Lightning storm raid review

Winthor · 2022-10-07T09:46:48.408Z

Raskhaul:

So if the Alpha is that bad reach out to other clans, form merge pacts or just decide to merge together for advantage, trade, socialize, share knowledge.

In all fairness. This is easier said then done. In order to merge several small clans you need to establish a certain trustlevel and you still often get one clan that will stab you from behind. Give information and ressources out to the alpha clan in order for protection while playing the friendly guy in front of you.

The biggest problem I see right now is that raiding has no restrictions. All there is to it is mass destruction for destruction sakes without a purpose and no real goal and thats it. Raiding shouldn´t be like that in my opinion. It shouldn´t be possible to raid more then one clan a day, so they need to choose their raidtarget wisely. After that the raided clan should be able to get some automatic raidprotection for some days to recover. This way a server can not get cleaned easily by big clans in a day or two. There are a lot of other measurements Funcom could implement if they really wanted to.

If a clan that gets raided is outnumbered by a lot, the raiding clan should do way less building damage. So they get some sort of punishment. They can still raid that clan, but it will cost more. Funcom also could restrict the amount of explosives a clan can produce per day. This would also help with the duping problem since people only could dupe that much as to what the daily limits are. It wouldn´t be possible to dupe unlimited explosives anymore. The battlepass shows that it is possible for the system to do that easily. And they could finally downsize clans to 6 and make a timer so you can not just leave a clan and rejoin another back and forth unlimitedly. It doesn´t change the fact that people can still merge play together, but it would make it much fairer on the battlefield and for smaller clans easier to survive since bigger tribes would need more then one base to watch and protect since they could not constantly hopp between clans back and forth.

Let me be clear: all systems can be abused one way or another. No matter how hard you try. But that doesnt mean that there is no room for improvements. You can not and you should not allow players in pvp to do whatever they want to do without expecting total mayhem breaking loose.

azaroth · 2022-10-07T10:39:21.850Z

In fact there is no unraidable base, all bases in conan are raidable.

the only thing that can prevent you to raid a base, is if a large clan always stay online, in this case yes there is not a lot to do if you don’t have the same amount of people or more people than them. but that’s pretty normal, no ? but what i never saw happens in 5 years is that kind of big alpha clan staying more than 2 months on a server. Usually when they start to dominate and be alpha, and are full of loot, they simply play less or stop to play. and jump on a new server. if they play less you have open window to raid. the big clans that stay on pvp server more than 3 months are always kind people who are more pve and like to build and defend their base for pvp part only. that the kind of people that keep alive a server, and help others, and if you attack them they will give you a war. and in past there was more of this kind of people on offi server than the one that want to destroy all. but this particular community have been hitted hard by FC with their ban policy for building. As reminder i’m a solo player, never been in a clan on official, and playing on the exact same servers since the start as never an aplha clan wiped me for real (i mean i have been looted and killed many time, but with strategy, that i learned with time, i had always succed to save part of my assets in every situation and war, i even survived cheaters large clan of 10 people using stat 50 everywhere and the hack of the giant toon). so well if i was able to survive, defeat big clan alone with time, i don’t really think there is a problem. problem is more when someone that just started to play want to be alpha without wanting to spend the same amount of time than others to acheive what they have. and now yes a solo player life on conan is tough on pvp server, but well if you don’t like this challenge, you can also join the big clan, but for sure, a solo player can do a lot in this game and harm really hard big clan (and no need of bugged LS to do that).

LostBrythunian · 2022-10-07T11:37:02.003Z

erjoh:

Changing the rules without advance warning this significantly demoralizes players that are entering the game because its very clear that it’s cowtowing to vets that are entrenched and fear loosing their stuff.

This one would like to opine upon this.
Perhaps elaborate on it a bit.

The update says it was fixed because the damage was more than expected, indicating the glisten sword of heaven that rended the ground and left naught but char and mangled dreams was doing more damage than intended.
Some players had said this, but did we have confirmation from on high that it was bugged?

This one hopes the tearing up stuff subterranean was an oops. But the damage?

Something that would be, perhaps, helpful, would be a regularly updated Known Bugs list.
That way we know whether something is working as intended or if it’s not. We can prepare stockpiles, ect, based on knowing what is hopefully going to be fixed soon.

Playing very close to the chest with updates to a Live Service game is, perhaps, not the best of policies.

For this one’s part…
They found the storm, especially in bottled form, too easy. That it carved all the way through terrain and layers of defense was excessive. But the damage, if it didn’t also have trample and rampage 9, wasn’t too egregious for what it is.
On PlayStation platforms, it came with the extra drawback that one’s game was very likely to crash for daring to cast it… Which is a form of balancing and added an element of danger to using it.

azaroth · 2022-10-07T11:48:49.785Z

simply search on youtube, you will see how balanced it was… damage were over 200k on some hits, and it was able to blow 3 square to 2 wide from ground to top in one hit, intention of dev was to have damage of one explosive jar on random hits, not 200k.

LostBrythunian · 2022-10-07T11:50:13.839Z

azaroth:

intention of dev

That’s the crux, isn’t it?
Where did you see the devs express that intention?

azaroth · 2022-10-07T11:52:38.372Z

denLead Designer

Katniss

24d

they will continue to do building damage, but we can adjust the frequency they target buildings. we’re investigating exactly how much damage they’re doing per strike - anecdotally people say they’re doing more than an explosive jar and “one shotting” t3, but the numbers internally suggest they should be a fraction as powerful and large as an explosive jar.

tl:dr - we’re looking into it

8 Replies

4

Are you guys serious with the lighting spell !?
Lightning storms

LostBrythunian · 2022-10-07T11:56:52.010Z

Gratitude.

It possibly should have been pinned or a sticky as often as the topic came up.

azaroth · 2022-10-07T12:02:41.028Z

yeah communication have never been strong point of Fc, they should have officially annouced it and ask people to not use it as in fact it was a glitch, like the bomb exploit.

Coty · 2022-10-07T12:12:04.979Z

Smoketreader:

due to requirement of dragonhorn

Why would dragon horns be a issue? I mean, you can kill baby dragons as soon as u get the stone daggers.

erjoh · 2022-10-07T12:16:02.613Z

Still have the issue on why I supported LS damage though
…like it’s just fine because it should be this way…3hours,100 m …each layer built accordingly to the tos…is this what you support as balanced raiding? If so, then this will continue to kill pvp because that isn’t fun…not even remotely and people will just walk away servers this built up. Sorry but that’s the cold hard facts. Yeah the dupes and exploits will drive the handful of vets in the servers that may get owned but the currently accepted raid mechanics will ensure it numbers remain low.

azaroth · 2022-10-07T14:38:02.784Z

with what are you raiding ?

erjoh · 2022-10-07T15:25:13.865Z

explosive jars, gas and explosive arrows in a deep cave. Front has build up so you can’t place treb to fire inside without blowing all t3 foundations. Avatars only get so far in and then you got to start the real work. Each foundational layer has two gates associated with it (front and middle which backs up to the next front) The foundations are raised so that if they crumble, the doors don’t get hit with the brunt of the damage and only the foundation does. This took well over 3 hours to get through ~ 20-30 layers of this. Perfectly legal and nullified almost instantly when the defender logs in and starts repairing the current layer. Completely removed all work when raid time ends. This may have been because of the splash damage issues but it’s still completely OP and unreasonable to work. Sure you can say they earned all of that with design…and you can also point to the server population of an average of 2 per night which means it’s dead and they have been on and doing this for well over a year…so please enlighten me how a normal person that can probably only put in 3 hours a night is going to play PVP against that? And if you say they can’t, then you are admitting this style of play isn’t a sustainable business model…the product can’t just be supported by those that have no life outside of the game. Defending that play is just suicidal for the playstyle as more and more folks get preoccupied with life and leave.

This is the ultimate issue with PVP in this game…those that have the time to kill dominate and push away those that don’t but those that don’t have more disposable income and therefore are more open about spending. Eventually , if this isn’t figured out, PVP will just fade away as people venomously defend their “earned” rights to have build-up to the point of utter dominance over the server. I’m not arguing on here because my team can’t get in, I’m on here arguing that the target demographic is going to continue walking away because seasoned vets don’t have enough sense to step down and let someone new take charge and makes an entire server unplayable for these folks because of it. The tired old mantras don’t provide revenue and actively work against company interests.
‘PVP needs dedicated and special folks willing to put in the time’…kinda forgot that this is a game and not a career.

erjoh · 2022-10-07T15:29:11.546Z

LostBrythunian:

Where did you see the devs express that intention?

I’m actually confused on what is the dev intent of the entire PVP play style for officials are.

Is it just an effort of balancing which will always cater to those that have built up and those that spend 16 hours a day on?
Is it a high turnover game that have large swings of power dynamic changes?
Is it just a server that has a larger risk than the other two styles?

The year of updates have given mixed signals of the intent and future of PVP in this game.

Lole · 2022-10-07T17:07:54.054Z

I actually do understand your point, but LS was the wrong way, you need to implement a raidingmechanic designed exactly against alphas and spam.LS was pretty useless against big alpha clans and ruined the game for smaller clans…

For example make it so that you can break a godbubble with gods, meaning the bubble will have hp and should be able to hold against a single god, but not for a second etc. That would be a mechanic directed only against bigger clans and won’t make any harm to small clans and solos.

I have seen what an alpha clan did with LS on our server, making literally 80% of solos and small clans leave… and we with other small clans made an alliance to get them of the server, without using a single LS because they had always people online to stop LS.

azaroth · 2022-10-07T20:30:00.637Z

Well in my experience, if you raid with arrow gas + explo you can dig in everything quicly, 2000 arrow of each alllow you to go through anything if no one repair, and for that it’s about 1h or 1h30. build a defensive base like thaét take far more time than 1h30.

don’t know the cavern site exactly, if this is crevice on conan exiles which is the wider & deeper cavern i know, i would simply use a jehbbal god (very wide and deep damage) can be launched from far away, or a zadt god (spit from distance and do incredible amount of damage on hit area), and even with other god, you have to remenber that only one hit of god will simply blow out all doors and gates and drawbridge (in past it was not the case, but funcom make it easier for raiding), and to finish if i need to finish with some arrows. but yes farm a god and use a god take some time, but less time than build a good defensive base. and with actual x4 farming which is in my opinion a error as it remove all interest of the game and the survival aspect, farming arrow and explosive is not really a problem, if you play 3h per day you can farm in one week probably 1500 powder or more which allow you to raid any base. and if there is defender well you have to use acid and smoke arrow. and so farm for it; and in addition you can use sorcery too.

for god, you can go test on solo session with admin mode, and do simulation of the site you want to attack (when you use a god, you always need to do a simulation before to find the best god, and best direction to attack from). but yes i agree it is some work, but the one who survived long, have a good loot, and build a good base has spent lot of time too.

and depending of the strengh of the defensive base you can go for more than one god, ie 2 jhebbals will wipe anything, and you can do a combine for a cavern (one jhebbal + one zadt), or one mitra + one jhebbal.

and well i can swear you that raiders are able to raid with bomb very quicly cavern as i own on sipthat the waterfall cavern, and on conan exiles the crevice, and you have no idea how many time i had those two spots totally looted in less than 1 hour (usually it’s around 30mn with a very good defensive build)

Barnes · 2022-10-07T21:01:00.095Z

erjoh:

The year of updates have given mixed signals of the intent and future of PVP in this game.

When CE rolled out (as a console player this game actually brought me to the PC) people took Survive | Build | Dominate seriously. It was a true King of the Hill. Then as EA progressed and the playerbase slacked off, it mutated to Scout | Build | Cultivate. By Release it was KOS, and my goodness it was probably the most fun two months of gaming in my life to that point. It’s an evolving thing, but all throughout we had direct connections to the Dev Team who explained a clear and concise philosophy.

When Oscar left as Lead, there was a lot of uncertainty. And then, there came Alexander, who said “we want to take what works and intensify it.” At that point, we with experience could tell the PvP direction was unmoored.

Fast forward to last spring, with Transfers in full force. A single pair of raiders came to our server, and, traveling from north to south hit every base for about a half hour each. I was away enjoying my darling wife’s company, for probably the first time in weeks, and I returned to damage and thrall losses. We all guessed orb, arrow and bomb raiding.

I’m not going to say it would’ve made me quit, but I know just about every other player except one would have – had we come back to LS annihilation. I don’t know if you can see what I mean, but to summarize, it seems as if PvP has evolved into some kind of radioactive fish, the sort we all enjoy observing but few wish to consume.

LostBrythunian · 2022-10-07T22:04:16.866Z

erjoh:

I’m actually confused on what is the dev intent of the entire PVP play style for officials are.

Based on the interview going in to 3.0, this one would say your position is reasonable. There was a note, and this one does not have the transcripts handy, that the community would show them how the new toys are used.
In all possibility they had a vision, saw how things were going, decided that said vision was not synchronizing with real play, and decided to just let it mostly go and assume a more reactive rather than directive roll in the evolution of play.

They think up a toy, possibly a disruptive one. Add it to the playground.
Adjust it based on feedback from the kids in the gravel pit and attending school nurse.

This is all moderately speculative on this one’s part.

Taemien · 2022-10-07T23:04:09.751Z

erjoh:

I’m actually confused on what is the dev intent of the entire PVP play style for officials are.

Whatever it is, is just one of many flavors of gameplay that is possible in Conan Exiles and the one they have decided to provide… according to their own words. But that is only from the one’s administering the server.

NOT the developers themselves. They are two separate teams. While they do probably speak to each other (whether informally or professionally), the devs don’t exactly make every decision with the other in mind.

I don’t blame them for this. Many issues caused by new content or features can be solved by changing administrative policies. That’s much easier than a redesign or balance change. You reserve balance changes that have a positive effect on all servers, not a select few with a funny tag.

There’s a problem that many players have on officials. They think FC is a monolithical singular entity, its not. Not only does it have multiple games but also multiple teams for each game. You have community managers for non-game related stuff (forums, steam discussion, etc), game moderators (for official servers), game developers, and other staff. They also think their unique server issues (usually caused by the fact its hundreds of servers per moderator, instead multiple moderators per server) are somehow the most important thing in their Conan Exiles experience, despite those issues being unique to them and not to the other 88% of players who don’t play there.

Lightning Storm was one of the issues that affected more than officials. I mean a 100,000 bolt strike on a near miss is a 100,000 damage on both official and non-official. But that was only fixable because a few got in there with actual tests and evidence of where the discrepancy was.

And believe me you all should thank those who did this testing and devkit lookups. Originally they said they were going to reduce the chances of direct hits of lightning bolts on buildings. That means 100,000 bolts would have been exponentially more common, and 6,000 dmg bolts less common.

The result would have been a literal wipe of every PVP Official server by the time of this writing. All of your buildings would have been gone by now. And that patch hit yesterday.

2cents · 2022-10-08T09:31:48.645Z

Can honestly say that is not what we experienced on our official pvp server, we did see almost total destruction from “another method” including a foundation wipe in crevice in about 40 mins, defence inpossible due to the lag caused, hopefully fixed now.
Storm wise, its now completly useless, 3 storms tested on a decayed sandstone shack, owner left due to the other thing, broke a single ceiling tile that was already damaged, and killed nothing.
Isnt worth the time it takes to use, sad really.

Gather resources is actually better as it kills more trees, which is all LS seems to be able to do maybe 3 a time, sadly it also crashes the game 50% of the time.

OctaviousWrex · 2022-10-08T09:51:37.151Z

erjoh:

I’m actually confused on what is the dev intent of the entire PVP play style for officials are.

I think the devs themselves are confused on what the dev intent of the entire PVP style for officials are.