Conan Exiles Interview – Early Access, Launch, and Beyond

Funcom’s community manager Tor Egil Andersen chatted with Massively Overpowered at this year’s GDC about his studio’s survival RPG Conan Exiles that’s set to leave Early Access on May 8, 2018. The resulting interview goes over the reasons for Early Access, the peculiarities of international censorship, the features we can expect to see in Conan Exiles come launch, and more. A sampling:

Reasons for early access

I asked Andersen about what needed to happen to move the game from early access to launch and, well, the answer is nothing. The company wanted to make a good game and keep the game there for about a year before launching. That’s it. There were no specific goals except to make a good game and let it bake in EA for a year. That honestly makes me feel justified in not only my skepticism of the game at release but future treatment of early access games, especially after the comments about EA you’ll be seeing from other developers I talked to at GDC this year.

That said, Funcom is also upfront about this approach, not hiding anything. Funcom’s constant work on the title and open development feel not only appropriate for early access but is also inspirational. Had the game not used the EA shield, I’d probably heap more praise on it because this is exactly how MMOs were released prior to the EA excuse. It’s simply a natural part of running games as a service. And since Funcom’s a company with a lot of experience in this department, future Funcom titles should in my view not only avoid using EA but draw attention to doing a real release with real post-launch updates. In fact, if you think about it, CE would have beaten ARK to release and probably gained a lot more respect as an actual launched survival game instead of being yet another EA title. Fixing your game during EA is a requirement, while tossing a game into launch and barely showing it any support is the real difference between true MMO companies and the companies shoe-horning in multiplayer. Funcom is the former and should proudly wear that badge!

[…]

Launch gameplay and beyond

First, I’m sorry to break any hearts, but when the game moves to its full launch on XBox One, don’t expect crossplay, even with the “Play Anywhere” system that allows other titles to crossplay on Windows.

A lot of details about the game’s launch features have already been discussed over the past few months: enhanced combat, more RPG-esque systems like perks for reaching certain stat-goals (with higher skill levels requiring higher investment costs), more zones (expect details on the swamp and volcano areas in the near future!), a new religion, fast travel, additions to the goals guide, and more. Andersen also talked about how many, many more items are being put in, “hundreds,” “MMO-levels” of loot, both for crafting rare items made of obsidian and other new materials, new items dropped from new mobs, and *gasp* legendary items.

While I love PvP, as an MMO fan I think having it without good PvE is an issue that makes a game stand out as a “gankbox.” Why fight to live in a gameworld if all you’re doing is surviving? Not only is the team adding farming (which is supposed to be another accessible crafting/world building activity that grows with you), but world bosses for end game, all over the map. These bosses are meant for max-level players, as killing them drops a key to chests they guard, with said key only being usable for maxed our characters. This is how players will have access to legendaries, which mostly seemed to look cool and have awesome stats. Legendaries can still be lost, destroyed, and repaired, so they’re cool, but balanced.

That may sound boring, but the new combat may help with that. As we’ve heard, each weapon has its own style. You can weave heavy and light attacks into combos, which may have special effects, like bleeds on daggers. You also get some more flavors that go along with that.

For example, since daggers are short-range, their swipes move you forward more. Since you also have a bleed and are at risk by getting in so close to the enemy, you can backflip away from enemies to let your bleed run its course. I still liked smashing heads with the mace I played with, but admit that archers are still annoying as heck, so if I jump back in, I’ll probably find a weapon that’s good for taking those jerks out. Polearms tend to have good reach still!