Some simple options would make this game much more family friendly

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
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Why did Valheim take off as strongly as it did? Because of the following combination of features:

  • A coop sandbox game, specifically intended for small group play.
  • Released in a very polished state (despite being called early access)
  • There are high-level goals to work towards while leaving players free to figure out how and when to reach those goals. The game is not aimless, but also players aren’t trained to be mindless quest-followers.
  • Includes “downtime” activities besides combat (i.e. building, hunting, mining)
  • Nature/wilderness/fantasy setting (much broader appeal than modern or sci fi)
  • Family friendly - mild level of violence, no guns, no nudity, no swearing.

All these features are shared with Minecraft (except maybe the goals point).

Polished family friendly coop sandbox games are a license to print money. Yet there are so few of them: the two I’ve mentioned, Raft, Grounded, Terraria, Astroneer, and not much else.

Conan Exiles is a polished coop sandbox game. It has vastly better combat and vastly better looking characters than Ark, and is mercifully free from guns. It has every point on the above list - except family-friendliness.

Myself, my partner and 10 year old all greatly enjoyed playing Valheim together. We’ve moved on from it now, mainly because in the later game it does get quite tough and quite grindy.

So I’m looking around for other similar games. I’ve played Conan Exiles quite a bit and know it well, and I know my son would enjoy the general setting and gameplay. But I’m well aware it has some stuff that would certainly be considered non family friendly:

  • Nudity
  • Sexual content
  • Violence
  • Questionable morality of thralls/enslavement
  • References to alcohol (and vague references to drug-like effects of some potions etc)
  • A few profanities in dialogue here and there
  • Toxicity when playing with random strangers online

Nudity is optional, per server. So this can easily be disabled on a home server.

Violence - I think some level of fantasy violence is OK for older children as long it is not depicted in an intense or distressing way. See Star Wars, Lord of the Rings movies, superhero movies… Conan Exiles has some points in favour here because there no guns. It does include decapitation and dismemberment during combat, however.

Alcohol is a very small part of the game and easily avoided or glossed over as the character being “poisoned”.

Sexual content - if nudity is disabled then this seems to be limited to some scantily clad NPCs? The bigger problem is the juvenile inclusion of sliders for the size of one’s testicles etc during character creation.

Thralls - this is another area where opinions will differ, but many people will find the game mechanic of kidnapping sla^H^H^Hthralls to be iffy in a “family” game. Unfortunately there seems to be no way to disable thralls.

So, I am asking the developers to please consider, as part of their upcoming big content patch, including the following optional settings:

  • Hide the breast and genital sliders in character creation
  • Disable decapitation/dismemberment/gore effects during combat
  • (maybe) Disable thrall capture & wheel of pain (this could be framed as an “extra challenge” option as well)
  • They might also need to think about some aspects of how they depict sorcery…

If they did that, and set these things to off by default, they might be able to get some of the game’s age ratings reevaluated. All without taking away “adult” gameplay from older players.

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Meh, my pre-teen kids play this along with my wife and I. We’ve made sure they know what they see is just what it is. Boobs, butts, manbits, and womenparts (not sure I’ll get censored so I’ll use those terms). There’s nothing sexual about their depiction so whatever. They’re also well aware that this is a fictional world so all the slave-knockin’, head choppin, animal bashin’, and whateverelseImissed is to be looked at through the lens of make-believe.

Ironically, they spend more time building in offline singleplayer than contributing like they have been told to do to the health of our base, but I digress.

Anyways, point is, all the content is in the eye of the beholder in terms of acceptability to audiences.

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If you disable nudity the sliders in character creation are harmless.

Lord of the Rings (rated PG13, not for 10yr old children) as well as Star Wars both include decapitation and dismemberment. Conan Exiles is a mature rated game. It is based in a violent world and should not be dumbed down for prepubescent children’s consumption. If you want a children’s sandbox game, stick to Minecraft.

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Valhiem took off because of marketing, if your reaching into the conan verse, we play it because its nothing like valhiem. Not trying to sound rude, but its a whole different animal

EDIT: Theres another game coming out thats kind of the same as your description, but it has guns and its based in a time period slightly after ww1, but they open portals to fantasy universes called the fey, if i remember ill look up the exact name and post it here… i wanna play it but it wont satisy my pvp needs like conan

EDIT2: The game is nightingale, mostly pve/citybuilder looks awesome i cant wait to play but as a predominantly pvper, i still need CE in my life, best of luck

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Welcome to the Forum. From reading your post I would think you are playing on PC or outside the US on console because full nudity is not on console in many areas. If you have your own server for PC get a mod for what you want or set your child’s nudity settings beyond that it is glorified cartoons. Several years ago a player followed my wife and I to another server as he was creating a character he asked what nudity was I told him to pass on that one a few weeks later we discovered he was eight years old. More knowledgeable about the game than us however. Several years later I see he’s playing a female character guess he figured out nudity. Russian was his first language and he was speaking English how were we to know. @trollusk

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I guess i should clarify. Im not trying to persuade you to find another game. Ce isnt much like you described but its a unique game in todays market as a whole, id completely recommend it. It has alot to offer and alot of fun to have. Alot fo the vets want to rerun their first play through for a reason. Most people have 2000+ hours in it

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I can’t say I agree about Valheim, from what I saw at the time it had very little marketing (I have literally never seen an ad for it), I think it took off because there is a huge appetite for small-group coop survival games that aren’t about zombies, guns and floppin’ dongs.

I think maybe people who don’t have children (not saying this is you, just generalising) don’t get that there is a difference between “children’s” vs “family friendly” media. Eg the original Star Wars movies are not children’s movies, but they are family movies. OTOH Phantom Menace is a children’s movie. “Family friendly” means entertaining for both adults and children, without containing inappropriate stuff. “Children’s” means directed at children, and so not very entertaining for adults.

Yes, I know CE is very good, that’s why I’m keen for it to broaden its potential audience!

Thanks for the recommendation of Nightingale, I will have a look at it when it is released.

In the meantime I might have to investigate modding. All the mods I can find are about making these problems worse, not better…

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Conan is for adults. Full stop.

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Well if your playing on console atleast i can tell you there isnt any full nudity, unless your in europe… pc i cant speak for. Wile alot enjoy CEs pve, i personally dont as much as single player games. But theres still lotsof interesting stuff to do and find, the construction mechanics are one of the best in the genre, and this game has a low vialibility rating but a highish mastery skill threshold… the only thing i can say is try and see what you think is ok for your family, personally i put my kids on ark. They love the dinosaurs and all that goes with it. Toxic players are in every game but through the years ive seen them less and less in conan

EDIT: I only said that about valhiem because i saw it advertised to me for months on end as game made by devs of x company and x company, i still didnt like how they did alot of things in it, but i havnt played it personally myself, because it has systems that have not worked for any game ever, atleast in my opinion. Maybe its because ive alphad alot of games on todays market, who knows how targeted advertising works these days

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So…
Conan the Adventurer version of Exiles?

While this one is in favour of customization, and really do wish more rescue or hiring options for followers were available…
It is quite a challenge to make the game Family Friendly. It’s not just the above mentioned issues. It’s also how the religion system revolves around murder for profit. The entire story of how the Exiled Lands and Siptah work. Basically, scratch the surface and the game shows it’s brutal inspirations
This one isn’t certain any number of sliders could make this “family friendly”.

Again, support for the admin options, but disagreement that they should be the default/official version.
Perhaps have something attached to the difficulty slider? Civilized could give us the denatured version, a more, well, civilized game?

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He is not asking to dumb it down for everyone, just a few sliders that allows for dumbing it down if they want to. Read the post, not once is it declared as bad for all, but just a wish list so he can enjoy the game woih thier kids based on thier values. Harmless sliders for single play/private servers. I swear, some people will get on a soap box and not really “listen”.

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That’s fair, but I would still tend to agree DaVice. But really, I only came here to laugh as hard as I possibly could at this:

Now it kinda is, but at first and for quite awhile I would say Valhymen was like, the opposite of “polished”… LOL

Oh, and yeah, marketing is what put it on most people’s radar. Similar model to PUB-G.

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I don’t need you to tell me how to respond or that I didn’t respond to what the OP wrote. I read it and understood it in it’s entirety.

Yeah I understood him to mean that he wants a Mature Rated gamed to have the option to be dumbed down for his child. I responded appropriately considering several of his concerns aren’t as simple as adding ‘harmless sliders’ that raise or lower some arbitrary numbers.

He is requesting stuff that will potentially take devs away from (or delay) further development or patching existing bugs and exploits in order to pander to a demographic that this game was not, nor should ever be targeted towards. A parent who thinks it’s okay to submit a child to murder in a game just because blood isn’t shown and yet has a problem with the naked human form, might need to rethink their family values.

Alright rant over. I can at least rest confidently in the knowledge that Conan will never succumb to these kinds of silly requests.

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Whatever dude. People like you guve mature games a bad name. Grow up.

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Now who’s on their ‘soap box’?

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Valheim (great game) with currently double the numbers of CE population could have many reasons people end up buying it. The reviews obviously helped “Overwhelming Positive”. The game is cheaper (half the price of Conan Exiles) for those with tighter budgets. PC specs for CE required way higher storage (100+ gigs to 1 gig) and processor. Or other reasons.

Hard to compare the two since they are not carbon copies of each other. Valheim has sailing for example which may attracted people. I love that and the terra forming concepts.

Of course as all games, either people will like it or not.

Conan Exiles was sold to more “adult” players like Age of Conan was originally sold. Which will limit the number of people who would buy the game. Not all games have to be mainstream. Games that hit niche markets can do well too, just with smaller overall player population.

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Ehm, parenting?

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Like you, @trollusk one of the features I like about the Conan Exiles game is the option to turn off the nudity. I’m all for player options. And I like that alcohol is also optional – there are plenty of other liquid and food choices in the game.

As for hiding the breast and genital sliders – I can see hiding the genital sliders if nudity is turned off since it has no impact on any visual changes. The breast sliders, however, do affect armor appearances (though slightly). That part should probably stay since it does affect the character’s appearance.

And there are some armors that a “too revealing” like the Derketo chest piece. Little tiny “cups” just doesn’t seem to fit the genre. I think that’s an armor piece that needs to be redesigned.

As for the capture and wheel of pain aspect – absolutely, yes, there needs to be a “rescue” feature that runs parallel to the game. Let the mechanics be almost similar so that there’s no advantage, but let the “anti-slavers” have a mechanic just like the “slavers” have to recruit “mercenaries” to one’s cause. I’ve been asking Funcom to do this for years now. They started to do this with the Isle of Siptah (releasing a caged Fighter, Archer, or Bearer), but development stopped. Hopefully, after the Age of Sorcery, they’ll finally get to it and develop into a full rescue system.

To overcome some of the gore aspects, you might try running the mods NoMoreHumanParts (which gets rid of the arms and legs in loot) and Dismember Me Not v2 (which stops the exploding bodies). I run these two mods all the time. It helps me enjoy the game the way I want to (less gore).

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Welcome to the forum m8.
Don’t get me wrong, but tou see things one sided. I am a family man too. Hopefully now my children are 17 an 16 yet they had a gamer father, so it is very reasonable, especially for my son, to be a gamer too. I say especially for my son, not because girls cannot be gamers, please, by all means, but normally the girl “copy” her mother and the boy his father.
My daughter plays league of legends from really small age, but my son and I are mostly Playstation lovers. My son grow up with every game I played. I even followed him to “his” games too. Though he is 17 he still loves minecraft and there is nothing bad about it. Gaming is there to provide fun, this is the goal.
Now.
To the point.
As I said in the past I follow him to his games, even the online ones. Before I know it I had numerous “friends” on my psn. How would you feel if your 10 year old son would play with a totally stranger 40 year old man?
I was always asking from the little fellows to ask permission from their parents to play with me and though they said they did I was pretty sure they didn’t, I am a father, I can surely understand a child when it is lying. So I had to move away from their games not only to protect them but above all to protect me and my family.
And my 13 year old son back then discovered Conan exiles. He asked, dad this is a 18+ game, can I download it? I said ofcurce, yet I will have to play it first and if I find it inappropriate then we delete OK?
So we downloaded Conan exiles, and we played single player for months without nudity, we didn’t knew that the game had nudity.
Ofcurce my son played some days, it was difficult and he kept playing minecraft and Lego.
I, however started to go online and for the first time in my gaming life I felt SAFE, the games audience were adults… Finally, daddys time.
My dear fellow exile I am sorry but here’s a great NO from my side, I don’t want children in this game without parental supervision and I don’t want to play with fear anymore.
Welcome again :+1:t6:

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Stop being a lecher.

I don’t. There are better alternatives.

I disagree. The bejewelled chains crafted at the casting table are far better designed and more flattering.

I’m entitled to my opinion, @Marcospt just like you are entitled to yours.

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