The reason why Conan Exiles can't compete with ARK or Rust

[AhBabay]

Anybody knows? Cuz this is my 1st time survival game, and more people saying ARK or Rust are much better survival games than Conan Exiles, which has more bugs than ARK + Rust + alpha bugs amounts. Even the twitch view counts prove that ARK or Rust have more than at least x2 more viewers than Conan Exiles stream.

And this is my 1st game from Funcom, and it seems people who bought another game previously from Funcom saying Funcom does not care much about fixing their game. And I heard they have record of being unable to handing their own game. OFC I am not buying any single game anymore from Funcom by looking at how they are treating Conan Exiles. Random coding, more new bugs since more than a year, releasing unfinished beta game as ‘official game’, unfinished features, and JUST WHAT IS THIS?

I have to say I have bought games from more than 20 gaming companies in entire of my life. And I never ever had this kind of issue and it is my 1st time to write this kind of stuff on forum about how can a company be so bad at handling their own game. Like when I remember 2 months ago when Conan Exiles officially released with unfinished features + so many crap bugs. That was such embarrassment.

[Halcyon]

ARK sold DLC’s during early access and delayed one after another.
But people apparently don’t care. Jokes on us for having double standards when comparing one company to another.

ARK did sooooo much worse in early access. But that’s fine… ARK didn’t really have a rival to be compared to.

As for Rust? Rust was pretty much the first of it’s kind, inspired by Minecraft. It was stable, and bugs weren’t as bad, but exploits… boy were there exploits.

I own over 370 games on my steam account and have been gaming since the Ultima Online era.

The first game I played by Funcom was Anarchy Online. It’s launch was … memorably infamous to say the least.

Funcom always was a rollercoaster of wins and fails, with the longest journey series being the only exception - TLJ was generally well received and quite stable.

Conan Exiles is a game of extremes. It is both very good and very troubled. It’s the type of game where you have as much fun as you had, pet peeves and gripes.

The last time I experienced this happen was Anarchy Online, incidentally.

But let me tell you… ARK’s height of excellence was during the “Thylacoleo” patch, before the flyer nerf, and before the volcano was made into a tek dungeon.

After that, it all went downhill.

For every good wildcard adds to ARK, they nerf 10 other things to the ground.

For every nerf Funcom adds to their games, they compensate for it in profound ways.

[Taemien]

Ark’s combat is easier. You mouse over and click on someone.

[AhBabay]

For a fact, this company is terrible at dealing their own game. Like just too many hella bugs, unfinished features, messed up codes and sometimes even being unable to play a game. I’ve been playing games for more than 15 years and I never ever have seen any sort of this in entire of my life. This is just a joke. Nothing was even close to this joke ever.

[nismo1969]

THIS!!! Awesome post. The fact is the days of getting a game complete on disc are over, more and more Gamer’s are going to EA titles but they can’t handle the bugs or the development process. This leads to companies launching games that aren’t ready and needing more funds so they release DLC’s during EA. Today’s gaming world is toxic as the Dregs if you get my drift.

[HonkyLips]

I never played ark or rust so I can’t comment on those two.

This is without doubt the most buggy game I have ever played and I’ve been playing since the commodore vic20.

In saying that it also one of the most fun games I have ever played.

I do hope they can go some way towards fixing it up but I have my doubts.

I don’t know much about coding a game like this but some of the bugs just seem like they don’t know much either.

Regardless. I’m still enjoying it.

[Halcyon]

Conan Exiles’ creative director explains how it’s different from Ark

Very good read.

[krix_ost]

Yeah, that is a good read. Read it before and read it again. That read is really spot on with CE.

*Sorry for the long post…I type really fast and it may help others who are on the fence or just cannot put their finger on it.

Old school gamer here and self funded game developer. Bioware’s Baldur’s Gate series and Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2 (Obsidian’s mod/change) are legendary RP games that had toolsets to build and layout adventures in. NWN was very well developed but took two additional expansions to make it damn near a perfect game. Skyrim, everyone knows how buggy it was and can be, but is also a legend once the community stepped up and modded the heck out of it. And it is still going strong still.

I have lots of hours in ARK (630) and have run my own ‘Adventure Hub Hotel’ island server which was excellent for RP Adventures and Server Events. ARK was a buggy beast that needed a number of mods (steam and my own custom) to fix a lot of things that Wildcard just did not want to fix…like ever. They had new shinies to add and their own new ideas and just would not go back and fix these things. And their ‘Optimizations’ statement at every patch was simply something they wrote down to keep us in tune with ‘checking/testing’ if there were actually any.

ARK had dinos…and that was damn awesome. Then they went from a really weird Tribal/Primal dino world to being able to craft high tech gear. The balance was soooooo off I simply disabled it all on the server but still allowed the first pistol and the longneck rifle as the most techy as an option to ARK’s excellent bow animations and combat. ARK does not belong in the ‘Legendary’ game category in my opinion. Close but just not there.

ARK’s animal AI was good enough…the dinos did what we would expect them to do. They were simple and either aggressive or passive. The aggressive ones charged and you had to be on your toes or these ‘monsters’ would chew you to bits…even in the metal combat/plate armour. It was great enjoyment to know you could be ambushed by them at any time. The island is also beautiful.

ARK’s NPC models were simply ridiculous and people would make some really F’d up looking characters. And even though they looked F’d up all the males looked similar and females as well. Small differences that only mattered in clothing colors from all the cloning. ARK’s animations were gawd awful as well. And don’t even get me started on the synthetic voice sounds. Come on! Really? How HARD is it to make some male and female generics to fill in those spots! Really? That is simply Lazy!

CE is lovely. It is very immersive and has much better animations. Visually it is different than ARK and Funcom really nailed the look and feel to be some strange alien asteroid/ship crash in the Hyborian Age that is made to be some crazy alien arena slave experiment. I like it. The NPCs also look great and everything is adult and edgy. Well done from the Art standpoint. CE in my opinion is a better game and has the ‘Potential’ to be a legend.

CE though is a design flawed game. For those with UE4 and Game Design knowledge simply open up the CE Tool Kit and have a look. It really shows inexperience with UE4 but also it shows ‘Can We Do This?’ experimentation in how things are done in a modern engine like Epic’s UE4. UE4 is a tool…Wildcard used it for ARK as well…and the developer really needs to use the tool how Epic uses it (unlike Unity which is more of and empty shell). So CE has a flawed foundation which exacerbates our current game status.

CE’s NPC AI is simply mind boggling horrible…but not all Funcom’s fault. In the end Funcom will need to get a handle on this with some really good UE4 AI consultants and code that stuff from scratch. Perhaps still use the current animations with modifications then marry Skyrim’s combat with CE…that would be pretty awesome for CE. Also the difficulty has been cranked waaaaaaay down from the early days when the ‘Ostrich’ was arguably our most deadly animal…those things were crazed!

Everything was a blood fest early on…and now I can pretty much fight everything nude, which is cool, because of how easy it is. I have to force myself to make RP mistakes and Not use healing in combat just to keep things interesting. Hunting with bows now is just head desk banging why? Bows worked Perfectly in Pre-Release with exception of the Arrow Stuck In Hand issue that can only be removed by removing bracelet. Why change the bow mechanics…just Fix the Arrow in Hand issue…which is tied to the flawed design…but it IS fixable…in fact the solution is already there! And we had Detailed Steam Forum posts on HOW Funcom can fix it.

In my opinion Patch 32 was the best CE had to offer. It was very stable but had some really strange physics and floating to the sky animals issues…but all in all…it seemed most everything worked. What did not work we made mods for to solve. That patch was a long duration patch as well. Then there is this ‘New Release’ and ‘New Shinies’ mentality after full release trending. Simply rule 101…just do not piss off your game player foundation. We can all argue over PvE or PvP being the ‘Base Foundation’ but the simple fact is Funcom pissed both sides off. Just calling a Cherry and Cherry here…‘Shooting Straight’.

CE has some extras going on in it that can pop it into ‘Lengendary’ if Funcom would just stop twisting their fingers in the game and doing damage to it without first solidifying the base game play 100% bug free. And yes it IS possible…I know…I have a custom mod that fixes (or work arounds) these system issues to make a really bug free play. Some things we have no control over but Funcom does…and it is their game.

And I think that is where people are banging their heads on the desk and becoming very vocal on Funcom’s forum. Most of us see how Legendary this game could be if these Quality Issues were simply taken care of for good. We can live with things like lack of dungeon spawns since an Admin can set up adventures in real time for groups…dynamic challenges. We can set up our own Purges that 100% work since we are spawning them in. We can live with that. Just FIX the poorly thought out Hit Box Colliders and Predictable AI and make damn sure the building pieces ALL work! From there…we can Live With That.

Lastly, if not resolved, it will stay in the uninstalled library with no future DLC purchases (which I am a sucker for ). Does not matter if my conscience is telling me to install it again and put it into hardcore modded mode and survive to 60. I will come back to this in 6 months to see…

[biazu17]

It is really nice to see people who payed Anarchy Online. I played the Meta-physicist and used to be asked for the Nanoskill buffs while I was wondering in a city. When Shadowlands expansion came, I hardly slept. hehe.

[Rayner]

I really don’t understand what bugs everyone is experiencing. I have hundreds of hours in the game, and the only bugs that have ever gotten in the way of my enjoyment are:

1. Wells not refilling.
2. Fish traps not refilling.
3. Some T4 thralls don’t make items that they should.

Honestly, that’s it.

[Rorik]

I hate people comparing new released games with older ones that had time to add more content or fix bugs. Anyway all 3 games are for different audiences and it’s sad when people ignore that factor.

[Halcyon]

I’m just grinning to myself the following:

Either people are bored out of the game (no mega patch) or bugged out of the game (megapatch half baked).

I think it’s a lose/lose situation for Conan Exiles either way. Wouldn’t have really made a difference.

But at least all the “trend riders” will move on to Battle for Azeroth, while all the people who have firmly made up their mind about Conan Exiles, will stay with Conan Exiles.

I for one will play Battle for Azeroth, until I arrive at the raiding stage, at which point I’ll run back to Conan Exiles at full throttle, and return to my maintained bases, and be so BLOODY HAPPY that I can progress proper without raiding with 24 noisy people, through a designed theme park, with linear strategies.

Then comes Fallout 76. See… There are no thralls or dinos, or nudity, or even beaches and palm trees in Fallout 76…

Don’t get me wrong; i’m a total Fallout fan. But I know if I get shot in the face even ONCE by some random dude, i’ll fly off my rails and uninstall F76 and come straight back to CE PvE.

[AntonChigur]

Ark has server wars, being able to travel with items and dinos to any server and fight, keeping making enemies/allies is what keeps Ark going. Without that, it would be as dead as Conan is now.

[Enyo]

The first time I played Conan I was like “Oh this will be easy. I’ve seen all the videos and read a few guides. It won’t be hard.” But then I hopped on the game (pre combat patch EA) and was killed within a few minutes by a goblin when all I had was a hatchet… Then a Shaleback got me… Then the first human npc I came across got me… It was brutal, but I loved it lol.

After the Launch I was able to go days without dying (may have run from a couple cats and gorillas) until I pulled too many thralls while wearing almost nothing (gathering build). I was thoroughly disappointed about the difficulty. Heck, just for giggles I took a lvl 20 into the Witch Queen wielding daggers, wearing cloth and nearly finished her off before dying (my first attempt ever in there).

I am not THAT good. Not terrible, but definitely not the best. This is disappointing as far as difficulty goes. Pretty sure Joel said something about it getting harder at launch, but it did not. The vanilla difficulty settings needs cranked up, and not in a hit point and damage dealt kind of way. The AI is extremely predictable and you can juggle all but some of the bosses (and a few skeletons) with the stagger effect from most heavy hits. Perhaps the new animations in the pipeline will address this, but I can see how people would become bored.

[PrehistoricDog]

I mostly play solo online, occasionally I’ll team up with other player’s I just randomly bumped into but that’s rare. And I’ve been finding the game mostly unchallenging since about level 50. I’m not using as good of gear as I could be and by no means am I a great player.

I did find it much more challenging at lower levels, so I agree that the game doesn’t need to be more challenging for new players, but some sort of rebalancing is in order.

It is a survival game afterall, so it should maintain some level of challenge no matter what level the player is.

[Liralen]

Well, I came here via Anarchy Online, where I’ve returned for their 17th anniversary event, having played it off and on, for almost 17 years, plus The Secret World at its release, then Secret World Legends. I’m a big fan of their games, although I recognize their deficiencies and have moved on when needed.

I’ve also played Ark for 2100 hours and looking for answers to the question, should I switch to Conan Exiles?

I was really put off by the bad reviews of Ark at first. It wasn’t until I played it, on our own PvE private server, that I began to understand why that was.

First of all, a newb playing PvP on a public server had no chance, so lots of QQ from them. Go figure.

Secondly, the PvE experience on Ark public servers isn’t so hot either, with players hogging resources and blocking new players from building.

In Ark, the sweet spot for us was running our own, private server, and allowing only friends to join us.

Even so, an Ark PvE private server with good friends only allowed, is still a pain in the butt without mods, specifically Structures Plus, whose developer has since been hired by them. Things like placing an object in vanilla Ark shows you an outline where it will be placed. But it often doesn’t place where it showed you. In vanilla Ark, you have to destroy it, hoping for some mats to be returned, and try again. And again.

The mod Structures Plus relieved that problem by allowing you to pick up the object, and trying again, and again, but at least you don’t loose your mats for each attempt.

So I don’t expect Conan Exiles to be any different.

That’s pretty much the crux of the issue in my mind. Vanilla Ark on public servers sux, whether PvP or PvE and their only saving grace is private servers and mods.

Ark allows you to modify the game to make it fit your playing style. http://www.playark.com/workshop/

Does Conan Exiles?

Or is it crafted well enough to not need them, as opposed to Ark, where they are needed to make it playable?

[Eastofdeath]

Played Ark for 3000+ hours played the hell out of it in all modes PVP, PVE, tribes and solo and offline plus PGM. Picked up Conan Exiles after release and only have 201 hour playing. Between the two games I am enjoying CE more, Ark went in a direction that I didn’t agree with, the whole tek stuff and the Boss fights for a solo player, was a turn off for me.
Also Ark was my 2nd early access game and I will never buy another one. It was the reason why I waited for CE to come out.
Conan for me is a great game, I have only done one dungeon two times and explored maybe 70 % of the map, Building in CE has a ton more option and a lot better then an unmodded Ark. And I think there is a ton more for me to do, the games AI needs work and I hope they fix that and like you all said its to dam predictable. I will support the game as I believe in there product and think it could be come a really great game and I hope the modding community takes is farther. Like they did with me beloved Elder Scrolls series.
Conan need some TLC like making the spawns more random, we can learn where they spawn to easy and just go around, would be nice to turn a corner and find a danger I didn’t aspect and add life to the animal’s with more interaction between predator’s and pray.

Been playing PC games since 1982 on a 286 lol yes I am old, The gaming industry has changed to a “lot see how much money we can make”, making a game with lots of shiny
and sell it to Johnny and Jenney, dumbing it down as much as they can, so they can play it on a PS4 and Xbox. Thank GOD for the modders. I am looking forward to see where Funcom takes there game.

[Liralen]

I bought Pong the instant I saw it, then later my brother gave me a Z80 then I bought a 6502 (and yes, when I later bought the 286, it did feel like the beginnings of the PCs we know now more than the earlier stuff I fooled around with), although not sure what relevance it has, except it establishes I’m very old.

As I tried to say in my previous post, I’m a builder. I don’t care about dungeons, or tek stuff, or boss fights.

Modded Ark on a private server works great for that.

What more does CE offer me? Understand I’m very inclined to give Funcom the benefit of a doubt, and I will play Anarchy Online tomorrow, regardless of what is said here.

But will consider CE for later.

[kill2die]

alright mate, we’re gonna start:

• ALL environmental NPC not attacking most times, since the mega patch
• own thralls do not attack generally or are totally dumb
• own thralls put away their weapons in inventory and fistfight only
• you can put stuff in meshes of buildings like chests, bed rolls etc. , there was even the possibility and might be still to build underneath the map or inside buildings
• there is a exploit availiable where you can do a very far jump with a simple makro (or even without if your quick enough)
• players can look and loot through walls
• sandstorms hit you in some caves
• sandstorms not synced on player join (theres a catch up time, but comon… you die instantly from it, while you atleast see nothing)
• weapons totally unbalanced, just use spear, theres is in pvp no other viable option, or atleast it’s so cost efficent no one uses different stuff
• avatars suck all besides seth (some are really useless, do not make any dmg on different things or like derketo look nice but are completly unusable!)
• your thralls sometimes fell and may fall still through foundations and die
• sometimes your own corpse is not visible if you respawn in the same chunk (cached area)
• only visual , but still strange : corpses falling down again if you go out of the cached area and go back in it
• you get stuck underneath rhinos, which is just ugly , there was even before the patches a possibility to go under the map, and therefor the case of building stuff underneath the map was made easily possible)
• rhinos get catapulated far away if you kill them like the ragdoll is having no real physical weight
• you can endlessly climb by just waiting 5 seconds, releasing and instantly hanging on the same wall again
• the skill agility 2 is bugged, it will cause you too only get half damage indepentend from where you jump down, it can even be a tower in the sky, it doesn’t matter
• star metal totally rare since mega patch, it’s so rare it’s not even viable anymore to go through north and search for it,if you need it, your *****ed

5 min brainstorming was this, what really was faulty with the game, and as you see, there is a hell lot!
If you don’t know of these parts you just haven’t looked at the things correctly or just forget about it.
In my opinion it’s so much it’s even unplayable in official pvp, cause there’s always someone coming to your server and abuse the **** out of it.

[Enyo]

@Liralen

First of all, a newb playing PvP on a public server had no chance, so lots of QQ from them. Go figure.

Secondly, the PvE experience on Ark public servers isn’t so hot either, with players hogging resources and blocking new players from building.

You’re still going to run into this, but they stand a lot more of a chance in Conan since you can progress to end game materials and weapons expediently.

Resources nodes and building spots can still be claimed on ‘official’ servers by foundation spamming griefers.

The building in Conan is Amazing! It is a wonderful building system that can be frustrating yet elegant and beautiful. If you get your jollies from building, then this is definitely worth taking a look at.