No more planned content? WHY STOP NOW?

Conan Exiles General Discussion
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Funcom is shooting itself in the foot with its meager updates and lack of motivation for employing innovative updates to the existing game, due to it’s success in terms of community and finances.

The development team said during their last stream:
1.) Two handed axe (might) make it to the game if they (even) plan on adding another animation set.
2.) Little to nothing on sorcery, with the suggestion that the current (lackluster) “necromancy” we currently have will potentially be the extent of things.
3.) I don’t even recall that they said anything on adding mounts, I recall that they said that it was “muh impossible” but I have seen modders who have added flying carpets, so what gives?
4.) No further map expansions planned at all. I won’t even bother to get my hopes up that we might (finally) get a second entirely new map to the game.

All in all it seems as if Funcom has decided to leave CE in the mud, while keeping it alive with a few minor updates here and there.

This makes no rational sense to me

Take a moment to go over the CE steam charts:

Conan Exiles is doing marvellously, it has a healthy (growing) community, it’s on the brink of entering the positive (blue) review rating of 70% on steam and it still has loads of potential for further development and financial gain.

As I understand, Funcom has moved on to developing and RTS, but why leave CE behind? Why do they treat the development of CE as a sunk cost when it clearly is a successful game?

Another reason to keep CE in the spotlight is the new TV series that is coming.
With the Conan TV series coming, many people will want to explore the world + be immersed therein. I am convinced that CE will satisfy such a need, and will do so way better than an RTS ever could as a survival / adventure game. It makes perfect sense to update CE now and as much as possible to be prepared for when the floodgates open.

Collectively, I don’t know what we as a community can actually do to convince Funcom step up their game and continue updating CE at a more vigorous pace, but despite it’s unstable development CE is finally a success, why not capitalize on this?

The purpose of this post isn’t just to rant, but to ask you guys to join me in brainstorming of ways that we can actually FIX this, seeing as there seems to be a consensus in the CE community that CE could still use a lot of major updates before it has reached its maximum potential.

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Then what are the actual staff of CE doing atm?

If they are receiving remuneration I say that they should be put to work lol

There has been a massive decrease in frequency of updates since Early Access, I realize that this is because the game has been released but surely due to the healthy population of the game such a low workload is unsustainable?

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They said new build pieces incoming and new dungeons also the continued rework of npc capitals.

They probably have other stuff in the works but are not confident to talk about it yet. If they say something is being made but then later on in development they have to scrap it cause it just wasn’t working. Players would rage. I don’t like it either but it is probably the smarter choice. I just wish they would let us know about new features when they are in a working state and all they have left to do is polish or visual assets.

Edit: Also the recent financial reported stated that exiles was one of their main earners. They will continue developing this game as long as it stays that way.

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3 more dungeons
3 more dlcs
New building pieces
new armor to loot
framed paintings
…and all we don’t know yet.

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They sometimes refer to 1 dev being responsible for a whole feature. This makes me think the exiles team is pretty small. At the end of the day they are a business here to make money. I wish they would higher more devs to speed things up but they obviously want to keep costs down for maximum profits.

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Hardly anything to write home about I have to insist.

As I said in the original post, the recent updates lack innovation.

Adding more items + systems that are nearly just reskinns of existing systems isn’t what I would call innovative.

People want more content (as well as fixes) to keep them coming back to the game and thus to let the game keep growing.

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Exactly, and if we look at the steam charts I have to press my argument that there is money to be made from CE.

If they need to hire more bloody devs let them get to it, especially while CE is still in it’s good days.

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The problem is they need the exiles money to expand the business buy buying other IP’s and making more games with the IP’s they own. This will make them able to reach a larger audience an in turn make more money. It sucks for us as fans of exiles. Hopefully those other games also pay off for exiles in the future.

When exiles was launched they where about to go broke that’s why it left EA when it did. It was a good move from a business point of view it got them the money that they needed to expand and get back into a growth phase. Hopefully they don’t screw it up. But only time will tell.

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motivating people by demotivating them… how quaint.

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I don’t know if you’ve ever spent any time hunting exploits but I have. With almost 30 years in computer technical support, nothing has made me renovate or improve my systems and functions more. To stay ahead of exploiters, a lot of my peers just watch videos of the bad guys, I actually get down in the server with them and watch it all crystallize. To me, a change in processes for the better is innovation. Considering almost 1/3 of the fixes in those volumes of patches are responses to player-promulgated exploits, that’s a metric boatload of innovation.

Perhaps this next bit doesn’t apply to your idea of innovation, so read at your peril. Take thralls for example. There is definitive proof that they were changed for the better after the Anniversary Patch.

Sometimes things aren’t heralded as novelties when they’re side-effects of patching or hotfixes. Thus they fall outside of public view.

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Yes that’s all good and wonderful but that doesn’t change the notion that the average CE player would feel more compelled to return to the game / continue playing if there was more content to work through.

What I mean by innovation is more content to keep the game fresh, new and entertaining.

Obviously fixes are good and necessary, but so is content for maintaining and growing a healthy population.

Now I realize that I don’t have 30 years in computer technical support like you do but I don’t have to be an expert to realize that content keeps gamers interested. I wish I could link steam charts here to back up what I’m saying but we have statistics that prove what I’m saying is true, an example of a game such as Rust shows that there is a considerable influx of players upon content updates, when compared to the influx of players when compared to exploit / bug fixing updates. I use Rust as an example because it bears similarities to Conan.

Remember the topic of this post is the importance of content, so generally when I say things like “hardly anything to write home about” I literally mean “hardly anything to write home about with regards to content.”

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That’s a matter of opinion. I’m still playing Age of Empires 2. Why? It’s a game construct that, once fully realized, hasn’t deviated from its core so dramatically that it is not the game I love. That’s the tightrope. I respect what you’ve said, you want newness and not reskins. Just be with me when I say we do not want to go down the road of some titles. GTA’s about stealin’ cars, not flyin’ around on some goofy impossible rocket bike.

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You quote my statement without quoting where I stated where I derived my statement from - statistical evidence. Writing it off as a mere opinion is disingenuous of you.

I’m not suggesting that Conan Exiles should be remade or radically changed but expanded, I urge you to see the positives of this notion and not the negatives because I firmly believe that CE still has a ton of unrealized potential.

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I countered with a game that has been played for almost 20 years now. Fairly sure that when I looked up the Rust stats before I posted my last reply, the Age of Empires’ stats dwarfs them. That might imply you did not do me the courtesy of researching before posting. That’s beneath disingenuous.

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Content is important for player retention. But so are mechanical updates and bug fixes. It ends up being a delicate balance. One side of the community wants the game to be more stable and less buggy another side want more content to consume. There are also those that lie in-between. I myself am more of give me bug fixes and stability and I’ll make my own content type of player.

It’s tough for the developers to achieve both sides if they only have a small team. I don’t envy the guy who has to make those calls.

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The purpose of this post isn’t just to rant, but to ask you guys to join me in brainstorming of ways that we can actually FIX this Fix what?

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I have seen the game go months without an update or new content, then all of a sudden get a ton of new content. Maybe chew your food a little more slowly, instead of rushing out and doing marathon sessions to complete all of the new content / updates immediately. Savor it, enjoy it. I have 4980 hours in game and still haven’t done “everything”. For instance, I just visited the silver mine yesterday, and its amazing. I knew it has been there, but didn’t feel the need to rush over and “do it”. My apologies, but even though the OP states this isn’t a rant, it sounds exactly like a rant in my opinion.

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Some interesting thoughts in this thread. I have not thought of it as a company trying to balance between investing their profit back into the existing game, while using that same profit to further expand into new games. Helps put it into perspective. I’m pretty content with the game as is. I have found the climbing mechanic to feel glitchy, and while I myself have sort of figured it out the do’s and don’ts of climbing, I was watching someone new play, and seeing them become horribly frustrated with trying to climb a wall does remind me that it is still a problem.

Besides the climbing, I would really like to see mounts and some sort of magic implemented, but I don’t think they’re as important as climbing. I’m sure there are probably some end game weapons and content that have balance issues also, but I don’t know much about that. The way I see it, climbing is something you deal with in this game no matter what level of content you are experiencing.

Overall, I am pretty happy with the game so far, and that is partly because it was half off when I bought it, so I already feel like I’ve got my money’s worth, anything additional at this point is gravy.

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Exactly correct. I think I paid 29.00 US dollars in January of 2017 and have played the game for almost 2 and a half years. I definitely have gotten my moneys worth, even though i have purchased every single DLC, and do not care for a few, I still feel it is money well spent. Everyone has their dream update or glitch fix. While I have zero problems with climbing (maybe its the hot key / mouse set up) I still dream of being able to gallop a horse across the map.

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So this reply will be partially expressing my frustrations but also expressing what the game needs to succeed. First they have stated multiple times that they do not wish to even try to expand the map or work out issues with expanding it. Their last stream from two weeks ago they came after a YouTuber named FireSpark when he made a video stating why they were lieing for not being able to make a map expansion. They came back with that if they opened up buildable areas then it would just lag servers. Though, comparing CE to Ark, their map is wayyyyyyy bigger and only seem to get bigger reach new expansion. They have a really good opportunity to heavily update and make a turn around. Especially when the new Conan Game is coming out and the TV series. Funcom, please take a break from the texture DLCs and give us meaningful expansions that will increase the fanbase. Because right now, new players don’t have much incentive to purchase this game at its current price point. We need to fix the issue of why we can’t make a bigger map, divide it into sections that the server loads and deloads, handle it like Don’t Starve where servers can opt out of expanded areas, have multi maps that severs can opt in to load. Add true sorcery, add crossbows back, mounts, boats, improve on the story and lore. Fix some major bugs that have been around for a long time. As someone who has spent a lot on DLC I don’t need any more DLCS, I need expansions to the game.

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