Worst Month in 2 Years

Conan Exiles General Discussion
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Yes, and I’d love to see some evidence that it will be finished, but it looks less and less likely with each successive update that doesn’t do anything about them… That said, after (I think it was) chapter 1 of AoW, I thought we were going to be stuck with legendaries at the ‘grey goo’ stage that many of us had warned for years would be the result of the constant calls for nerfs - but they did then continue to fix them (I dislike some of the decisions made, but at least they were made) :man_shrugging: I’m not denying anything about Funcom’s record, I just still have hope that some promises may get fulfilled - the question of what and how is the one that will ultimately decide how long I stick with the game.

And again, the best I can suggest is (supposedly) finishing stuff they ‘ran out of time on’ is meant to be what ch4 is about. That’s a big part of why I’m still at the ‘withholding judgement’ stage. If they do a decent job of focusing ch4 on the fixing and finishing and don’t magpie off after the latest shiny thing, then that may be a good sign for the future. If it turns out to be more incomplete new ideas instead, then I’ll probably be grabbing a pitchfork too.

Personally, I’ve found the gameplay to be an improvement - I’m not a big fan of the new purge, but I still prefer it to the old one - at least this one actually attacks (my experience - I’m aware others have had the opposite result) rather than just milling around about 100 yards away from my base (or spawning on an island with no physical connection to my base - that one took a while to find lol).
As for the lore - I’d argue the new one is closer - they may not ‘ride across the land burning and looting’ - but at least they are clearly sent by Thoth-Amon rather than just being some random collection of local animals…

Agreed - but then, I’ve never found the purge an interesting or rewarding mechanic. I don’t find the new version interesting or rewarding either (just a bit moreso than the old one) :man_shrugging:

Intrinsic vs extrinsic was actually something I was thinking about with regards to that section - a youtuber called Whitelight makes some good use of it in his AC Black Flag retrospective (essentially, combat in that game is, at base, easy and potentially uninteresting - counter-kill, rinse-repeat - but there’s added depth from trying to do the ‘cool things’). I’m not a fan of game design relying on that - it puts too much of the responsibility on the player - but I’m also not a fan of players ‘solving’ a particular mechanic and then immediately claiming it’s boring because they are able to beat it by the ‘established method’. I haven’t built one of these ‘maze’ bases - my purge base has a straight line up a staircase to the treasure room with a single door. To get there they just have to get past me and then a couple of thralls on each of two landings. It seemed more fun that way :man_shrugging: Of course, it would be far more fun if thralls and combat weren’t so jacked up right now, but those are different issues from the purge itself. As for whether it is or isn’t continuing to be fixed - if you define the purge as the old mechanic, then sure it isn’t - but in theory the new system is supposed to still be being worked on…

There are whole games built around just this mechanic, and I find it uninteresting there as well. I’m really not sure how much the problem is the execution, and how much it’s just the basic premise itself.

As for the rest - I’m in broad agreement on many of the points - as I said, I’m not suggesting those interpretations are ‘how it is’ - just disagreeing that the versions Pugilist offered were any more absolute. Their broad thesis is one I agree with - Funcom has a history of trying things, not finishing them and then moving on - but that isn’t necessarily the only interpretation.

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This one thinks they see a disconnect.
Perhaps an unspoken statement that you hit on, but others gnash teeth about. That being Funcom doesn’t actually run out of time. They run out of attention. The perpetual to tinkering across numerous properties, prioritizing the reinvention of the wheel, while there are work orders in for repairing the drive trains and transmission, are not a bug in the Funcom model. They are a “feature”. Or at least the situation is exactly as it is intended to be, deliberately kept in a very unfinished state.

This one might have been more generous before the Age of War. But as matters stand, this one firmly agrees with the view that those in charge would rather attempt to alter how gravity works than replace the laces on their boots.

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66

Yeah, I’m one of those others that have had the opposite result, but only because I happened to have played this game long enough. There was a window of time – a few months, if that – when the old purge actually worked, and it was glorious.

Yes, but no. Sure, they’re sent by King Cstephon of Stygia, who is doing the bidding of Thoth-Amon. But they’re not the Purge, they’re Stygian invaders. The Purge was supposed to be a force from inside the Exiled Lands, hunting for relics. “Skimming”, as Gilzan calls it:

You could say I’m splitting hairs, and maybe you’re right, but I really detest the way Funcom always does this. They did the same thing with Siptah: came up with a novel idea, tried to implement it, faced too many difficulties and criticism, and said “Fuсk it, let’s do the cookie cutter thing that’s already been done before.”

I liked the old purge a bit more, when it worked. It had more variety and invited more actual tactics.

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67

This.
I see points in favor of the old purge and some in favor of the new.
The variety, sense of urgency and inevitability of the first.
The mechanic of the second where you can release thralls from cages after it ends.

I think both are interesting ideas, both can theoretically coexist, both have implementation problems that I believe can be fixed.
The second doesn’t replace the first, not even lorewise.

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68

Agreed.

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69

Exactly.

You had to build smart, layered defense, and you could drop down into the mix and make a difference.

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Beautiful way to summarize. It’s short and succinct with an air of poetic and fits on a bumper sticker. Good job. You got marketing talents.

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I disagree purely from a financial standpoint. CE was a big win for Funcom; AoC not as much. From a “where do I sick my money” business perspective, I build on what enabled me to be where I am, not recycle the classics. I firmly believe there is a behind the scenes CE2 plan already in the works… just a hunch.

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I dread to think we might have to wait close to a decade to get it, though @darthphysicist :pleading_face:

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The main reason I say this is because the average casual player wants a story driven narrative. So that’s either a RPG or MMORPG. I’ve seen quite a few posts indicating this about ‘finishing’ the Exiled Lands story, adding more life to Siptah, and even some complaints about the Mummy of the Ring being removed. But not just in Conan Exiles, but in other games that focus primarily on multiplayer. They’re always asking for that story driven campaign.

I don’t quite understand it myself, I prefer games to be games and my stories in books. But that’s just me.

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I agree with you, but I think that’s the box Dune is trying to check, and I also think a CE2 would build on what CE has left unsaid.

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Apologies, this one will be back to their near incomprehensible text wall rambles soon.
Rare and unpleasant moments of lucidity intrude upon the normally comfortable madness and this one remembers some of the atrophied skills of a professor.
Which is not dissimilar to marketing, but instead of a product we were once expected to sell the desire to learn and enthusiasm for a topic to the students, in a relatively limited time frame.

But that was many years ago, before the ascent of the university industrial complex, wherein tenure more often than not means laxity, administration budgets bloat while student and teacher resources evaporate, guidance counselors merrily guide the student body into as much debt as possible for as useless a degree as possible, and the need for a historian whose primary education was anything other than poli-sci disappeared.

There we go, at least one tangent and three glasses of mulsum (which auto-correct desperately wants to transform into Muslim, and no, the two are not related and the latter should have nothing to do with the former, which is a honey heavy wine of antiquity, for those who don’t want to look it up, because this one might not live in the past but they certainly will drink like it) later, and all is right again.

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I beliwve in genwral, they are talking bug fixes. Not mechanics.

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A bug fix tho wouldnt make sense either. A bug is code not working as intended; something working in ue5 doesnt mean it can work in ue4.15… no matter what, it has to be fixed in the context of 4.15 and the existing game code.

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Funcom pls can you already kill this game with ch.4 to i finally remove this shit from pc. After last update, you broke camera, you broke katana animation, pers always bagged, you destroy spear, before - you kill pvp with endless stamina, bows with 700+hp damage, i have idea for you - add endless hp

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79

Yes, bring back food healing. But with current healing rate of potions.

:clown_face:

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You are actually quite wrong, mechanically there are big differences in UE5- to 4.15 however blueprint wise its 99% the same, a bool is a bool, a int is an int.

However the “fixes” won’t trickle down, what people need to realize is no matter the backwards capability of block code the game doesn’t exist in a copy paste vacuum, it has systems built on systems.

And while there can be crossover, and I have no doubt the player base has been mined for data in the chapters, headhunter, the new journey etc, comparing to dune announcement features I don’t foresee with two distinct teams, one working on a big movie tie in, trying to build hype, and work to make “New game money” I doubt they are taking the time to implement the new code, into an old game with all its issues and dependencies, it makes next to no sense.

Just think of all the issues we get with purpose built code by a team dedicated to this game.

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And that is what tbey are saying. That the people working on Dune and what/how they code wont fix bugs on CE because of being 2 seperate engines. So although both teams are under Funcom and make Funcom moneyzl, they cant help each other.l even if the wanted to. The smaller CE team is left out to dry patching and band aiding while the marketing and money will be poured towards the new shiny object.

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That is correct. When I started this thread, I never suggested I thought Conan was dying, just losing all it’s progress over the last two years. And that loss happened suddenly. The changes in the last chapter were, overall, not good. I think the tavern is a fun roleplay thing, but the thrall nerfs and combat changes have been toxic. The only thing worse is the trolls who come on these threads and tell people complaining to “Get Gud.” That is such a tiresome response.

Anyway, Conan continues to lose playerbase in March. You have to go back to 2020 now to see numbers this low. This sort of hemorrhaging of players can’t continue for long or their overmasters at Tencent are going to lose patience. Hopefully, that works in our favor.

Oh, and for the record, the negative points about Siptah in this thread are spot on. It took away valuable development time from the core game and gave is a neat-in-theory but terrible-in-practice gameplay experience that just continues to eat up resources without providing significant value. Thank goodness they switched to getting things right on Exiled Lands first and then maybe putting it on Siptah later if it works out, rather than the other way around.

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If I write code and it has a bug… writing it again elsewhere does not fix the bug. I have to actually find and fix the bug. Simply rewriting it will replicate the bug if I don’t know why it happens. If I know why it happens, I fix it in the relevant code. It wouldnt be a bug if I wrote it completely correct the first time. Adding ue5 to the mix in a different environment simply includes features that I have to worry about removing when I move it back to ue 4.15, potentially introducing more bugs. Dune and CE are different games on so many levels.