No More Paid DLCs!

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
46

I think anyone wanting DLC to be stopped is simply living in their own selfish mind and nothing more. The temperature effect of the new dlc armor and intensifying the temperature effects on official servers was an oversight at best, and not one that cannot be worked around in the meantime. Also as cyrusthevirus pointed out it’s not an armor set that everyone cares to use based on where they set up base.

There will always be something to balance/patch/remove, it’s a natural effect for games. If anything its a good thing because it means people still play the game and bring these discussions up with the dev’s (who do read these forums). That by no means stop all projects because group X is experiencing an issue (intended or not). I haven’t purchased the first DLC but I probably will get the aquilian one. Partly because I like the theme and partly because its to support the developers to keep up the work.

47

You said:

I asked you to verify this with specifics and you obviously did not do so.

Since those thralls are misnamed in the tables, everyone is in fact having those issues. But I do admire your willingness to admit to your mistakes. /s

And providing evidence to back up your claims certainly helps in that regard.

48

More generalisations that certainly look like good old fashioned shilling, since when pressed, the arguments melt like icecream in the sun.

Oversight or not (and I highly doubt that it was, given all the other stuff going on), we cannot prove one way or another, and by incessantly giving them the benefit of the doubt, you provide cover for unscrupulous developers to shaft their customers.

They could have reverted the changes to the temps OR normalised the “cosmetic” DLC armor so that it was no longer best in class. They did neither. That’s intent.

If a company can make money from cosmetic DLC without fixing even the trival bugs in core gameplay that have been explicitly pointed out to them, they will continue to do so.

By promoting DLC before core gameplay, you are promoting anti-consumer bs and doing all gamers everywhere a disservice.

50

They said it was cosmetic, and it isn’t.

51

I can’t wait for the new DLC. I will enjoy it , my kids will enjoy it, and anyone they trade with will enjoy it. I will keep supporting the entertainment I value.

52

They said multiple things about Khitan DLC unfortunately, talking out of both sides of their mouth. When announced, they said it would be cosmetic, but that the gear would have stats on par with iron and star metal. The also said you are not buying power, i.e. there was still better stuff in game. Initial star metal tier stats were actually better than star metal gear in terms of damage output. However, there was still obsidian, dragonbone, and telith items that were better. However, after some people complained, they nerfed the stats down to basically hardened steel tier. Even more people complained, and now they have, or will be, bringing the stats up to actually be on par with star metal as advertised.

So, no, they did not just say it was cosmetic. But, Khitan DLC was announced in an ambiguous fashion. They should have been more clear: DLC building stuff is cosmetic, but DLC gear is on par with pre-existing gear.

They seem to have learned how to communicate better. For example, in announcing the jewel of the west DLC, they have stated:

"Jewel of the West Pack contains:

  • 39 new Aquilonian building pieces: A full set of building pieces with the same stats as existing tier three.
  • 15 new armor pieces in three sets, such as the Black Dragon armor: Light, medium and heavy sets with an epic end-game version of each.
  • 9 new weapons in one Aquilonian weapon set: Same power as iron weapons with an epic end-game version of each weapon.
  • 5 new Aquilonian warpaints: Decorative warpaints symbolizing, for example, rule and bravery.
  • 25 new placeables, such as the harp and councilor chair, craftable in the Aquilonian Artisan station.

All the new content from Aquilonia is exclusive to this DLC. The new items do not give any in-game advantage in power, as all items have comparable stats to existing items."

(See https://www.conanexiles.com/blog/the-jewel-of-the-west-pack-brings-aquilonian-grandeur-to-conan-exiles/) (emphasis added))

53

that’s why I didn’t buy the dlc not spending a dime on a broking game lost several vaults the other day i was raiding blew a 2nd floor down and had a floating vault in the air nothing holding it up but we have vaults just disappearing just ******* weird

54

midgets

55

And who’s doing the fixing of the animations?

Who has to add all the “artist” DLC items to the game code?

Who has to assign the items the proper stats?

Who has to test to make sure all the items are functioning properly ingame?

Sure, they can say the artists create them… because they do, but it still requires other people to test and implement, and animators will be working on the new items instead of the base game (like the ‘minor update’ for combat talked about over a month ago.)

Fact is, they’ve only released paid DLC since that blog post, and they’re talking about more paid DLC. The July 5 patch was completely devoid of anything they mentioned. They can’t even get something as simple as the right-click hold bow functionality changed in a month of development time, when it used to function that way!

If they can’t improve the base game, they shouldn’t be releasing paid DLC.

1 Like
56

Not really. They have just learned to communicate more ambiguously.

The Khitan heavy armor (not sure about the others, I don’t own the DLC but might buy it just to verify), has vastly superior cold protection to anything else and so is not comparable to anything.

And yet irrespective of the words they are using now, the implications of those words are that DLC does not provide advantage. (Tbh, I don’t now nor did I ever care much about sub 60 gear since if the fights aren’t equal in the first place, your odds aren’t good anyway, but certainly, it wouldn’t have been hard to offer identical drop in replacements for other gear in every respect in in the first instance. In fact, it’s technically harder to do anything more.

Also, since SL was over nerfed for no reason at all, it leaves space for the Aquilonian heavy armor to have comparable heat protection to SL, whilst being demonstrably superior in pretty much every other respect.

That being the case (as I’ve already mentioned in another thread), the best armors in the game applicable to the most lucrative areas in the game (hot and cold) would only be obtainable by buying the DLC.

And again, fixing the stats on some non DLC gear to eliminate that advantage is the opposite of hard. They still didn’t do that though, did they.

We’ll see what they do with the next DLC, but certainly, Khitan heavy armor is hardly comparable to non DLC armor and since they could have reverted either the changes to temps or the cold protection on the armor and did neither that’s intent, not incompetence.

And still we don’t have a plausible explanation for why they couldn’t correct some typos in a table, or pad out the waves to include humans (and so the artisans everyone wants), or change the server defaults so that lower difficulty waves spawn, or do likewise to set the min number of online players required for a purge.

It still doesn’t reasonable explain why thye needed to “stabilse” a testlive patch for weeks, run a blink and you’d miss it free DLC event to promote testing and then between the end of that test and the rollout, suddenly manage to add critical bugs affecting the decay, or demonstrating the changes to heat.

All of this reeks.

57

I wouldn’t go that far tbh, although I share the underlying sentiment. What angers me is that they seem to me to be leveraging bugs to herd people like sheep and maximise profits.

I came into CE with a fairly high opinion of Funcom, although I didn’t know much about them. (I liked Dreamfall and TSW).

When it became apparent after looking in the dev kit that the tea boy could fix some of this stuff, that they have been offering vague excuses about “looking into things” and that “fixes will arrive in a future patch” for months, when even a single test run or examing the tables would have thrown the errors into sharp relief, that’s when I became angry.

And since I contacted them privately offering to help with the PCT but they both refused and made no attempt to ask me what I understood about the nature of the problem, I concluded that they don’t want it fixed, since nothing else makes sense.

And since not fixing these things has all kinds of financial benefits (since they already have our money and running official servers costs them money), that conclusion has added weight.

I don’t expect pristine bug free software. I don’t expect free content. I do expect developers of a product that I bought to fix simple bugs in core gameplay when made aware of them. I also expect developers selling cosmetic DLC to provide it.

(and no, the idea that they just boosted the stats on the DLC door by mistake makes no sense at all given that the most efficient way to construct DLC is to copy comparable items and only change what needs to be changed. It’s not like checking what the values should have been is even remotely hard either).

58

They already said that simply reinstating the right click to hold shot on bow change wasn’t possible because it was a victim of the combat update and how their attacks worked. They have owned up and said they are working to bring it back. It is, as you already pointed out, involved in many departments and not something they can do with a click.

59

adding the dlc item is as easy as walking down the street and buying a pie. The artist can do that themselves, In fact if you look closely their DLC cosmetic stuff are just reuse of the existing ones. Like they can add as much item as they like the Item data table handles all of that for them and its the parent of that blueprint that controls what each item does. Like they do not develop new idea rather they take existing idea and reshape it.

Do download Dev kit and you will understand what i mean.

60

Even so, I fail to see where making money off of DLC provides a financial incentive to invest resources into developing anything that isn’t more DLC. (As in we aren’t convinced that the resources acquired through the sale of DLC will be invested into anything other than making more DLC. The major fear is that they’re just gonna pay the artists to pump out DLC and milk that until the game dies as opposed to paying the Devs to keep the game alive as keeping the game alive isn’t as lucrative as milking the DLCs.)

61

Did Rockstar just pay people to make more microtransaction items for GTA Online, all through selling $700 million USD in Shark Cards?

Or, at the other extreme of developer side, does Frontier take everything from microtransaction sales to just make more ship skins, and cosmetic add ons for Elite Dangerous?

I can think of nowhere, except maybe horrid browser based f2p (but pay to not grind) games, where what you lay out has happened. With both GTA Online and Elite Dangerous, the games have continuously made core game refinements, and new developments, that have benefitted both base game players, and those who bought add ons. GTA Online is near unrecognizable from its early iterations especially in performance (Yes, I know, content lag loading issue, but that is a firm PS4 limit), and Elite Dangerous is a vastly improved game for the better as well.

Given the history, I don’t think what is laid out as a fear is a real possibility for Conan Exiles.

62

I’m usually anti-dlc but this one is okay, the added items are inline with the base gear (possibly a little less efficient), effectively sidegrades.
Its a little awkward how you get 2-for-1 feats, maybe theres a better solution to that.

63

GTA online just made more really expensive cars/money sinks to incentivize the sale of Shark cards. (Or in otherwords Shark Cards are their DLC, and have contributed to the inflation prices on in game goods and items.)

I don’t play Elite Dangerous so I have no clue. Still inclined to say that this is an apples to oranges comparison as neither of these are survival based games…

It still comes down to a matter of trust… With GTA, they still had a solid foundation to build on before they introduced shark cards… (And really common complaints about the online version of the game is how content gets locked behind a soft pay wall to push the sale of shark card.)

So still concerns here with DLC
1.They end up being pay to win: As in giving an unfair advantage over those who refuse to or are unable to pay.(I’ve seen the point being brought up that the DLC stuff has better temperature stats.)
2.The company does seem to be pumping them out at a rapid rate… Players are worried that the resources aren’t going towards QA and bug-fixing.(By resources we mean money… Pretty sure we know nothing about how big of a budget they have, but I’m still pretty sure that if they can’t afford to pay both the DLC team and the QA team on the budget allotted to them by Funcoms upper management someone is gonna be getting some time off, and it isn’t gonna be the people who’s efforts are bringing in the least amount of money.)

64

No, that is objectively incorrect. They made more content, that was included with the base game, for all players. Yes, there are some ridiculously high priced things, like the Deluxo (flying Delorean). But a lot of new contact missions, mini games, and other content was paid for with Shark Card purchases. As for price inflation, making money on businesses open lobby, while challenging, hasn’t made Shark Cards the reason for price inflation solely. More money is made than ever before with import/export, biker businesses, and other groups of player efforts. There are players out there who can easily generate cash flows of 17 mil an hour when they team up, and run a lobby.

So then,

How do you know that then? Elite Dangerous is very much a survival vein game, but one of an economics more so. You lose the wrong ship, at the wrong time, your essentially set back hundreds of hours of in game time and effort.

All that said, how is place in genre of game, related to the issue of what DLC purchases fund? That is a non sequitur. Both games have purchasable cosmetic virtual goods, both games purchase of said goods has positive cash flow back to continued development of the game. Where in there does the games genre matter?

The usual, but yet again, how does becoming pay to win, amount to all money going toward DLC creation over core game refinement? Even if paying to win, are you going to pay for ‘winning’ material in a stagnant game? I’ve never seen this, and don’t believe such an animal exist.

That is a false dilemma however, the reality is far more complicated than that, and so open to speculation that we cannot even begin to do more than wildly speculate over what resources are available, and applied where, internally at Funcom. I would say though that shipping 1.5 million units of CE, has given them enough positive cashflow to do both without draconian competition of resources between both business objectives.

1 Like
65

The money is going to the company which in turn drives all their projects. You mention how the dlc armor has slightly better cold resists but is that truly a reason to consider it p2w? Adding in stuff like this is fast and easy and requires minimum time investment. you never know they may be planning another map expansion and wish to have a bit more income to support it. Games now require a constant influx of cash to keep online services going especially ones with a large collection of servers, like Conan and ark. They also dont have the benefit of people buying the game constantly due to most of the people who were interested got it during preview at a major discount.

66

You have no idea where the money is going. And since the (notreally)Cosmetic DLC isn’t remotely proportionately transactional, they have no obligations to you whatsoever with regards to fixing bugs. And even where they did have obligations to you (to provide a functional product) they have failed. Seriously, if your new PC broke you would not take it back to the shop only to buy a charity badge for 1/3 the price of the PC hoping that maybe they will fix your PC too. That would be quite stupid. Not least because they had a responsibility to fix the damned thing in the first place for free.

Very interesting choice of words. It’s not slightly better. It’s much better. Perhaps even twice as good. And since the temp effects have been increased, running around without a high level of cold protection in cold areas is going to be much harder now. So yeah, P2W. And I predict that the same will happen with the next DLC and hot areas, since SL has been overnerfed. But since I’ve already said all this, you clearly aren’t reading the thread, you are just promoting your chosen narrative and doing so without talking to me, because you know I would dismantle it in public.

Exactly though, you don’t know. If they were trying to maximise profits by churning out trivial DLC and then keeping the cash, your hand waving justification gives them cover to do it. You are selling faith. Markets are not supposed to function on faith. If you were always obliged to trust a company we would be in a much worse situation than we are already in as consumers. I mentioned somewhere else about Volkswagon rigging their emissions tests. Nissan just coughed up to doing that too. But hey, trust these companies… ignore evidence to the contrary… have faith.

Nah. I pay for products, not blind, naive faith.

Sometimes I wonder whether the reason people give game developers so much leeway is because they are selling entertainment. Fun. And that therefore, those involved are committed to making people happy.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, when smart ruthless people spot an opportunity to maximise profits by shafting their customers, they take it.

Now, if Funcom had demonstrated a genuine commitment to the game people paid for, I would have bought the DLC in a heartbeat. Instead, they are imnsho jerking everyone around for $$$.

Fixes are always over the horizon and even when they do arrive on occasion, they are often counteracted by other breakages or swiftly broken again in a subsequent patch. Out with the old bugs in with the new bugs. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

For example, they finally added some missing recipes to thralls that spawn at the galeon (great right?), but at the same time, they nerfed the spawn chance for any named armorer thralls from 10% down to 1.1%
Yes, you read that correctly: ONE PERCENT.

If I started a new game now, I might need to visit that spawn hundreds or even thousands of times to get Irniz of the furnace after that change since there’s only a 1.1% chance that one of 5 named thralls will spawn.

So, they “fixed” it one way, but ensured it was still practically unavailable at the same time by the back door. I am not surprised.