Conan Exiles - Funcom strikes again

[Rahdulan]

I don't even know what to think about this, although I can't help but wonder how many assets they'll re-use from AoC. Funcom's late bandwagon attempt at survival sandbox genre?

http://www.conanexiles.com/

AN OPEN-WORLD SURVIVAL GAME
IN THE BRUTAL LANDS OF CONAN THE BARBARIAN

You are an exile, one of thousands cast out to fend for themselves in a barbaric wasteland swept by terrible sandstorms and besieged on every side by enemies. Here you must fight to survive, build and dominate.

Hungry, thirsty and alone, your very first battle is that against the harsh environment. Grow crops or hunt animals for food. Harvest resources to build weapons and tools. Build a shelter to survive. Ride across a vast world and explore alone, or band together with other players to build entire settlements and strongholds to withstand fierce invasions.

When strong enough, march forth into battle and wage war against your enemies as you fight to dominate the exiled lands. Sacrifice enemy players on the altars of the gods and shift the balance of power your way. Unleash your fury in savage, fast-paced combat and execute bloody and bone-crushing attacks that will see heads rolling and limbs flying.

Early Access on the PC coming summer 2016.
Full launch on PC and console to follow.

http://massivelyop.com/2016/01/28/funcom-announces-open-world-survival-game-conan-exiles/

‘CONAN EXILES’ is first and foremost a multiplayer game that can be enjoyed on both private and public servers, but it will also feature a single-player mode.

You are an exile, one of thousands cast out to fend for themselves in a barbaric wasteland swept in sandstorms and besieged by enemies on every side. Grow crops or hunt animals for food. Harvest resources to build weapons and tools. Build a shelter to survive. Ride across a vast world and explore alone, or band together with other players to build entire settlements and fortified strongholds. Unleash your fury in savage, fast-paced combat and execute bloody and bone-crushing attacks that will see heads rolling and limbs flying. Fight other players to dominate the exiled lands, and even call upon the wrath of the heavens to aid you by sacrificing enemy players on the alters of the gods.

 

[murloc_gypsy]

Wasn't Funcom is some financial difficulties recently? I also read something about a potential acquisition by some other company

Can't say anything about the announcement / game itself, since there's barely anything to go by :\

 

[Akratus]

You are an exile, one of thousands cast out to fend for themselves in a barbaric wasteland swept in sandstorms and besieged by enemies on every side. Grow crops or hunt animals for food. Harvest resources to build weapons and tools. Build a shelter to survive. Ride across a vast world and explore alone, or band together with other players to build entire settlements and fortified strongholds. Unleash your fury in savage, fast-paced combat and execute bloody and bone-crushing attacks that will see heads rolling and limbs flying. Fight other players to dominate the exiled lands, and even call upon the wrath of the heavens to aid you by sacrificing enemy players on the alters of the gods.

Sounds sweet. Now we'll see if the execution is as good as the concept.

 

[Infinitron]

bylam Tell us more.

 

[bylam]

Not sure what marketing have planned in terms of "information reveals" but ask questions and I will answer what I can.

 

[J_C]

AN OPEN-WORLD SURVIVAL GAME
IN THE BRUTAL LANDS OF CONAN THE BARBARIAN

Fucking finally Funcom doing something other than MMO-s...

‘CONAN EXILES’ is first and foremost a multiplayer game

Fuck you, Funcom!

 

[bylam]

We are announcing a few games this year, J_C. I'm sure you'll eventually hear something you like.

 

[made]

I'm sure you'll eventually hear something you like.

Highly unlikely.

 

[Zed]

I don't get it. What is this?
Minecraft without blocks?
Does it have topless chicks?

 

[Baron Dupek]

If they release it (I mean - after beta/Early Access) game faster before other survival zombies games - they might won.
Thundersnail race.

 

[markec]

I'm sure you'll eventually hear something you like.

Highly unlikely.

Just put on cover that Tim Schafer contributed to the project and it will be day 1 purchase for him.

 

[bylam]

Yes to topless everything.
I think a better description than minecraft without blocks is Conan with blocks. For building shit. Wherever you want.

 

[Akratus]

Yes to topless everything.

 

[Night Goat]

First they make a Gone Home clone, now they're making a survival game...what shovelware fad will Funcom try to cash in on next?

 

[DeepOcean]

AN OPEN-WORLD SURVIVAL GAME
IN THE BRUTAL LANDS OF CONAN THE BARBARIAN

Fucking finally Funcom doing something other than MMO-s...

‘CONAN EXILES’ is first and foremost a multiplayer game

Fuck you, Funcom!

Me:
Yeah! I will play as Conan and CRUSH my enemies! HAHAHAHA!
Wot? I will have to play with other people that will bunnyhop like tards and have SuckCocksXX14 over their heads?
Wot? I won't play as Conan?
Well... at least I WILL CRUSH MY ENEMIES on the EDGY GRIMDARK Conan universe! HAHAHAHA!
Wot? I will spend most of my time cutting trees, grinding and building shit? Whot wants to build minecraft shit on a fucking Conan game?!
FUCK YOU FUNCOM!

 

[J_C]

We are announcing a few games this year, J_C. I'm sure you'll eventually hear something you like.

Funcom clearly writes the best stories, best characters, best worlds in gaming (at least one of the best), yet the team wastes it on MMOs and MMO like stuff. Imagine a proper RPG set in the Secret World universe.

OMG it would be heaven.

Or a proper adventure game running in The Park.

 

[bylam]

I've been working in Funcom for 8ish years now and the problem has always been the fact that Funcom is a public company. CEO answers to the board and shareholders and decisions are based around an investor mentality (i.e. the games need to make shit tons of money or they are considered failures)

Don't blame the team for that.
When Dragon Age came out, I was pointing at it and shouting "We can make a better looking, better playing game than that in the Conan engine if you would just let us"
I've been asking for years to make a Vampire: Bloodlines style RPG set in The Secret World universe. Shit half of the quest design in The Secret World is setting up mechanics that could be reused later if that game was ever to become an eventuality.

TL;DR - Devs get just as frustrated by being forced to do multiplayer as you'd expect. It also a lot fucking harder than single player in every aspect. Conan Exiles is server based - but smaller scale so you can host your own servers and not give a fuck if you want. Which is the way MP is going anyway.

All whining aside, the new CEO is open minded and wants to pursue any and all options. He let us make The Park as an experiment to teach us Unreal and to test the waters of the SP market again. If things go well, we'll be doing more interesting things going forward.

 

[Eirikur]

Looks promising so far. A few questions:

1) Aside from the setting, how would you differentiate this game from games like Rust and H1Z1? Will there be RPG elements?
2) What kind of age rating are you going for - mature/adult I hope?
3) Will there be permadeath, like in DayZ and H1Z1?
4) Subscription-based? Micro-transactions?

 

[Rahdulan]

All whining aside, the new CEO is open minded and wants to pursue any and all options. He let us make The Park as an experiment to teach us Unreal and to test the waters of the SP market again. If things go well, we'll be doing more interesting things going forward.

Speaking about The Park how did that work out for you as a new direction experiment, sales-wise, etc? In general because I don't expect you to divulge business details, of course.

When Dragon Age came out, I was pointing at it and shouting "We can make a better looking, better playing game than that in the Conan engine if you would just let us"

That's certainly interesting and I'd be inclined to believe it. Such is life, I guess.

 

[bylam]

Looks promising so far. A few questions:

1) Aside from the setting, how would you differentiate this game from games like Rust and H1Z1? Will there be RPG elements?
2) What kind of age rating are you going for - mature/adult I hope?
3) Will there be permadeath, like in DayZ and H1Z1?
4) Subscription-based? Micro-transactions?

1) RPG, Religion System, The Purge mechanic, Dark Souls style storytelling. Essentially we spend a lot of time talking about what we call the "Day 2 problem" which is our expression for the wall people hit in these type of games when they figured out the survival shit (day 2 in Minecraft). There are RPG systems, but it won't be anything like the power scaling that an MMO would have.
2) Mature
3) Probably as a server setting.
4) My assumption is B2P, but that is never gospel before anything is officially announced.

Speaking about The Park how did that work out for you as a new direction experiment, sales-wise, etc? In general because I don't expect you to divulge business details, of course.

Well as a learning exercise it went well. Zero marketing budget was spent, it was covered by most major websites, it sold as expected and we paid for the team to learn Unreal.

We have some way to go before we get our single player mojo up to where it could be. Pacing was difficult for The Park, people complained about the writing being overly dramatic (it was copying TSW style which is deliberately that way) and we should have prioritized a couple of other features that emphasize horror games (fail state, tighter corridors). In essence, we built it like an MMO playfield, not a single player level.

All in all though - few people make PC games of that production quality in 6 months so it was a decent test of our ability to do so.

 

[Eirikur]

Looks promising so far. A few questions:

1) Aside from the setting, how would you differentiate this game from games like Rust and H1Z1? Will there be RPG elements?
2) What kind of age rating are you going for - mature/adult I hope?
3) Will there be permadeath, like in DayZ and H1Z1?
4) Subscription-based? Micro-transactions?

1) RPG, Religion System, The Purge mechanic, Dark Souls style storytelling. Essentially we spend a lot of time talking about what we call the "Day 2 problem" which is our expression for the wall people hit in these type of games when they figured out the survival shit (day 2 in Minecraft). There are RPG systems, but it won't be anything like the power scaling that an MMO would have.
2) Mature
3) Probably as a server setting.
4) My assumption is B2P, but that is never gospel before anything is officially announced.

Thanks, those were mostly the answers I was hoping for. At the risk of sounding optimistic, you may consider me... optimistic.



Incidentally, I still harbor a little bit of hope that Midgard might be revived at some point. Was very enthusiastic about the concept and setting.

 

[Aenra]

People yet again positively interested in a future Funcom product..

Man is just not a learning animal.
I could go on and on about good ideas mixed with mainstream elements that only helped in undermining them. I could go on and on about a half arsed design philosophy in terms of implementation and what it should entail. I could go on and on about how, half done, half arsed and half mistakenly conceived as it was, said implementation always failed to be realised in anything but a buggy, partly feature-complete product. I could go on and on about how even the tiniest of said glaring bugs errors were and have been allowed to go on and on, in some cases a decade later; still prevalent. I could go on and on about the 'spirit' of a company wanting to 'do things our way' but then being incapable of comprehending just how tough that is, or what it entails. Because the above have apparently never been enough for them to learn this lesson.

But already,. even the TLDR is getting long winded, isn't it.
Man is just not a learning animal.

Keep showing interest. They too gotta make their money somehow. Morons.

 

[Spectacle]

Yes to topless everything.
I think a better description than minecraft without blocks is Conan with blocks. For building shit. Wherever you want.

Topless is good.
Can you build things out of skulls? Will the game be moddable?

 

[Eirikur]

People yet again positively interested in a future Funcom product..

Man is just not a learning animal.
I could go on and on about good ideas mixed with mainstream elements that only helped in undermining them. I could go on and on about a half arsed design philosophy in terms of implementation and what it should entail. I could go on and on about how, half done, half arsed and half mistakenly conceived as it was, said implementation always failed to be realised in anything but a buggy, partly feature-complete product. I could go on and on about how even the tiniest of said glaring bugs errors were and have been allowed to go on and on, in some cases a decade later; still prevalent. I could go on and on about the 'spirit' of a company wanting to 'do things our way' but then being incapable of comprehending just how tough that is, or what it entails. Because the above have apparently never been enough for them to learn this lesson.

But already,. even the TLDR is getting long winded, isn't it.
Man is just not a learning animal.

Keep showing interest. They too gotta make their money somehow. Morons.

Funcom is a Norwegian company. As a Norwegian, the idea of not supporting them is as reprehensible and shameful as not supporting Varg Vikernes, cheese, or oil drilling.

Besides, I still give my money to Piranha Bytes. So...

 

[bylam]

I could go on and on...

Your vague criticisms crouched in generalities that cannot be pinned down have been noted so we can make improvements.

Topless is good.
Can you build things out of skulls? Will the game be moddable?

Yes and maybe.