Conan Exiles - Funcom strikes again

[Blaine]

The game is basically craft/survive/build-flavored trash, but it's fun trash to play in co-op for a while. I left a review.

https://steamcommunity.com/id/suicideboy/recommended/440900

To be brief, there are three particularly noteworthy issues with this game, aside from the fact that it is clearly popamole: Shields block 100% of the damage of almost every enemy attack (only a couple of exceptions, like giant snake boss strikes) with no stamina loss until they literally break, up to and including half-ton axes wielded by twenty-foot-tall frost giants; arrows fired from bows travel slowly in exaggerated ballistic arcs as if they're tennis balls tossed underhand by 13-year-old girls, and do terrible damage; and enemy creatures and NPCs spawn in the same spots and mostly stand around like MMO mobs, with very little in the way of interesting behavior or advanced AI.

Of special note, crocodiles hang out on land, attack you by waddling at you from a distance instead of lurking in ambush, can't swim properly, and can't attack when they're in the water. Yes, that's correct: Crocodiles can't swim properly or attack you in the water. Crocodiles. bylam You should all be ashamed of yourselves, that's fucking absurd m8.

There are also bugs, although on balance, they're no worse than those found in any other game of this ilk. I recorded an example of a fun one:

 

[ERYFKRAD]

How bad is ARK anyway Blaine?

 

[Blaine]

ARK is trash, and the developers are awful, greedy cunts (example: using Early Access status to excuse the game's shortcomings while simultaneously releasing paid DLC, which is against Steam's Early Access policy), but it has the same sort of fun-for-a-while appeal.

ARK probably has far more staying power than CE because it features dozens of undeniably cool dinosaurs and prehistoric-themed creatures to tame, raise (affecting their stats), ride, and sic on enemies; whereas the thralls (read: slaves) in Conan Exiles are all just random assortments of human features from the character creator. Also, aside from fighters, archers, and load-bearers (who collectively serve very little purpose in PvE), thralls like blacksmiths, smelters, and cooks serve essentially as upgrade and expansion modules for crafting stations, like slotting a gem into a piece of armor in a Diablo clone.

For a non-trash, if janky, survive-build-craft type of game, Empyrion: Galactic Survival is the way to go.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Empyrion: Galactic Survival is the way to go.

Probably best one out there. I don't really like this kind of games but Empyrion captiveted me for a long time.

 

[thesheeep]

Empyrion: Galactic Survival is the way to go.

Probably best one out there. I don't really like this kind of games but Empyrion captiveted me for a long time.

Ahh, yes, the feeling when I created my first vessel, the Swinging Banana, from nothing but scraps and thin air.
Speaking about air, getting a ship air tight was a fucking nuisance, but I heard they improved that.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Blaine If you think bows are trash you should try them with the Snake arrows you can craft if you're a follower of Set. They apply a poison that stacks and it's quite effective. Still not *the* best weapon ever, but I find it to be a worthwhile investment to get 10 accuracy for slightly better ranged damage scaling and the more effective cripple effect. Then with 20 strength you do 25% more damage to crippled enemies which should apply to bows as well. Aiming with the bow is crap but if you use the hard target (default bind Q) then you can easily just shoot up an enemy, provided that they don't have a shield. Bows seem to be at their best in PvE content vs animals and monsters.

 

[Blaine]

Blaine If you think bows are trash you should try them with the Snake arrows you can craft if you're a follower of Set. They apply a poison that stacks and it's quite effective. Still not *the* best weapon ever, but I find it to be a worthwhile investment to get 10 accuracy for slightly better ranged damage scaling and the more effective cripple effect. Then with 20 strength you do 25% more damage to crippled enemies which should apply to bows as well. Aiming with the bow is crap but if you use the hard target (default bind Q) then you can easily just shoot up an enemy, provided that they don't have a shield. Bows seem to be at their best in PvE content vs animals and monsters.

Set arrows were all we used for the entire game. My Steam pal and I both chose Set independently, although a common bug started me off as a Mithra acolyte, which turned out to be a good thing. We also installed a mod to un-nerf ranged weapon damage (perhaps too much), although unfortunately it couldn't un-nerf the physics. That said, I ended up using bows very, very rarely, far less than 1% of the time.

Anyway, I've seen and done basically everything the game has to offer: enslaved named blacksmiths, armorers, fighters et al.; fought every enemy; tried or had access to every tier or type of armor, weapons, building materials, and crafting stations; and thoroughly explored every nook and cranny of the map (except for a bit of the surface of the volcano, when we lost interest, having torn through all the content). Really, the only thing we didn't do was a Purge, which I'd been greatly looking forward to until I learned that the game just fucking spawns enemies on your foundations, as described in my review.

 

[Blaine]

 

[ortucis]

What is sad is that they could've created something truly epic that could've rivaled top MMO's out there using this setting. Instead we got a dumpster fire that no one will remember down the road.

Anyway, now that it's "released", it's done. Game over.

 

[Blaine]

What is sad is that they could've created something truly epic that could've rivaled top MMO's out there using this setting. Instead we got a dumpster fire that no one will remember down the road.

Anyway, now that it's "released", it's done. Game over.

It's doing all right, for now. It seems to have about half of ARK's concurrent player base at any given time, and nearly as many as Rust; those are the two heavy hitters in the small-pop server-driven hopw roewur ne janky survival sandbox genre.

MMORPGs are absolutely a dead genre, full stop. I used to play MMORPGs a fair bit until I finally left EVE six years ago, but endless WoW clones stagnated the whole genre; lately, the explosive popularity of dotas (the #1 factor), F2P games like Warframe, CCGs, janky indie survival sandbox games, the fairly recent rash of Team Fortress 2 clones in the wake of Overwatch, and most recently the rash of DayZ/PUBG/battle royale shovelware have all taken their toll.

It won't be long until true MMORPGs are as obscure as text MUDs had become by the mid-2000s. It's probably for the best, since they needed to be put out of their misery. Connoisseurs can still find private servers running Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, etc. if they really want to relive old-school sandbox MMORPGs. EVE's still limping along, as always.

I played Anarchy Online a bit way back in the day, so I've had a long, but very intermittent, consumer relationship with FunCom. Considering their history, it's a miracle they managed to get a janky survival sandbox even to this state.

mastroego We decided we should show off some of the game's shortcomings and issues because they're pretty damned entertaining, so I'll be making a video compilation.

 

[ortucis]

It's doing good cause of release PR. People will soon discover what others already did in EA. Game has nothing new to offer.

They spent all this time re-doing combat, but I had no issues with it. Issues were the shit enemies, shit AI and the fact that there is nothing else to do other than build buildings and destroy buildings. PvE in this game is way too fucking boring because of retarded AI and the fact that the game world is dead. No interesting NPC's, no story to give a shit about, no interesting quests.

Pretty sure the only exciting thing that ever happened to me and my friends in-game was when admins on a private server allowed people to destroy buildings (cause of everyone leaving beds and one stone base everywhere for weeks and never logging back) and a bunch of people created those bombs to destroy all buildings when most people were offline.

I honestly am only angry about this game, usually I don't care enough to keep shitting on the game. They fucking wasted a license like Conan, ripe for a kick-ass RPG to create a shittier version of ARK (if it was possible, and apparently it is).

 

[Blaine]

They spent all this time re-doing combat, but I had no issues with it. Issues were the shit enemies, shit AI and the fact that there is nothing else to do other than build buildings and destroy buildings. PvE in this game is way too fucking boring because of retarded AI and the fact that the game world is dead. No interesting NPC's, no story to give a shit about, no interesting quests.

Retarded AI will probably constitute about half of the video, including crocodiles that can't swim or attack while in the water.

You know what they say: When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!

 

[Ninjerk]

sexbad?

 

[thesheeep]

Blaine So... where can we join that barbarian guild? It seems fancy!

 

[Blaine]

Blaine So... where can we join that barbarian guild? It seems fancy!

You can join it in Hell.

Once filming had wrapped and we were satisfied that we were done with the game, we put all of our slaves to death in a huge arena full of summoned monsters (also on film), demolished our castle with a catapult and explosive jars, then jumped into a volcano.

 

[thesheeep]

Blaine So... where can we join that barbarian guild? It seems fancy!

You can join it in Hell.

Once filming had wrapped and we were satisfied that we were done with the game, we put all of our slaves to death in a huge arena full of summoned monsters (also on film), demolished our castle with a catapult and explosive jars, then jumped into a volcano.

That does sound like you had a good time. Even if not as the devs intended

 

[bylam]

Blaine So... where can we join that barbarian guild? It seems fancy!

You can join it in Hell.

Once filming had wrapped and we were satisfied that we were done with the game, we put all of our slaves to death in a huge arena full of summoned monsters (also on film), demolished our castle with a catapult and explosive jars, then jumped into a volcano.

That does sound like you had a good time. Even if not as the devs intended

I'd say "as the devs intended" is pretty much a moot point in a sandbox game.

 

[bylam]

What kind of game is it then?

I am dead serious. Did you guys expect the players to build stuff for you?

Did we expect players to build in our survival sandbox game where one of the major features is building? No, of course not.

Seriously though... this is the type of game made for the genre it is in. It isn't supposed to be Conan the Witcher or Conan Fallout, it was pretty much always Conan Minecraft/Ark/Rust.

We never said otherwise.

 

[Zombra]

I'd say "as the devs intended" is pretty much a moot point in a sandbox game.

Ehhhh. You may not have a linear path laid out where you expect them to go from Floating Question Mark A to Floating Exclamation Point B, but you better have a pretty damn good idea what the player will be doing moment to moment and a vision about why it's fun.

 

[bylam]

Ehhhh. You may not have a linear path laid out where you expect them to go from Floating Question Mark A to Floating Exclamation Point B, but you better have a pretty damn good idea what the player will be doing moment to moment and a vision about why it's fun.

Sure, and then when players find a different way to have fun because of the flexibility of the mechanics, you don't pretend that you "intended" to design it like that. It's the intentional and unintentional interaction of mechanics in sandbox games that makes them more interesting to a certain type of player.

I am not going to pull my punches here; you guys did a great job in making the game *feel* it is in the Hyborian Age

,
I'll take that as a compliment since it is kinda my job.

but the rest of the worldbuilding feels mostly unfinished. Now, I don't expect you to admit it, but I am quite sure that it was meant to be more and at some point, it was aborted half way through. What irks me is the enormous potential this thing has which is being ruined by this action.

When you say you don't expect me to admit it, you basically say "even if you tell me it was the intention all along, I won't believe you." which is pretty unfair.

I had written designs for - a proper branching dialogue system, a proper story mission and more interaction with followers. But the game was always roughly what it is give or take a few features. A entire part of the DNA of the game design from the beginning was "do less content because content heavy games ALA The Secret World require manpower that was not available to Funcom when this project started.

I also wouldn't be too concerned about "wasted potential" - we now actually have the license to make single-player Conan games and we can do something that more fully realizes the world. I really don't think Exiles was the game to do that - the core pillars were building, combat and exploration/survival - story was never mentioned. And I actually regret the half-assed dialogue system I did manage to push in - would almost have been better without it.

 

[Zombra]

We now actually have the license to make single-player Conan games and we can do something that more fully realizes the world.

Quoted for hype

 

[ERYFKRAD]

We now actually have the license to make single-player Conan games and we can do something that more fully realizes the world.

Quoted for hype

I'd like to hear what would fully realize fair Hyboria, per bylam though.

 

[Zombra]

We now actually have the license to make single-player Conan games and we can do something that more fully realizes the world.

Quoted for hype

I'd like to hear what would fully realize fair Hyboria, per bylam though.

I have no doubts that the creative side would be beautifully realized. Everyone agrees that Secret World as a proper single-player RPG would be fantastic; and I hear good things about Age of Conan's content - it's the MMO structure that drags down its critical prestige.

The problem isn't lack of creative good taste; it's getting the Funcom Board of Grandmas to stop chasing outdated profit trends. "I hear the kids like the pokemans, let's spend millions doing our version of that." First it was subscription MMOs and now this open world survival nonsense. Their next game will prob be a mobile clicker with microtrans and loot boxes (now that that business model is facing substantial legislative scrutiny), then after that 5 years from now there'll be a battle royale game (probably in VR), once again too late to catch today's market boom.

 

[Grokalibre]

"Battle Royale in Hyboria"

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I have no doubts that the creative side would be beautifully realized. Everyone agrees that Secret World as a proper single-player RPG would be fantastic; and I hear good things about Age of Conan's content - it's the MMO structure that drags down its critical prestige.

The problem isn't lack of creative good taste; it's getting the Funcom Board of Grandmas to stop chasing outdated profit trends. "I hear the kids like the pokemans, let's spend millions doing our version of that." First it was subscription MMOs and now this open world survival nonsense. Their next game will prob be a mobile clicker with microtrans and loot boxes (now that that business model is facing substantial legislative scrutiny), then after that 5 years from now there'll be a battle royale game (probably in VR), once again too late to catch today's market boom.

That's just how Funcom operate. They have these brilliant creative folks creating captivating worlds, pump the hype, try and sell enough on launch before people realize the game is actually garbage and then dump and abandon it and move onto the next thing. It was the case with Anarchy, their first MMO in 2001, it was the case with Age of Conan, it was the case with TSW and it's the case with Exiles.

Fun fact: Anarchy is still running, it's one of the oldest MMO still in existence, it is also the most expensive MMO on the market with 15$/month subscription while also being a P2W with selling items that increase player power. This is the kind of company you're dealing with.

It's literally a Ponzi scheme. Save yourself nerves and never give them as much as a dollar.