So I made a pretty hefty review after about 200 hours in

Conan Exiles Isle of Siptah
#1

It’s from a largely pvp perspective, but most of the criticisms are valid for pve as well. I made sure to set aside a large portion of the video for constructive feedback and suggestions on how to fix it as well. I wasn’t really happy with really every other review out there since I don’t think they spent enough time with the material to give an accurate review.

This video isn’t monetized and I’m not a youtuber, so this isn’t an attempt to plug my channel, I literally gathered up all the software I used specifically to make this video - I just think larger reviews are better received when they’re cleaned up and presented well. Sorry for any nooby editing mistakes.

I’m only posting it here in hopes that it sparks discussion. Like I said before I’m not a youtuber, this isn’t an attempt to gain any kind of a channel/following, and this video is not monetized. If you do see any ads they’re placed by youtube not me.

6 Likes
#2

Another chapter of “You are having fun wrong and that is how to have fun right”.

While I maintain that Exiled Lands had more story and engagement fuel than Siptah has -until not-, there is nothing wrong with it in terms of -> Work in progress <- it is.

Took some time for Exiled Lands to have the North, the East, new building pieces, new systems, better thrall AI, and many of the things most people think as “always being in the game” actually were added after the release.

But most of the “make the game easier” points I hope never get to the game.

This shows one point I have always resented in most games, and I still dont in Conan Exiles because Devs often refrain from doing it:

People ask the game to adapt to their own gameplay style. They are not prone to understand that when something they do does not work as they want is because they are doing it wrong.
The fight system is not bad, it is complicated. You have to learn to use it as it is, and not ask to change as you want it to be.

The first two problems are bad resource administration. People think about any game wanting “mana/focus/rage/runic power” style from WoW or GW2 in Conan Exiles. People complain they cant climb a mountain because of stamina, or just go out of water and go around fighting a mob. That is what makes this game good, not bad.

People complain that a mob of enemies will circle and prevent you from doing what you want, that is not bad, that is good. That demands you to think what you are doing.

People complain about stack sizes and recipes, that is not bad, that is good, that makes you think you how to carry or allows other people to prevent you from taking resources from one place to another, effectively creating importance to placement.

Combat like in real life has a pace to it in Conan. In wow, me and a lot of people can just build a macro and just faceroll content by chaining the same thing over and over, and that in WoW is praised and called “knowing your rotation”. That is mindless gameplay.

And finally, people confuse 4x fun servers with “Conan Exiles”. If you set up your server to it, Conan Exiles is one of the most rewarding and complex games I ever played, and I thank the devs for it. If you put some hard set up in it, even the direction you run from a combat must be well thought as to not get you cornered and dead because you chosen a route that you cant run. It actually make it valid to run in zigzag instead of in a straight line to avoid being shot. And many other things useless in WoW, which you shot people around corners, “guided fireballs” find you if you jump in a hole, and other non sense.

6 Likes
#3

KorgFoehammer, You clearly didn’t watch the video. It is not about making the game easier, it’s about making it balanced. Nothing you just typed offered anything of use. Just aimless naysaying.

3 Likes
#4

I watched the video.
And this “balanced” thing, I heard it alot since I started playing wow too, and it was also said about thing that make it “easier” and “streamlined”.

Balance is like justice, it pertains to a moral judgement.

Easier or hard do not. Something might be easier for me, or easier for another, but the concept of being easy or hard to not pertain to moral judgement.

1 Like
#5

Hugo and Ignasis, I am begging you to watch this, fully take it in and critically think about the points in this video and bring it to your developers. The PvP community as a whole will thank and love you for it.

#6

Yep. That poster clearly didn’t watch the video. I watched the entire thing.

Good video man. Didn’t see anything in it that I disagreed with our thought you got wrong.

3 Likes
#7

Watched the video. Toxic and has nothing constructive. Most people won’t even take it seriously past the 2min mark because of the overuse of memes and bad language.
For the sake of not repeating what was already said, I’ll just quote KorgFoehammer

Best regards.

1 Like
#8

Addressing this first, that is not what the video asked for. In fact, the recommended change actually makes it harder to a reasonable point that they need to put in any effort at all for the ganking pvpers and worth the time for people doing the surges.

Secondly, comparing WoW to Conan just doesn’t make sense. I’ve played WoW more than most people on the planet and raided from Classic-Legion. WoW doesn’t put everything you have since Day 1 at risk so “balance” in that game is exactly what you described, a cry to make it easier. In Conan, you can lose every single item you have in a matter of minutes in a raid on a PvP server, so it does not make sense to allow this to be completely tilted to the side of the person with minimal risk with maximum gain in the contexts of freeflowing exploiters and hugely imbalanced mechanics (surge marker on map, ridiculous horse combat mechanics, etc). On one level I agree with you that usually “balance” is a cry for ease but this is not that time or that game.

#9

lol , 5 mintues and i had to shut it down.

too many F bombs, … dude you better get some matters. and some education.

not wasting my time with this video.

1 Like
#10

Some of the points about removing the blue map markers for surge summoning or the icons for storm collectors are no brainer. Over all the grind needle has been shifted a little too far and needs to come back to the middle at least for the public servers. The rest of us can just adjust the sliders to some extent.

I do disagree about PvPers making their own fun. Game designers should provide structure for the PvP. Great example is the tri faction map for Elder Scrolls OL or Camelot before it. The game should provide a rule set and terrain to enable fun patterns of PvP play. Otherwise you just get mindless electronic tag and in CE’s case you loose you stuff which is pretty brutal (more brutal now with the grind increase.)

2 Likes
#11

That’s really too bad. You missed the best part the entire video.

#12

Wheres my razor, I wanna slize my fiber cable, before watching this past meme land.

Do everyone a favour edit out all the trying to be funny stuff and keep it shorter.

#13

nice video big dog. its how a lot of us are feeling about the game in general, not just siptah!

#14

Yeah I watched the video read that comment made and wondered if the person saw the same video.

It’s clear both exile lands and Siptah have no actual loot table balance and a very lazy tech tree system in place. The game has huge amount of “copy and paste npc here, link to random loot table links… rinse and repeat” as the total duration of thought put into them.

The devs outline they want Siptah to have more dynamic content which is false hope. Making the surge of malestrom content stops and starts with npc spawn grinding (which either yields poor rng output or too much hp grind for little to no rewards)

Then when you think a balance of economic brilliance is but a patch away, especially when it’s titled “economy” nothing nearly as close to a balanced economic change occurs. Even the 2.1 patch failed public UAT, bugs were knowingly ignored and any / all faith in future TestLive adoption was likely broken.

Suffice to say the “dev” teams aren’t investing enough in QA, aren’t bringing their audience along for the “where is this heading and why” so any and all adoption so far is met with -200 steam accounts uninstalling the game per day …

So maybe this review is spot on or maybe it’s a little off but make no mistake thousands each month tend to agree “this publishers approach to game development isn’t working”

Steam data demonstrates daily just how disappointed players have become.

3 Likes
#15

Buddy, these people are playing a game revolving around murder and slavery. If bad language upsets them, that’s pathetic.

1 Like
#16

ok i tried to watch it, and again ended up closing it, is totally unpleasant to watch t, (Whats up with the F word? that some people cant stop using it so often? it was just Vulgar…

also, totally wrong about the maelstrom, if he goes and do maelstrom farming like that, then ,i think he needs to check out several guides already posted… i closed it soon after. and yes thumbs down on that one. no for the content but the “style” used .

#18

whatever… you forgot to put 20 f bombs in your reply., (oh wait its not allowed on the forums?)

#19

Lol. I don’t think he saw it.

1 Like
#20

Just determined to be upset i guess. :stuck_out_tongue:

#21

“You are having fun wrong and that is how to have fun right”

I’m not sure I really see what you’re getting at.

The section titled “it’s not a pvp map” - the argument here isn’t that the map is bad BECAUSE it’s not a pvp map, the argument is that people are writing off the expansion because they think it’s too pvp focused, when in actuality the only pvp feature on the new map really stifles pvp more than it helps.

At the end there’s a tl;dr section -

  1. Surges are too grindy, and the map markers artificially give an advantage to larger clans where one wasn’t needed
  2. Maelstrom demands that you metagame it, which ruins the fun of it and turns a dynamic encounter into a static farm
  3. Delving system is an unenjoyable vertical grind that wont keep players interested
  4. Continued dominance of horseback pvp cheapens and makes irrelevant the combat system that had been continuously developed over 3 years - players with 950 armor and 40 vit can die in 2 hits from someone in horseback
  5. The reduction in gathering rates on pvp servers wasn’t properly thought out, since pvp’ers need to farm 5-9x as much (and I prove the math on this in the video) and often have to restart their progress, so halving the gathering rates makes an unapproachable gamemode even less approachable
  6. The new economy update and their economy of space balancing isn’t compatible with pvp building, it jumped the gun and wasn’t derived from existing gameplay, just grafted on afterwards, artificially reducing base variety
  7. Continued lack of admin support hemorrhages players

And I spend a solid 45 minutes in the video giving constructive feedback on how to fix all this, from new items, damage tweaks, building options - @GodlyVoice says there’s no constructive feedback, which only proves my point about him. People are writing the expansion off for the wrong reasons and ignoring really key and important structural issues with the new expansion’s design, structural issues that seriously impact pvp as a gamemode.

So Im not saying you’re wrong but it really doesn’t feel like your comment applies here, and neither does @GodlyVoice.

And @Palm522 is just mad because I called him out too, lol. We’re gonna write off my review because I used a naughty word - for a game with cannibalism, dismemberment, full body nudity and slavery… nah I think it’s because I said it was ridiculous to balance the surge mechanic around 10 man pve clans with 15 combat thralls trivializing the content.

4 Likes