** Funcom - THANK YOU for reviewing and acting on our feedback! **

Conan Exiles General Discussion
, ,
1

UPDATE: Thank you for reviewing and acting on our feedback! What you are working towards with this TestLive patch I believe is work in the proper direction:

Funcom:

I desperately hope that this feedback reaches Oscar, Jens, and your entire systems teams. And maybe even some of your investor type people.

This game is a great game. You have done some truly amazing things with the combat system. Things that you should be proud of, and lauded for. However, I have deep concerns about the lack of “polish” and follow-through that have been exhibited since launch.

I will not list specific examples of lack of polish areas right now. There are plenty, and I feel sure that other players have pointed many of these out. But I would like to ask you to give significant reconsideration regarding your upcoming pet system that you are getting ready to launch.

From all appearances, the pet system is nothing more than the addition of animals into the already existing combat thrall system. Very literally. The pets are combat thralls with different skins. If you are a player reading this thread, and you do not believe that Funcom would add pets on with the same system /API coat tails as thralls, I submit to you Exhibit A:

Highlight: Conan Exiles Stream: Pet System, Nu-combat and Jhebbal Sag (44:03)

In this highlight reel, the new pet system is demonstrated. During the demonstration, the hyena pet dies. After it’s death, you can see from the quick loot window that the hyena has on it coarse shirt, coarse handwraps, coarse pants, and coarse sandals. You can see it at 44:27. So, it’s a thrall. A slave. This is what a perished combat thrall would normally yield.

What this tells me is that this hyena is a copy/paste of a regular combat thrall. It further tells me that rather than the pet system being a NET-NEW system, it is merely an adjustment to the existing combat thrall system. Which, unfortunately, still has some significant problems with it. Namely: AI problems, aggro problems, hitching, falling through floors and terrain, follow/unfollow problems and inconsistencies, heart attacks when approaching stairs or elevators, etc. I imagine I may be missing a few of the problems still plaguing our combat thralls.

What is more worrisome is that the pets need to be fed. Per the vision, this mechanic seems to make sense for animal pets. However - this is not something that they are able to implement for pets without implementing it for the entire pet system construct – which is the combat thrall system construct. Because the pet system is tied at the hip to the thrall system, these two aspects of the game will effectively be identical. Which means that combat thralls, too, will now need to be fed.

There is already significant heartburn from the player community regarding the incoming feeding system, and having that system apply to combat thralls (these do not include the many threads that were closed on the topic):

I think that players would be further disappointed and frustrated to learn that this is not something that can be separated from the thrall system. Mainly, because the pet system is the thrall system. On the current path, players who login to their game a couple of days following the pet and feeding system delivery will do so to find all of their combat thralls dead to starvation. I hope that you can grasp the gravity of this – it will have significant effect – you will lose a ton of players to rage quits – all of their carefully broken, placed, armored, and weaponed army gone.

I IMPLORE YOU to please reconsider the changes that are currently deployed to TestLive. I fear that the path you are on will lead to disaster for this game. That affects me, as a player, who loves the product that you have come forward with. That affects other players. That will affect DLC purchases. That will affect future game sales. That will affect your investors. Which will ultimately significantly affect you.

Please reconsider. Thank you for taking the time to read this feedback, and for your significant consideration internally with your teams.

Sincerely,
Cauthey

40 Likes
2

I resonate with the OP’s sentiments.

This feeding system exhibits the same sort of short-sightedness that screwed Funcom out of implementing mounts in the first place.

This thread reads like hyperbole considering it has already been stated by the devs that the food requirement has been set more on the “extreme” side. But even if the patch has been matured… even if the rates are well manageable and allow a solo player to field a moderate army, it will change the game forever in a way that a majority never asked for.

Just alone the fact that this system has been implemented just to cull thrall population, it will always have a certain bias in favor of discouraging players. Giving players the “freedom” to weather logistical attrition in order to field a larger army is manipulative.

You don’t simply have players enjoy something for so long, then remove that enjoyment.

New features use to be a good thing… But now Multiplayer survival games deteriorate over-time due to feature decay.

13 Likes
3

That is my fear as well. Comments from Joel and even our good community rep suggests that they’re going to take any feedback with a gigantic helping of salt. Understandable, perhaps, but I really, really hope they won’t just push aside the feedback with a “players are whiners” mindset. We often are, I suppose, but not always.

7 Likes
4

Feeding is about floating thralls, or server load? I seem to remember running a few dozen hard-earned dudettes a time or two back, and attacking some guys with a high base loaded with about 500 cimmerian jagoffs in full Hyrk, yet in the video replay I don’t have a single bit of recorded lag or stutter. Even when I was trebbing them and people were falling from the aqueduct structure like thrall rain. Granted the server was only two months old at the time, but I seem to recall a lot of thralls everywhere, from Jungle to Set City. Of course the PVP solution to too many thralls is “kill and rob.” So what are we really talking about here? PVE?

I don’t want to seem ungrateful, and I am overjoyed at the prospect of a posse of Spider friends. This system is just fine for Pets. But players want more from the thralls than what we have. I believe the expectation was that Funcom was returning with an improved/shiny system for thralls, with a feeding-enabled one potentially “deprecated” to Pets, which may account for a number of bruised feelings. I know a few content creators had prognosticated on their channels an incoming reworked system for thralls.

Right now, the feeling is our devs wanted to give us more Environment, so they added Pet models to the thrall entity. And because pets need to be fed, and they’re part of the thrall mechanism, even thralls need feeding. Seems circuitous. And punitive.

6 Likes
5

After two stream they already showed 2 dead giveaway how similar both the thrall and pet system if you all remember.

First, he said " I was told that we’re gonna add some functionality if your pet get too far away from you, they should teleport" and Also he also mention that pet will not follow you through the map room which is similar problem to we facing when asking thrall to follow. I wasn’t buying it when he said “adding some functionality”.

Second, went people ask is there a server setting to disable the thrall feeding instead they said there will have server setting for “how much feeding system you had to do”, Not separately only thrall or pet, but both them because they integrate similarly together. you could clearly see when he pausing before he could say for the pet feeding because he knew their coding aren’t allow them have separate server setting.

Which why this is so apparent to me, because why suddenly thrall are needed to feed when nobody asking for, and even though the new pet system had just been release went why Funcom woud willing risk adding even more trouble to the thrall went there a still large amount of bugs still have not been solve? thrall not attacking, sometime in the air etc. You all tell me if you have one problem with your coding would risk to add more feature without solving the main problem first?

3 Likes
7

Beginning to think they can’t fix thralls and are just tacking stuff on now trying to mask that the AI cannot be corrected.

Game is becoming way to prescriptive now rather than open world.

It’s “do your chores first Johnny then maybe if you have time you can go and fight something.”

7 Likes
8

I just finished watching that Livestream (2 days late… i know…) and noticed the armor on the dead hyena as well. It is less obvious in Testlive, since now all thralls are naked with ghost armor when first placed, so there will be no armor in the dead pets inventory.

I (and the vast majority here) would rather see all of this attached to the decay system as opposed to adding in the feeding mechanic. I get much more lag from large numbers of building blocks, than large numbers of thralls. At launch they nerfed half of all animal and thrall spawns in the name of optimization, and now they want to nerf 99% of thralls as well…

A parting warning about this patch going Live. I had all of my placed thralls missing when this patch hit testlive, so expect every placed thrall you have to disappear when this update hits. I also had several thralls in their workbenches gone as well, so I would suggest moving all of those to chests for safe keeping before this patch hits.

4 Likes
9

While it definitely needs to be flushed out (hence why its in testlive, I think people forgot that) I enjoy the system for the most part. Thralls and pets are not forced on you so you don’t have to use them. I agree the feeding is annoying but only because thralls need such high quality food. I think changing thralls tp require gruel would fix most people’s issues. As far as the pet system goes, that will be fixed over time. It has been out for 2 days guys, cut them some slack and give them time to put unique loot tables and such in

2 Likes
10

This is flatly unacceptable, and must be sorted before the patch is moved into the live servers.

1 Like
11

There is no way to see if this will occur in the next iteration of testlive, as all placed thralls disappear when the owner logs out, no matter for how short of time you’re gone.

I really worry about the thralls missing from benches because of how many people will lose their t3 and t4 crafters on Live servers because they don’t read the forums or miss posts about the issue. They have no warning as to take precautionary measurements to prevent losing some of their hardest to get thralls.

All of my benches and items were present upon the patch, but the thralls were missing. some were still in benches, but others just flat out disappeared.

2 Likes
12

I have not yet tried the pets on Testlive. I do use combat thralls. To the tune of dozens. I am happy, mostly, with the way they operate right now. My worry is that when the patch hits, my dozens of thralls will all be dead via starvation. So - all of the work to break, place, and equip will have been for nothing.

The potential starvation death of my dozens of combat thralls (depending on the timing of the patch and my availability to next login and play) is being forced on me. It is absolutely, 100%, being forced upon me.

The requirement to feed these combat thralls once these changes go to live is also being forced on me. If I want to play the game as I play it presently, with the way Testlive currently is, I will have to suffer mass starvation to my thrall ranks, and I will have to potentially rework the layout of every base where I have combat thalls to allow for thrall kitchens to keep them from dying.

The need to feed them is more than simply “annoying.” With very little faith in the method that they chose to roll this out, I am betting that I can pretty much kiss any placed combat thralls goodbye. Again - this is not acceptable. Other players who do not attend and participate in the forum community will not abide this, and will not make a peep about it when they put the game onto the shelf.

The “pet system” has not been out for 2 days. The thrall system, which has been built into the game since Early Access, has only had hyenas and other animal thrall models added to it for 2 days on Testlive.

2 Likes
13

I Love the Pet System, and waiting it so bad to come Live, Funcom, please ignore this thread, those people don’t even know how many efforts and hard work on the new features. I need Pet System!

14

Not to mention all the armor and weapons you are going to have to strip off them in case you have to re pop your forces again. What a pain in the tush.

3 Likes
15

Haha, the 30+ thralls I had on testlive that vanished when the patch hit all had flawless heavy armor and exceptional hardened steel weapons. It was a bummer, but didn’t bother me too much, since something along those lines was expected. It was all in the name of feedback and thorough testing. In retrospect I could have gotten the same result with 2-5 thralls, but I wanted my base safe from an offline purge that was due.

3 Likes
16

Not at all. But if we are going to have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting this fixed, now is the time to raise our voices about it.

Also, recently lots of stuff has gone through TestLive to Live virtually unchanged, despite concerns raised - so “it’s TestLive, it’ll be fixed” is unfortunately a dangerous mindset.

4 Likes
17

My natural language is german. The last lesson in english is serveral decades ago. So forgive me my spellings and in case of my age some typos.

I purchased Conan Exiles to get a diffrent game to ARK, which I played more than 1.000 hours. Meanwhile the playtime in Conan is more or less equal to the hours spending in the other game.

I play PVE and I won’t become a PVP-gamer.

I got an average base near the mounds of dead (at the cimmerian village - just east of the obelisk there). There are 5 altars, the maproom, a big wheel of pain and all kinds of artisans there. Exact 82 bowmen guard the building at the lowest parts of the roofs. 10 tiles away from the building and from each other there are three watchtowers manned with 8 other bowmen each. The building has 4 entrances, guarded by 6 cimmerian beserkers (or Dalinsina Snowhunters etc.) each. Off course there are some other named at duty like Duneman, the named bowman from the black galleon and - some Freyas. I would very, very hefty dislike to lose one in case of that “feeding - crap”!

My wish to own this game was bound to expectatios. Exiting battles in dangerous dungeons, legendary armor, unique weapons and other stuff.

I really don’t think, feeding thralls is an amazing aspect of playing any game. I think an exiting part of the game - as it stands - was the thing with the purges and the chance to get some T4 thralls to improve my army or workbenches. - Well this is broken atm.

My private server lost several players, because there is no beast in the dredge (? this first level 30 dungeon with the worm in the acidpool), because there where no starmetall-roids for a long time, because people builded what was to build an capture, what was to capture and than there was nothing to do or to go on.

No battles with an “wow-effect” - Low-health-thralls - vanishing corpses - chaotic purge-defence - broken purges - etc.

I really don’t think, feeding thralls is together with nerving the t4-spawnrates or the chance to get those glands (?) from the pink salamanders in the jungle is a “feature” to keep players and win new ones.

I think feeding thralls will be the next tombstone for conan exile.

The improvement of this game could have done much better with other decisions about r e a l l y exciting things!

3 Likes
18

I have played this game since early access and it is truely an enjoyable game. I am a big fan of grinding and I understand the need for the pet feeding system. That being said having great ideas and implimenting them wrong or to hastely will ruin a game that I have sadly watched decay itself over it existence. I have read all the comments in this and many other disscusions regaurding the state of the game. ( please realize its a game people stop playing and play agian ). Where as I understand taking a long sibatical on a PvP server already has a overtly negative outcome. The thrall feeding system implamented hastily will make it so the majority of players who have stuck it out this long wont any longer the system as it is right now will not allow you to not play for less than 40 hours. Lest you want all your thralls and pet dead. If it must be implemented one solution would be to treat trough like preservation boxes and then it might be viable. But I havent seen anyome mention anything about the changes to other features such as having to put bugs in fish traps for a 5 to 1 ratio of fish this is and insane addition of yet more tediousness to and allready tediuous game. Same goes for having to have honey to make more honey. These systems to can be implamented in a much smoother way such as having a stack of insects in a fish trap with increase the fill rate or keeping a stack of honey in the hive will allow for a faster production of honey as opposed to starting from scratch.

PLEASE FUNCOM HERE MY PLEA AS SOMEONE WHO HAS STUCK IT OUT THIS LONG. REMEMBER THIS IS A GAME THRALLS ARE FUN. YOURE WORDS “BUILD YOUR ARMY” MAKE IT SO WE CAN KEEP AN ARMY. PLEASE MAKE SO WE CAN “CONQUER” AND NOT JUST GRIND FOR 6 HOURS JUST AS AN UPKEEP. FINALLY I SAY PLEASE KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK AS THIS I A GAME ME AND MANY OF THE POEPLE I PLAY WITH TRUELY ENJOY.

2 Likes
20

“hence why its in testlive,I think people forgot that” Not really, we just remember that all the other patches that were on testlive also came out broken on live.
“thralls and pets are not forced on you so you don’t have to use them” Well buying & playing the game is not forced on any of us either but here we are. And since they are destroying the game with each patch we have a right to complain about it.
I never really understood the mentality that fanboys have which is - “if you don’t like it, don’t play it”
The only way to save this game is for the team to listen to the players, if nobody would complain then they wouldn’t know what they are doing wrong, and kill their own game.

6 Likes
21

Through my experience with the Conan Exiles since Feb 2017.
Their ideas seem always good, but their execution seems always bad.

4 Likes
22

Exactly,

or some inexperienced noobs will say “if you don’t like it, don’t play it, you paid for this game, and stop complaining. it’s just a video game. I wouldn’t care”
And people look so dumb when they do not have enough experiences and have no idea about what’s going on.

3 Likes