After seeing the production “version” of the update, and following up on my stance of not doing what people seems to like to do, which is berate the devs with ignorant ad hominen, I try to raise questions much like “some” of the OP points. A more “constructive” form I can think of.
1 - I really cant see a reason for time gate. The “activity gate”, sure. Like Liu Fei requirement of learning sorcery. Some might say it is a time gate, but it is not really. Activity gate will consume time, but it is adequate to my playing behavior. If I play 10 hours in my off days, I dont want to have to way till my next “off day” to follow up a quest after 10 minutes of doing some “kill quest”. Some people might play Sandbox Games exactly for the “make your own adventure” style. If Funcom feels the need to make an MMO or a Theme Park Adventure game, should do it as a separate game. However we all know how that went:
2 - If you want to make something “Sandboxy”, the “on rails” style of questing does not really suits it. It MIGHT serve a looter shooter well, but it is a “Nasty Chimera” which is a pure theme park mechanic in a Sandbox game. It MIGHT be useful in a Theme Park Looter shooter, but again, many of us might know how that turned out:
3 - Someone who plays a lot of Conan Exiles, probably a someone who is interested in the Bazar items, the whole game World, and play the game for what the game is, not resenting it is not a MOBA or a MMO, probably want more of what Conan Exiles had of good, not things that belong on another game. Companions should be Sandbox, meaning: You should mold your “favorite” thralls into better companions. Like getting a “Freya” you have in your base, and going through an arc of, idk, (and keeping the cringe out for now), get her some armor, the cultural armor, the cultural weapons, that would spark her some memories or some “anything” that start to evolve her from a simple thrall into a special type which has special abilities. Then you can talk to her and get information, quests, whatever. But instead of being a “specific short unappealing disjointed quest”, it is a kind of generated conjunction development to go the Sandbox way. If I dont want Freya, if I dont want Liu Fei, if I dont like the tone of the story, those are concerns of a Sandbox game. The things should be just generic stuff players pick and choose to build their own game. Once I start railing the gameplay, I am marching to another type of game, one that Conan Exiles is ill suited to be.
4 - Conan Exiles is for the most part a personal experience for most players. It is not a game that thrives on streams, or general watch content. It is a game that appeals by being played. Trying to make it something you will be interested in seeing a “movie cut” in YouTube wont really benefit it. People might be interested in watch, and even be thrilled to play games like Mass Effect or Horizon Zero by watching movie cuts, which will be the same, no matter who is playing. Maybe your commander is different, but still the same set of things. Conan Exiles is another thing. It is lousy when it comes to cinematic appeal. No matter if you make it as crispy as modern games, the visual is not the problem. The problem is it is a game you build your experience by playing it. Your own way. That is its strength, which is being sapped by introduction of theme park mechanics. The more railed the game is, the less interesting it is, because in railed experieces, there are hundreds of games better than Conan Exiles. Conan Exiles excelled in affording a personal sandbox experience, but the apparent solution funcom found to “problems” is to introduce what is popular in other games. It seems they think the problem with the game is that people dont flock on it because it is not the right “genre”. The problem is that it does not perform well what people like on it. If time was spent furthering the Sandbox personal experience aspect of the game, I can guarantee Funcom that the game would see much better numbers. People are not wanting a lousy Adventure game made of Conan Exiles, (they think they do, some, but they dont). And I mention it exactly for the copium about that quote. You go now to Classic WoW servers, they are DESERT. Sure, streamers have guilds, have groups, have “fame seeking groups”. But as a regular player, you will find that actually joining a classic wow server and playing on it will be very different than the experience we had in which you would go to the most derelict zone in a RP server of low population, and find a player there doing God knows what. In my days on Sha’tar server, one of the least populated servers, you would find players around Stonetallon Mountains which anyone knows, by that viral video, is one of most forgettable zones, you might even not remember it if asked what is the most forgettable zones. Today, you go to classic servers, you MIGHT see a bunch of players in well populated outdoor zones IF it is peak hours. That is kinda what the new direction is making with Conan Exiles. It is forcing the people who like the game for what it does best out, in trying to seek people who wont be joining in a game that does poorly what other games do better.
