Dear Funcom,
Conan Exiles is gorgeous and a triumph of potential, but I don’t feel that persistent multiplayer is necessarily where it lies.
I get on a multiplayer official server and it’s just eyesores of overcrowding, unoccupied trash structures as far as the eye can see and I don’t want to build anything and just want to leave and go play single player because of how much more beautiful it is. The decay system works in my mind, but what I WOULD consider adding is maybe a range limit to how far a clan (or, if solo, the individual player) can build from their first foundation stone (maybe call it the “anchor foundation stone” or “isolation stone” or something, or just “first stone”, let’s call it the “anchor” for now as this is its function) in order to force them to remove buildings entirely if they wish to move their base to a different location and thus reduce overcrowding of structures and the pervasive shadow of abandonment over the entire game world, which is what really ruins it for me. Consider, a Lego building looks much better on its own with the extra pieces still stashed in the box rather than laying strewn around it in disorder. With the addition of each player to the clan, similarly to how this affects your clan thrall limit, the building range limit from said first foundation stone could be extended. You could even implement a system to allow the players to mark a different stone as their anchor foundation stone. Potentially you could even have a new building piece that is a thrall pot on top of a foundation stone to serve as the anchor, since the thrall pot itself already has a feeding range of its own. That’s just an idea off the top of my head for the very little I’ve seen of multiplayer. More importantly…
I feel the ripples of a goldmine beneath the surface of a co-op Skyrim-killer here. I feel like you could slap some more lore, events, purges and vocalized npcs with quests or needs right on top of the game you’ve already created and it would bring games from the Elder Scrolls and Borderlands series to their knees. The potential of your game feels strongly directed towards IMMERSION.
With the existing survival system, I wouldn’t change your new thrall system much, I’d leave thralls as “hands-off” and “zero-maintenance” as they are, as, hey, they’re supposed to be capable of fending for themselves, BUT, consider the idea of maybe a few special npcs, thralls or pets placed to be found around the world (or via quests) who offer more interaction (whether quests, unique abilities or recipes, dialogue, reactions, the ability to command them to interact with placeables or to perform emotes, etc) but who ALSO have survival requirements: the dependent thrall/pet, let’s say.
You could make all that an expansion that gets slapped over top and people would pay AAA value for it, because they’d effectively have a co-op Skyrim sandbox to lose themselves in.
I love it enough for it to be one of my 1000 hour games as is, but I feel that there are boatloads of other players just waiting for elements like this to arrive in your beautiful game. If it weren’t possible to accomplish this somehow with this current installment of Conan then you might want to at least consider it for your next Conan game.
That’s my two cents. If you guys like this enough to feel compelled to contact me for more ideas I consent to you using my email associated with this account for this purpose.
Robert E Howard and Funcom rock!
edit
(If a player/clan were fleeing a wipe)…a player could re-designate their “anchor” foundation stone anytime as one of the radial actions interacting with it. They could just rebuild somewhere else and the base they fled would vanish.
What could be even COOLER… would be to be able to CLAIM someone else’s structures after removing them (say a time-gate after a person abandons their “anchor” foundation stone, wherein anyone could take ownership one of the empty structure’s stones as their own new “anchor” stone, thus allowing them to inherit entire structures - this would be very true to the essence of the world of Conan where civilizations constantly conquered and replaced each other throughout its history)
***ALSO: when I suggest “quests”, I do NOT mean adding a quest journal with quest markers all over the map and crap like that, one of the biggest draws to this game was the way in which nothing slapped me across the face at the start with some mundane objectives. One of the best aspects of playing the game for the first time was the fact that all I got were some contextual controls. I’ve never had such an organic experience playing any other game in singleplayer, and it felt like truly natural exploration and discovery, and indeed I made it my personal goal to play alone just so I wouldn’t get spoilers on discovering things from other players, and I can count on one hand the number of times I looked something up online in over 1000 hours of gameplay. I like how simply the lore is presented. When I say quests, I mean simply the addition of vocalized npcs who will reward you in some way for doing certain things (maybe even thralls that join you as a reward, among the standard fare of items, coin, or even other quests, whatever, yes it’s been done, BUT A LOT OF PLAYERS OF FANTASY GAMES LIVE FOR THIS ASPECT).
ALSO, my idea for the “anchor” foundation stone with the range limit on building away from it would absolutely not work in singleplayer/co-op, that would be a multiplayer feature only, as in singleplayer/co-op the draw is building bases around the map to end up with a populated world and a little empire of your own for you and your co-op buddies.
I realize fully that implementing the “anchor” placement in multiplayer would make it impossible for a clan to have map rooms around the map to facilitate travel, but honestly, on the other side of that coin, defensively it breaks the game to have players teleporting all over the map anyways - it’s Conan, if you want to get there then get on your horse (literally) and go there. Either the world of Conan is fully merciless or not, there shouldn’t be too many shortcuts, hardship is what makes the investment in the world worth while, in my opinion.
At this point I guess I’m up to my “three cents”… Just ideas. Just love the game. Just greedily hoping for even more enjoyment out of it at this point, lol!