Good morning Internet people, and welcome back the weekly community newsletter! We hope you’ve missed us and are happy to see us back in newsletter action.
We’re one month (and then some) out from the full launch of Conan Exiles, but work on the game is not slowing down. There are still bugs to fix, exploits to remove and balancing and optimizations to implement, and since launch we’ve rolled out several hotfixes to improve various aspects of the game.
We know that there still are some stability issues on consoles, that the Purge isn’t working as intended and that the decay system needs some updates and fixes. Everything is getting its due diligence. We may not be able to respond to everything we see, but we’re keeping track of bug reports and feedback from the community to prioritize tasks among the dev team.
Finally, we want to take a quick moment to talk about exploits. We’re receiving reports through our Exploit Hunters program every day and we’re working diligently to reproduce these exploits and fix them as we learn of them. We want to make it absolutely clear that we are not endorsing exploits of any kind, despite what people online might tell you. Using a bugged mechanic to gain an advantage over your opponents or the game in general is not okay in our book.
Roadmap update
In case you missed it, we announced what we have planned for game in the future. Our roadmap consists of major updates, minor updates, and paid cosmetic DLC that will add new content, mechanics and gameplay to Conan Exiles. We’ve announced some new dungeons, a system for taming pets, further updates to the combat system, and an easier way to download and install mods. Finally, we announced the Imperial East Pack, a pack of Khitai inspired weapons, armor, placeables and building pieces. Check out our blog for more information.
We are also currently working on stabilizing a huge patch containing over 500 changes, adjustments and fixes. These range from smaller worldbuilding fixes, animation updates, hitbox changes and audio updates, to much larger updates like combat balancing, Purge changes and new attacks for bosses. This patch will come to Testlive very soon and then be rolled out to the live game at a later date.
What the teams have been working on in the past week(s):
Every Friday, the development team meets up to highlight and talk about what they’ve been working on recently: New content and features, bugs that have been fixed, and things to come down the pipeline. To not make this newsletter overly long we’re only sticking to the highlights. Even if something isn’t explicitly mentioned things are still being worked on “behind the scenes”, and we’ll mention these when they’re relevant.
Vanguard
Our intrepid Vanguard are once again at the forefront in our battle against the bugs and exploits, while also optimizing existing systems and supporting any of the other teams as need be. The past week they have, among other things, been working on the decay system to help alleviate the issues with land claim griefing that we’ve been seeing on official servers. We know how much this affects players and so we want to take whatever necessary steps we can to fix the problem.
We’ve also made some tools to improve workflow for game designers that help them fill out dungeons and camps. It’s minor in terms of impact for the players, but it makes life easier for our designers.
Tools
From the Tools team comes a neat little utility program designed to make it easier for players to run their own dedicated servers in Conan Exiles. We’re going to be rolling this out on the forums very soon for you guys to test for yourself, but we thought we’d give you a quick introduction to its purpose and why we made it.
Setting up your own server isn’t necessarily the easiest thing in the world and so one of our Tools Programmers whipped up a launcher in order to improve the process. The Dedicated Server Launcher lets you easily get over some common hurdles you might run into when trying to set up your own server, and you’ll easily be able to set your admin password, change ports, change server region, change the max player count, test port availability on your router, and even switch between Default and Testlive. You don’t need to deal with command lines and everything is presented in a clean and visually simplified user interface.
Once it’s been downloaded all you have to do is run the program, edit the parameters you want, and simply hit a button to start your server. As mentioned this will be made available on our forums (for free) and will at some point become available as part of the game client.
Tech
The Tech team's main focus these past few weeks have been optimizing the game across all platforms, optimizing server performance, fixing crashes, and implementing other quality of life fixes to create a smoother experience. Over on the PS4 they've been working on fixing the leading source of crashes and the Xbox One version's out of memory crashes are currently being addressed as well.Finally, they recently rolled out an optimization patch to the console server lists. They should now populate quicker, with further improvements coming down the line to improve how we convey information in the server list.
Monster Hunters & Terraformers
We’re combining the two content teams this week because there’s a lot of crossover between them right now. Both the Monster Hunters and Terraformers teams are working on different aspects of the new dungeons, in addition to developing some extra stuff on the side. The Monster Hunters are planning out which monsters are going to go in which dungeons (with some help from the Art team) while the Terraformers are handling the design of the dungeons themselves.
Beyond the dungeons the Monster Hunters are making further improvements to creature combat and behavior. That includes improving boss attacks and animations, changing up the turn animations on creatures, and expanding the knockback system. Monster attacks will be able to do smaller and bigger knockbacks depending on the attack, so you don’t get knocked on your face all the time. In general, monsters will look better while in combat.
Over on the Terraformers side they’ve been working on implementation for the Imperial East Pack and the Pets system, which we also announced last week. You’ll get to see more of both of these in the future.
Wrapping up
We had a lot of ground to cover this week and we hope you all enjoyed reading about what’s been going on over at the studio lately. Our final bit of news is that we’re back to streaming again, on Mixer and Twitch. Going forward they’re going to be split between the regular dev streams you were used to during Early Access and community streams that showcase cool stuff from the community, from fan-art and screenshots to videos, Twitch clips, mods and game modes. Feel free to send us your stuff on the forums and you may get featured on an upcoming stream!
Our next stream will be on Friday, June 15, at 5pm CEST. Tune in and you’ll definitely get to see some cool stuff! There’s also going to be a 2x exp weekend on the 22nd to the 24th of June!
That’s it for this week!
Sincerely,
Funcom
