The Gloom of Siptah

I was wondering if having the blue swirling tentacle go away after the wild surges have all been set and then only reappear when a wild surge needs to be replaced after one has been cleared might alleviate some of the darkness of the island. It’s really quite gloomy and you don’t get the vibrant colors especially in the non-maelstrom areas for some reason.

Also the light seems to be very yellow. Sandstone foundations practically glow yellow in the light. It seems a little off.

5 Likes

Anything that could reduce the constant gloom would be a good thing. Suffice to say, I really dislike the lighting on Siptah - to the extent that I’ve spent maybe 40 hours there and don’t expect I’ll go back any time soon. (As a result I feel no excitement about the Dev Stream leak that update 2.3 is called ‘New Lands’, since I expect that to expand on Siptah - in which case maybe that should be ‘New Lands shrouded in gloom’ :wink: ) It’s a shame, because Siptah has interesting potential, but I find the lighting so constantly unpleasant that I’d really prefer to just avoid it all together.

It’s an odd one - my guess is that the Dev’s are aiming to create a particular atmosphere with the lighting, but I really don’t feel like it works. It reminds me of TV in the 90s where directors went through an obsession with over-using darkness, so you’d encounter whole episodes that appeared to be largely black screens. I feel like Funcom is falling into that same trap - overuse of dim lighting, intended to create a particular emotional effect, just resulting in diluting that effect by being a constant extra ‘grind’. And what a shame to never be able to see all the attractive new scenery that the art dept has spent so much time and effort to make look nice - if the game was graphically poor, I’d say ‘go for it, cover it up’, but CE is and always has been graphically very attractive - why reduce one of your strongest points?

2 Likes

I agree 100%.

3 Likes

It’s funny though. There are people that want it to be darker.

2 Likes

Well, I haven’t had any problems with high ping in a couple of weeks now. Everything seems to be back in the normal range.

However, I suspect that may have more to do with a pretty substantial drop in the number of active players at any given time.

If Funcom had done something to fix the server browser, you would think they would have announced it.

1 Like

To be honest, I would like both. It’s not the darkness that bothers me – as long as it’s not pitch dark like in the Exiled Lands highlands – it’s the perpetual gloom. My favorite moments on Siptah are when the Maelstrom ends and there’s a few seconds of glorious sunshine.

I don’t mind the Sky Sphincter being there, but I dislike its effects on lighting. As for the nights, they’re not even as dark as the desert nights in Exiled Lands. Why do I have this nifty green torch if I never get to use it?

3 Likes

Conan Exiles is a beautiful game.

Siptah is cool.

I like many of the things they implemented there.

I have some issues though.

As others have stated…

The storm cycle on Siptah basically leaves a fleeting moment of natural light that looks way too bright…

Because virtually everyone adjusts their brightness/contrast/gamma up to play in the near constant gloom.

Add to that the out of stamina debuff, and an encumbrance build…

Yeesh. That beautiful game just got UGLY and irritating.

Aside from that, I want MORE of Conan Exiles, cause I rather enjoy it.

The building system is great, the armors look pretty, the movment of characters, with recent changes being ./meh… WAS perfect… But, balance, right?

I look forward to the devs slowly building in more depth to their content. More armor slots, or slots on armor, for further customization.

I should not go off topic though.

Siptah is very gloomy. It has a bright spot, but that bright spot is fleeting, and over-compensated for (often). This results in weirdish graphics on Siptah.

The new lighting effects are appreciated.

I mean, it’s weird that it’s gloomy at all, when you think about it.

According to the dev blogs, Siptah is supposed to be off the coast of Stygia and Kush. In post-collapse Hyboria (i.e. our age), that’s going to be somewhere like Niger - but I can imagine it should be similar to Cape Verde. It’s described as looking pretty much like that in “The Gem in the Tower”, which the devs have specifically referenced several times.

I guess tentacle boi/Nyarlatothep is the cause of it looking like Oregon, which is vaguely similar to the way the Pictish Wilderness is described in Beyond The Black River.

I also tried to play Isle of Siptah looking forward to adventuring in the beautiful new scenery but found it dark and gloomy almost the whole time. I got so depressed after trying two different PVE servers and starting on opposite sides of the island that I finally just gave up. No matter how far away I was from the maelstrom the skies turned dark, wind started to blow and debris flying all around. I was still in the starting areas as far away as possible from the maelstrom. I could understand this if I was adventuring within the maelstrom, but it seems if I am well outside the area that the skies should be clear and colors bright. To the Dev’s, this seems to be a beautiful game, I just wish there was some way to turn off the maelstrom effects other than doing a stand alone game.

2 Likes

Well, I grew up in Oregon so it feels like home.

Also, it really feels more like Northern California.

1 Like

Might depend where you are built, and what lighting you have enabled. When the storm gets “sucked away” and vanishes, there is a fleeting minute or so of beautiful, cloud free sunshine. But then, the tentacle guy spawns and the graphics literally block out a large portion of the light. Things go from bright, to slightly darker, super discernible. It’s just not tuned correctly, yet. Maybe some tweaks and it will be a lot more enjoyable.

I rather enjoy it right after the storm ends and everything is “too bright”. I would like to keep that setting, and tone down my gamma/contrast/brightness a bit.

Again, I am sure it depends quite substantially on your display, settings, and build location.

Also, the “night” on Siptah is really gloomy, not a true night. They were trying to address issues with it being “too dark” but it’s just “too gloom” now.

No, I don’t have a good answer. Sorry 8/ lol

3 Likes

Agree with the need to get rid of the constant gloom/darkness. Honestly, I’m liking Siptah for the most part but the almost non-stop gloom is annoying (I usually have 3 torches in my inventory at any time now because of it).

1 Like

Part of what’s weird about siptah is that the sun rises almost at south-southwest and sets at east-southeast.

So, even if the day is full length and there’s no maelstrom, the sun is always low in the sky and the shadows are very long.

I’m pretty sure that on the old Exiles map the sun rose in the south and set in the north, so you would have a pretty significant portion of the day where the shadows were short.

They can’t do that in this map because that would mean the sun would spend a significant amount of time behind the sky clocoa.

Agreed, I would def like to see more sunlight even if it means darker nights.

1 Like

I was really confused about why the browser glitch wasn’t being treated as higher priority. Seems like an extremely high priority situation, and increasing the ping didn’t really seem to help. Sure the server’s accepted higher ping, but then it seemed like the baseline ping went up again at the same time.

1 Like

Yes because we bought the game and played on Exiled Lands, and it got dark.
Now we play on Siptah with the new DLC and its not.

It feels like it’s missing features that should have been just like it was in Exiled Lands.
This is a survival game, how do you survive the night when its bright as day, right?

And I know… I repeated this over and over again :stuck_out_tongue: sorry

1 Like

I built on the cliff formation north of the city, west of the little island in the river. The view down the river at dawn is spectacular. For me, it’s the big blue cloud in the middle over the tower during all hours except for the storm. It’s visually distracting as well and seems to move when you look up probably because of the sky box.

I have noticed that south of the tower, near the goblin vault, it’s very bright. Haven’t laid any foundations down there. But the sand stone foundations in the western valley definitely have a yellow gold appearance that I don’t see in exlid lands. Playing on Ultra without volumetric lighting which I am pretty sure gives me a headache for some reason.

Good point - either way, though, not really Stygian.

1 Like

My base is in the south, and since the sun is always to the southeast it’s never blocked my the sphincter. If you build in the northwest I suppose it would almost almost always be blocked.

1 Like

I like this magic “moment”. Maybe it´s a little too long…

Yep!