Why did Funcom break the Dodge

Conan Exiles General Discussion
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Well considering their inconsistency with several other things, i strongly disagree that they had thought ahead of all of this.

For instance, do you know how much armor thag has? 600. Is that a problem? Absolutely not, we have plenty of armor pen now.

Do you know how much armor kinscourge has? Whooping 84. Since released, and 84 armor was relevant back then. What is 84 armor now?

Even more ironic is the fact that kinscourge drops one of the items used to leave the game, which should make him one of the endgame bosses, while thag is just another extra side dungeon with exclusive gear.

Yetis? They have up to 12k hp and 30 damage. What is 30 damage? You kill tier 4 warrios for 20% chance of getting one. The black yeti requires you to farm hearts of the sands.

What is the point of Yetis nowadays?

why does Kinscourge gives 40k xp while Explosive traps grant 140k exp?

Black ice VS reinforced stone walls?

This list can go all day if you think about it.

The problem is that at the same time this kind of things happen in the game for months, we have to give them the benefit of the doubt and pretend that they know what they are doing, that this is all intented and are the best decisions.

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But again, we can speculate all day about what is intended or not, but we do know they made the dodge change intentionally and know all of the things you mentioned and have not changed them (yet).

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‘Bad’ is also such a subjective term, and we will not likely reach agreement on this point. One mans bad is another mans masterpiece. And when it comes to entertainment mediums, there is only perspective. But here is how I personally view the change. Is is better than no dodge at all: yes. Is it inferior to the old dodge in every conceivable way: yes. It has rendered certain playstyles either unplayable or much more restrictive, with no real benefit to accompany that. So…is it ‘bad’: sadly, yes.

No problems. I always show other peoples viewpoints courtesy and respect, even if we happen to disagree. :+1:

This was a poor choice in example (for me). I explicitly stated “and to a lesser extent the Scorpion King”. For the record I am happy yhat it has helped you to dodge the spinning tail attack more effectively. However, I found it was still possible to roll clear of the attack area using the old dodge. The problem is that now attacks such as the double claw strike are a guaranteed hit for it, as even if* you manage to dodge the first blow, the iframes expire before the second, and the dodge doesnt have the distance to get us clear of the attack.

Sorry but hard, resounding disagreement on that one. So if the dodge isnt the right tool (which it was for the last 1.5 years) then what on earth is…!? Run around the enemy in a circle to dodge instead of using the dodge to dodge? People always say ‘just use a Shield’, when they know full well that it isnt a solution. And this is coming from someone who uses the War Axe & Shield combination as their preferred loadout. The shield only guards against the players front, not back, and robs us of our movement while raised. Meaning that if we are facing multiple enemies (eg-Kinscourge in Black Keep, Thag in the Wine Cellar dungeon, inside New Asgaarth), it is inneffective. This is further hampered by a lack of knockback and fast enemy recovery after striking the shield. When we accurately dodge the first hit, but have no recourse available to dodge the multiple successive strikes, it spells doom when fighting powerful enemies such as the Kinscourge.

While I have no problem with large groups being hard or at times fatal. However, Singleplayers and online Solo players should still be able to defeat them. Something we could still do beforehand, and still derive a descent challenge from the group. But thanks to the ridiculously slow dodge recovery speeds, they just rain multiple free blows upon the player, while they finish their animation. Furthermore, its lack of distance means we can no longer get clear and regroup. This directly intersects with my next counterpoint: healing.

As I am a console player I use a controller. There is none this one click instantly consumes 3 healing items, and also maintains movement in the process. Every time we open the radial wheel and click on 1 item the radial wheel auto-closes and all movement grinds to a complete halt.we then have to repeat the process for the next 2, any hope we dont get hit (ie-the previous healing affect get interrupted) in the process. The slow, short roll animations only exasperated the issue.

For the record, I agree with your unobtainium analogy.

While feedback seems to indicate that PvE won as a result of this change, PvP, and Singleplayer and Online Solo play lost very heavily. Their very independence! Here is the thing for me. Many people have told me why they like the new dodge, but few if any can tell me why it was necessary. The answer is elementary; it wasnt.

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Like you said, we’re probably not going to agree on that. I hope that, despite that, you don’t mind if I keep sharing some details from my own point of view :slight_smile:

It’s not really an attempt to change your mind. To be honest, it’s mostly because I have a meeting soon enough that trying to do serious work is counterproductive, so I might as well have a conversation on the forum :stuck_out_tongue:

Yeah, it was possible, I won’t deny that. However, every time I managed it, it was because I got lucky, not because I timed things correctly. It’s entirely possible that I just suck at timing :wink:

Even if you’re dodging laterally instead of backwards? I might be misremembering, since I’ve only been refreshing without playing actively for a few weeks, but I could’ve sworn that the sideways dodge worked fine.

Yep, that’s what I said, too. Shields are way less useful than they should be. We need better blocking and/or a parry/counter move. Using dodge for everything just seems like a Golden Hammer and I really dislike that kind of game design.

I agree, but I think that’s how it is right now, in general. I play online and although I have a full clan, they’ve all either stopped playing on that server or quit the game. Since Funcom rolled out the new dodge, I’ve died to large groups a handful of times, mostly when I get cocky or when a really bad lag spike hits.

I think your problem might not be with large groups being impossible or too hard to defeat without a group, but instead:

From what I’ve seen, console controls for Conan Exiles are really bad :frowning:

Just out of curiosity, do you disagree with Alex’s explanation? I don’t play PVP, so I can’t really judge his explanation based on the personal experience that I don’t have.

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I actually prefer the new dodge roll. Since it has been around, more and more people are actually engaging in combat PVP wise. Before, the style was more spam rolling and poke, cancel poke, spam roll. Akin, IMO, to pray and spray of a lot of FPS pvp. And i detest those. There is a certain satisfaction in dueling 1 v 2 in a skirmish of 3 v 6 (basically everyone pick a target and work them) where using the dodge to manipulate the 2 enemies into hitting each other. But that is me, tactical v spam. I actually avoided the sonic meta, and would just not engage. Never felt fun. As for battling NPC’s taking them on slowly, instead of going full berserk, has been my style with the dodge. And tactically avoiding being cornered, and looking for the out if caught in a group of NPC’s is actually quite satisfying. for bow PVP players, i tend to use cover and reduce areas where there is straight line of site. Tactical over berserk.

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So you basically dislike this:

@CodeMage
This was a fun fight we had in April 2019, when spear meta was at it’s peak.

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Group fighting is almost impossible vs skeleton or units that do not get interrupted. Not saying that’s entirely the new dodge’s fault, but for me, as a pc keyboard + mouse player, feels completely awful. Not to mention that its too slow to even dodge some attacks that have more than one strike, like kinscourge triple sword slash.

Like i said previously, i’m pretty sure that solo content feels bad right now because they did most PVE considering the old dodge active at the moment they made those enemies, and after changing the dodge well, they forgot about the bosses…

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yep. it was swap, poke, swap, poke, roll,roll, roll, swap,poke. All were done hoping the gods smiled down and they rolled in front of you.

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You left out the ceremonial dip dip dip over his corpse. Not saying it’s right, I’m just saying it happened.

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Iced tea anyone?

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Of course not buddy. I value freedom above all else, and even when I disagree, I still respect other peoples points of view.

Almost all of the time, yes unfortunately. The same applies with dodging backwards. The problem seems to be that the new dodge does not offer enough distance to get us out of harms way. In the case of the larger bosses the first blow (correctly timed) misses, however all successive one land, because we dont land outside of their reach. And in the case of large groups, it is because while we avoid the blows of 1-2, the others still swarm us and land free hits before we can complete the animation. If we are encircled, its goodnight all.

Definately agree here. In addition to their standard blocking, if we had a timing mechanic that would help. By this I mean that essentially, if we press the block button at the right time at point impact, it would knockback or stagger the enemy. That would help with their usefulness.

I disagree. And I have seen other Singleplayers players on PC saying the same thing. The problem lies with the design of the dodge itself. Its the combination of the distance being to short, and the animation being too slow. If it were only one or the other, we might be able to work through this, but as it stands now, it is just impossible to avoid free blows. The controller primarily adds its handicaps to the healing aspect of things (which is again impacted by the roll distance).

Which statement/part do you refer to? I cannot recall all of his statement. Aside from that the change was made to “make certain weapons more viable in PvP”. In which case I do emphatically disagree, and I am not affraid to say so.

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I think the dodge change would have less impact if there was a proper parry action.

I understand why the dodge changed. Its more realistic and people cant just fast dodge out of combat and run off quickly. The slow dodge is more realistic yes and while I dont mind it, it lacks the context of parrying. I dont mean quick parrying either, I mean big sword conan style heavy sword blocking and stuff. When Rexor and Conan fought at the end of the movie, it was big blows, sword on sword. Thats whats missing imo to give the slow roll context.

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I understand that Funcom wanted to make heavy armor more competitive, and I appluad that. However, while they ‘fixed’ one armor type, they have now broken the other two in the process, to the point where as @Barnes correctly pointed out, they now need to improve medium and light armor, as they are no longer viable. There were other ways to achieve this without tearing the old system down and starting fresh. For example they could have instead:

  1. Move the classic Nimble Tumbler perk (dodge one weight class lower) from level 4 down to level 3 to make it more affordable. Then everyone would have been using the medium and light animations, bypassing the hop dodge.
  2. Give heavy armor strong bleed/debuff resistance or immunity. So many people suggested this, however it seems they opted for the nuclear option again.
  3. Change only heavy armor’s roll animation to the new dodge, but leave light and medium armors as they were. Then they wouldnt now need to be buffed, and Singleplayers and Solo players wouldnt be having the issues we are now.

Ok I am not someone who likes to simply sit back and criticise with the benefit of hindsight, so here is my suggestion to improve the new dodge:

  1. When investing points into Agility, have Agility points also increase the speed or distance (preferably both) of the dodge, as opposed to just the hit time coming out of it. If we are going to make the Agility attribute govern the dodge, the make it govern ALL aspects of it, not just one out of the many facets.
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It was about 1 player being able to take on a group of 10 players in PVP situations. Here’s a quote from @Multigun’s recap, because I’m too lazy right now to go skippity-skip through the video looking for Alex’s explanation :wink:

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I suspect that this is a trap to divert the discussion, and find and open up weakness in my argument. I see no reason or relevance to bringing Alex’s statement into this. His statement has no bearing on what the aftermath which has resulted for Singleplayers and Soloplayers as a result of the unecessary change. Not to mention PvPers for that matter. But sure ill play ball, even if it means standing right in the centre of the firing line. I imagine ill be coping some serious blowback for this, but so be it.

Ok I have read the statement (thanks for finding it and pasting it here :smiley:), and I will now say the following. I am standing firm in my assertions, and disagree with Alex’s statement in very strong terms. My reasons are as follows. For one he has clearly generalised and exaggerated the numbers. There odds of 1 player defeating 10 simultaneously, while not outright impossible, are highly improbable. And even so, the odds would still be weighted accordingly against the 1, even more so than a 1 vs 1 engagment. Moveover, if 1 player has the skill and cunning to bring down 10 opponents simultaneously, then to me that is a victory well earned. The whole Conan universe is interwoven with lore about overcoming enormous odds in battle. Allow me to demonstrate:

The change was not even necessary, or for that matter even called for. It came about because they listened to a very small handful of casual players crying on Reddit who didnt want to invest the time to git gud. There next to nothing in the way of threads here on the forum calling for changes (or should I say nerfs) to the dodge system. And certainly not with any regularity or community support. Now despite the clear and overwhelming majority of feedback on this change being negative, we have to live with the fallout from this decision! Singleplayer and Solo are play no longer even viable without a massively overpowered thrall (aka-auto battler) at our sides at all time. To give you some idea of how bad it has gotten, up until the Mounts update I was able to solo every Boss and World Boss I fought in the game on default server values, and without a thrall. It was hard, extremely time consuming and I died a huge amount of times, but it was still possible. Now, as far as I can tell, it isnt.

It is exactly the same problem for PvP mode. I am reluctant to toss figures around, but I am going to estimate that well over half of them dislike the new dodge system. They now have the same problem as us; they must have a thrall with them at all times just to stand a snowballs chance in hell of winning. PvP is now a game of Pokemon, 2 hits and the player is out.

So ok, if I look at all of these factors in the context of Alex’s explanation, then I am sorry, but yes I disagree with it.

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Crom’s Prayer always makes me tear up…

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Well said, and I totally agree with you.

It amounts to Funcom doing a knee-jerk reaction and wildly going out of bounds in doing so.

The result? In catering to the PvP players that whined, they screwed over all the players who play the game solo. Worse, they either don’t realize, or simply don’t give a damn that they’ve done so.

It’s a pretty big problem when they want to listen to the “11” players supposedly getting their ■■■■■ beat by the lone super player. But that is stupid in and of itself.

Just think about it. You get 11 newbies who barely know their ■■■ from a hole in the ground about the game. They don’t know squat and can hardly handle themselves. Now they get into battle against a lone player who has put in 4000-5000 hours in the game. Knows 100% how their weapon functions and how to use it.

Naturally the experienced player has a strong advantage and could possible win against those odds. So again, back to the knee-jerk reaction of let’s f*** over the experienced player to cater to the newbies.

That’s not really how it should work.

If 1 experienced player can beat 11 experienced players in a simultaneous battle like that, the game is heavily broken, that’s easy to see.

If 1 experienced player can beat 11 newbies, it may be broken. But nowhere NEAR as bad as the previous example.

Yet they seemingly treat it as the same.

But regardless, they’ve broken the game even more with their changes. It’s why I can’t see myself ever paying for content from them again, in any game. Even as interesting as Dune seems, I’m just not sure Funcom is trustworthy enough to not pull a stunt like they’ve done here.

They made a game specifically with single player options. Then a couple years later they ruin single player in favor of PvP online. Effectively cheating out all those players who purchased the game specifically as a single player, because they liked the setting.

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I agree there is an error in changing a core gameplay mechanic late in the game. The idea that the roll though is an irrecoverable change though is a bit over the top. Everyone has the same roll now so it’s not like they made an unfair change. We all have to live with it. After about a month, I barely even remembered the difference from the old dodge (perhaps if I suddenly had it back I’d say to myself “OOOH, now I remember!”).

As to the 1 vs 10 thing. If all 11 are experience players, there’s no way the 1 beats the 10 when they all have the same dodge. That’s not an assumption or a guess; that’s just logic. Anything the 1 can do, the 10 can do so I’m just gonna put that aside. As to the 10 n00bs vs 1 experienced… shrug idk that it matters. Funcom has the right to re"balance" the game as they see fit. If they think that it’s better for their game to make it 1:3 instead of 1:10, I mean, I guess it’s their reputation on the line as to whether changing a core mechanic worth it. The game didn’t change drastically because of the dodge; it changed drastically with the thrall changes and mounts.

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It wasn’t meant as any kind of “trap”, honestly. You kept saying nobody has offered a reason why the change was necessary. To me, that meant that you were either unaware of Alex’s reasons or in disagreement with them. I simply wanted to know which :slight_smile:

I don’t have an opinion of my own about Alex’s reasons, because I don’t play PVP and I’ve never been in a 1v5 or 1v10 situation.

Personally, I’ve never been able to solo every boss without a thrall, even before the update. After the update, some of the bosses became a bit easier for me, some a bit harder, but most are the same. For some reason, we seem to be having a very different in-game experience and I keep trying to come up with an explanation for that.

One thing I will always 100% agree with is that it sucks that we often have to rely on fighter thralls to deal with balance screwups.

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I know exactly what you mean. I get a shiver up my spine and the hairs on the back of my neck stand on ends. The whole Battle of the Mounds was nothing short of epic. Helped along even further by Basil poledouris’ amazing musical scores.

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