So, they were talking about “romance” being cringe and decided not to include it in the companion feature. I have to say, I agree with the statement: “romance in games is cringey.”
During the stream, Dennis mentioned that it was one of the initial decisions made—at least that’s how I understood it. It sounded like they were implying, “We didn’t really want the whole companion system, but since someone insisted on having it, we made it clear from the start that romance was off the table.”
What I’m about to say isn’t an excuse for its inclusion—just an observation: Romance in games is cringey, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad thing. It’s an “obvious” kind of cringe. You’re trying to gamify and simplify something as subjective and emotional as romance into a set of multiple-choice options, stripping it of depth and context. Of course, it’s going to come off as cringey.
Now, why did I bring this up?
After deciding not to include romance because it’s cringe, they went on to create a companion arc that similarly simplifies and removes the context from the next logical question about companions: Why do they exist?
Initially, it was fine. After you fight them and “bonk them senseless” (in the US sense, not the UK one), their scrambled, concussed minds become mindlessly obedient. End of story. Sure, that’s cringey, but it’s the kind of cringe born out of necessity—it’s just what happens. It’s different from the type of cringe that comes from actively choosing something contrived or unnecessary. Like, soiling yourself in public because you were restrained is one thing; doing it because you thought it was just a fart is another. Both are cringe, but one is caused by unfortunate circumstances, while the other stems from bad decisions.
The companion feature itself falls into the “unfortunate circumstances” category of cringe. It will never fully enable players to develop a parasocial relationship with the characters, especially ones like Freya, who already exist in the game’s lore and therefore come with preconceived expectations. Beyond that, all the effort you put into acquiring companions only leads to essentially “bonking a named Thrall and throwing them on the wheel of pain.” In the end, it’s just as cringey as the romance idea because it also fails to create a meaningful connection or add significant depth. Plus, it doesn’t reward you with a powerful game NPC, which, in the current state of the game, wouldn’t matter much anyway.
Then you’ve got the dialogue choices in quests like Freya’s. Honestly, what are those options? It’s as if they were pulled from the bottom of the barrel of storytelling. Subverse—a parody hentai game made by a studio known for Rule 34 videos featuring little more than onomatopoeic grunts during alien sex—has better dialogue than this. Talk about cringe.
So, my question is this: Was it really worth the time and effort that could have been better spent on other systems that actually need attention?
Installing a romance system into the npc’s would be a large undertaking. A new romance skill and meter would have to be programmed into the thralls. Then you need gifts, or whatever might buff or detract from the romance levels. This would break the game in some way. Usually these romance systems are built into character systems as part of a base game from the start. Programming this now would be an undertaking.
Then what? Do they perform better if they like you more? How does that calculate with the authority buff?
This would complicate existing systems if it were introduced.
I guess missing the point is more common in the forums than in Madrid’s bus system.
Who the f would want to romance an ogre? Freya is so ugly that I have to hide her under arnor and Liu Fei isn’t exactly hansom. So yeah, I’m glad they didn’t waste time on it when the rest of the game is falling apart. That said, the so much needed fixes didn’t come out either…
I don’t know about cringe. I’d say that the whole thrall knock out and capture wheel of pain thing is pretty cool and original for a game. Being able to capture almost any human npc on the map besides a few boss npc’s is a cool idea. That is what makes Conan Exiles the great game that it is - it does things like this.
If the point is to say why do the Freya or Liu Fei storylines at all, rather than focus on improving other aspects of the game that could use improvement - perhaps that is a good point.
When one is playing pve (or pvp, perhaps), being able to rename the thralls and give them personality can allow one to play an entirely new story each play through. It is always different.
However the point is well taken. Isn’t the argument about every game a bit old, though? Complaining that the game team should fix things rather than offer new content? This same complaint pretty much exists with the player community for every game out there. Yes, some glaring problems could use to be addressed, but that doesn’t mean to forgo adding anything else new.
The idea that it could be cringe is what I find cringy. Of course there could be romance. It would add a completely new dimension missing from the game that could make playing alone a little less “lonely”. But you would need to want to romance them and when the end result has a face that only slightly ressembles a human, it gets kind of hard. Shaelbacks are prettier than the Freyas I got so far! 
Not in absolute, and not in the way the argument was posed.
I am not saying they should stop “everything” and focus on fixing bugs, whatever.
What I am saying is not even about “fixing the game”, but working on systems.
We have all these systems half implemented, and instead of finishing them, in terms of what they are meant to be, they keep adding other things.
Lets assume for a moment that there are no bugs, and lets say the game works right. There is still the question of "what these systems do ? "
Taverns: Well, you have the tavern keepers, you have the tavern decoration. You put the tavern keeper on the tavern and it serves to trade stuff and to have the guy who hire mercenaries. Ok. What that system “evolves” into, or “progresses by” ? It is just there, it exists.
You have the sorcery, and it is a self contained “lukewarm” alternative to use in combat. It does not really integrates with the gameplay, it is just “there”, it exists.
You have a hunger and thirst system that “barely works” correctly, as it merely “depletes over time”, but it has no “gamification” to it. There is no “choice” in terms of what to do. It does not imply any type of choice. As it is not integrated in the whole arc of the game, it does not impact in the game overall dynamics. Besides the first 40 or so minutes, if that long, it makes any difference. After that the worse risk you have is forgetting about it and impacting your gameplay if you never really see the indicator. And I use a “minimalist UI” that does not show any indicators, and still cant “forget” to eat or drink even with very harsh settings that does not become unrealistic (like depleting water each 2 seconds).
So even if the game worked perfectly and had no bugs, it has a ton of things to be worked to actually work as a survival sandbox game that would take precedence. And that, ignoring the whole building system, which I did not mention exactly to make this comment.
The building system needs a ton of QoL and Relevancy Gamification alone more than the whole rest of the game. Like armors, they are not really expanded upon in terms of “build this way here” or “that way there”. After you updated your buildings in terms of tiers, there is no reason to build differently for the biome or the ground you are building. There is no reason to build differently for enemy reasons. Not even the purge, new or old, required choices and decision making in terms of where build which types for what reason. On QoL, the building hammer brought a lot of actual drawbacks from not having it. Now besides the different flow of building, you cannot simply choose what you build and set pieces, you have, if using the hammer, to keep searching pieces through a badly sorted list even if you are using the same 8 pieces you could shortcut, now instead you need to keep searching them, or trying to maximize use of related pieces to diminish time searching them across the lists. And many of them dont have a “logic” for their place in the list.
If they had build slowly the relevancy of systems, in terms of building this or that, survival this or that, adapt to this or that. THEN, now the companion system could build up on those and create a relevant arc for companions based on the specific needs and dynamics of different places.
If they had built up sorcery, thralls, survival (food, drink, armor, shelter), then a companion system would be really more than just “doing what BG3 does” kinda system.
Instead they keep creating new systems that go nowhere.
I think I understand. What is the point of “companions” compared to thralls, except a more convoluted method of recruitment?
The obvious answer would be “their story”. Which is a good answer. But how much story is there beyond the recruitment quest? I don’t know, I haven’t been playing. But in story-driven CRPGs, the story and the relationships with companions evolve over the course of the game. Does that happen in Conan Exiles?
It doesn’t have to be romance per se, but if there’s no evolution in the interaction between the player character and the NPC, the NPC becomes just another piece of base decoration.
At this stage in the CE lifecycle I appreciate every single one of you players, even the ones I disagree with from time to time. At this point CE is like being 7+ years into a zombie apocalypse: many haven’t made it this far, and only the most resilient survivors are left - some hanging on by a thread. Some of them are absolute d*cks, but you have to accept them because that’s all that’s left of the community and they’re better than nothing.
Still, I really wonder what some of you are thinking, and if you’re actually playing the same game the rest of us are. This game is absolutely rife with literally game-crippling and balance-breaking bugs, glitches and hacks yet there is still a portion of the playerbase that seems to be happily playing that and posting thread after thread about how they would like interactive chicken coops, a romance with thralls “system”, and - my personal favourite - an entirely new map. All of these suggestions would be wonderful if we were playing just about any other game on earth other than this bugfest that gets worse and worse every time Funcom touches it.
Regarding the romance with thralls “system” they should implement:
Have you been playing Living Settlements? The entire system is absolutely #%@$ed beyond belief. Literally the only way not to lose Tier4 thralls is to go to every crafting station and set them to “Disable Thrall Use”, which effectively disables the entire Living Settlements system. If you look at the compiled bugs (part 1 & 2) threads, you’ll see that with each new system Funcom shoehorns into their already buggy game they introduce dozens of potentially game-breaking bugs.
So do I want Funcom to implement a romance system? Hell no. I want them to focus whatever meager resources they still have allocated to CE on FIXING THE @$#%ING CORE GAME.
I always wanted something like this. For years.!
Now that I have it, I play with it disabled because a) it’s just eye candy - I wanted a real settlement system, b) it’s full of bugs.
If that doesn’t speak volumes, I don’t know what would.
I wish you could disable it (per player) on Official Servers.
Unfortunately the only 100% guaranteed way to not lose potentially very hard to replace T4 crafter thralls is to meticulously Disable Thrall Use on every single crafting bench, well, campfire, chair, bed, and other interactable item in your base. Which ironically disables Living Settlements, so the entire thing is pointless. And then god forbid you or a clanmate places a campfire or something and forgets to disable it, you’ll log in to lost thralls again.
The only people I’ve seen post raving about it are ultra-casuals who probably don’t even know what a Bladesmith is, much less would even notice if they lost one. They’re just like “oooh look, my thralls are moving”. I still see people’s crafting thralls appearing and dying at 0,0,0, regularly so even months after being implemented and a “hotfix” it is still very broken.
Yet Funcom has repeatedly demonstrated that they don’t give a flying %@$! about their poorly implemented, buggy new content causing catastrophic loss of progress for their players. They’re just there to add bullet-points to each new update and show their superiors/investors (who will never play the game or ever read these forums) a demo of “oooh look, the thralls are moving” so they can keep the lights on.
Honestly at this point I am just waiting for the next big #%@$up like the Nemedian Foundation bug, and that will be the catalyst for me to finally quit this buggy $#!&-show and never play a Funcom game again.
Is it still on on official servers? I thought they had it disabled for the time being.
I quit playing online. There’s just too much bugs and performance issues.
Also, Conan is not the only game I play. Until very recently, I had it shelved, not knowing if I would ever pick it up again. I gave a gazillion hours to this game and spent a shitload of money on it. It saddens me seeing it in this miserable state. Worse, I have no hopes it will get any better.
Yes it’s still on on Officials 
It’s mainly the only thing I play (except for Oxygen Not Included, and some Forza with friends), but mostly because of hope, habit, nostalgia, and the fact that I have a bunch of legacy, unobtainable thralls and items I’m hanging onto.
Honestly if another Nemedian Bug or Mass Thrall Deletion Event were to occur, it would piss me off, but in some way it would be a relief since I could finally let go of this game that I have a love-hate relationship with.
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