What is your favorite game mechanic in Conan Exiles?

Greetings everyone!

Following the fantastic reception and discussions gathered in our previous poll (What's your favorite way to play Conan Exiles?), we’d like to continue it this week with a new question.

This time, we’re interested in knowing what your favorite game mechanic in the game is: from building to the Purge, what tickles your fancy when you’re out in the Exiled Lands?
For this poll, we’ve decided to offer multiple choices as some of these mechanics are tightly intertwined and it could be difficult to choose one without the other. Also, like in our previous poll, you can’t see the results until you’ve voted just so it doesn’t influence your honest opinion! No peeking!

What is your favorite mechanic?

  • Exploration
  • Survival
  • Building
  • Crafting
  • Combat (specify on next poll)
  • Dungeons
  • Thrall mechanic
  • The Purge
  • Gods and avatars

0 voters

Since combat can entail different aspect for each player, you can specify which one is your favorite. This time, single choice!

What is your combat preference?

  • Combat against environment
  • Combat against player
  • Raiding and siege

0 voters

As always, we’re interested in knowing your reasons on why you selected those mechanics as well as any stories you might have that made you love (or dislike!) a particular feature! Let us know in the comments below!

9 Likes

Building.

I’ve always loved building games, starting with the original SimCity back in 1989 when I got my first gaming computer. Whether it’s a Tower Defense game, or an RTS, or a 4X game, seeing the fruits of my labor (or the labor of my loyal minions) gives me great pleasure.

And the building mechanics of Conan Exiles give me more freedom to unleash my creativity upon the poor Exiled Lands unlike any other game. I can design, build, decorate, furnish and populate anything from tiny fisherman’s huts to entire villages and castles. I can make clothes for the people living in the places I build. Even if it has no other function than serve as a gigantic doll house, I can play with it for hours and hours.

And then I can go murder a world boss or two when I feel like doing something destructive to counterbalance the constructive things I do.

9 Likes

I loved the purge mechanic when it actually accumulated enough progress to proc, even for a solo player.

It gave building and thralls a purpose in PvE. It gave purpose to the way one builds a base, where one considers what type of thralls are placed around the base. It gave one motivation to properly gear the thralls and use animals as shock troops.

Back when purges happened whether you were active or not, gave a true feeling of “survival” within a PvE setting.

Navigating the beautiful landscape is quite nice with the climbing mechanics.

6 Likes

Oh so hard to choose but I did. I’m not going to say what I chose but it’s been my favorite mechanic since I started to understand it. :wink:

Good luck Exiles.

3 Likes

Ignasis I love these community poll questions and discussions. They are positive, and predominantly seem to generate friendly and open discussion. Please keep them coming!

Although I like literally ALL of these aspects of the game, the two stand outs for me were Exploration and Gods and Avatars. I love being inquisitive, roaming around in the beautiful diverse array of biomes and landscapes. However I also adore this games religion system (not just the Gods and Avatars component of it). It offers so many creative building and aesthetic possibilities, and items. Although…(and you all knew this was coming) I do so wish Crom had some more in the way of this games outstanding features. :mountain_snow: :metal:

Its also Combat Against Environment for me all the way. I enjoy fighting creatures and factions from Hyborian lore more than dueling and sieges. But to each man his own fun.

7 Likes

As voted, I am fond of the mix of exploration, building, and combat, but also included the Purge.

I play on a barely-more-than-solo home server, so haven’t been able to provoke many Purges, but having seen the range of game suggestions for quite a while it looks to me like the Purge is the mechanic with the best opportunity to grow.

Exploration tapers off as you become familiarized with the map. Building also starts to slow down, naturally taking more time to make bigger additions and loses some incentive as more and more territory becomes “civilized.”

Consensus is the map size has hard system limits. The notion of a random procedural map sounds cool, but the game wasn’t designed around that, and even with a magic wand there isn’t a way to knit all the game’s lorestones and storylines to a random map.

A means to hasten and provoke the Purge on behalf of a particular clan or player, however, seems less likely to hit hard system limits as it’s an existing feature of the game. Building conventional-looking defenses becomes more meaningful and rewarding if there is pressure available to test them.

Unlike defending from players, a castle is the right tool for the job against a Purge, and if I had some kind of watchtower or signal beacon fire structure to craft that directly hastens and attracts the Purge, those building and combat mechanics could get more and sharper use without taking on all the power of Admin.

4 Likes

The only thing I don’t like about pvp, so far, is that it only ends with the one who has the most heals, appropriately. Other than that, the light RP that occurs before pvp encounters makes the game more fun. I don’t use the mic, so I rely on emotes.

The fallout aspect of gods and avatars is good. It’s disabled, however.

The thralls and the purge remind me of a game of chess. It takes strategy to build proper defenses. Fun.

I still have lot to explore and dungeons to do.

I have had fun with pve and cheesy boss fights, solo. I think I prefer pvp now that battle standards exist.

One thing FC overlooked is achievement points. I like those points shown on these forums. It is its own mechanic, and players really like to compete for the highest achievement points. I mean this is beyond journey steps. It is something you can also share cross-platform, not just console based trophies.

2 Likes

Trying to figure if this supposed to be a mechanic i would prefer it it worked to its potential, or the thing that brings me back, Potential base, I would like Raiding Siege, combat. But as is, well, social interaction with my crew is not listed. I guess building and crafting because it gives me something to do while online with my crew. But i can’t really vote that i have a true favorite.

1 Like

Building. Right there on the top. Everything else doesn’t even begin to hold a candle next to it.

Ok maybe exploration, after all you do need to find the right spot to build. Location is important! But man, isn’t this the game that gives you the most pleasure by just being able to build entire cities out of nothing!!! And so realistic too, down to everything that you need to craft to make a simple brick. The satisfaction you get from solving an architectural problem is amazing, and this is coming from someone with an architectural background (biased opinion ftw). I can spend days or even weeks tweaking a base until I find it perfect (or close to).

I wish there was a bit more to the gods and lore than what we have right now. You build altars and summon avatars and that’s it. Nothing else, no development, your choice at the beginning means nothing as you can have all religions in the game. Could really do with some more development.

8 Likes

Restraint, my dear Halk. With a game like this you must have restraint. In maybe 3 months I’ll hit 5,000 hours on the PC and I still don’t know the Den, the Dregs, Sobek or Warmaker very well at all. I have always hoped against hope that we’ll get a finished game here, prior to my grinding those dungeons and places for all they’re worth. I am to this day an undersea virgin. I have avoided spoiling too much.

One thing I never get tired of: that drive to action feeling I get when I come around a corner and see Light leathers on a bearer thrall. It’s different from a dopamine pop because in order to capture this object of desire one must focus and be attuned to everything in the area.

1 Like

It was really hard not to select all 9. I went with Building, Combat, Dungeons and Thralling, because those are the aspects that I get most amped up for. But I want to stress that I think the most apt description for me is “greater than the sum of its parts”.

5 Likes

The greatest aspect of Conan Exiles for me is that the game feels so incredibly smooth when just running around and do whatever.

The controls are easy to learn and still offer a great potential skillcap wise, the animations and movements create great immersion.

Unlike other similar games you never get the feel of skittering over terrain, you are actually traveling around it, no bumping off little rocks or hip high ledges becoming impassable obstacles.

The animations of characters feel really organic (except emotes, some of these really need polish) the effort of using motion capture really paying off.

All these little things, the attention to detail on the actual playing part of the gameplay. That is what sets the game apart from its competition.

4 Likes

Man more developers should ask questions like this. So simple and elegant, what part of the games your favorite? And you get statistical feedback as to what to do to make more monies? Win win.

Building and thralls baby. I love building camps and cities. As others have mentioned i do really enjoy my dollhouses. And yes im also really looking forward to a thrall ai update. Gotta make our castles more alive!!

Oh and im also looking forward to more facial hair options, as previously mentioned. :wink: Still making noise for hair and beards!

4 Likes

I don’t enjoy building in this game - its too buggy and chaotic, but, things are nice when it works and there are no problems.

The purge would be one of my favorite features if it wasn’t almost nonfunctional in some parts of the map (many places in the jungle for example) or had some built in configuration.

The map itself is beautiful and great to see what’s around. There are so many nice views people forget that this place is an ancient hell.

1 Like

Building, without a doubt.

For me, building in a game featuring gorgeous hifi visuals* is what it’s all about, it’s what caught my interest initially, other than my perpetual interest in all things to do with everyone’s favorite Barbarian of course, and it’s always been the core of the game for me. Combat, dungeons, thralling and all that are important elements, in so far as the Building aspect cannot stand alone, but those experiences can be had in hundreds of games. Combining them with freeform building is what has been innovative about CE.

Though I do feel inclined to say that I wish there were more point to building a castle/fortress/etc in PvE/singleplayer. The Purge being what it is never really gave much purpose, and well… that was all there ever was to it.

*I tried Minecraft. I just can’t do it, I’m sorry. I want to like that game so much, but I can’t.

2 Likes

@Ignasi. I gotta say, as a true and blue Conan fan the exploring has amazed me from day one. You guys have flooded this game with Conan lore and references to the books, even in that the pirates and giant apes are in the jungle, and the frost Giants of the north!

The latest update to combat really started fine tuning the mechanics to a well polished combat system, and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying it! If the game doesn’t change at all, I will be absolutely content. But, I’m sure I’ll see better things in the future, and for that I thank you!

7 Likes

i choose exploration since when i play , i like to loose myself in your world. i become ( not in a weird way lol ) but i become the character i am playing .
and i choose fighting against the environment , cause servers are kinda laggy and i have less issues on solo type servers.

4 Likes

Dont get me wrong - I like dungeons… but never do them after trying two.
Reason: Single-player
a: Pets stay in the middle after you die and go to entrance (no way to get your stuff off your dead body or your pet)
b: yeah, just not single-player friendly (no respawns should happen in a single-player dungeon, unless you actually leave. (either from spending to much time away, slowly getting through, or merely dying and having to fight naked to get to pet and body to get clothes)

Other than that - would really love to play in the dungeons (explore, etc.)

edit:
I don’t think the ones at the bottom are bad… just the ones that need to be super tweaked, as it were.
(Again, love thralls and would like to like Dungeons more)

1 Like

Love this topic. Also difficult for me to choose. But, I had to say the exploration part of it. I want to see and explore everything on the map. I also like the survival part and building. Using the different DLCs to build different types of bases and in different locations.

3 Likes

I enjoy exploring building and chasing after thralls. My wife however was up at 2AM this morning laying foundations and pillars building bridges as we started new characters again. Good thing it’s our server.

4 Likes