Conan Exiles - Funcom strikes again

[hello friend]

You DO realize that "survival" (using the term loosely for Conan Exiles) games like 7 Days to Die, REQUIRE that you at least put in 20 hours before realizing whether they are good or not, right? Hell, in Conan Exiles, you'll be collecting sticks and stones for at least 4 hours before you start crafting some good stuff.

I won't argue there is some grey area here of what is long enough or not to judge a game, and that area differs somewhat from game to game.
But I'm talking about people with many dozens or even hundreds of hours.

But honestly, even after only 4 hours of a survival game, you can judge it fairly well. You don't need to see everything to know if a game is for you or not. These games never radically change from early to late game.

If you want to say that the 2 hour refund policy of Steam is shit, then I fully agree. It isn't long enough.

Not to mention, a lot of time, you sink in 50 hrs before realizing "Yeah, this game has no end game, what I saw is what they want me to do for the net 200+ hrs".

So what? Who cares if a game has no special endgame?
Players really need to get away from this ridiculous MMO mentality of every game requiring an eternal end game to keep you hooked.
Did you have fun for those 50 hours? If so, you either feel you are done with the game and move on or keep playing because it was fun and you want some more. Either way, you got your money's worth.
If you didn't enjoy your 50 hours, why the hell did you play for so long? Hoping for it to get better or change? A simple look at some reviews or other material could have told you that.

While we're at it, people who say "You've played a game for so many hours, THE GAME MUST BE GOOD.", need to play more games. I sat through the new Ghostbusters movie, it must be good too, right sheep?

You must be really out of arguments if you start comparing games to movies.
It doesn't work like that, games are interactive, movies are not. And movies are 2 hours long, that's just not long enough to leave early for most people, even if they realize they won't like it.
I also watched the new Ghostbusters movie. It is ... okay? Nowhere near the old ones, but not nowhere near as shit as some "fans" make it out to be.

At best, you could compare "games" like that TellTale stuff to movies - and in that case, yes, it is either good or you are a fucking idiot for "playing" through it entirely. And in the idiot case, your opinion doesn't matter anyway.

(keep in mind that these games are all open-ended games that people expect to play for 1000s not 100s of hours)

And that is what is so completely wrong. This expectation is 100% ridiculous. No developer has ever claimed that their game has such a lasting appeal. Hundreds? Maybe. Thousands. Nope. Therefore it is absurd to judge it by that.
The only people who play a game that long are those that have all their sweet spots hit by the game. But to say a game sucks just because it "only" lasted you a hundred and not a thousand hours?
You really have to step back and realize how absurd that is.

Some people have a special kind of autism. Remember Celerity? He had, what 2000 hrs playing Darkest Dungeon and hated it, but you know what? All his criticisms were on the money. It was a shit game, not particularly fun and I regret buying it.

And many of these early access games even start out pretty good, but changes made before full release destroy the game. There are so many cool and interesting games that had turned terrible by the time they came out.

The moral of the story is, don't be an idiot and stop paying for games in early access. As for conan ex, I hardly played it and wish I could have tried it out more. It looks fun for at least a while, but my PC won't let me .

thesheeep, I find it a bit peculiar to see you vociferously defending this game when, by your own admission, you have yet to play it. Surely the people who have sunk many hours into it for whatever reason have a better basis for comparison to other games?

 

[bylam]

Let me apologise to everyone else in the thread in advance. This is the last time I will reply to this person.

Yep conspirancy theories right? :D Like when people told that most likely the most anticipated features where cut by the release and you guys labeled this people as doomsayers and people that were spreading bad rumoris please......have some dignity.

Yes, you fucking idiot, what you just posted is the definition of a conspiracy theory. Nobody who works at Funcom did what you describe here.

And yes i have plenty of hours played and most of them where taken during the early access and because i was running a clan of large people in a rp server and guess what? we were waiting for the release to have actually the promised features hoping the game would have more content and the promised features... guess what happened'?...

The "I only played your game for hundreds of hours on behalf of other people" defence.

Come on guys... Since you were in a situation pc owners of the game were mad at you and for legit reasons you just told: Screw that lets do a gold build to release the game mainly for console audience... In fact.. Graphic downgrade features still missing... Patch that are not doing nothing more that fix small issue... "But hey while you are waiting us to fix the game while meanwhile you don't buy our newer Cultural DLC that is just released? I know during the early access campaign we promised this kind of content to be part of the base game but still..." come on this is age of conan all over again.

Conspiracy Theory #2 is easily disprovable by looking at the timeline. Consoles were announced before any features were discussed. "Oh but X and Y were cut for consoles". Nope. We overshot our ambitions, we cut features to work on bugs/stability, we informed the community of this multiple times and... you still carry on with your idiocy. Hence, why I consider it pointless to argue with you.

And how you defend yourself gameplay hours?..... Wow you must feel well entagled to fall so low :D

Oh no. There are a bunch of legit criticisms in this thread. I even acknowledged a couple of your legitimate ones. But your spinning this into a grand conspiracy of deception is ridiculous. Made more so by the fact that you obviously spent 100's if not 1000's of hours in our $30 game.

I'm quite happy to discuss game design (with other people), but I've no wish to encourage your inane rambling anymore.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

Let me apologise to everyone else in the thread in advance. This is the last time I will reply to this person.

Yep conspirancy theories right? :D Like when people told that most likely the most anticipated features where cut by the release and you guys labeled this people as doomsayers and people that were spreading bad rumoris please......have some dignity.

Yes, you fucking idiot, what you just posted is the definition of a conspiracy theory. Nobody who works at Funcom did what you describe here.

And yes i have plenty of hours played and most of them where taken during the early access and because i was running a clan of large people in a rp server and guess what? we were waiting for the release to have actually the promised features hoping the game would have more content and the promised features... guess what happened'?...

The "I only played your game for hundreds of hours on behalf of other people" defence.

Come on guys... Since you were in a situation pc owners of the game were mad at you and for legit reasons you just told: Screw that lets do a gold build to release the game mainly for console audience... In fact.. Graphic downgrade features still missing... Patch that are not doing nothing more that fix small issue... "But hey while you are waiting us to fix the game while meanwhile you don't buy our newer Cultural DLC that is just released? I know during the early access campaign we promised this kind of content to be part of the base game but still..." come on this is age of conan all over again.

Conspiracy Theory #2 is easily disprovable by looking at the timeline. Consoles were announced before any features were discussed. "Oh but X and Y were cut for consoles". Nope. We overshot our ambitions, we cut features to work on bugs/stability, we informed the community of this multiple times and... you still carry on with your idiocy. Hence, why I consider it pointless to argue with you.

And how you defend yourself gameplay hours?..... Wow you must feel well entagled to fall so low :D

Oh no. There are a bunch of legit criticisms in this thread. I even acknowledged a couple of your legitimate ones. But your spinning this into a grand conspiracy of deception is ridiculous. Made more so by the fact that you obviously spent 100's if not 1000's of hours in our $30 game.

I'm quite happy to discuss game design (with other people), but I've no wish to encourage your inane rambling anymore.

Oh well on that i wated just let you have a little taste of what some folk felt when they expressed the concern on their forums and you guys attempted to shot down this post claiming those were doomsayers and spreading bad rumors, turned out that voices were quite true in the end again how you think those people felt?.

And again the hours discussion? I had the game since it went in early access i kept testing giving feedback and signal bugs like many of the people that played and supported this game to become... Way more than how is becoming now.

Consider this hours i played like paid testing and bug hunting except i was paying for it and we even never got major bugs fixed even after the release the first patch you did was to implement a way to kick afk players because you opened official servers with like 30 slots?.

There were a lot of civil discussion about how to implement features or good feedback about what people wanted to see done in the game all ignored in favour of.

Omg official server 524 is not working!
Omg chinese hackers are ruining official server insert number here..

What you did is pandering to the ones that abandoned you during the early access people that were interested nothing more to have another rust with swords while your team in the conan roleplay enjin were promising that the game would had a lot of things for roleplayers too.

After the release date the Chat is STILL NOT FIXED and it was one of the first things the rp community asked for funcom.

Again a guy had to fix it implementing a mod that now is a must for who is running servers of any kind PIPPI.

So please.. who is silly here?.

And just to inform you those posts were in the steam forum and people indeed got labeled as doomsayer and accused to spread bad rumors those are facts not cospirancy theories just facts.

 

[thesheeep]

(keep in mind that these games are all open-ended games that people expect to play for 1000s not 100s of hours)

And that is what is so completely wrong. This expectation is 100% ridiculous. No developer has ever claimed that their game has such a lasting appeal. Hundreds? Maybe. Thousands. Nope. Therefore it is absurd to judge it by that.
The only people who play a game that long are those that have all their sweet spots hit by the game. But to say a game sucks just because it "only" lasted you a hundred and not a thousand hours?
You really have to step back and realize how absurd that is.

Then you seem to be completely new to open world survival games. A Steam friend of mine has spent 2,600 hours in 7DTD. I calculated that he spent over 1 year in front of that shitty game. Which is kinda funny because he is just 20

But people like your friend are the absolute exception.
Take a look at the average playing times of those games:
Ark - http://steamspy.com/app/346110 (168:32 (average) 21:12 (median))
Empyrion - http://steamspy.com/app/383120 (42:52 (average) 08:44 (median))
Conan Exiles - http://steamspy.com/app/440900 (56:55 (average) 15:06 (median))

Of course, some people go to extremes here, as your curious friend. But you have to realize they are not the majority, not even close.
Nor are they the people those games are made for.
Most people behave as I said, play a few dozen hours and are done with the game - which is perfectly fine and normal.

I also have to laugh everytime I see raving reviews on all those storyfag interactive movies that go for games these days and then everyone has like 20 hours playtime.

20 hours playtime for an interactive movie "game"?
What?
Do people replay those?
I must say, I buy them from time to time - usually when I'm in the mood for a movie or pure story experience. Some do that well (Observer was nice), some unfortunately try to be a game and fail utterly (Hellblade...).
But 20 hours?!

Did you have fun for those 50 hours? If so, you either feel you are done with the game and move on or keep playing because it was fun and you want some more. Either way, you got your money's worth. If you didn't enjoy your 50 hours, why the hell did you play for so long? Hoping for it to get better or change? A simple look at some reviews or other material could have told you that.

If you file a divorce does the judge ask you, "did you have fun for those 11 years?"

I'll be sure to tell you if he does.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Those averages are extremely high if you subtract the people who have 0 hours. I'm sure more than half the people never play them at all.

Of course, some people go to extremes here, as your curious friend. But you have to realize they are not the majority, not even close.
Nor are they the people those games are made for.

Yeah buddy, but that is the problem here. Because "those people" are called "gamers". And they flock to these E/A games because the developers usually promise something great, to make games without restrictions. Why else would anyone buy a game that is barely 30% finished and that erases your progress every two months? There are already more than enough interactive novels for schmucks who buy some game "play" 15 hours and then buy the next one. You can of course bait and switch many many times then turn around and mock gamers. But there could soon be long faces when the next best E/A thing only earns 1,500$ because gamers are fed up, and the casuls only buy AAA games with shiny trailers.

 

[thesheeep]

Those averages are extremely high if you subtract the people who have 0 hours. I'm sure more than half the people never play them at all.

I am sure people with 0 playtime aren't even counted in that statistic.
That would only lead to drag every single statistic down because of people who own a game and never play it. Wouldn't make sense to include.
I think that's also why there is a stat saying how many people own it vs actual players.
Of course, we can't be 100% sure that's how it was implemented.

Of course, some people go to extremes here, as your curious friend. But you have to realize they are not the majority, not even close.
Nor are they the people those games are made for.

Yeah buddy, but that is the problem here. Because "those people" are called "gamers". And they flock to these E/A games because the developers usually promise something great, to make games without restrictions. Why else would anyone buy a game that is barely 30% finished and that erases your progress every two months?

I would honestly like to know. I almost always found that an utterly stupid thing to do - except the few games that truly are ready to play, even in early access (like RimWorld or Factorio).
My theory is not that the people blindly buy whatever the developer sells them - those are the casuals. I'd hope that the average actual gamer is a little more reflected. I think most people buy early access titles to check out if the game would be for them - and with a certain hope that it is already good enough to actually play.
But who knows, people in general are stupid and do not act logically so...

 

[Burning Bridges]

I already explained it to you. Most E/A games with increasingly negative ratings are open world games without restrictions, and not storyfag b/s. You just don't listen and babble unrelated, politically correct stuff and indirectly try to project people with playtimes higher than yours are degenerates.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I have installed and ran around a bit. It's as I feared, looks like it's an infinite 1€ job of collecting stones and clicking monsters dead.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Eh, the first few hours of Conan Exiles does a shit job at showing the player what the game is like. You can't just click monsters dead when you get further in and there is a bit more depth than just collecting sticks and stones, though that is certainly a big part of the game. There is a win state for the game that involves a lot of exploration, dungeon crawling and boss slaying to get to.

 

[thesheeep]

I already explained it to you. Most E/A games with increasingly negative ratings are open world games without restrictions, and not storyfag b/s. You just don't listen and babble unrelated, politically correct stuff and indirectly try to project people with playtimes higher than yours are degenerates.

You explained it, yes.
And it is fully irrelevant. Playing a game is about fun. Its genre doesn't matter for that. You play a game as long as you have fun with it. And then you stop.

Nobody, ever, has played a game for hundreds of hours if the game had not been fun.
Hundreds of hours of fun for a few bucks doesn't comply with "the game is shit". There is no explanation for playing that long other than having fun (or writing a Codex review for Shroud Of The Avatar ).
This is the fundamental truth that every single one of your and your "colleagues" sad ad hominems fail to address.
Because it is so logical even you cannot deny it.

That it stops being fun at some point is not an issue, every game does that. I bet even the guy with 2k+ hours will at some point stop having fun and move on. And he might even be degenerate enough to then leave negative feedback because he only got a few years worth of enjoyment from it, who knows.

Answer a simple question:
Why would anyone play a game for hundreds of hours if he thinks the game is shit and not having fun?

Besides being a voluntary QA tester (which simply doesn't happen), I have not heard a single reason.

I'm not talking about patches or updates messing up the game, making a nice experience not fun any more, resulting in negative reviews. This is the only case where someone with a load of playtime can reasonably say the game is shit (because it is NOW but wasn't when he played).
But that simply isn't what happened here, I don't think I've seen a single negative review saying "this game used to be good before update X" (other than, "now it crashes for me", but that didn't seem to happen often).

Also, no, I'm not defending the game, ortucis. I haven't even played it, yet.
It might be shit.
What I am doing is calling out all the stupid bitching about it by people who obviously had a long and good time with it, but now pretend it was a horrible experience.
Now, excuse me while I watch some tranny porn.

 

[Burning Bridges]

@thesheep your words have convinced me. And I think that 100 hours should automatically lead to a positive review. This should be implemented on steam somehow.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Answer a simple question:
Why would anyone play a game for hundreds of hours if he thinks the game is shit and not having fun?

Because it is not the same game that he played anymore?

I assume if someone plays 500 hours and gives a negative review, he cannot say that he did not have fun, no, in that regard you are correct. But the question was not wether it was fun. A rating is about what the game has developed into. And most such reviews begin with a historic part "the game was fun" and then go into detail how that changed, and usually end with the lack of updates even though the game never reached v1.0 or that the game is still at v0.3 despite 5 years of updates (eg Stranded Deep).

In Early Access the review is as much Early Access as the game and is "about to change" when you see great changes. if your boss fires you after 5 years, you also dont make argument that you only started slacking after 4.

The point is that developers can change the game at any time, and those changes are to the worse. And this is actually very lamentable, as we lost the ability to downgrade. For example I gave a very good review to Motorsport Manager. It was a great game that sometimes crashed, but you could change something reload a few times and continue your career. Now some updates has introduced a random seed in the savegame and now the game will crash every time you reload no matter what you do, while the developers play u-boat since December. You can see how I changed my review to

after 259 hours played. In other games it's good mechanics that were gradually taken out and consolified (like completely botched UI in the The Long Dark). Or the total lack of programming skill in Automation which even remained after a complete rewrite (!) although that one is a bit funny in my expense (I played 500 hours).

I actually explained that to you before. But such logic seems to bounce off from your thick skull, almost like we were discussing at Steam forums. I told you that Early access is like a fresh marriage and you are still are at the stage where the judge asks "was it fun? then why are you complaining after such a long time".

Also, no, I'm not defending the game, ortucis. I haven't even played it, yet.
It might be shit.

You see? that's the thing. some people play 300 hours and write a devastating review others become fanbois even though they have playes 0. Humans are so strange, you sometimes want to bash them with a wooden hammer.

 

[thesheeep]

@thesheep your words have convinced me. And I think that 100 hours should automatically lead to a positive review. This should be implemented on steam somehow.

1. How did you manage to misspell my nick with the forum auto completing names?
2. I give up. It doesn't matter what I tell you, you just pick some points I never made and try to counter them. I mean... FFS:

Because it is not the same game that he played anymore?

I assume if someone plays 500 hours and gives a negative review, he cannot say that he did not have fun, no, in that regard you are correct. But the question was not wether it was fun. A rating is about what the game has developed into.

[...] blurb

I actually explained that to you before. But such logic seems to bounce off from your thick skull, almost like we were discussing at Steam forums. I told you that Early access is like a fresh marriage and you are still are at the stage where the judge asks "was it fun? then why are you complaining after such a long time".

I'm not talking about patches or updates messing up the game, making a nice experience not fun any more, resulting in negative reviews. This is the only case where someone with a load of playtime can reasonably say the game is shit (because it is NOW but wasn't when he played).
But that simply isn't what happened here, I don't think I've seen a single negative review saying "this game used to be good before update X" (other than, "now it crashes for me", but that didn't seem to happen often).

!!!!

Humans are so strange, you sometimes want to bash them with a wooden hammer.

Well, at least we can agree on something.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Now I am still puzzled wether I should refund the Conon the Barbarian game. My mom allows me just 1 game per month, and I am afraid Memories of Mars is much better.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

Now I am still puzzled wether I should refund the Conon the Barbarian game. My mom allows me just 1 game per month, and I am afraid Memories of Mars is much better.

Much like Ark, it's alright for a laugh if you're playing with someone else and play on a private server and mod it to hell, but otherwise hell no.

 

[Burning Bridges]

1. How did you manage to misspell my nick with the forum auto completing names?

How did you manage to misspell your nick during registration?

I'm not talking about patches or updates messing up the game, making a nice experience not fun any more, resulting in negative reviews. This is the only case where someone with a load of playtime can reasonably say the game is shit (because it is NOW but wasn't when he played).
But that simply isn't what happened here, I don't think I've seen a single negative review saying "this game used to be good before update X" (other than, "now it crashes for me", but that didn't seem to happen often).

!!!!

A-ha, now we are beginning to understand the real issue!

You are making the case that the accused Mebrilia has no right to make bad reviews about the game because there were no game breaking updates.

But Mr. attorney where is the proof? You have not even played the game! Mebriliasaid that the game was touted as a RPG and now we are talking about a theme park game with enforced 3rd person and gameplay consisting of picking up leafs to make banana skirts. Isn't that a clear case of deception?

I played for 1 hour and must say I'm very puzzled. I liked the wind effect but had the feeling it would always be the same weather until eternity. The UI was shit, the enemies were shit and placed much too close, A campfire 50 meters between two groups of animals. I found dead corpses in full armor, bedrolls, and tents that I needed but I could not interact or pick up anything. I dont want to be rash but I am afraid this is another game for mentally handicapped.

 

[Haba]

The important question here is: what size did you make your schlong in the character creator, BB?

Also are your slaves female or male?

 

[Burning Bridges]

My character is almost 2m with a very small penis.

https://ibb.co/dcDMhJ

 

[Burning Bridges]

I found a very method to play this game is put a match under the E key. Incredible how much shit you can collect without stooping a million times.

 

[Bocian]

My character is almost 2m with a very small penis.

Would you rather be tall with a small penis or a manlet with a huge dong?

 

[Burning Bridges]

My character is almost 2m with a very small penis.

Would you rather be tall with a small penis or a manlet with a huge dong?

B)

 

[thesheeep]

My character is almost 2m with a very small penis.

Would you rather be tall with a small penis or a manlet with a huge dong?

The second one, "riding" on the first one, Mad Max style.

 

[J_C]

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.

Now go back and look up how much support Anarchy, TSW and Conan got (hint: quite a lot), and realize how stupid you are.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Refunded this piece of shit.

Combat and enemies are worse than Morrowind.
Enemies have a sensor range of 25 meter.
Everything is much too close.
Picking up objects and item interaction is cancer.

It could actually be a good game, but is ill of consolitis and an insult to intelligence.

 

[Idiott]

Apparently the huge patch (fixing "over 500 issues", including some damn gamebreaking bugs) that was slated for this week will be deployed in September... Because they go on vacation.