Players Suggestions about gameplay - Hoping for developer interaction

[Effemme94]

Since the game is losing more and more players (Playstation and Xbox Pvp Official Servers), it would be an excellent idea to insert a thread where each player, in close contact with the developers, could constantly give ideas to improve the gameplay (in my case especially regarding the pvp that has become terrible in my opinion).
It would be great if the developers could also join in this speech and express their opinions about our proposals, considering that we are the ones who play it and who better than us can give advice for the gameplay !?.
Since the last patches that have made pvp very slow and boring, many players have abandoned the game; therefore my advice will be focused especially on the pvp component.
Here’s what I’d like to change:

1. Considering that returning to the old healing system is impossible, and considering that it is now practically impossible for a player to survive an outnumbered fight against players accompanied by slaves, in my opinion the speed with which the potion is taken to heal should be considerably increased. Imagine fighting 2 enemies, it is enough for them to hit you while you heal to sentence you to death. A player with skills must also be able to face multiple enemies, as happened before; this makes a normal player from one with many skills!
   In all games, players with more skill must be able to prove this, now it is quite difficult if your enemies are decent in pvp.
   If it is not possible to increase the speed of the animation of the potion, then allow the regeneration even if you are hit, as was the case before. (I prefer the first option).

2. It is absolutely necessary to modify the attacks of the daggers and the lance on horseback.
   Daggers are ridiculous, especially poisonous ones. By spamming them with good timing, your opponent can in no way heal himself due to the animation of the potion.
   As for the lance on horseback it is simply ridiculous. Allowing to one-shot an enemy is pathetic, where are the skills and the pvp!?. By applying the oil, with 5 strength, you manage to oneshot your enemy.
   Absolutely to change both in my opinion. (ferossic daggers are embarrassing).

3. Add some way to heal yourself properly when you on horseback!

4. The x1 farm is way too low. This factor has practically removed from the game those who had only a few hours to play it (for work, study or in any case real life).Considering Conan is a game, why make it so frustrating?
   Same consideration for leveling slaves and horses. Hours used to level them up and they die in the first lost fight. All this does nothing but make it impossible for those who have only a few hours a day to enjoy a pvp server, where the game is really real.

5. Add new contents for Exile Land. I remember when Siptah was released for consoles - all servers super full.
   In my opinion, adding new areas or dungeons to the exile land could bring players back again. Maybe try to add something new consistently, every 3/4 weeks, so that the player is tempted to stay there.

6. Make the game free-to-play or crossplay between consoles. This could populate the servers again, especially considering the pitiful numbers for official pvp servers, practically on ps 2 full official servers out of a total of 100 (?).

This is what I think could bring many players back to Conan, especially that big chunk who loved Conan for his unique and fun pvp genre.
I have been playing this game since its release and in 3 years I have seen too many changes which, in my opinion, have killed my game.
I would also like that the community could update this list, give their opinion, but above all that the developers interact with us about it and give them feedback too.

Greetings friends, and be safe!

[DanQuixote]

I like some of your suggestions, and particularly like the approach you’ve taken - calling for adjustments rather than nerfs is a far better way to go about it. I do have one request:

@Effemme94

pvp server, where the game is really real

Please don’t do that. That’s not helpful, because it suggests that the other game modes aren’t ‘real’ and shouldn’t be taken into account. The actual result is that it will get you more opposition than you might otherwise get. (Lecture over)

It does sound like the combination of the new version of healing potions vs daggers is a particular problem. I’m certainly noticing more issues with the potion vs bleed situation in PVE, so I can only imagine that’s considerably worse in PVP. I think I’d prefer to see changes to the potions than the daggers - at the very least going back to healing through bleeds.

One-shots with a maxed out lance sounds pretty reasonable from a realism perspective - but gameplay should take priority over realism, and anything that one-shots generally seems like a bad idea, unless there is some sort of built in hard counter. (Actually, that’d be my preference to see - some sort of hard counter rather than a need for reduction - I never use lances, I just think it would be the more interesting approach - though it’s hard to figure what sort of hard counter would actually solve the problem.)

@Effemme94

Add some way to heal yourself properly when you on horseback!

Is that really needed? (Realism again, it’s pretty hard to do things like bandage yourself while on a moving horse, but gameplay still more important if it is something really needed.) It’s one of those situations that’s just a minor inconvenience in PVE, so not something I’d given much thought.

@Effemme94

Add new contents for Exile Land.

I’d love some more EL content. I don’t know how possible it is (there’s always been talk about how it’s already ‘full’), but it would be great if it could be done. I think the 3-4 weeks idea is a bit ambitious. But if some additional content was possible, I’d be happy.

Free-to-play brings a lot of potential problems, since the company then has to find a different revenue stream to pay for all the work - dlc may cover some of it, but without base game sales, there’d likely end up being micro-transactions or subscriptions or similar, which would be worse IMO. Cross-play on the other hand would be great - reading other threads, it sounds like sony may be a particular stumbling block, but I hope it can be sorted out some day (I’d like to see full crossplay with consoles and PC - but recognise that balancing that might have some serious difficulties).

[droch-aon]

I like some of the suggestions also.
except this one

@Effemme94

Make the game free-to-play

I have been around online games for a very long time, and “free” is never really free and comes with a lot of baggage people don’t consider when asking, Like censorship the violence and gore would be toned down, and nudity would be removed altogether.

Consoles are already censored. If the game went f2p it would mean even more censorship. I’ve seen it happen a hundred times, with many company’s including Funcom.

Sales, lower prices sure I can get behind those things, But games that are free attract MORE of the kind of people we DON’T want, griefers, bigots, cheaters and their ilk.

I’ve seen all the arguments that this wouldn’t happen because X publisher has X game that is free and uncensored. But those are seldom the popular games you think and clam you want Conan to become.

[CodeMage]

Some nice suggestions here, great to see a constructive post.

Here’s my feedback, from a mostly PVE-oriented point of view.

@Effemme94

Considering that returning to the old healing system is impossible, and considering that it is now practically impossible for a player to survive an outnumbered fight against players accompanied by slaves, in my opinion the speed with which the potion is taken to heal should be considerably increased.

Honestly, the healing system is one of those things that bother me a lot and where I wish Funcom would reconsider their insistence on never going back to way things were before.

At this point, “old healing system” is imprecise, so I’ll specify that I wish they would go back to the one with all the animations, but without cancelling the potion healing effects after receiving damage.

Yeah, I know it was done to balance PVP combat, but it sucked the joy out of PVE combat. There’s almost no difference between potions and bandages anymore, since both require me to disengage and run away. The biggest difference is that I have to run much farther to use bandages, whereas potions will let me do the Benny Hill routine with the AIs. Really engaging and immersive, that

@Effemme94

If it is not possible to increase the speed of the animation of the potion, then allow the regeneration even if you are hit, as was the case before. (I prefer the first option).

I prefer the second, because it was more fun in PVE, but even the first would be better than what we have now

@Effemme94

It is absolutely necessary to modify the attacks of the daggers and the lance on horseback.
Daggers are ridiculous, especially poisonous ones. By spamming them with good timing, your opponent can in no way heal himself due to the animation of the potion.

I’m really unhappy with this idea. Bleed already got nerfed for PVP reasons, and although it didn’t ruin PVE combat, it got right up to that line and it’s waiting to cross it. Further dagger nerfs would cross the line then turn around and piss on it.

To be specific, what I’m complaining about is the fact that bleed is the only thing a PVE player has as an option for dealing with certain bosses without a thrall. Sure, I often take a thrall with me to help me go faster through the content I’m not in the mood to engage with but have to do for farming reasons, but that’s okay because it’s my choice. It’s not really fun being forced to choose between being relegated to playing as your thrall’s sidekick and being forced to chip away at a damage sponge until you’re bored to tears (or stop paying attention to where you are and move the fight far enough for the tether to kick in and set you back to square one).

What I would counter-propose here is some kind of a buff – a potion, a sigil, a warpaint, whatever – that you can take before the fight to mitigate the effects of the daggers. That’s an easy way to differentiate PVP and PVE combat: all players apply the buff, no NPCs (or some extra-hard NPCs) do, everyone’s happy, except for the inevitable horde of PVP players who can’t adapt to the new meta and come here to complain about it until the next meta

@Effemme94

As for the lance on horseback it is simply ridiculous. Allowing to one-shot an enemy is pathetic, where are the skills and the pvp!?. By applying the oil, with 5 strength, you manage to oneshot your enemy.

Abso-freaking-lutely.

@Effemme94

Add some way to heal yourself properly when you on horseback!

I wouldn’t mind that, either.

@Effemme94

The x1 farm is way too low. This factor has practically removed from the game those who had only a few hours to play it (for work, study or in any case real life).Considering Conan is a game, why make it so frustrating?

As long as that’s only on PVP, I’m on board. PVE(-C) servers have enough of an overbuilding problem already.

@Effemme94

Add new contents for Exile Land.

I’d love this, but I’m not sure if it’s feasible at all. Technical limitations of the engine, yadda yadda yadda. If you really wanna know, look it up on the forums – search for all those discussions where people whinged about how “Siptah is not an expansion” because “it doesn’t expand the map”

@Effemme94

Make the game free-to-play

Seriously, no. Free to play is the Eternal September. It’s the dawn of the microtransactions and censorship and tons of other garbage I don’t want to see in Conan Exiles.

[Taemien]

@droch-aon

But games that are free attract MORE of the kind of people we DON’T want, griefers, bigots, cheaters and their ilk.

Pretty much this. I know it sounds elitist, but paywalls DO keep the riffraff out. Its not that people who can’t afford to buy in are a problem (they’re not). But when people can simply use another email address to avoid bans rather than paying. You get some nasty ones.

[Effemme94]

Maybe not free to play always but like game of month of PlayStation so new ppl can try it as already happened.
This could be good idea .

[DanQuixote]

Good solutions on the daggers - I wanted to push back on that one, but didn’t have a decent alternative to offer (other than reverting potions to stopping bleed and reverting bleed back to longer than 8 seconds, which Funcom intransigence makes unlikely).

@CodeMage

@Effemme94

The x1 farm is way too low. This factor has practically removed from the game those who had only a few hours to play it (for work, study or in any case real life).Considering Conan is a game, why make it so frustrating?

As long as that’s only on PVP, I’m on board. PVE(-C) servers have enough of an overbuilding problem already.

As far as I recall, PVP and PVE servers used to be on different harvest rates and got standardised a while back for some reason. The problem is that the only logic I can see for why they were standardised was to reduce confusion in arguments on the forums - PVPer says ‘x is easy to get loads of’, PVEer says ‘no it takes ages of grinding’ - because both are on different harvest rates. And I can’t imagine that Funcom would make a change like that to forestall arguments o the forums, given that a direct nuclear strike wouldn’t forestall arguments on the forums…

@Effemme94

Maybe not free to play always but like game of month of PlayStation so new ppl can try it as already happened.
This could be good idea .

Yeah, that sort of ‘short term free trial’ might work. Or just special offer prices from time to time. (Base game on steam is around £20-25 iirc, but sometimes drops as low as £8-9 for a week or two - which logically may attract more players). It definitely helps get around the ‘infinite accounts’ problem @Taemien suggests, and should help steer clear of the censorship issues @droch-aon covered (unless sony also adds those requirements for short term free games?). The only problem I can really see would be that if it is done too frequently then the trolls can just wait for the next time it comes around. But other than that, it seems like a decent suggestion.

[CodeMage]

@DanQuixote

As far as I recall, PVP and PVE servers used to be on different harvest rates and got standardised a while back for some reason.

Yeah, PVP used to have x2 harvest and x4 XP rates, compared to PVE. If I recall correctly, they changed the normal harvest and XP rates to be x2 compared to the old ones and then set all servers to x1.

As for PVE complaints about the rates, most of us were asking for higher rates on PVE, not lower rates on PVP.

Whatever Funcom’s reasons for the change, I feel like the new rates are good enough for PVE. I’ve never really had any problems with PVP having higher harvest rates, so I’m fine with that idea, but I feel like it wouldn’t be a good fit for PVE.

[DanQuixote]

Yeah, I wouldn’t want the PVE rates raised (though, I can always change them, so no big deal for me, I just mean I think they’re already as high as would be wanted - to be honest, I thought they were better before from a PVE perspective). As for PVP having separate rates, it seems to make perfect sense - as we’ve always argued, PVP and PVE have very different needs.

[Taemien]

I believe they changed exp rates because base exp was increased across the board.

The server I play on had to go to .5x rate (half of normal), otherwise players were hitting 60 before they could make a hardened steel bar.

I’ve actually thought about talking to the other admins about pushing that rate even lower. From my test on newer characters, if you don’t fight creatures (which yield 5-20x as much exp bonuses as humans do), you can get 30 right at when you’ve got enough steel to make a set of tools and a weapon, and 50 when you get the same for hardened steel. And this is assuming you’re not making a large T3 structure in the meantime.

I’ve seen several new players hit 55+ in their first login session. Its crazy. But those people are hitting the high exp mints such as crocs, journey steps, and POIs.