a bit… strong.
  • If it’s PvP, the reduction to 8 seconds should be enough. Nerfing both the stacking and the duraction seems a bit too much.

The nerf to bleeding weapons make it necessary to rebalance lots of weapons, e. g. the Scythe of Thag. It’s really hard to get, and it’s only really great aspect is the bleed effect. Without it, the weapon isn’t worth farming for. This in turn takes away much of the reward/appeal of the Wine Cellar, which is possibly the greatest dungeon in Conan Exiles. I don’t want to be overly dramatic, but this nerf has a negative ripple effect across many other aspects of the game.

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31

I’ve read the novels, and I have a question for you. Have you ever considered that not everyone in those novels is Conan? There are other characters there and, unsurprisingly, they are not carbon copies of Conan himself. Some are thieves, some are assassins, some are archers, and yes, some are warriors, but not even all warriors are like Conan.

In the world of Conan, fighters are not only barbarian adventurers, but also soldiers, pirates, guards, and sellswords. Not everyone is a Cimmerian, not everyone swears by Crom, and not everyone has the same moral code. Different nations value different character traits, and even in those nations there are outcasts and outliers who behave differently.

So if anyone is flat out wrong in this discussion, it’s people who insist that we all have to follow the same play style, which just happens to coincide with their preferences. And those who base that claim on the source material without accounting for the differences in the medium are doubly wrong.

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32

If you google the terms conan and bleed out, you can find at least two stories where people in Conan stories (including Conan!) let people die by bleeding (or wish it upon them). Yes, yes, expanded universe, lazy google search, but I’m just too lazy to look it up in the books.

And Conan himself is thief, a sneak bastard, who uses every advantage he has.

Edit: I remember him killing a sorcerer with his own poison, too. The sorcerer used a blowpipe, but before he could blow the poison, Conan took the other end and “counter-blew” the poison right back at him. Yes, not a Howard story, but one of the other older ones iirc. Must be >25 years since I read that.

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33

Conan nearly died from exsanguination in his very first story

“Best stop your caterwauling and aid us to bind the king’s wounds. He’s like to bleed to death.”

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34

Ithink its good that they nerf bleed. if you meet 3 enemis w bleed it do not matter how OP you are, they slay you while drinking margaritas.

35

But… think about fighting three opponents with poison weapons. That needs to be nerfed, too! And after that got nerfed, they still outnumber you three to one. Nerf player numbers!

Or maybe balancing shouldn’t be done with a three against one fight in mind.

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36

You sure about that? I mean, if they’re applying bleed stacks at essentially double (or arguably more than) what you can do with other weapons, doesn’t it make sense that would be a big contributor to their power in itself?

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37

I’ve seen way too many “how to eliminate bosses” youtube vidios. where they stack bleed and go on vacation later. Throws a knife every now and then to keep bleeding up.
I do not think Funcom thinks it is balanced when you can kill almost anything with “passive laziness”

(Now, all knife users - do not get triggered by the word choice. It is in parentheses for a reason.)

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38

Does the nerf for bleed apply for all the creatures that make you bleed, too ? Or is the nerf only for Player Characters ?

39

I think its to the daggers no matter the wielder. Anyone back me up on that, or correct me.

40

honestly why not just give zamorian and another race the ability to add 3 more second of bleed and 4 more stack of it …

Not only to give incentive to lore but also to give a fresh reason to make races more of a picker over the other.