Testlive Patch (29.05.2020) - Balancing and Avatars Rev. 1

That’s good news that you’re lowering the HP on bosses. I play singleplayer and it’s rare when a fight is enjoyable and that’s because my character is so anemic compared to my thralls and even more so compared to the enemies I’m fighting.

I’ve devised a New Game+ mode for myself, and I’m effectively fighting at level 120 with a heck of a lot more resources than a regular character would and it’s not really comfortable but it feels a little bit closer to Skyrim when the first level scaling hits in and it hits like a truck when it does. Your characters goes from hero to zero in an instant when you meet that scaled up enemy. Conan Exiles feels like that throughout the entire game. I’m not sure that’s intended, but perks are unimpressive, there aren’t that many stat points to go around, character abilities are pretty limited in regards to combat options and in general, there is little you can do to improve your situation.

Also, most attacks with weapons will miss small opponents like spiders because they were motion captured to be used against humanoid targets. Putting a mace on a thrall and having them fight spiders while you go loot the gossamer is almost an infinite fight because you’ll come back and they would have killed maybe one. They can’t hit when they’re swinging about 90% of the time.

I feel that way too, combat feels way too rigid and in comparison, humanoid opponents spam attacks on you much faster than anything a regular player could do and with much higher precision, which ironically makes them deadlier than a player… Again back to the character not feeling all that heroic throughout the vast majority of the game.

NPCs with mace spam are more annoying to me than those with tridents. But not by much…

Also who is Denuvo, the winged creature from your pic? Why remove him? Make him something not attackable that flies around somewhere now and again. Seems like a nice looking asset.

Also, please pay closer attention to the Argos pack. It has incorrect mip maps for ceiling tiles and carpeting. They fade out almost immediately upon your character stepping off of them, making them look very low res compared to other pieces. Collision boxes are not their biggest woes in terms of bugs… The Argos DLC needs QA.

If you want to improve the feel of the characters in game, you should try to make players feel more like leaders of a base in regards to the PVE world. Maybe have thralls and followers be given commands to harvest and gather resources, instead of fighting heroically while the players mine ore and chop trees like slaves. Shouldn’t it be more the other way around?

Instead of learning emotes, maybe players can accrue additional attribute points or special moves that they can slot into their weapons. Like a gemcrafting system, or some similar ability to customize or gain new abilities in combat. I feel it’s too limited at the moment, and powerful thralls are a band-aid solution. Characters are vastly underpowered and largely under-developed by the time the levelling time ends.

Maybe give players veteran levels or something… It’s not really enough to have a finite anything in this game because of the nature of the combat and the fact that boss fights have to compensate for the group component. Sinpleplayer is really struggling to make ends meet and I feel like that is your biggest draw. Even if it just means playing solo on a multiplayer server. I think most people are generally going to be doing things alone most of the time.

Looking forward to fixes. :slight_smile:

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Nope, its anti piracy software.

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Ok, I finally got all my gear built up to the point I went around doing boss fights. There are a lot of bosses in the game that I have still never tried to battle, so I ignored them since I don’t have a baseline for comparison. I’ve thus far ignored avatars for the same reason. I wasn’t playing the game when avatars were in use. I really don’t think I’d be a fair judge for most things avatar related. It’s the first time I had a RHTS as a thrall, I usually just have a T3 from Set City following me. Weapons were the star metal versions from the Argos DLC armors were the craftable lvl 60 armors (except I lucked out and found the Executioner Hood, given to thrall). Details on the gear/stats are available upon request, but I’ll stick to general concepts for this post.

The fights seemed to go a little bit faster, so I’m assuming that’s mostly down to the RHTS. I’ve used the same/similar equipment before, and I remember it taking slightly longer. For the most part, the boss fights felt good. They weren’t so easy that it felt like I was cheesing them, but it also didn’t feel like a tedious grind-fest. I didn’t time them, so I don’t know how long were the durations of the fights. I don’t do the thrall tanking method. I’ve got nothing against letting your thrall do the job, but personally I don’t enjoy the gameplay unless I’m right there in the mix, putting my own butt on the line. I like to share aggro with my thrall.

That brings me to my next point. Sharing aggro. It seems like you guys have put some work into this. Running the live version, for most of the boss fights, it felt like the boss fixated on my character, so a lot of the time I spent running around in circles trying not to die while my thrall did most of the damage. Maybe I’m just imagining it, but it felt different this time compared to when I’ve done them in the live branch. Having said that, a few of the fights felt like they were no different than before. Most notably the Red Mother. When I’m lucky, as soon as she squashes my thrall into the dirt, she ignores him completely and focuses on me. When I’m not lucky, she ignores the thrall completely. I’ve yet to kill the Red Mother. Maybe it’s because I’m fighting in light armor. Maybe I just need some more practice learning when & where to dodge. If you want the player to feel like the hero, he has to be there doing his fair share of damage. I think if you can fine tune whatever type of threat detection mechanisms you have coded in, it could go a very long way in achieving that. The fights I felt were the most engaging, the most immersive, are the ones during which the boss aggro was shared between myself and my thrall. He tanked some good blows while I flanked the boss. Then the boss would turn to me and I would shield up while my thrall was given a chance to deliver some damage. It was a very enjoyable dance to the death.

I obviously don’t know what mechanics are coded into the game for the AI, but I think maybe some type of damage-based threat assessment might be a good tool. For those who play by means of sending in the thrall and firing healing arrows from range, the thrall is the most important target because he’s the one doing the damage. For a player like myself who wants to be right up in the boss’ face, then I’m half of the threat and should take aggro half of the fight. Maybe you already have something like this in place. If you don’t, I hope you consider it. All in all, I think it’s been great patch. And I’m not just saying that because it’s my first one. I’m really happy with what I’ve experienced thus far.

Bosses engaged were: all of the UC bosses except for the snake boss, Croc world boss, Abysmal Remnant (earlier levels in the playthrough), Undead Hyena thing from the Executioner’s Entrance. There are a few more for me to test and compare, but I assume the experience will be similar.
USA Testlive PVE Server

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As I said before. This is the wrong approach. First nobody wants to grind for a rare Thrall, put the effort in him to level him to 20, equip him with good stuff and entrust him your base, while its numbers will be limited and he should be as easily be killed by a player as vice versa. The only solution I see is, to keep there healthpool as it is in the current Test Live build and add a damage penality for hitting players. Just bring them closer to pets in terms of damage when attacking other players…

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USA Testlive PVE Server

T3 Armorer cannot repair the shield that she crafted. I have the proper feats. Unless someone sees something that I’m missing, I don’t know why she can’t repair it.

This issue resolved itself upon my most recent login, although it persisted several login attempts prior to this. Maybe it was a server reset that fixed the issue?

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USA Testlive PVE Server

Ok, so I decided to revisit this in order to verify. It was not caused by the reset potion. Screencap included here was taken immediately after using a yellow lotus potion.

I did some digging and found this from OP of the previous patch thread:

Currently Known Issues
Recipes provided by thralls are not available on crafting stations. Current workaround is to restart the server or rejoin the session.

Which suggests that both the firebowl cauldron and armorer’s bench issues that I mentioned above are a result of this ongoing issue with artisans forgetting their recipes. I wasn’t here for the previous patch, so I didn’t think to read through the previous thread.

Yes I got hit with the the firebowl one, upgraded to improved and swapped the cauldrons, boom gone, placed old one back down and gone from it also. I feel like such a thrall running out to fill glass bottles… :frowning_face:

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It’s even worse when you don’t live near water and rely on the well, isn’t it? Trying to fill an inventory page full of glass flasks and your water keep running out.

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I followed these instructions but they didn’t work for me. Steam opened Conan Exiles, not Conan Exiles - Testlive. Thanks for the suggestion though. Worth a try.

I’m going to loose everything … sigh …

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This worked for me, and I reverted to live afterwards.

Regards

jim

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I had an issue the first time I tried it to, the step I missed was was to shutdown steam completely and restart it. That’s what happened to me, may it will help you.

@scottj So one week still no fix for the test live other then that work around. A week this has been broken and no word from you on fix or what is going on??? Could you tell me when this will be fixed so test live can be joined without some work around???

USA Testlive PVE server

I want to test the avatars but the recipe isn’t showing up. I waited until I knew for sure that the server reset before posting. Reading old help threads, the crafting cost was 200 zeal + 200 fresh harvestings. Without the recipe, I don’t know what I need to summon. I have a T3 priest. Does it now require a T4? Is this not showing because of the recipe bug, or has the functionality not yet been added into the altars? Or have I overlooked something simple again? I’m trying to test on official, so the option to spawn in a token isn’t available.

It was the recipe bug. Looks like I need to save a lot more lost souls.
true_name

I thought if they were placed near other parts of your build that they would get the decay time from the main part of the build, for example, you build a large house that has full decay time, then build a barn near it. Shouldn’t the barn inherit the main buildings decay time?

On the live game it seems like this works. I’ll do some more checking on both to make sure, thx for the info Wak.

Heaven, sorry for the problems, but the post 2 above you was the standard way to get to testlive for a looooong time. There are other steps in there just to save your current single player game and configuration. If you don’t care about those, just do the beta opt in and go to town !

I hope you get a chance to add positive contributions to the team.

Regards

jim

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Bourbon, if you are an admin (solo or non-official server), while targeting the building, hit tilde twice for the full command console. Type in bu and arrow up to BuildingIdentify and note the number in the return, BuildableID: xxxx.

Do the same with the other building and compare. If different, they do not share the timer. If the same, they do.

The info is not available unless you are admin. Note that you can also destroy the entire building and its contents with one command. You can actually record erecting a building and, after destruction, rebuild it without mats the same as it was, but not the contents.

Regards

jim

It’s now the weekend in Norway, if they didn’t get it fixed by now then the earliest we will see a fix is Monday. Testlives are meant to have bugs, that’s the point of them. Have patience, a fix will come in due time.

Is the purge still being worked on or have they got it sorted?

USA Testlive PVE Server

The momentum mechanic, i.e. movement after input has stopped, is causing an unusual behavior in the horses. Mount your horse. Ensure there is no movement. Now execute a standing turn, only the turn. Left or right is irrelevant. Do not input a forward direction. When the turn stops, the horse will often start moving forward, presumably due to “momentum”.

This is not only unrealistic, but in dangerous terrain and in combat this is potentially fatal to the horse and player.

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Shared decay timers do happen, There is a proximity for share as I have seen and shown in my videos but it’s unclear how close it actually has to be in order to get that timer. My guess is a lot closer then you think. This video is old but explains the decay timer and shows some poor building with different decay timers right next to each other. It is possible that unattached parts seem to be on the same timer because when you run up to it to check it shows the same timer as the one you checked before but if you missed running close to that part it would not update from the surrounding buildings. I have seen nothing in the patch notes over, well the almost 2 years I have been bumping around that show that the decay system has received any changes.

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