What exactly is the purpose?

Conan Exiles General Discussion Feedback
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There have been a plethora of new ‘additions’ to the game over the last few chapters, many of which aren’t actually additions or even content at all but are simply changes to things that already exist within the game. Changes are not inherently bad, for example the change to the building system that came with the first chapter of the Age of Sorcery was a positive change in my opinion. It showed a though out plan to update an existing system to provide an improved experience and although not every single person will agree that the new system is better than the old one I do believe that the majority of people have either embraced it when it came out or have grown to appreciate it, or at the very least tolerate it over time. That, however, cannot be said of the more recent batch of changes which have been occurring and I would like to ask if @Caroll could take a moment of her time to address these concerns with those people who are able to review these concerns and address them as she herself is only the messenger and go between.

The Potion of Midnight did not need to have it’s crafting location to be changed, especially not to have it changed to only one specific place on the map nor did you have any need to go into peoples inventories and delete their current supply of said potion. For what purpose was this done? This was clearly not done for “player enjoyment”. No one enjoys having a potion which they were previously capable of crafting at their own base suddenly being gatekeeped to a pre-determined location for…reasons? And I can guarantee that no one enjoys having their previously crafted items just suddenly yanked out of their chests and poofed away. So for what good reason was the justification behind this done?

The entire new “radial” system on PC is a massive downgrade over what existed previously. It most assuredly is not a “rework for ease of input” as it is honestly more difficult to use than it was previously. Furthermore the new “menu” system is also not intuitive nor easy to use at all. But more imporatly it brings up another issue all together. Why are we adding MORE STEPS WHEN THEY ARE NOT NEEDED to achieve the same results we were able to achieve before in an easier and more intuitive manner? Why complicate things for the sake of complications sake? Also, what was the freaking reason for removing the stop command?

This is yet another change that made things more complicated for absolutely no reason what so ever and was completely unnecessary. There was no reason to change things AT ALL. Now, we are all aware of the many bugs that this change has cause but that is no the point of this thread, it is the change itself and the the unnecessary nature of it that is the purpose here.

Another completely unnecessary change which was unneeded and has only added steps, complicated the process of accomplishing that which was previously a relatively easy method. And the reasoning behind it was, frankly, insulting.

I’m not even sure where the patch note is where the original change was made, but the change to no longer have your camera move with your mouse while you are in combat was another one of those changes that was wholly unnecessary, unwarranted and utterly shambolic. In the PC gaming world with camera views such as Conan Exiles, for how many decades has this been a core feature? Hell, since EARLY ACCESS this has been a core feature OF THIS GAME, so to suddenly remove this was just… I cannot describe this change without risking another time out on the forums but this change (along with the dye change and the inventory change) pretty much made me stop playing Conan exiles. And your solution was to… ghetto rig a toggle that doesn’t even properly work rather than to just put things back to how they were before hand?

Now to put things into perspective @Caroll I have been playing Funcom games since 2008. No joke, I pre-ordered Age of Conan and played it pretty much daily until I begain playing Conan Exiles back in Early Access. But the Age of War, specifically chapters 3 and 4 broke me. And I have to ask you (not you specifically Caroll, but you FUNCOM), what exactly is the purpose of these mindless changes to systems that worked, if not perfectly, at least BETTER AND EASIER previously to now install these half baked systems that either gatekeep recipes to specific locations, add extra steps that are not necessary, are less intuitive and or more complicated and in pretty much every example I have listed are LESS ENJOYABLE FOR YOUR PLAYERS? What exactly is the purpose??? If there is one, please just let us know. That is all that we really want, a reason. Maybe there is some “bigger picture” that we just are not privy to, and if so great. LET US KNOW! It will make us far more willing to accept these sort of changes and not just assume that you are doing these things just to “fill in the space” and “pad out” the updates. Because that is what it honestly looks like.

Thank you for taking the time to read this (if you actually do).

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The Potion of Midnight got changed because in pvp most people are using it was a escape from raids when someone are almost getting raided the guy was the potion storage in fridges used it to escape running with all loot.
Before it was changed people have to camp the jherbal dg to kill the rat running with loot.

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Moreso than that - people were using this potion to make a safe “exit” from “out of bounds” places on the map. Skybases. Mesh bases. Passed the green fence bases.

While I was not pleased to see this change - I understand why the change was made. It was done in an effort to try to control/limit/reduce the exploitation of other problems with the game. Rather than fix those issues - they elected to impact player convenience.

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But i have to agree most changes they made to game isnt asked from the players , we asked many times to improve the character creation , the repair hammer to have a aoe fixing , the removal from the button " recreate your character" from near the suicide button , the fix for the climbing system , the agility and expertise corrupt perks , the rework from most legendary weapons and armors dont have legendary effects , the rework in pet system and many others.

But they are always ignoring the community and going in ways no one ever asked :sob:

And yeah i hate “age of war” too the combat system is bad most time you fight versus stun lock and lag , the thralls become babys and the new purge just lag the entery server isnt fun because bad AI and in pve people are using it to raid others players bases because you can choose where the purge will apper and when.

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All of the radial and facing changes, as I understand them, were to help add support for and improve support for controllers. Much of this functionality, I believe, is to make the Quality of Life (QoL) better for our gaming console brethren.

I have little love for these changes as I play on a PC with a mouse and keyboard. But in order for them to be able to market this beautiful game over multiple platforms, these changes were necessary. That these changes did make things better/easier for console players and controller users… I can forgive the changes “moving” of my own, personal “cheese.”

Terrible. Everyone agrees.

The only real boon out of the inventory changes and the UI overhaul was the adding of the “QuickStack” button.

These changes were not ideal. There are some who did ask for some of these features. But not at the expense of ease of use. Most of the players are against the Dye Crafting Aircraft Carrier and the need to “dip” your armor piece into the table.

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I agree construction hammer makes it easier.
But the change removed players ability to be able to precraft, share with players who did not own.

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Except that many console/controller users have also expressed how much worse the new ‘system’ is. Likewise, even if this were a clear improvement for console/controllers, that still does not justify moronic decisions such as locking facing in combat (poorly patched, so we can now move in combat, but constantly get locked while harvesting). The game had functioning movement for all control systems - it now has less functional movement with any control system.

Similarly, radial menus - we already had those, and that was fine. The primary change made was to remove mouse pointers and make them less reliably interactable - instead now mouse has to be used to mimic controller movements. This cannot possibly actually be easier from a code perspective either - since they still have to have full code for controller input vs KB/M input - it just removes functionality from KB/M.

Apparently an issue for PVP. While I accept that means it needed ‘fixing’, it is yet another thing lost for everyone else - adding yet more fuel to the fire when certain morons claim after every update that ‘nothing was done for PVP’. (To be clear - many PVPers do not make such claims - but there are always some that do, no matter what has been stripped away from the rest of us to fix something in PVP.)

Agreed - none of this is in any way an improvement. All just downgrade or unnecessary added complication. Removal of the ‘Stop’ command is particularly pointless. The only reason I can come up with for it being that it was a sideways attempt to stop people ‘exploiting’ Al Merayah for instant levelling of thralls. So to ‘fix’ a problem of their own creation, that was only a problem in their minds, they have once again removed basic functions that were used by the rest of us for perfectly reasonable purposes.

Nothing but trash. No added value, just destruction of everything that came before and every lesson learned by the industry across decades. All done with the most arrogant and stupid possible excuses that could be given - ‘no one uses it anyway’…

Pointless, worthless. Makes looted dyes utterly pointless. For many of us, this in effect removes the dye system from the game entirely.

But what does any of this matter to me? In the end, I’ve pretty much quit this game. Doubt I’ll ever do much more than dip a toe in from time to time to see if something (anything at all ever) has actually improved. I no longer have any faith in Funcom. Certainly won’t ever spend another penny on any product they make

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And for anyone who plays legitimately it hasn’t stopped them from walking a fridge to their base :woman_shrugging:

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:100:

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I believe that we have enough speculations why things was changed over the years. Some official answers would be very welcome i say. It seems pointless all these years to debate on players speculations and not actual reasons and decisions that devs took for these matters. Thank you @Oduda for this wonderful effort you did, congratulations!

Ps. I don’t mean to be disrespectful to any of my fellow exiles here, if i did accept my apologies in advance!

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Speculating on game dev decisions is all the rage now. I’ve seen some absolutely vile garbage posted on all manner of forums and comment sections. Devs recieving threats, being called stupid, trash, untalented, lazy, woke, ect. All by people who more than likely have ZERO clue what even goes into making a game work, let alone making it entertaining, and balanced. I’m not saying Funcom hasn’t crapped the bed more than once. Hell, I stopped playing for many months because of said crap, however, never once have I resorted to speculation, or name calling, because I have no idea what goes into these decisions. For all I know they had wildly different plans, but are constrained by technical issues. I just don’t know. So I watch, wait, and hope they can get on the right track again. Like a rational, educated adult.

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Wouldn’t it be nice if we had fewer reasons to speculate? :wink:

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Who in this thread has resorted to name calling? Point out where you are seeing it, because all I see is calling changes and development decisions—as well as the reasons given for them—awful, stupid, etc. No person has been called any names as far as I can tell.

As for speculation of intent, or why this is done, that’s an open question per the thread title, and what else is one to do when no answers are actually given and these terrible decisions are made without rhyme or reason?

For all I know they had wildly different plans, but are constrained by technical issues. I just don’t know

Sounds like speculation to me, what’s different about your speculation from everyone else’s? Apparently, there is no problem when you do it!

So I watch, wait, and hope they can get on the right track again. Like a rational, educated adult.

As do the rest of us, and because most of us like this game and do not hold it against the developer or blame their team members personally, rather actually respect them enough to want to voice our concerns and criticisms here in hopes they are in some way responded to (as they sometimes are, would living settlements have been disabled on official servers if not for the community reaction?), it is assumed the devs are themselves adults and can take some well-intentioned criticism without having to be treated like children.

For that matter, it is more than a wee bit disrespectful that your statement reads to me as implying the rest of us are like irrational children. I assume in good faith that’s not intended.

To paraphrase game designer JE Sawyer and something I saw him say years and years ago, if you can’t take the heat, you don’t belong in the industry. Why? Because, he explained, it’s through criticism that one learns best what to improve upon on their own games, and even when it’s not very nice or is disrespectful or personal, there’s something to be learned from and it’s the result of your own decisions as a dev that caused such a strong reaction in a player in the first place.

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Please don’t take my statement personally. I wasn’t implying that you shouldn’t be able to come to a forum and express your opinion. Neither was I suggesting that you acted in any sort of unsavory way. I completely agree with most of your complaints. I suppose I should’ve added a disclaimer like the person I was replying to. I was just trying to say that most people that make assumptions based on player reactions are usually grossly unqualified to make such assumptions, especially in light of the lack of info coming from funcom, or are just flat out rude and incapable of compromise. None of what I am referring to is present in your post. I apologize if my rebuttle came of as rude or presumptious.

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It always has been.

I’ve been gaming online since the days of text-based MUD’s and local-dial-in BBS’s, and there have always a portion of people gaming online who did these things. The only real difference is that there are so many more people gaming online nowadays, so the raw numbers of people behaving badly have also gone up.

In no way am I suggesting that it’s good for people to behave this way, just a reminder that it’s not new, it’s not just “now”, it’s always been there.

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Because potion of midnight was used for practically free personal teleportation from around the map. This had major pvp consequences.

You drank the potion, and exited the dungeon immediately: lo and behold: you teleported across the map.

Basically this tidbit here told me you dont really know what you are complaining about.

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Absolutely agree. I have no doubt that this behavior has been going on since the advent of entertainment as a whole. People have, do, and will always, suck. The difference now, is that people are far more comfortable hurling insults and death threats around without consequence.

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Absolutely. But alas…

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Come on, dude. If you’re going to dismiss the whole post because of that, then you missed what @Oduda’s complaining about.

Yeah, sure, all changes have reasons behind them. If you happen to know the reason, then you’re ahead of the curve, and that is what the complaint is about.

Sometimes the change is motivated by one specific game mode and if you don’t play that mode (or follow closely the forum threads dedicated to that mode) the change will seem arbitrary.

Sometimes the change is there to pave the way for future changes, but if it makes the experience worse for the players and it’s left like that for months or even years, then it looks like a half-assed attempt rather than one step closer to some grand vision.

Sometimes the change happens because the game designer looked for something they can improve and chose something they can fit into the time and resources the team has for that particular release, but if they had waited until they can invest more resources in a better solution, the players would have been happier.

All of these things have something in common: communication.

It shouldn’t be up to me to create a forum account and obsessively follow threads about the game mode I’m not interested in, just to understand why my preferred game mode got the short end of the stick. It shouldn’t be up to you to explain it to me, either.

It should be part of someone’s job at Funcom.

This is why I don’t agree with @Dinner_for_wolves that “people suck” because they speculate about the devs’ motivations. If you’re speculating, that means that: 1) the change was a net negative for you, and 2) you don’t know why it was made. It’s true that the devs can’t please everyone with their changes, but when their changes displease significant chunks of their playerbase, they need to communicate about it.

Insults and death threats and personal attacks have no justification or excuse. I’m not defending that. But rampant speculation is a sign that the studio failed to properly engage their players.

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