Thank you for the kind words. For my part, I would trade being “good with words” for being calm and constructive like @Jim1:
Sadly, I’m not, so I end up writing walls of text
I don’t need a public statement from Funcom, but a detailed post in its own separate thread would be very welcome. Not a “please be patient, we’re working on it” kind of post, but a post that actually clarifies the situation.
At the very least, I would like to see a list that clarifies exactly what was done on purpose in the TestLive patch, in detail. The policy of not writing detailed changelogs is understandable, but I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that it has backfired badly.
It’s not just about Wak’s video anymore. For example, Chaoruk has reported that the legendary kits are no longer a 100% drop from Unnamed City bosses. There’s no mention of that in patch notes. Is that on purpose? Is that an oversight? A bug? Who knows? Funcom should know.
Going one step further from there, it would be great if Funcom communicated better about the changes in their decisions. Case in point: the 2.2 update is no longer the “combat update”. Wouldn’t it have been better for everyone involved if they had announced that in a separate, prominently positioned thread, instead of dropping it in a post by a producer who doesn’t even work on Conan Exiles, on a thread that got closed? (No offense meant to ThomasJ. I’m glad he did what he did, I just don’t think that’s the best Funcom can do.)
Finally, we would probably all appreciate it if they would actually sit down and write a careful explanation of what they’re working on and where the game is headed. They don’t owe anyone that, but it would be nice.
I haven’t actually watched the video and I probably won’t. Call me a curmudgeon, but I’ve yet to find a YouTube video that presents the information I want to know clearly, concisely and without endless chatter. I’m one of those dinosaurs who prefers books to movies and likes videos only when they actually show something that would be cumbersome to describe in words
Having said all that, I don’t blame anyone for getting frustrated or “jumping the gun” in this particular case. The way Funcom has been handling Conan Exiles this year has inexorably led to this point.
Just think about where we are: anyone who complains about the game being buggy is likely to be told they should’ve helped with TestLive. So if you want to do the due diligence and try to prevent another buggy mess from hitting live, you have to spare 100 GBs on your drive, at least. And now that even the TestLive patch notes are a mess and unclear, if you want to be well informed, you’ll need to spend another 230 GBs (or so) on the DevKit, provided that you have a machine that can run it.
Frankly, I can’t be arsed to do that and I don’t see why anyone should have to do it. And conversely, I’m grateful to anyone who actually does all that, even if they end up “jumping the gun”. I might not be Wak’s (or any YouTuber’s) fan, but the fact that he goes to all that effort speaks for itself.