Hello everyone! First some background to my experiences in Conan. I have always been a PvP player through and through. All 750+ hours have been done on Official PvP servers over the past 1-1.5 years. I want to provide some feedback on the map from a strictly PvP players perspective. I realize that this DLC just released but I feel there are some gameplay designs and map features that are both good and bad and I am going to discuss them below. To start off, the good:
The Good:
-
Forced PvP The map does what it was designed to do, force pvp. The whole theme of the island is built around the central tower and the storm. It has a very noticeable progression system to push you in that direction. The focus of adding elements like surges and leyshrines to encourage PvP is a big plus and I think works very well.
-
Beautiful Lands The environment of the map is beautiful. The art design for what does exist is really well done! Do I think there should be less reskins (I’m looking at you cougars and wild dogs)? Of course I do but for what it is, the assets and environment look very good.
-
Viable Building Spots Now this will be a bit controversial, but I do think having areas where bases are all visible can be good. This puts more emphasis on PvP and raiding and less on finding bases. NOTE: This does has drawbacks I will discuss later.
The Bad:
-
Map Diversity One of the parts of the original map was the overall diversity. You have the desert, the savanna, the highlands, the volcano, islands and jungle to the East, and snow-capped mountains to the North, very diverse and interesting landscapes to explore, fight, and build in. I feel like Siptah doesn’t have that. Yes there are the redwoods, the plains, and mountains on the West but that’s really it. The map lacks that diversity feeling that I fell in love with on the Exiled Lands. I realize the difficulties of changing layout now, but I feel adding in some new islands or even an expansive underground environment would add so much more to the map.
-
Resource Hotspots The lack of resource hotspots on this map is surprisingly high compared to that of the Exiled Lands. Here, there is no iron equivalent to God’s Claw, or brimstone equivalent to the Shattered Springs, or black ice substitute to the Temple of Frost. Overall, I feel it to be damaging as it really makes resources scarce and much harder to grind for. Because there are lower gather rates on official, this mixed with less resources really puts a strain on progress as a whole. This problem is made worse with thralls being harder to get.
-
Lack of Building Spots Now, this sounds hypocritical based on an earlier point but hear me out. One of my favorite feelings when first playing Conan was “Woah that looks cool!.. WAIT I CAN BUILD HERE??”. That feeling has been what has kept me playing the game for so long. Being able to create bases on such unique spots that you can’t find in any other game is incredible. And well, sadly this map has none of that. Every preexisting building is building blocked, the terrain lacks significant differences, and that feeling of discovery is just gone. This plays heavily into my point earlier on map diversity.
-
New Vaults Oh man, how I wanted these to be fun and unique but out of the 6 I have done so far, all but 2 felt incredibly similar. When it was advertised as having puzzles I was excited for the possibility but the only puzzle that comes to mind so far is the fishman eggs. I was hoping for something more interesting like riddles or mazes or just something new, something refreshing. Vaults have so much potential to be good and have so many additions that could make all of them unique but right now, I am slightly dissapointed.
Now, I feel like most of these things can be fixed easily. I will continue updating this post as I play more but these are the blaring things I have noticed. Feel free to point out any flaws with my reasonings above! If anyone at Funcom does read this and considers these points, I think this will greatly prolong the map’s life and make it just as good if not better than the Exiled Lands. Until then though, I feel like the Isle of Siptah will have a 1-3 month life span.