Time has come, do or die

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
1

As those have read my previous posts may be aware I play on console and run an RP server. Just before the launch of AoS my server had 250 plus players. By the 2nd chapter of AoW that number had dropped to around 50. Now my server is at 15 including my 5 moderators. I by no means claim that the decline is entirely due to the games development direction. However after spending a week looking at the server list and sorting the list by decending player count it became clear that the CE console community is no longer sustainable.

You may wonder why this could be, well the answer varies. The most common answers I have gotten from former players are as follows:

  1. ā€œThe game just doesnā€™t feel the same anymore.ā€ The consensus of this was there have been so many unnecessary changes to gameplay and mechanics that CE no longer feels like the game it was.
  2. ā€œIf itā€™s not broke donā€™t fix it, if is then fix that.ā€ I think this is the complaint I got most and one I intend to agree with. More often than not the changes that came with the ages ā€œFixedā€ things that didnā€™t need to be. At the same time things that did need improvements went unchanged. A few examples are the religion system, mod support on console, undermeshing, anticheat system, and so on.
  3. ā€œItā€™s just more of the same, its kind of boring.ā€ This comment is one Iā€™ve been hearing more and more lately. The game development over the course of the past age and current the focus has been limited to the Exiled Lands map which frankly most long time players are burnt out on. While Siptah was a much needed addition it was and still is quite lack luster and blocked by paywall. What would significantly revitalize CE would be the addition of another base game map and for financial justification a second DLC map.
  4. And lastlyā€¦ā€œOver greedy monetization.ā€ This one cuts to the bone but is becoming more and more obvious. Since Funcom was taken over by Tencent the focus of CEā€™s development has ventured further and further away from the fans enjoyment to instead milking them for every bit of cash the company can get. Like what Elon Musk said in a recent interview, when number crunchers in suits are put in charge of a gaming studio the art is lost. This is the light Funcom is being seen in today. Truth is so many gaming companies are doing this that gamers are starting to feel abused and are slowly starting to fight back.

I for one sincerely hope that these opinions are heard for I truly believe there is still time for a course correction. However Iā€™m not naive enough to think the views and opinions posted here in the forum will ever be enough to convince Funcom/Tencent to change the path they are on. Instead like all of you I will sit back and watch as the corporate world slowly chokes the life out of yet another beautiful IP and community.

14 Likes
2

I understand the ennui with a 7 year old game but these points conflict with each other.

1 and 3 are completely conflicting. How can you have unnecessary changes but also complain itā€™s just the same thing over and over? And number 2 is directly the result of trying to fix 3.

The players need to make up their minds.
Do they want to play a stagnant game till it eventually falls off the vine (ie stop active development, fix whatā€™s there and move resources to other projects). Please keep in mind this will kill the game.

Do they want active development so that the game changes and remains fresh, but keep in mind it wont be the same game? This also means that the game may morph into something you donā€™t like.

The bugs are problematic in that even when provided extra time, it fails to improve the quality of release. This tells me their development and testing environments are not compatible with the game live environments and that has to be fixed before any other aspect goes forward. We will all be unhappy which ever direction we go if subsequent fixes or changes are done in faulty ways.

2 Likes
3

I hate to be the bearer of bad news for you.
Funcom doesnā€™t live or die on your desires.

4

actually I think you are wrong. 1 and 3 are not necessarily conflicting.
Without going into detail why., it may be that changes are introduced that make things feel weird in the game and still they donā€™t fundamentaly change endgame loops. Both views can and do happen in this game, especially as some preexisting end game loops were rendered useless and therefore push you to less variation in your ingame activities

8 Likes
5

I agree for the most part, as the reasons I mentioned are the comments of multiple former players from my server. So its only natural some of them would be conflicting. And yes testing is essential but is only part of the problem. That being said as I mentioned above I donā€™t expect anything to change. I am only pointing out that the console community for CE is all but gone, at least from what Iā€™ve observed on the Xbox server lists.

6

No they donā€™t, but they do live and die by selling a product to their customers and judging by recent decisions and monetization efforts Iā€™m guessing they are doing less of than expected projections.

5 Likes
7

The UI rework is viewed as unnecessary as far as I know, nothing implemented was specifically asked for and has been one of the biggest pain points of frustration since April.

Then thereā€™s the change to the dyeing system. Justification was given that it is to give the dye bench a purposeā€¦ except poorly received, poorly implemented and is yet another huge pain point of frustration.

Neither is providing new content by definition. It is changing baked in systems and releasing them in an unpolished way without prior warning and has gone mostly without acknowledgement of player feedback.

14 Likes
8

yeah those points were mentioned numerous times, as well as the crafting thralls now using up thrall slots limiting the number of base defense thralls. I thought it best to keep it simple and not get into specifics. However feel free to point them out if you think it might lend validity to what players are discontent about.

2 Likes
9

Off the top of my head the things players REALLY have been asking for are:

ā€¢ finish the dungeons and/or add more
ā€¢ let us dye saddles
ā€¢ finish the pet rework as promised
ā€¢ interact via emotes with pets
ā€¢ link EL to S or bring back transfers
ā€¢ allow us access to the hidden dye channels of armor
ā€¢ fix the problems on GPortal
ā€¢ fix bugs
ā€¢ the many great posts here and elsewhere of what theyā€™d like to see in the BLB

Etc.,ā€¦

While the settlement system was something begged for since the beginning and finally we get it, it has been poorly received BECAUSE of bugs and the lack of considering the impact it could have. Like how about allowing us more control over the settlement globally? Or ability to lock doors?

Then the Companion quests, well done quests surely and the new dialogue is nice but then when the quest is done, theyā€™re really not all that different than existing thralls and most of the things that make them unique donā€™t even work. Not even a consideration to have them talk to you after theyā€™re thralled? I donā€™t get it. So you go through 8 hr time gates to basically be disappointed. Having tested them I also see that placeholders were put in that tells me a lotā€¦

They cannot make everyone happy. But they can at least think ahead and ensure the new content comes out reasonably working?

13 Likes
10

Exactly! With so much existing incomplete content already why add more? One feature I have seen and heard requested more than any other is an overhaul of religion to make the system more integral to gameplay. I had assumed that would have been in the AoW. Lets face throughout it religious difference has caused more war than greed and political ideology combined and multiplied 5 fold. Yet even with Dennis mentioning in a DevStream they had religion revamp on paper it has yet to even be hinted at coming into future focus of development.

4 Likes
11

1 and 3 are not conflicting. Complaint one is about mechanics and gameplay, the way you fight or the items you fight with. Some people complain about the purge and prefer new or old. I agree to a large extent with that complaint, like how legendary weapons became consumables and how certain weapons get changed.
A lot of these changes just feel like they are made ā€˜just for the sake of itā€™, to shake things up, rather than to add something new or improve on it.
Complaint two is specifically about content or the lack of new content more precisely. About there being a different map that gets very little new content(Siptah).

Another base map would be nice, I would also like to see more dungeons. Dont even have to be large. A smaller but interesting dungeon can be fun.

6 Likes
12

New dungeons would be nice as well, but would only add at most another few hours of interest before becoming as mundane as the current dungeons. However adding a completely new map that your character is automatically transfered to upon completing the endgame story of EL would add several days if not months to the current endgame loop. Unfortunately that is impossible due to server limitations. For instance on private console servers like mine its limited to only 10G of RAM and once the RAM gets above 7G crashing and lag becomes unbearable.

4 Likes
13

Iā€™ve been asking for something like the quick stack for a while. But the rest of it?

The UI changes Iā€™d like to have seen would have been cosmetic, and informational. Like having the rest of the furnace/forge recipes on the left side.
Or the rest of the campfire recipes.

One of the BRs I played, had content like different style UIs. Think what could be done just with the cosmetics of the UI.

3 Likes
14

Youā€™re right, 1 good thing asked for. But couldnā€™t that have simply been implemented on its own? It also overtakes Give Allā€¦ why combine them?! Especially being thereā€™s blank button placeholdersā€¦

2 Likes
15

Iā€™ll admit though, technical limitations aside i would enjoy being funneled to a new map with the option to still revisit the exiled lands in some form.

That said, technical limitations and most likely studio capacity to do it justice would likely be the big hindering factors.

2 Likes
16

(PC player, rather than console, so Iā€™m aware Iā€™m on the lucky side of at least some of the buggyness - you guys have it worse, I know.) Full agreement on points 1,2 and 4. 3 Iā€™m not so bothered by - playing on Siptah (and Savage Wilds the ā€˜premiereā€™ modded map) just led to me wanting to go back to the Exiled Lands - but I can see why others might want new maps. But for me the damage is pretty much already done. I just spent an hour in the game - first time in a couple of months - I doubt Iā€™ll be trying again, at least not any time soon.

I wonā€™t claim I didnā€™t get my moneyā€™s worth - I got thousands of hours out of this game and thatā€™s a really good rate for the price. But it still feels like a sad ending.

4 Likes
17

Indeed. But as Iā€™ve said in the past ā€œYou canā€™t build a house on a broken foundation.ā€ But at this point the devs are trying to build a mansion on a broken foundation intended for a house. That being said as much as I hate to admit it, the best option would to be cease development of CE and rebuild it from the ground up on a newer engine and with enough foundation to accommodate future expansion.

2 Likes
18

Imagine you work at a company that provides lunch for everyone at the office. And that lunch is chicken, every single day. Some days itā€™s chicken soup, other days itā€™s roast chicken, and occasionally you get wings, but itā€™s always chicken. On top of that, sometimes they serve it cold, so not even the most fanatical chicken-lovers get to enjoy their lunch consistently.

So naturally, people start complaining about how having chicken every day is boring and also about all the times they got their food cold.

After a while, the company sends out an announcement that theyā€™ve listened to complaints and implemented measures to improve, starting next week.

The weekend comes and goes, and on Monday people go get their ā€œnewā€ and ā€œimprovedā€ lunch. The differences are notable. The lunch is now served on paper plates with fun new designs on them that change every week. Also, the silverware is now plastic, painted in bright primary colors. And if the portions are too small for you, now you have an option to pay $10 to add chicken nuggets to your lunch.

Thing is, itā€™s still chicken every single day, except now it has more salt and pepper. And the plastic silverware canā€™t even cut it properly. Oh, and remember how they used to serve it cold occasionally? That still happens, but now itā€™s occasionally undercooked.

So people start complaining even louder:

  1. People who remember eating the chicken without excessive salt and pepper are saying how it just doesnā€™t taste the same anymore.
  2. Some are pissed off, because no one asked for the shіtty plastic knives.
  3. Yet others are complaining about how itā€™s still just chicken.
  4. Even chicken lovers find it a bit excessive to pay $10 for a handful of chicken nuggets.

The management just canā€™t understand how their workers can be so impossible to please. They canā€™t figure out how to fix the problem. After all, their demands and complaints are contradictory: a bunch of people want to go back to old chicken recipe, while at the same time a bunch of them complain about the chicken being boring. Canā€™t they make up their minds?

How the hell can the problem be solved if every change is met with resistance? Why canā€™t the workers understand that changing the plates and the silverware was an indispensable part of improving the lunch?

And how come they donā€™t understand that selling $10 nuggets to some of them is what makes it possible to keep serving lunch to all?

16 Likes
19

LOL wow you took my OP and made it into the perfect analogy in a unique and very understandable way. Kudos my man, absolutely brilliant.

7 Likes
20

Both Console and PC face the same problems when faced with changes to base game. PC at least has mods that cushion the blow, though judging from your comment that cushion can only absorb so much?

And they canā€™t say they are completely unable add mod support on console. Several games now have added it post launch now.

2 Likes