For some reason players think that the decisions made for the games they play should be some sort of democracy. They aren’t and nor should they be. Video games are art. Created by their creators and therefor pretty much extensions of themselves.
And while these people may look for feedback, ideas, inspiration, and generally reports on what might be going wrong. They are under no obligation, legal, moral, or ethical, to actually do so. If a majority of the players want something, even if a super majority do… hell even if 100% of players and all potential players (who haven’t bought the game yet and would do so) want something added or changed. They have no obligation to do so.
They have every right, both legally and spiritually/personally to make the creative work they wish to make and how they wish to. They are the final arbiter of the product they wish to make. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t offer suggestions, feedback, criticisms, or express yourselves. But don’t feel entitled to be listened to. That is done at their leisure.
I’ve said this in the past, and only bring this up because it was asked in another thread. I didn’t feel as if it was appropriate for that thread, but should be here since it is about feedback and how to actually get a response/listened to. @TeleTesselator asked, so here it is.
First thing, be civil. Many people seem to have this problem with typing in things and not reading what they type before they send it. I don’t know how much to put into that claim since you can read what you type while typing it. But in either case, don’t write something and then not read what you wrote. I had a college professor, a retired Marine and Viet Nam veteran, who once said, “Learn to speak and write clearly. Clear speech and clear writing is a sign of a clear mind.” This doesn’t mean your spelling needs to be perfect (though Chrome, Edge, and Firefox all correct that… so go ahead and use their tools) or grammar has to be thesis level. Just do your best. You’re trying to convey a thought or idea. Assume people can’t read your mind. Cause we can’t.
But most importantly the reason for being civil is that no one wants to take feedback when they’ve been personally insulted. For some reason a select few in every game forum thinks they can shame a developer by calling them incompetent, lazy, or whatever else. And then get them to do what they want because they’ve been bullied into it. These people need to learn a bit of humility and common sense. You cannot shame a developer into changing something. You have NO bargaining power and couple that fact with the idea that this is NOT a negotiation. Fun fact, these things are utterly ignored and not even brought to their attention. So insults to the developers is a waste of time. A simple emotional outburst that serves no purpose.
So now you’ve used whatever method works for you to put away the anger and vitriol. There’s something left because you’re not a total piece of crap person and actually might have something constructive (or maybe you’re one of those who didn’t have that negative stuff to begin with, good for you, honestly). As said before, you need to write it clearly and understandable. Remember people are not mind readers. What seems great in your head now needs to be expressed.
Some of you are not great at this. Some of you use English as a second language. That is fine. We have an open forum. Do your best, and I’m sure someone in the community will speak with you for a back and forth to get your idea actually conveyed. This community is usually decent about that. Usually.
But try to convey your idea as detailed as you can. And make sure you understand and are mindful of the impact of your idea. For example, there has been talks of PVP balance changes. In many cases these players are not thinking of their impacts on Singleplayer or PVE content. Pretty much any change in PVP that isn’t bomb, trebuchet, or avatar related. Or any change that doesn’t affect PVP only settings like raid times or DBD and settings like Follower damage to players. Will affect PVE. Things like weapon balance, dodge roll changes, attribute and perk changes, hitboxes, and all that all directly effect PVE.
There is also controllers to take into account. Not everyone plays with a mouse and keyboard. So things like archery accuracy and such can have a much more major impact to a subset of a playerbase than some people think.
And no, it isn’t your jobs to think of these impacts when making suggestions. Sure the devs can weed those things out. Well… guess what? They do. This is why you don’t see such suggestions see the light of day. They do weed them out. What I am suggesting is you do take the time to think about these things so your idea doesn’t suddenly get weeded out and discarded because it was infeasible from the start. They aren’t going to spend their time looking through your idea and modifying it to work. Why would they do that when its easier to toss it out and go to the next bit of feedback?
Which brings up the next thing. Does your feedback stand out? Is it something already suggested? Let me introduce you all to a bit of a secret. Dozens of one comment threads about a subject don’t do so well. Whether it be from a dozen different people. Or a person making a dozen threads. One topic with a dozen people having a constructive back and forth about a single suggestion works WONDERS. I think this is one of the better ways of getting an idea implemented. The ones who do curate the forums do bring those threads to the developers attention. Again none of this is 100% guaranteed. It still has to be in line with the dev’s vision of the game they want to make, and it has to be something that is possible. But this is one of the single best ways of getting their attention.
So if you have an idea, and someone made a thread on it. Don’t let pride get ahead and cause you to make another thread that will deadend. Put your ideas in the existing thread and talk with others there about it. Many times ideas are rough drafts and need a bit more feedback from others to be truly realized to their fullest potential.
Use every tool available to you to convey the message and idea. Ideas are great. Suggestions are great. But they have their limitations. Experiences are even better. Especially when it involves Conan Exiles itself. For example, server settings are a requested feedback in the past. Funcom has asked for feedback on both Follower Limits, Follower Damage, and Dynamic Building Damage in the past. The last one seems to be a hard to get feedback on. But that specific thing is a topic for another thread. Someone who is interested or has experience with DBD needs to make a thread for it.
Another thing to consider is modding. I do believe modders provide one of the most valuable resources to Funcom about game changes if not balance as well. I have seen many mod features inspire base game features over the last 5 years. I even have a personal experience along these lines which I will go into at the end.
What, we need to make mods to get changes? Well sort of, yeah. But no, it isn’t required. But I would pose this to you. What else is a better explanation of an idea or feedback than with the idea actually in effect and the results are plain as day to see? An idea is an idea, a gamble. A working mod is a proof of that idea’s concept actually working. But understand this isn’t infallible. There are many mods that are used by nearly 80% of the community that have features that are still not in the game and likely never will be. Because the logic goes, if the mod does it, then the ones who want it, already have it. And not all modded content is appropriate for the base game that will apply to 100% of players, not just on PC. Again, the developers are the arbiters of this.
In summary its quite simple. Be Civil. Be Clear. Concentrate the feedback into a single area. Use every tool available. And then be courteous. Understand that your idea and your feedback is just that, an idea and feedback. It isn’t definitive, it isn’t always the best. It might inspire, it might not.
Now here is my personal experience with this. Back in 2018, they had just changed up a large portion of the game. Archery was in a very very bad position. It was doing a fraction of the damage it was doing now. And it didn’t look good. Livestreams had developers on record saying the damage and implementation was intended, even calling a bow a ‘sidearm’ to melee. A tool rather than a primary weapon.
Well I had an issue with that. There were entire feat lines dedicated to archery and arrows. A full scale Attribute worth 275 attribute points, the same as Strength, or Vitality, or Grit. All that for a sidearm? That didn’t seem right.
But I followed my own advice. Or rather came up with it. I didn’t attack the one who called them a sidearm personally. Some forum people did. In fact I clashed with those people. Even though they agreed with me. I called them out when they made personal attacks. What good would that have done? Insulting the people who hold all the cards is stupid anyway. So I respectfully disagreed.
I then made my case. If these things cost as much feat points to unlock as melee weapons, it stands to reason, that they ought to equal in effectiveness. In addition if Accuracy costs as much as Strength, then it ought to equal it in effectiveness. I made those points very clear.
I didn’t stop there though. At the time I was playing on a highly populated private PVP server. I started taking feedback on what people wanted to see in Archery and even spoke to the owner of the server about potentially running a mod. I got my feedback, and I got the blessings from the server owner with their conditions to make a mod that fixed archery. Long story short, the server ran the mod, and to an extent, Archey was a bit more popular. I was really conservative with my edits. The server owner didn’t want Archery to overshadow melee. More of a support role. Well support is better than a tool like a hatchet or cleaver.
This was a 70/70 server during primetime and notable because of some of the large battles fought. We’re not talking duels. But full 20+ vs 20+ engagements. Archery was a factor, but didn’t dominate. It was deemed acceptable by the general community.
But that was only one server. A little while later I played on another PVP server. This was a slightly smaller one, averaging maybe 30 players. It was an overflow server to one that was 70/70 nearly 24/7 anyway. In casual conversation on discord, I saw the owner mention something about how they wish Archery was used more. So I suggested my mod. They didn’t run it on their main server. But they did on the overflow. Didn’t get much feedback there from the playerbase. I wasn’t as well established in the community there. But it did get alot more usage in some of the major battles fought there. Whenever a big fight sparked up, it would draw in people from the main server to participate. So again I was able to get some 70/70 full on tests in large scale battles.
Since the mod focused on the weapons themselves (a basic item table merge) they were useful to people even focusing on melee. A 45 damage bow+arrow combo is still doing damage with 0 Accuracy, just a like a war-axe at 45 damage does some damage at 0 Strength. I think back in those days the best arrows and bows together did less than 30. Meanwhile heavy armor was the meta.
Well now I have data and experiences from two servers, with populations that dwarf (even at the time) most officials. So I used that in my posts and comments on the subject.
I can’t be sure that what I did had a sole effect on the changes that came. I’m humble enough to realize that IF I played a part. It was a small one. But my experiences were expressed with the community, who in turn could provide their own feedback to what I have done in addition to what they wanted. This is called constructive feedback and discussion and one of the best tools available to the community as a whole (but of course it HAS to stay constructive, leave the emotions out).
But not too long later, archery got a major buff. Lower level weapons saw nearly a 50% boost and arrows and higher end stuff saw a 20-25% boost. These changes were more than my mod had done and has since deprecated it and made it obsolete. The mod still works, ironically. But it will nerf the very thing it was meant to fix if you run it in the modern day. The values were higher than the base game in 2018, lower in 2019-2022.
That is only one example of positive feedback yielding results. I do have many more. As well as personal experiences that show how all this works. However you all are only going to get the one because this comment is already longer than hell.
But because the advice was asked for, it was given. As stated in the other thread, I normally don’t bother. Having a similar mindset as Multigun, why waste the effort on the forums. And usually in the past when I have shared the advice, it appears most people don’t take it, or even ridicule it. That usually tells me those people have no intention of giving good feedback and just want to vent silly little primal emotions and don’t actually care for results. TeleTesselator asked for the advice and gets to prove on the forum’s behalf that not everyone is like that (no pressure dude). But normally I don’t even bother because it is usually futile. Sometimes its not, but we’ll see.
In either case, you all have your information going forward into this new year. What you do with it is on your own. At least ignorance can’t be claimed for incompetency of player feedback in this regard.