I'm a modder, why does Funcom takes weeks if not Months to do a 10 min work?

Conan Exiles General Discussion
22

I do agree.

Basically you can see the relationship from a software house who develop games and players like a relationship one at many, where:
The one (Funcom in this case) should provide hotfixes and new features in a fast and reasonable time, also yes, considering what is pretty simple to fix for a modder in a datatable, in an international team of software developers require a lot more of time to coordinate teams, code repositories and so on.
In this, we should give some patience and don’t expect "oh there’s a wrong value on a itemtable, why the heck the fix don’t come tomorrow?.
Don’t come tomorrow because Funcom is not a single indie developer who can fix things basically in real time and release in short time.
This is a fact, companies can lower this time working on Q&A policies, hiring more dev’s, etc etc.
It’s also a fact other companies, mostly of the same size of Funcom, are able to release hotfixes in a more short time.

The part related to the many, us players, we are entitled to play, have fun, report bugs, and support the development if we want and can, buying stuffs.
Now, i don’t want to dig deep about the MTx’s system, good or bad, bla bla.
A fact is, this is a work for game companies, and they had to raise money to pay the dev teams.
Choose how to get that money, if simply try to sell more copies of the game, or making DLC’s, or making MTx’s, both, three, just the first, is a company decision, it’s business related, if we don’t agree with MTx’s or DLC’s we can simply stop to play the game or uninstall it.
Or play the same and don’t support Funcom buying BP’s and stuffs from Baazar.

The real fact (and problem) is, us, as customers, from the moment we buy a game, we don’t have any rights more or warrancy things will be done in a way instead of another from the software house or even worst, things will changes in a total different way like here, stepping from DLC’s at an very honest price to MTx’s at a very less honest price, due changed business situations like Tencent own now Funcom.

We don’t sign a contract officially where the two parts, Funcom and the players, had to respect things like from Funcom, had to come short time bug fixing, short time further developments, follow the community ideas, sell items at a reasonable prices, etc etc, and from us players we had to play X hours at day and pay X money at month to respect the terms of contract.

As you can see, putting in these terms, will become absurd for everybody, first for us players.

You can get a refund from Steam in the next few hours after buying a game, then if you don’t, game is yours, your choice to play, your choice to support further with money or not, everything is on you.

Also the final choice to give your money to a company instead of another.
Sad but true.

23

This is the reason why I call them FUNdamentally inCOMpetent.

Because of simple things like this, just basic EXCEL work.

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24

Beside the PC community, you don’t consider the server market also, probably.
Aside the official servers, there’s an very active community running private servers and everyone of these servers are ofc, heavily modded to can offer a different game experience.

Remove the mods will means:
A) kill all these servers so also cut down the playerbase a lot.
B) also give a business damage to all the companies who rent servers for CE, and to rent servers for CE servers companies had to pay Funcom for licenses. So double damage, most important, for Funcom first.
C) I don’t know stats about, but i suppose really the majority of PC gamers of CE use some mods, or a lot. Remove the mods will again not only cut down the playerbase like mostly half (40% someone was said before) but also raise an insurrection from the playerbase.

Absolutely true. They release also the updated Devkit some time before the next update to give time to Modders to update the Mods.

1 Like
25

Now it makes sense. They gotta burn the new data on to a CD and mail it to the other studio.

26

Ah, so there is extra time needed to develop mods where/when the DevKit is released for its next iteration (and possible inclusion into base). That answers part of the OP.

27

No it doesn’t.
You are completely out of touch, but that’s no surprise considering all your previous posts in different threads.

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28

Yeah, that pretty much summed it up right there. You do not understand. You are a modder, and for your community I have no doubt that they are extremely grateful for your time and effort, and they should be. Modders put in a lot of hard work on their own time for FREE to do what they do out of love and passion. But modding has f***all to do with game development.

You are not beholden to a boss with a list of priorities and demands, you are not held to deadlines, you are not told “yeah this can be done in 10 minutes, but THIS is more pressing even though it may take 2 weeks just to find the code which is causing the issue because it effects a wider range of players in a more negative manner”. That is a massive difference between the game development and modding, one of a great many differences.

And this sort of mentality would make you a horrible game developer. You have to get over your “us vs them” mentality and start to think about the big picture and not just “if I don’t like it then it must be BECAUSE OF THOSE OTHER PEOPLE!” News flash, a lot of the changes in the game are NOT implemented for the benefit of PVE, and in fact negatively effect PVE. Hell, there have been quite a lot which have been implemented specifically for the express purpose of PVP no matter how much you want to blame “the other”. But none of that matters, ALL of the changes have been implemented because that is what the game designers WANTED to implement because that is what they saw their VISION of the evolution of the game going towards. Not because “PVE”, not because “PVP”, but because the designers and developers chose to pursue that path for their vision.

Yes, they most assuredly can. At any point in time for any reason they so chose. It is a free tool they provide to the community for the benefit of the community, but it is not a RIGHT. They on the other hand have the right to take that tool away for any reason what so ever, and if they deem that self entitled arrogant people on the forum are going to use that tool to attack them on a constant basis, they would be will within their right to take that tool away. It would be a devastating blow to the PC community, but the PS and XBOX community would not even notice since they literally cannot use mods so a substantial portion of the game base wouldn’t even care. So perhaps you should think before you act?

“Fix” is a relative term. In your opinion it needed to be “fixed”. But then that goes back to the whole mentality of people who cannot control their own actions and MUST USE THE META THAT THEY THEMSELVES COMPLAIN ABOUT. Feel free to swap out meta with exploit / hack / any other thing you like. It all comes down to personal choice and they all personally chose to use it and yet they all personally chose to cry about it and someone none of them seem to see the hypocrisy of it all. :woman_shrugging:

Except you quite literally were, and when it was pointed out you took offense and went on a rant about how Funcom hates pvpers and they make everything to cater to pvers which is patently false. Oh and not to mention your lovely little accusation of:

Yes, I would love to see you prove that claim. By all means, provide some evidence to support that one. (By the way, as someone who primarily plays PVE, but occasionally plays PVP, I despise target lock and will never use it).

4 Likes
29

So it was Tencent that told Funcom to spend a significant amount of time developing the devkit for modders to use? A feature that will keep players playing long after they shut down their servers, long after battlepasses and bazaar items are no longer made. A feature that has no revenue value and isn’t even available for half of the playerbase who purchased the game?

If that was something they made a decision for. Then it was a 100% boon to me. I will be able to play, enjoy, and continue to do so decades, as in 10, 20, or even 30 years from now. Even if they stopped developing today, even if they closed their servers, today. If that was their decision, then I see no reason to not support them on it.

30

Entirely wrong.

Many developers start as Modders or are already developers and make mods.

Sure you can make low level datatable edits or you can do entirely complex blueprint systems the visual scripting language of unreal.

Going on about bosses priorities demands etc is Corporate culture which is far from universal and developers=/= corporations

I also tend to refute this, I am not a fan of tencent myself but clearly it has not had a negative effect on a game such as path of exile which consistently produces well received quality updates.

and I can give examples of players with the same complaints in regards to conan exiles from 2018.

31

I do not doubt that this is absolutely a pathway that many developers take. It is likely that passion I mentioned above that lead them to want to turn it into a career. That however has nothing to do with working in an actual company.

Edit: I just wanted to point out to you that I was making this post, and that comment, not in regards to the development aspect, but in regards to the business aspect. I realize that I wasn’t very clear in my original post so I apologize for that.

Naturally there will be outliers, there are indy developers for example. But we are not discussing that here. We are discussing Funcom. And we are discussing Funcom who has been purchased by Tencent. Do you actually think that there is no Corporate culture at play? If so you sir are:

32

Corporate culture? As someone who has worked for small businesses, large corporations, and in government, all in multiple ways, the ‘culture’ you are likely referring to can happen in any of those. Its just human beings working together. Sometimes its good, and sometimes its bad.

If you want to know about the culture at Funcom, just ask Andy, Ignasi, or Nicole. The silliness they engage in at work is likely far less overbearing and devoid of joy than whatever void most of this forum goes to work every day for.

33

So quality is a waste in thier business? That is horrible business practice. Excusing it because of time is acknowledgng porr leadership and procees control at FC.

34

Ah I see, well with the clarification you are quite correct, but cultures still do vary wildly but as you say we are talking about a very specific one, and you are right it is likely very common across 2/3rds at least of the AAA space.

35

Sadly yes, which is why so many Indy games are becoming so popular!

3 Likes
36

Dude, i’m sorry, but sounds you really make strange assumptions.

Let’s make some clearness about, shall we?
CE is developed using Unreal Engine 4. An old version.
Everybody can download the engine and the devKit and start to develop his own game, ( i don’t talk about publish and make money which involve also other processes) and infact a lot of indie games are developed like that.
Also more famous games use the same engine, i will name Days Gone, Satisfactory (now UE5), State of Decay 2, the list is endless.

What that means: When Funcom have start to develop CE 5 years ago, they have used UE4 and his devkit.
Then yes, they have added C++ custom code (is the programming language of the engine, you can use blueprints, which is a visual tool to help Modders and Developers to create functions/objects/features,etc, or also write C++ code, or both) to manage all the features and also to lock some features they don’t want Modders being able to modify behind this code wall.

When they (FC) modify, add or remove features, they start from the actual version of the game, cooked and tailored for CE still using the Unreal Engine 4 and his DevKit.
So they start also from the Devkit, version X.XX, the CE one.

They are kind enough to release the actual version of the Devkit for the modders, but talking about effort, it’s the same effort you do when you develop code on GitHub and everybody can download your code, make his own branch and develop new stuffs starting on that code.

It’s just create code (and you had to do in any case when you want to release an update of the game) and make it available in a tool, the DevKit.

Again, they start also from the last version of the Devkit, so, sorry, your assumption they are late in releases or bugfixing due the fact they had to wait for Modders to fix the Mods, and WHEN the modders have fixed the Mods they will release the game, is totally wrong, work in the opposite way:

A) Funcom do what they need to do to develop the next update in the 3 months between an update and another.

B) After some time (near to the end of the three months), they release this code and new version on TestLive, so players can try and find bugs.

C) a couple of week before (in average) release the official update, they release the new version of the Devkit, so Modders, if they want, can recook their own mods using the last version of the engine in this two weeks.

So the Modders have to hurry to modify the Mods they manage, not Funcom.

By the way, this is not mandatory, because most of the time the Mods will work the same, Modders had to modify the Mods only if the Devkit modify funcionalities they also use in their own Mod.

The only real downside to don’t cook (that’s the term) the Mod with the last version of the Devkit, is, you receive an alert in the main panel of CE saying this Mod is not updated.

So, as you can see, Funcom don’t waste any time into care about what Modders do, or don’t.
And this is not for blaming Funcom, is a fact. Reasonable also.

Last but not least, for any update they warn “Hey, the update can mess your Mods, please take a backup if you use Mods before run the updated version”.

I hope this is clear now.

37

Sounds like that is exactly what people are forgetting here about the consoles. Some of the other statements from the PC crowd just doesn’t make sense.

Can’t download it for consoles, so you can’t say everybody.

See, you missed the point of the certification period. Let’s just “assume” that modders must make that the cutoff period for updates.

:roll_eyes: I hope you got it all out.

38

Since your definition of quality is wasting time over and over doing the same thing. Then absolutely, 100000% yes.

Your definition of quality would result in nothing ever getting done.

39

Anyone defending Funcom on this particular case just doesn’t want to face it…

Yes, this specific issue is an easy fix, it is quite literally a well-known value to change.
Yes, there are some issues that are more complex to fix, and that may take more time.

Yes, the company’s structure and the coordination between developing teams can delay the release of a fix, but not the fix itself. Also, if the structure created by Funcom is flawed, if the way they organize their work between different teams is making those easy fixes into massive hurdles, that is their fault as a company.
If you want things to work properly, at the very least, you need to have an environment that isn’t sabotaging your work, and this is a huge issue in today’s world.

Yes, you also have certification periods that can delay release, but again, it doesn’t delay the fix itself.

We don’t know whether it’s lack of communication, bad organization, work pressure, or sheer incompetence, but the result is not acceptable.

Some things are hard to fix? I can hear that, no problem.
You’re not fixing the things that are blatantly easy to fix? I’m not tolerating this, and there is no excuse.

1 Like
40

Anyone who believes this and still has the game installed is a perfect little submissive customer. From a business point of view, even if you are right, and lets say you are. Why should they change when you’re just going to secretly white knight it up and throw money at them?

They break your game, you still buy.
They make changes you hate, you still buy.
They break their servers, you still buy.

You are like the best customer ever dude. The perfect one. Doesn’t matter if you get scammed or cheated, you still buy.

And you have been scammed and cheated. For years. You’ve been took and you’re still going to keep going.

1 Like
41

Too close to home, even for me…

I always keep returning back because I had the best moments here, (obv. before age of dissapointment).