There is this huge discussion going on about the changes to thralls.
I think the problem is that the developers need to do a better job explaining what they are exactly trying to balance.
This game has several different kinds of fights:
Player + thrall against boss
multiple players and their thralls against a boss
Player + thrall against multiple NPCs (e.g. camps)
1 player vs 1 player and their single thalls
1 player vs multiple players and their single thalls
multiple players against multiple players and their single thalls
Offline base defence with thralls against players
1 player + thralls defending a base against multiple raiders
Offline base defence with thralls against the Purge
1 player + thralls defending a base against the Purge
maybe moreā¦
These are all vastly different fights. Balancing for one kind of fight will make other kinds vastly overpowered or underpowered.
And I havenāt even started talking about differences in gear, available healing, attribute distribution, skill level and levels (of players and thralls) and experience playing the game.
Currently thralls make a huge difference in these scenarios. This makes the game easy to program, but does make it less interesting to play.
Most games solve these issues by separating the scenarios and then balancing for them separately. Thatās why you have ladders, tiers, separate match making queues for 1vs1, 3vs3, 5vs5, and dungeons that scale with the number of people in them, and sometimes even the levels of the player.
Both ARK and Conan try to balance these things without separating them. I think that is impossible.
I think it would thus really help if they communicated clearly which things they are trying to balance, and which things they are leaving unbalanced.
Are they balancing for the new inexperienced player to have a good time and not get bored and frustrated, then the player with 3000 hours in this game will think it is too easy.
Someone who can solo the toughest bosses without help from a thrall is never going to be balanced against a naked level 1 player. There are a lot of things in between.
For Funcom:Which ones is Funcom balancing for?
For players: Which ones should Funcom balance for?
I think Funcom needs to separate these scenarios more, and give the players the options to tweak their own servers as they like them.
I think PvP and PvE should be balanced separately. Players are just so much smarter than NPCs in most games. This especially still makes offline raiding a challenge to balance.
I think players should be given more agency, to āfeel like the heroā. I think the last patch giving more control over thrall behaviour is a step in the right direction. More direct control. It also helps in having to āfix the AIā.
If the sliders for thrall damage dealt and damage taken were re-enabled, the server owner could decide how to ābalanceā the game for themselves. Then it could be decided by the environment and player base subsets.
I agree. PVE and PVP have to be separate.
Many years ago i played Guild Wars 1. A āMMOā with nearly perfect balanced an competitive PVP. Why was PVP balanced and only skill based in GW2? Because the following points:
PVE Content an PVP where strictly separated from each other.
In PVP mode each player was pushed to max level.
In PVP each player had acces to the best max level gear.
There where no special OP Legendarys in the Game. Each weapon in endgame had the same max stats. Legendarys where only cosmetical.
So the difference between the players was ONLY the skill they had. Nothing else. A player who played only 5 hours a week could be netter than a Player who played 40 hours. Play time was no factor.
You simply canāt balance PVP perfectly in an open world loot game. Itās impossible. Especially if you try to balance PVE and PVP togetherā¦
The game where I had the most fun was City of Heroes MMO.
There the developers just said that they were not trying to balance the game, but make it fun instead.
If you grouped up, it would make everyone basically the same level as the party leader and adjust your stats accordingly.
PvP existed (in some areas) and was horribly unbalanced. Nobody cared, and the real PvP players built their characters for it, with a few similar builds, which resulted in it largely being skills based.
When entering a dungeon, you could choose the difficulty level. If you had a fun, but really stupid build, you could go for āvery easyā, and if you had a very effective build, you could go āvery hardā, or something in between. It would also scale to the number of players in your party.
Loot worked differently in the game, as you played superheroes with their innate abilities, and were mostly independent of gear. You did get drops from mobs, but most were consumables and crafting materials.
The result were a lot of insane but fun character builds and a very high replay value. I think i had 20 completely different characters, while in most games I just have one.
It did not matter that it was completely unbalanced.
Yes, Iāve heard good things about the PvP balance in the Guild Wars games.
Iām never going to play it though, after how NCsoft handled City of Heroes. Iām never going to play any game any more, where I donāt have full control over the server and someone else can just decide to pull the plug.
Hereās a revolutionary idea: maybe all game content doesnāt need to be balanced for everyone. There can be stuff thatās balanced for groups of people with thralls that are too difficult for a player to solo. And there can be stuff that is meant for a single low-level player that is too easy for groups of level 60s with top-tier thralls.
A sandbox should exactly be what is: a sandbox. Each player can do what he want, the way he want. If a group of 3 players decide to take additional 3 Snowhunters with them in the dungeon, let them go. Sure, this dungeon run will be a piece of cake. But hey, itās their decission. It doesnāt affect other players.
I like Conan because I can do things they way I want, when I want. Sometimes difficult, Sometimes chilled. Thats why I play a sandboxā¦
And thatās why game dev is hard. But since servers are flagged as either PVP or PVE, with some minor optional PVP, to me they should just balance both play styles separately.
On PVE side, While running around in towns I do feel like the hero, I can murder everyone in sight even without a thrall to help. But the moment I step in front of a boss without a thrall tanking for me, I feel like a wimp even in top tier gear. As a primarily solo player, ideally in a boss fight I want to be the tank and dish out say 75% of the damage while my thrall does 25%. Maybe they can step in to tank while I heal up momentarily and then take over tanking again. My thrall is picking up the adds or kicking the boss to interrupt stuff for me, etc.
What I think they should do is add a āBoss Difficultly Sliderā that scales how tough bosses are up & down. If set to 1, I can solo it, set to 2 I can solo it with a thrall, 3+ requires a group, etc. Solo players can lower this to play and feel like a hero, big servers can pump this up to require groups if they want. Everyone can have fun.
But some players think the game should fit only them, and they tell you to find another game. And Funcom seems to agree with them. Talking about PvE, if I can choose a weak or a strong thrall, why should Funcom remove the option of choosing a strong thrall? Itās the same mistake of removing weak thralls and keep only the strong ones. It makes no sense. Itās nice to have options.
Talking about PvP, they really need to change things that affect only PvP.
Good news, there are people running servers for this game (Clarify in Edit: City of Heroes). They have access to the source code, so itās not an emulator like SWG.
EDIT: Clarified that City of Heroes was intended not Conan Exiles.
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PvE Balance is happening and very adaptable to changes made.
PvP needs to be a āSkinsā type system where All Light Armor is the same Armorā¦Med sameā¦Heavy sameā¦All 1 Handed Weapons same damageā¦All 2 Handed Weapons sameā¦then leave the armor and weapon mods for player customization and the different animations. This is soooo much easier to balance PvP. And it would be a simple and toggling the PvP option ON to switch to a different Data Table.
I think you are talking about Conan Exiles, and Iām talking about City of Heroes (which was the thread I was responding to).
The City of Heroes servers - Itās not a ādev kitā. Iāve reviewed the code package (and even helped adapt it for a local installation, itās C#, but my C++ experience worked for what was needed). Itās the full, compilable source code. You can change any behavior you want, or even modify the server architecture.
The code is a complete spaghetti mess, but with time, you can develop it and add powersets, new animations, even new areas to the game if you had the resources to do so.
I liked alot most of the things you said. Especially the way you end it, i tottaly agree. I suppose you have a lot of gaming hours on this game too. So i will inform you before i start speaking that my English are not so good as yours and this opinion comes only as a personal opinion and nothing more. I believe that the creators of this game fix a game that the company couldnāt invest the budget to fix it all, so what we see is not the original and complete idea yet. Still the marketing team wanted to go online and add the pvp option because it gives more money. All the kids like to kill each other and change useless skins. So pvp had to be added for financial reasons. And now the programing team have to work 24/7 for an audience that is never satisfied. You will tell me, this is how it works, itās never easy. Yes i agree. You cannot have good without evil. All i can say here, no matter how many bugs, no matter how many complains, i am gamer 35 years now and i never ever stayed in a game that long, never.