Proposal: separate PVP stats from PVE

And I do actually feel bad about that. I really do. It’s been years, and this game has been a dumpster fire on official PVP servers pretty much all that time. Frankly, when I compare what my grievances in PVE are with what I keep hearing about PVP, I’m astonished that long-time PVP players like you have persisted all this time.

So don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing that PVP shouldn’t be made better. I’m just trying to find a way we can all talk together about making Conan Exiles better in general. And for my part, I’ll try to tone down my occasional frustrated jabs at the PVP community.

FWIW, that doesn’t feel condescending, it just feels incomplete.

I mean, yeah, how much we’re willing to risk is a huge factor in the decision we make on which game mode we want to play. But that’s not all, and in a way it’s almost like mixing up cause and consequence.

You might have seen me write about what I believe is the design philosophy behind Conan Exiles, about how it tries to attract and cater to a really diverse playerbase. People who like survival games, people who like MMOs, people who like competitive PVP, people who like RP, people who like exploring, collecting, building, yadda yadda yadda. I’ve written about that before.

You’ve also seen me mention the Bartle taxonomy of player types. It’s imprecise, it has been met with valid criticism, it has been expanded on, but the important thing is that it serves as an approximation, at least.

Both of these themes have one thing in common, and that’s players’ motivation for playing Conan Exiles. Yes, we all like this game, but we like different aspects of it to different degrees. People who play on PVP servers are generally people who are motivated strongly enough by that aspect of the game that they’re willing to make the necessary allowances. (And yeah, I know you’ll point out that you scored only 33% killer on Bartle’s test, but we’ve been over that, too :stuck_out_tongue:)

What I’m trying to say is that it’s not useful to reduce something as complex as the player’s motivations for playing the game down to their choice of game mode, and then assert that the only real difference is that PVP is superset of PVE-C is superset of PVE.

“They’re all the same but for the risk you’re willing to take” is true in a narrow sense. Yes, it’s the same game, with same underlying game mechanics, with the same primary, secondary, and tertiary gameplay loops, in the same setting, based on the same source material, etc. But we don’t play it for the same reasons, and the choice of game mode tells you something important about those reasons.

As an interesting corollary, the more you go towards the PVE end of the game mode spectrum, the less you know about the player’s motivations. If they play on a PVP server – especially if it’s an official PVP server – you can be sure that the inter-player conflict is something that motivates them quite a bit. If they play on a PVE server, they could be into building, or collecting, or socializing, or RP, or whatever. Who knows? All you know from their choice of game mode is that the “killer” aspect of PVP is either not important enough to them or it’s directly against what they want.

2 Likes

It could very well be that I am one of those RUSTer type PVPers, and that is why we are of differing minds on this subject. I PVP for the thrill of the fight. If I don’t have something to do at base (I’m often our builder), I’m scouting and hunting. There is nothing worse to me than finally “owning a server”. Feels like being the king of nothing and it’s hard to keep myself and my teammates motivated for a fight that may never come. What’s worse is that we have to actively hold back on newcomers to give them a shot at the “king” - hard to shake that feeling of self defeat.

I found your earlier comment about your kill count interesting, I’m my last raid I killed at least 5 people. Raiding people has been the best way to get into fights in my experience, so it’s often a goal. It could be I’m in the minority, but when I play CE these are my priorities in order:

  1. I want to fight (players)
  2. I don’t want to sacrifice fun to be a slave to a meta
  3. I want to build pretty things and defend them (from players)

I can’t imagine this is even close to the case for PVE players.

Edit:
Clarifications

3 Likes

How about adding some weapon mods that only work in PvE. Not against other players.

Maybe a 50% damage increase of the current weapon, but it is not directly added to the weapon stat, but actually calculated within the normal damage calculation.

if(false == target->IsPlayer())
{
outGoingDamage = attacker->GetWeaponDamage() * 1.5f;
}

So PvP players can simply ignore this weapon mod. And I would add one weapon mod for each weapon type for obvious reasons.

Maybe add different tiers of these mods as well and you need to do certain dungeons to get materials for the highest ones.

3 Likes

Oh no! :fearful: I’m late to the party!!! I call P2W!!, NO! FOMO! That’s the one, yea! :slight_smile:

So… first of all I am wondering why Johnny is obsessed with archers… like… is that really the most pressing and urgent thing that is wrong with the game atm? Why archers? :frowning:
Could it be that we’re seeing a similar knee-jerk reaction that we’ve been schooling PvP players about, but this time the PvE version? Something “went wrong” ingame… things happened… and as a result, we now have the post containing all of life’s solutions! (again!)

I am not questioning the validity of the subject and the topic of discussion whether the two game modes should be balanced separately is quite a good topic imo. I was merely questioning the motivation behind it as it seems rather odd to pin this all on archers… (which btw can be quite good as a lot of people already pointed out)

Some other comments here and there:

No, actually I think that sword was introduced before follower thralls were a thing - can’t remember for sure… However what I DO know for certain is that it was never “meant” to be a thrall weapon it was merely an oversight as it was meant to be a gimmick weapon… (Crom taking more than they’re giving), however Thralls happened to not have a stamina based system thus being accidentally immune to the mechanic - which was the reason for this new nerf, fixing a bug (though I wish they fixed a couple of different ones with that time :joy: )

There are games which successfully pulled off something similar within the same game. Guild Wars 1 for example already had abilities that would simply do something almost completely different in PvP that was more balanced there - however the game featured instanced PvP unlike here so that was easier to switch these back and forth.

However it is not impossible to make such distinctions and balance things depending on the targets they’re being used at / make effects be stronger / weaker based on target etc. even within the same game. So on that front there might not be a need to actually separate the two modes in order to balance them separately.

We actually already see “some” willingness towards that from Funcom - as well as already built in features…
I bet a lot of you who play PvE aren’t aware, but we did get a compromise!
On official PvP servers RIGHT NOW, followers do 50% less damage to players through the server configuration. Why? Because it became clear during testing that their damage is just high for PvP (most notably Sabertooths one-shotting people), so instead of Funcom blanket-nerfing pet damage across the board like they would’ve done in the past, they did the smart thing and reduced their PvP damage only through server config on PvP servers.

So in my books that is actually a step in the right direction and I’d like to see more of that.

Where in that diagram is the katana, is it on the PvE-RP border? :joy: (sorry! couldn’t resist)

But… but… They’re already saying that!!! How many threads have you seen that start with stuff along the lines of:

  • “If you don’t play PvP, this thread is not for you because you don’t know what you’re talking about”
  • “Separate PvP and PvE” (Wait… that’s this thread… Oops)
  • “Who cares about PvP players getting one-shot, thralls are too weak”

And all sorts of other variations, or do you see the tight-knit community where players go around and do a survey of how a nerf call or anything would affect the other side before posting about it? I think it is as segregated as it is humanly possible :smiley:
However like I said above, if Funcom actually wishes and puts in a bit of extra effort, it’s not impossible to try to cater to both crowds instead of picking one… the question is whether they wish to and whether it’s worth it I guess.

Anyway, this post is getting long and I only just read the first half of the thread.
I just want to say to all the NPC Archers out there reading this :stuck_out_tongue: It’s okay if you’re not the best, the effort counts too so we appreciate it!

1 Like

I just oneshot katana users with Mario Build nowadays. Very good way of getting rid of them very quickly.

2 Likes

Fight :cheese: with :cheese: (or :mushroom: ) Clever!

1 Like

As one of my co-workers is fond of saying, “We have more than one engineer on the team, so we can tackle more than one problem at a time.”

Why archers? I can’t speak for @JohnnyWylder, but if I had to guess, maybe it’s because they have been shіt in PVE for as long as I’ve played this game, which is since February 2017 :stuck_out_tongue:

Yes, we are. “Archers suck, so naturally the solution is to split the game in two” is very much one of those topics – no offense, Johnny :slight_smile:

But it’s been interesting, nonetheless. Who knows, maybe it’s been even a bit productive. :wink:

You say that :joy: but do we actually? :smiley: I’m pretty sure the last game update was thrown together by a single person in 1-3 hours.

They’re not THAT horrible… and if you truly remember your playtime from 2017 then you know that archers were actually the best combat thralls then since you could place them on a wall and they murdered everything from a mile away :smiley: And the only other competition was a static fighter thrall that didn’t follow you and didn’t have any levels and boasted less than 1k hp.

I think people got overly indulged with the “reliability” of fighter followers… Same way pets were never “useless” like they’ve been branded.
I used both archers and pets all this time… Even now, I leveled up a few archers to 20 as actual followers on vanilla settings, they’re obviously not going to solo content for you or tank… but at the same time they also don’t get in the way if that fits your playstyle more and they do provide some extra damage (roughly half that of a fighter on average and they barely miss any of their shots when they’re within normal distance of the target and not sniping from some high up tower).

I also placed 50+ on them to guard a wall a while back and they took out a 3 skull ice dragon purge boss in a few volleys… again, not completely useless :stuck_out_tongue:

But yes, sure I agree that compared to fighters they’re quite bad, I was just saying that if I had to pick a scapegoat as to why I want to split the game in two… maybe that’s not the one I would’ve went with lol.

I’m speaking of my adaptations to the way things are. At first I was much like a RUSTer, and I have the level 60s on a lotta servers to show for it. But other than during “opening weeks,” nobody really wants to engage. Everybody, and I mean everybody, runs away. Maybe I look like the sort who won’t pursue, but if you’re gonna run, you’ve already lost.

The only two major Raid battles (multi-week fights) I’ve been in were in repulsion of the enemy, and I got so destroyed in both of those I hardly got a pike into them. Totally bested. In fact one time, I almost got the Junior Raider in the party, and our T2 Thrall straight up killed me with friendly fire. At that point, I just started scooping up armor and weps for flight purposes.

The last two servers I was on were very pleasant experiences. We had a cadre of solos who basically took over, and fought all-comers. There was intrigue, excitement, betrayal, and Kevin Bacon. I guess it was a like a band of friends all playing games with any clan that appeared. We could fight each other, or team up. Just great fun, and the pop grows like this. On our last server, we got ranked all the way into the top 100, when we started the place was 12 playing, maybe 20 online peak.

That’s what I love about it. Different approaches for different servers. But that’s what you do when you’re trying to bring the pop up.

If you’re telling me there’s actual PvP out there, and it’s not EU servers, I’ll be very happy. I might even think about changing my style again.

1 Like

I would say it would be a simple Blue print edit to check in the weapon stat section. So not the most complicated suggestion.

It’s true for my team at work. I have no idea what’s going on at Funcom, and at this point I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know. It would only depress me :stuck_out_tongue:

I don’t know what they’re like right now, because I’m going through yet another playthrough, establishing a character on a server, and I stopped trying to make archers work a while ago, when it became clear that no amount of fiddling with their AI directives would make them stay on their damn platforms without eventually falling down.

I don’t, but that’s because I played single-player exclusively at that time, so I was discovering everything on my own, without the benefit of the grapevine :wink:

The pets were never useless, but then again, a lot of the skeleton-key legendaries are labeled as useless and they aren’t. They just aren’t very useful compared to the rest of the stuff we have.

To illustrate with two examples from the legendaries I like: Glimmermoon and Lovetap. I still like having Glimmermoon because it saves me from having to worry about torches when I’m farming. And I still like using Lovetap to knock out groups of low-level NPCs to sacrifice on my sacrificial stone. But both of those uses are very niche and I can live perfectly fine without them. The thing that bothers me is that it used to be different. Finding Lovetap was an important part of establishing my character on a server, and now it’s just a pleasant surprise. Things that were good keep losing meaning.

I like what they did with pets in 3.0, now they’re more interesting to play with. They weren’t useless even pre-3.0, though, but they were mostly niche, except for greater sabres, who had their heyday (at least on PVE-C servers) during the horse-lance-cat meta.

Going back to archers, the reason I find them useless is because – the last time I used one – they sucked as followers due to bad AI, and they’re worse than useless for purge defense. By “worse than useless”, I don’t mean “they’ll fall off the platform”. That’s annoying enough, but not nearly as annoying as having no ability to tell the whole freaking group to stop shooting because I want to knock out an NPC instead of killing it.

Oh, I agree.

1 Like

Yea, I agree with all of that, as for this though:

I just “crowned” Lovetap as still the best KO weapon post 3.0 in the other thread :smiley: The new attribute system actually benefitted this particular weapon a LOT

Edit: Oh and:

The new buff to archery makes them do much more damage than they used to pre-3.0, however they are still very very slow at firing and as such like Taemien pointed out fall behind which becomes exponentially worse if they happen to miss, so they’re definitely not comparable to fighters in their effectiveness, but still not useless imo.

There is not near as much as I’d like. As you say most people will run given the chance, that has been my experience as well. It’s hard to catch a fight out in the field especially. When we raid it’s not that uncommon for people to dump their loot and scoot at the first sign of trouble. However, sometimes you corner someone and that fight kicks in instead of flight - it’s just chefs kiss, win or lose (and I’ve done plenty of both).

Everyone once in a blue moon someone will online raid us, but overwhelmingly offline is the case. I’m thankful for the lads and ladies who do online when possible, it’s the most fun way to lose things.

You are definitely spot on that different servers call for different strategies. It also might be that your propensity to stay and mine to move on has colored our perspectives. I will say if you are willing to hop servers and kick beehives, there is PVP to be found - lol sometimes.

1 Like

I think for a long time I was drinking by own bathwater, deluded into thinking “anchor” players could build a healthy fightscape. Like I said, my thought processes and priorities have evolved, now that I don’t think I’m going to be able to change things. :smiley:

1 Like

I always found archers on just a pillar was very effective and rarely did they fall off

Guild wars was built on instanced pvp was it not? Its been a while since i played so i cant say if its still the same.

The new buff to archery makes them do much more damage than they used to pre-3.0, however they are still very very slow at firing and as such like Taemien pointed out fall behind which becomes exponentially worse if they happen to miss, so they’re definitely not comparable to fighters in their effectiveness, but still not useless imo.

No man, I don’t know where did you see this buff, but I’m using constantly since 5 months (because I like to have them on my walls, despite they are useless) and they still suck as always.

I wrote numbers in a lots of posts already, and everyone who tryed against mobs agreed with me: they are the worst choice possible for PVE. If you insist saying they’re not useless, then I can only suggest you try them as well against wolves. Then we will speak again.

Ah, and to explain my obsession with Archers: it’s really easy, they are my favourite class for base defense in every game. Fortress NEED to have archers. Just wish they’d be worth something.

IMHO, it’s all about the DPS and since thralls seem to always wait to charge their shot, their DPS is very very low. Why not just increase the charge shots to equate to a more reasonable DPS from rapid fire? It would be the simplest solution without gutting the AI.

1 Like

Interesting observation.

Since you sandbox, have you ever tried positioning non-converted archer thralls of the same variety into your Mockup castle? It would be interesting to test a side-by-side comparison scenario.

I haven’t. Its a neat experiment and would be interesting to try but I may not have an answer till two weeks when I get the time to formally experiment.

1 Like