Hi Conan Exiles
am revisiting this game again, as I had stopped playing before the Age of Sorcery
I’m trying to have an “Immersive” Experience
I’m playing Single-Player
and I can tweak all the option sliders to how it suits me
but I want to talk about 1 issue
is encumberance
your letting me carry a literal Boatload of Goodies on the character
who is skimpily dressed with a warhammer and skimpy panties on
she / it / whatever … has 50 strength… thats legit… I put my points in there so I would be effective with the melee weapon
but in all seriousness I cant see the character carrying all those goodies
i mean, 500 rocks, 500 pieces of fiber, and a literal Boatload of other goodies, no backpack, no shirt ! no shoes !
just a magnetic unit that attracts and holds all the rocks to HER body
i’m trying to play immersive, what i want to see, if i grab more than 10 ROCKS, i want to see them drop out of my Lack Of Pockets on the ground
regardless of Strength Rating
Offline Singleplayer here myself. I may be able to suggest a few ideas which you could consider moving forward.
The first is that if you dislike what the character is wearing, maybe consider changing it to something modest if that is to your tastes. No one is forcing you to dress your character in “skimpy” attire and you are not obligatted to do so. The same principal applies for the warhammer; if it bothers you, then consider switching to an alternate weapon. There are countless options available for alternate armor/clothing, weapons and saddles too.
If you break a Bearer thrall you can loot their Backpack and equip it on your desired thrall, and it will depict them carrying a more substantial load. For shirt and shoes, see the prior point.
The second is that this would involve a substantial rework and would needlessly inflate grind levels. If you only wish to have the capacity to carry 10 stone at a time, then only carry 10 stone at a time, and only place the aforementioned quantity in your followers inventory at any one given time. Or place greater quantities on a pet such as a Camel, Rhino or Elephant. But do expect the rest of the playerbase to conform to your personal preferences or laborious levels of pseudo realism.
Sorry, couldn’t resist a little joke. Let’s get serious now.
We all have different tastes and preferences, so it’s completely understandable that your sense of immersion requires a high dose of realism.
That said, if this is something you can’t work around, then Conan Exiles is probably not a game for you. It’s unrealistic in so many ways that if I had to list them, I wouldn’t get any sleep tonight.
And I’m not even talking about the fantasy aspects of the sword-and-sorcery setting. I’m talking about certain conventions that the majority of video games have adopted and very few eschew for the sake of realism or whatever niche they’re trying to occupy.
Allow me to present some examples.
Combat
You know what happens in real life when someone takes a big-ass sledgehammer, winds up a mighty swing, and hits you on the head? You die. And if you don’t, you end up in a hospital and possibly remain in vegetative state for the rest of your life.
You know what happens when someone does that in a video game like Conan Exiles? Your character yells out, a bar on the screen gets shorter, and then you eat or drink something or put a bandage on it and you’re back to normal.
And if the hammer isn’t convincing enough for you, let me point out that the exact same thing happens when someone pierces your skull with an arrow, which would definitely kill you in real life.
Construction
You can instantly turn some “hardened” bricks, steel reinforcements, and “shaped” wood into a gorgeously shaped and decorated building piece.
Regardless of whether it’s in Aquilonian style with it’s predominantly blue and white palette, or in Turanian style with it’s gold accents, you always need the same materials in the same quantities.
Oh, and when I say “instantly”, I mean instantly. The construction takes no time whatsoever. One moment there’s nothing there, the next moment a beautiful vaulted ceiling corner appears out of nowhere!
Storage
If you think carrying more than 10 rocks while being almost naked is unrealistic, what I’m about to reveal will blow your mind!
Okay, so for this trick, you’ll need 820 shaped wood and any Artisan Table. Put the shaped wood in the table and craft 1 small crate and 20 large crates.
No, that’s not the whole trick, although it’s pretty neat how you can just put a shіtload of planks “inside” this reasonably sized table – what does “inside” even mean in this case?! – then click a few times, walk away, and come back later to find fully assembled crates “inside” the table, without any human being whatsoever doing the required physical work. And again, how the hell did those crates fit “inside” this table?!
But no, like I said, that’s not the trick. This is the trick: place the small crate somewhere on the floor, open it up, and you can put 20 large crates inside it!
Hopefully, these three examples were enough to help you come to terms with the lack of realism in Conan Exiles. Even if Funcom changed the game for all of us to satisfy your personal inability to maintain your suspension of disbelief because your character can carry too much, I doubt you’ll be able to cope with all of these violations of natural laws of physics and biology, and many more that you’ll encounter in this game.
If, however, you’re somehow fine with all of that stuff but it’s carrying some rocks that specifically bothers you, I would politely suggest to get over it.
Alternately, you could always download the devkit and make a mod, which is where this sort of silly request belongs.
This reminds me of an angry parent’s complaints about a game that contained violence (including towards civilians), demon summoning, necromancy, etc. that there was a quest that required the player character to get drunk! Apparently everything else was fine (or more likely, the parent wasn’t aware of all that other content).
Workaround: make an AGI, GRIT, VIT, AUTH build. Low encumbrance, good combat viability and utility off thralls/pets. You can then go gather tiny amounts and haul it back and forth or put it on your cargo pet and haul it to your building site.
Bit of a non-issue, really. You can also increase the weight of items on private servers to the point where you can only carry the bare minimum for combat or gathering.
Duuuude! I remember that. That’s a blast from the past
Oh, yeah. I get that. I was aware of that when I wrote my reply. My point stands: if they’re in an vanishingly small minority of players who can maintain their suspension of disbelief in the face of every other unrealistic video game trope but get triggered by this one specifically, their request should be dealt with by a mod, at best.
So you have no issue that a giant dragon that weighs literally decades of tons will stomp his feet but you still going to be alive…
Or that you can build literally 200 square meters in 2 hours ,without ramble, without help… All alone
Or…
I can write down a list of fantastic things that a player can do not only in this game, but to whole, yet would it matter really?
So if you had a back pack would you be able to carry more than 2 building stones in your bag? Because yes, stones for weapons are no building stones and with stone tools you need hours to prepare one of the hundred stones you need to build just a wall…
But it’s a game!
Side note : If you feel so invisible with your stone hammer, go visit the dogs of desert, or al Mera yah
Strength build is for… New players, build agility!
Even very young kids know the difference between real and make believe violence. Witness them playing cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians with finger guns and stick horses.
Occult stuff by many would be considered fantasy and they’d likely have no more concern over their child mimicking that than they would over said child pretending to fly like Superman.
Encouraging a child to drink heavily however is something that could lead to it actually happening with disasterous consequences.
I’m told that when I was around seven years old that I got completely wasted one morning by finishing off all the mostly empty beers and such that the adults had left sitting around the night before after a Christmas party. Can’t say I remember it… Hell though, maybe that’s what’s wrong with me.
The problem with “immersion” is that you will find a way to break it if you want to break it. You wont find a way to break it if you dont want to break it. The game does little to actually get it one way or the other.
Some people like silent games they imagine the voices of the NPCs, others cant play a game without voice acting. Some want a general idea of what is happening and imagine the action in their heads, others want everything to be “8K 500 FPS” even if to the human eye, very little of that makes real difference beyond a certain point.
That being said, a lot of things go the same basic idea: Gamification is made to turn a computer software pure and simple into a game. Like the industry leading producers have a phrase for that: “In real life you cant double jump.”
That is said when someone pitches a game and they excuse certain design flaws in “realism”. You will NEVER have a game that makes things realistic, because in doing so, the game will be extremely grindy, tedious and counter productive use of one’s time.
Inventory is often a GAME gimmick that has little to do with the reality of things. When you are building, in “reality” you would get the materials around, move them to different places, form the planks, bake the bricks, flake stones, etc. Now imagine the stupidity of making a game in which you would take the real hours it takes to get everything done so you can start a 2mx2m block of bricks, planks or cement, for a SINGLE foundation ? A game like that would not sell even over “Satisfactory” which is a monumental waste of anyone’s time already, even if it is gamified AF.
Same thing on people who talks about “where do your mounts go when you dismount in MMORPGs ?”
I never searched here, in the Steam forums for Conan Exiles, A LOT of people complain that it is easy to have problems because your mounts do not simply “vanish” when you are not using them.
Games are not made to isolated situations, or people who play for 5 minutes and like to watch a 10 minute animation of opening a door. It is made for a variety of players that have different needs for immersion. If you are above or under the average requirements for immersion, either you become a modder (lol) or you choose another more niche game.
I for one would hate to have a 2 hour session in this game consumed for just “watching” the game performing the clear actions and requirements for the “realism” it sure does not need.
Hello.
Although I completely understand your desire for realism (I am the same), I note that unfortunately the rare attempts at realistic games have all failed.
I remember that around 2010 a modern fighting game failed miserably because it was too realistic for certain (flashpoint), only one bullet could put you on the ground and the injuries were localized, the players massively deserted the game, they prefer a game where you need a full magazine to neutralize an opponent.
That is a good example of realistic stupidity and why games do not work realistically.
Wont talk about shooting because it is not something I have IRL experience with. Sure my family if full of cops and I have been to stands a lot, but it is not something I know about. I am however two times champion of Karate, and I fought Jiu Kumite a lot.
A fighting game can pretend to be realistic, but will never be. No matter how much it tries, it CANT be. They fail not because no one wants a realistic game, it fails because it cant “realistically” be realistic.
Half of the gamification of stats, inventory, and etc are “shorthand game language for skills and knowledge”. Meaning: You are not required to know how to fight and have the muscle memory for reflexes and precise knowledge of anatomy and biomechanics (which you know by other names in an applied way. You might know where and how to down an opponent by swiping their legs, even if they are skilled fighters, because you know concepts of physics and biomechanics named in martial arts techniques).
If you are to make a “realistic game”, you have to translate that which is not possible unless you find some Matrix level equipment on your gaming gear.
Then you have the whole thing about translating agility and ballistics (which has its names, but neither mean “from the balls” or “bullet science”), which is more akin to understand this concept showed here:
In a game, you have many superhuman things, sorcery, magic, “nature”, “fantasy creatures”, they all can perform feats impossible on reality, that is one. Second, to realistically reproduce the ability to “dodge bullets” for example, either the game “plays itself” and dodge them for you, or YOU have to have the exact same reflex in your keyboard to dodge them given the controls you are offered. So to avoid either scenario, it calculates a hit and mitigation, and pretends it takes many bullets to kill you instead of having one hit kill you and expecting you to be able to dodge them via control, or dodging them automatically, which is worse.
The same logic applies to almost all gimmicky game trickery that is common place in all games, good and bad.
Then there is the problem of smell, taste, hearing and vision.
While most people think they know how these work, most of them dont. Your sense of smell does not only bring you the information you know, like how a body stinks (and by the experience with cop “training”, I know the stink is not how movies put it. Get someone to have a gaping wound, and that will stink in less than half an our like the stinkiest fart you ever smelled). Smell also hints at certain unperceptible things you react to without noticing. You might not know you are able to see things because they smell enough so your brain pay attention to them, but not enough so your sense of smell can disntictly detect it. Hearing is also on that category. You can have very faint sounds you cant even point to but they influence how you react. Your vision does not also works like what images you see, like in a monitor. You vision can detect movement and contrast on a level you are not always aware of. Patterns your training, experience, or even knowledge can point to things the image your brain presents to you as “what you see” wont.
That all is “short handed” in games by UI, stats, HP, Stamina, and other resources the game uses to reproduce the conditions of an activity without requiring the whole package of reality required to perform it.
The target group for such games is tiny. I liked the original Operation Flashpoint (released in 2001) although I don’t really like any military stuff. Realistic racing games from that time were Grand Prix Legends and Viper Racing, where I only ever found one friend at LAN parties who liked them too, everyone else always wanted to play Need for Speed…
But I actually have rather low standards for realism for Conan Exiles, I can easily overlook transport stones and map rooms for convenience. And magic is magic.
Dude, it’s a survival game, you have a problem with encumbrance yet you have no issues in running faster than wolves, tigers, deers and such.
And where do you run when you see a huge crocodile? Into the water kekekeke.
Still being able to outrun every enemy, run to the water, spider-man climb on the wall or tree, it was still to much to handle, so they introduced blind enemies - a long awaited change
is this game trying to depict a simulation of a realistic event?
apparently they are trying…
this is no different.
if im going to carry 500 stones ! i’m going to need a wheelbarrow or a mule
but its ok to not be 100% real… its a video game,
but if your going to create an immersive and realistic environment you have to obey the law of physics…
the solution, customizable slider bars and toggle… its a win win for every one… each server can choose their balance between realism and easier gameplay
No, it’s not. Features have a cost. They have to be implemented, tested, documented, and maintained. The devs should invest in better features than this.
