"I'd love to hear what you think" My a$$

Conan Exiles General Discussion
1

My original Steam review:
Not Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 304.6 hrs on record
Posted: Feb 17 @ 9:57am
Updated: Feb 19 @ 7:48am

EARLY ACCESS REVIEW
“Y’know. Before this very last community update, I probably would’ve recommended the game. They’re finally working on getting some not garbage combat, adding much needed replayability to the game. They were on a good path with lots of promising content for the future. Then, all of the sudden, they decided that once the game is launched, that’s pretty much it. They decided to cut basically all of the planned content, reducing the game to a less interesting reskin of ARK without the tames. The stuff they’ve already put in was a good start, but without more expansion, it’s worthless. You’ll get maybe a handful of hours (relatively speaking) mostly spent just hacking and slashing for the level grind, and then there will be literally nothing more to do.”

Community Manager (Jens Erik) [developer] Apr 27 @ 4:43am
"Hey there!

Just wanted to jump in and let you know that we rolled out a new patch last week that added a huge amount of new content to the game. The combat’s been revamped, there’s farming now, fast travel, the Purge, World Bosses, new building pieces, and a vast amount of bug fixes, crash fixes and optimizations.

When we leave Early Access we’re also adding two new play areas: A swamp and a volcano. We also plan to continue supporting Conan Exiles after Early Access launch. We’re not ready to give the game up just yet.

You can find a full list of everything we’ve changed and added here .

I would love to hear what you think about the game with these new changes"

Yes, Daddy Apr 27 @ 5:22am
"Community Manager (Jens Erik) I’m well aware of the update that rolled out. Like I said in the review, I think the combat overhaul is a good start, if still needs work. My problem is not with the existing content of the game, it’s with the amount of content that we’ve been told was supposed to come for the game that was then cut in favor of releasing it WAY earlier than it ever should.

If you’re looking for my review of the content itself and not the game state, I think it’s good for an early access game, a bit buggy but that’s the be expected. I think the game has a lot of potential. But like I said, without more expansion to make that content worth playing in the first place, I just can’t in all good faith recommend someone spend full price money on the game knowing everything that SHOULD have been.

If this game continued to stay in Early Access and continued to develop itself towards more of the larger scale content people wanted, I’d absolutely recommend it. I think the distinction between Early Access and a full game is important here because while there’s just as much chance the development can be abandoned while in Early Access, the whole point is to trust these developers to use the funding you gave them to build a game that meets the expectations given (not meaning a game’s bad if it doesn’t live up to people’s overexpectations, but that if something is said to be coming and then is cut purely to meet launch faster then that’s a problem).

Once the game hits full launch and all sales are made from the people who waited to see it out, there’s nothing to promise us that the devs will continue with anything significant for the game, which is especially worrying when the wording we’ve gotten every time cut content was brought up is basically “If we get to it” which to me means that if the game flops like it kind of did at first release, then it’ll likely just have its resources diverted elsewhere.

Namely, the city life content likely would have saved the entire game for me personally. I don’t mean things like the Set City, which while a good addition, is not what city life was described to us as. We were given the idea that the intent was for our bases to eventually become more expansive than a simple base and thralls were to become more complex than just a glorifed turret. We were lead to believe that we could build at least somewhat an imitation of a living, breathing city or settlement. This content alone would have given me actual REASON to go out and farm and fight mobs for certain drops: to keep my settlement alive and thriving.

At the moment, there’s no point to do much of anything except for expanding for the sake of expanding. If you’re not into PvP/sieging then the game quickly loses value because even if the combat is significantly better than it was before, it’s still not on a level of games like Dark Souls or a more recent example of Horizon: Zero Dawn where the combat is fun and fluid enough to justify playing the game just to play it.

In short, yes, I’m mostly happy with the last update and I’ll be playing the launch content as well to see what it’s like, but that’s because I already own the game and got it at one of its lowest price points when all of that sort of content was still believed to be in the works. That’s why I can’t recommend it in the current state without a more solid promise of future content that isn’t just small tweaks or minor content.

And yes, I’m aware that release dates and the like aren’t up to devs, and I’m not trying to target them, but they ARE our only direct line of communication with the people who ARE in charge of these things."

Called out the moneygrab that was cutting content to push launch, got the usual “Nah we just added some stuff, see? Let us know what you think!”, and then pointed out a whole bunch of larger issues and specific cases to which I got no response at all. So much for that, huh?

4 Likes
2

Oh and to add, yes, I think the direction they’ve taken with the latest DLC not only doesn’t solve the content issue but only takes it in a worse direction and is entirely self-destructive as well. Releasing paid “cosmetic content” (which has its own issues as well) after launch does not solve the fact that the VAST majority of actual gameplay related content to add replayability and enjoyment to the game (That was supposed to be FREE) has been cut in favor of an earlier launch. On top of that: “This isn’t meant for endgame, this is meant for everyone.” As if that’s some noble highroad they’ve taken and not a blatant disregard for the system they already have in play to balance cosmetic armors for both low levels and endgame. For that matter, I don’t know why they’re trying to take a crafting required direction for cosmetic items at all rather than a much more popular, universal, and less problematic skins route.

“Then you can’t tell what weapon tier people have!” So make a minimum tier that is able to apply the skins? For that matter it doesn’t really even matter when weapon strength is so radically affected by different builds to the point that someone can either hack away at you for a full minute or could just as easily three-shot you with the exact same weapon.

This entire game seems to have been started on a fantastic concept with great ideas and the groundwork for massive potential which all got its heel cut because there’s a bunch of very isolated and uncreative philosophies floating around the Funcom offices about how things should be done. Essentially what I would boil Conan Exiles down to at this point is “How can we slightly reskin the exact same stuff we already have and resell it again without really adding much of anything?”

The only team who can really be getting any work is the art team anymore because basically anything regarding gameplay or balance or anything of that sort has been all but dead and/or working to their own disadvantage since the combat update.

3 Likes
3

Did you catch that one? “We’re not ready to give the game up just yet.”

The “… just yet” part.

2 Likes
5

We do love to hear your constrictive input and suggestions and we are reading all the feedback on the DLC. :slight_smile:

The paid DLC was never meant to solve “content issues”. That is what new mechanics and features are for (which are free).

Since you didn’t mention any of that, I wanted to check if you are aware that we are working on adding additional content for free. Such as taming, additional combat mechanics (adjusted archery and duel wielding/off hand combos), as well as more dungeons with new mechanics. On top of this we are constantly improving the game (a big TestLive patch just went live, adding new mechanics and animations to boss fights as well as enemies in general along with a lot of other changes but also fixes).

As mentioned, we absolutely take in feedback but I would however really like to ask people on our forums to be respectful to us and other members of the community. Thank you :slight_smile:

6 Likes
6

Well Said!
However I (and im probably speaking for the entire community here), would like to see a bit more transparency, for example;
a small article on the blog each friday with what the teams have been working on or what they will work on next week. This will only take about 10minutes of asking around and 10minutes of writing, but it will give a message to the community that says “hey, we do listen and this is what we are doing, we are working on this!” that way, the players will know what to expect and dont feel ignored as much.

It helps in commercial webdevelopment as well, so why not here?

7

That is what the community newsletters on Wednesdays are for :slight_smile: We do talk about what the different teams are working on. Most development takes more than a week so we wouldn’t have new in detail updates like you are asking for.

3 Likes
8

Well, a simple “We are still working on item x since last week, we are making progress (or arent) so we expect this to be done in (estimate) x weeks”

Communication is key :slight_smile:

9

I was not aware taming was on its way actually. The last thing I’d heard on it was that it was another “if we get to it” feature and that even then it would likely be a rather small feature confined to maybe taming some cosmetic hyena’s or something along those lines. If taming is actually coming in a respectable state then I’m very glad to hear it.

As for the combat and dungeons: I don’t really consider the coming combat changes to be “new content” I consider them to be continued tweaking of some of the still questionable elements of the initial combat overhaul rollout. Dungeons are of a similar vein in that they aren’t really the type of content I was talking about. I was talking about actual gameplay elements: things that are constantly prevalent throughout the game and not a simple, “Have I done this yet? Yes or no”.

Like I said in my initial review comments with Jens, I was the most excited for the advancements that were supposed to be coming for thralls, but as far as we’ve been told, anything regarding that has been entirely scrapped in favor of just leaving them, as I put it, as “glorified turrets”. Similar things could be said of sorcery and taming (though this new information is hopeful), where we’re promised a full system and given more like an afterthought. Rather than being something game-changing and engaging, they become unviable paths in the game that don’t really do anything but eat time for little reward.

And then onto the DLC, I wasn’t trying to say that’s how you intended it to be, but rather just explaining my views on it for anyone who might propose the “Well they just released a DLC” counterargument.

And finally, I was perfectly happy to be respectful when the topic was still “fresh” but having someone essentially prompt a response and then ignore it like that sets a very bad image that I doubt many would respond well to if they bothered to stay interested at all. If we can get a bit more interaction and transparency, then yes I’d love to hear what the actual plans are for the game. Just like I said, all we’ve really been getting is “maybe” and nothing more to it and the track record isn’t exactly promising.

10

Yeah like that.

11

This topic was automatically closed 10 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.