The game was originally designed to be neither of these games. They will need to rebalance the entire game to be on par with these games, including encounters and mobs and how the AI moves.
I prefer the freedom I had before, rather than the shackles of this sluggishness. That’s why I poured hundreds of hours into this year instead of dark souls.
The initial acceleration for movement feels sluggish, even when the character is 100% unburdened. Maybe it was quads-day at the gym the day before? A+ on the new roll; B- on the inertia & acceleration.
Larathiel shares my thoughts in more detail then I think I can.
This sums up all my frustration specifically around the movement change of this patch.
I feel like a lot of core attributes of Conan have been removed or completely gutted/diminished this time around and it is shocking coming back to (what we already knew ahead of time) would be such a strikingly different game from what we have been playing.
I don’t think this game wants to, or can survive such a huge rotation of player base due to being designed into a an entirely new game and people not recognizing the game for what they have enjoyed and becoming disenfranchised with it.
That’s certainly possible, I myself game exclusively on my PC with a mouse and keyboard. The only games for which I use a controller are fighting games like Soul Calibur/Injustice, or for platformers.
I agree with your points, absolutely 100%. I prefer the old game. I just have one slight disagreement and that’s with rationale and it’s not specific to you. I’ve been seeing a lot of people using the term ‘realistic’ quite a bit. ‘The changes are more realistic vs the old’ and vice versa. It’s fairly subjective and unless we’re playing a full on life simulator, there will never be actual realism.
I do think the crux of a lot of the contention is that the core game mechanics was simply changed to be different core game mechanics with absolutely no gains and a lot of trade offs.
Just some examples:
PVP, the complaint I’m seeing seems to be that light armor was OP. With the new game mechanics now heavy armor is OP. There weren’t any game balances to make meaningful choices. So we got an even trade and now it just comes down to player preferences whether they like it or not.
The complaint was there was no mounts. We can give you mounts but now we’re going to hard cap clan thralls from infinity to 50-100 depending on how many accounts are linked to a clan with a +5 thrall increase per account. Again, that’s a serious trade off.
When I look at the changes everything is just an even trade off, not an improvement. Some may say that mounts are a huge gain, but considering the tiny map, that we have a superior fast travel system already, and how many places require climbing and vertical movement - mounts seem AWFULLY limited to just a certain niche. The shininess will wear off I think. Even the polls for favorite features after the releases - mounts are middling in the list among like 500 responses. I was told by community managers that this was the most asked for feature and it sure doesn’t look like it.
I could keep going, but instead of improvements we got trade offs with this patch and some serious game changing ones to boot. Which brings me to my original point which is realism shouldn’t play a part of this debate - we should be asking the questions: is this game fun to play? Do you feel like you have the freedom and movement to complete the objective the game presents and was designed for? Every game should feel unique and its core mechanics should really synergize with the content it provides. I’m trying to answer that question for myself and I need to give it time, but I feel like the movement really limits the content this game offers. It’s a farming and resource gathering game at its core - everything else is ancillary depending on your play style. The movement inhibits that objective imho. This game was about thralls and commanding other exiles, mounts inhibits that imho. I really think they should have expanded on that system instead. So we really have to ask the question that keeps coming up, what is Conan Exiiles trying to be at this point? Realistic it will never be. Fun game it could be. Great game it could be - but there has to be a major focus on fixing A LOT of bugs to even be considered great. For a lot of us its a labor of love and we see the potential. But patience only goes so far.
I mainly PVE and really dislike the changes. Movement is almost like over encumbered when doing things inside your base, even if you forget about combat, this has slugged the game to an almost unplayable state for me and several people I know. You spend so much time in game moving inside your base and traveling from one point to another that this will just rob us of hundreds of hours in game time to come (for those who will keep playing in this state). I think combat had a very clear meta which was being abused, wanting to correct it is a good initiative, as it is making agility more meaningful, but holy jesus, you just ruined the game. I think you should take another approach to the problem, and revert the momentum based movement and roll changes asap. ----THEN---- figure out how to adress the issue. This was my favorite game and I’ve spent hundreds of amazing hours playing it, please reconsider your changes.
Sir, sir! You have written one of the best response I have read so far. So brilliant. So well thought out. The logic in your argument is impeccable. You truly understand this game and what makes it great.
I can verify it’s great on the PS4 and buttery smooth on the PC. Then again, I play with a Razer BlackWidow Tournament keyboard, with pressure-sensitive switches. I think the membrane keyboard that I’m typing on right now did fairly well on TestLive, but it was more stop-and-start-ish. You may be onto something, Admiral.
Beautiful post.
I like the new changes, but I think it will be better if the dodge in light and medium armor could be a bit quicker than now. Nothing compared to the old system, but a bit quicker.
I dislike the new movement as the momentum makes characters seem lethargic rather than heroic. Furthermore, it does not feel based in reality. Compare in-game running and turning to a video of a football player doing drills https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBAgl4eLd6E (skip to 1:56) or compare the in-game dodge roll to a martial artist doing a roll https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adPc-sVpGTU (skip to 0:58) and I think the in-game mechanic is too slow. Combat atheletes are trained to be on the balls of their feet and react fast as possible, and I want my character to be a heroic athelete, not an average one.
Furthermore, just like many race games throw actual physics out the window in the effort to make a game fun, why are we even worrying about it? This isn’t a scientific simulation. Its a game. And I prefer a game to be responsive and fun.
Finally, to repeat what everyone said about in-combat vs out-of-combat game play, it is now more annoying just to go from my chests to my crafting tables and to get around the world.
At a minimum, the system needs a few tweaks with comparisons to professional athletes for all momentum based movement and . Going back to the old system would be better than what we have now.
The idea of the change is good, just not executed well. I have to agree with other players, the character is to sluggish. As she (the character) is in the prime of her life and great physical shape, yet starts running like she is chest deep in water. I on the other hand, a gamer, not in physical shape, and with tendonitis in the leg, can still start faster than my character. Something is dreadfully wrong there.
For me, there are certain games which I prefer on ps4 and some on PC. Typically the games I play on PC require more twitch controls. For ps4, I am okay for less responsive games or games that are forgiving for slower reaction time and when the game was developed for a console in mind. I’m thinking open world RPGs like Horizon or Tomb Raider. I’m seeing console players comparing it to dark souls or witcher 3, which in my opinion are more forgiving and don’t require PC twitch reaction time with precision and feel smoother with a controller. Which is why I stopped playing witcher on my pc and started on a console because it felt like a console platformer and belonged there.
I think it may be due to how PC players and Console players play this game. For example, I may be rewarded more on a PC for using cliff diving as a way of getting around the map. It may be more difficult to spin around on a controller, where as mouse and keyboard movements were very fluid to so some pretty amazing parkour things constantly vs feeling a bit out of control on a controller. For a console player, Conan is now more into alignment with games like Witcher that keeps getting brought up and feels more natural for the types of games which were released with console in mind. Games that get ported to PC or that were designed for multiple platforms often feel clunky on PC. Especially menus and things like that. Correct me if I’m wrong but Conan was designed for PC and ported to console much later. And I get Conan is not a completely twitch game but it was designed for a PC in mind. So the style of game play that felt great for PC feels sluggish and bad now compared to what we had. For console players it may just be par for course.
100% agree.
I hated The Witcher 3 because it had a klunky movement system. I only ever played 3 hours of The Witcher 3 because I couldn’t stand how dumpy the movement system was.
Apparently that was their goal… to transition to a dumpy movement system, instead of the smooth, quality one that they had.
I don’t know anything else about The Witcher 3, not bashing the game or your opinion… just hating on the dumpy, clunky, degraded movement system we now have.
I mean, I used to be able to hop pillar to pillar. Let’s see if that’s a thing anymore. -.-
This is amazing. I agree with all of this & think these should be implemented!
I play on console. the new movement stinks, never played witcher or dark souls but it it mives like this game does atm i never will hother to
Well said, thank you 
Yes, they kinda do in their own way - that’s the way they were designed and it’s part of what makes them the games they are. Of course, CE started off differently so that’s why a lot of players writing here are not too keen on the new system. If it’d been like that from the start I suppose people would have been ok with it. Personally I like the changes on the PS4, but I can hear and feel the agony of most PC players.
I don’t get why people can like this new update focussing on the movement.
This game/update is like pushing a car instead of driving a car.