Conan Exiles

6 entries. 6,204 words.

February, 2017

• Conan Exiles, Part Two. 2017-02-05 11:14 PM.
  • Status
  • Survival
  
  For some weird reason I’m still playing Conan Exiles. Probably some misguided need to get my money’s worth out of it. Also it’s a fairly relaxing game world to be inside right now. I can safely ignore everything in the real world while I’m breaking rocks. (And that is a big chunk of what you do-everything requires tons of stone.) However, I will continue to list everything that’s wrong with the game, hopefully to shame Funcom into feeling bad about releasing their game too early. Let this be a lesson to you game developers: I will say bad things about you if you release too early! 1,367 words.
• What Makes A Good Survival Game?. 2017-02-10 12:24 AM.
  • Survival
  
  My recent test drive of Conan Exiles and a comment from Jeromai reminded me of a topic I once started writing about but never finished, which I will now take up again: What makes a good survival game? What defines a survival game? The Forest (way back in 2015) What prompted me to visit this topic was a comment from Jeromai: That he became more interested in Conan Exiles after hearing you could play it solo. I think it highlighted one of the current problems with the survival genre: There’s a perception that survival games are defined as PvP last-man-standing games like H1Z1 King-of-the-Kill, ARK Survival-of-the-Fittest, Rust, etc., where your only goal is to log in and try to murder everyone in sight, basically like Quake Deathmatch in 1997, only using stone knives and bear skins instead of rocket launchers. 1,275 words.
• Conan Exiles, Part Three. 2017-02-14 8:25 PM.
  • Single-Player
  • Survival
  
  You might be wondering why I’m still talking about Conan Exiles after trashing it for two posts in a row. Welllllll, see, it’s still kind of fun. :) Some random shrine of some random priest. It has that same sort of addictive crafting progression treadmill that ARK has: I want to see everything you can craft, so I have to keep leveling up and unlocking new recipes and finding more and more resources. And every time you craft something new, it helps speed up the leveling and searching for more resources. And there’s always something cool to craft just out of reach. So it’s kind of a vicious cycle that will continue until I either run out of things to craft and/or can safely walk anywhere on the map. (I quit playing ARK after I could craft winter-weather protection and a rifle which could kill any dinosaur I encountered.) 851 words.

March, 2017

• 7DTD – New Game, Treasure Hunt. 2017-03-02 4:00 PM.
  • Survival
  
  So I’m going to write some more about 7 Days To Die since it’s all I’ve been playing lately, and there’s this weird expectation that bloggers are supposed to post things occasionally. I gave up on Conan Exiles because I already feel like I’ve done everything in the game, or I should say I’ve seen all the game mechanics that are in the game. Those mechanics are: Gather stuff, build stuff, and kill stuff. Everything you gather is gathered the same way: Either pick it up by hand, or hit it with a tool. Everything you build is built the same way: Put the component in your hot bar and place it where you want it. (This includes thralls.) Everything you kill is killed the same way: Shoot it with a bow or crossbow, or hit it with a melee weapon. (Or hit it with a club if you want to drag it back to base and make a thrall out of it.) 1,387 words.

May, 2018

• Week End – Conan Exiles, Wild West Online. 2018-05-12 2:30 PM.
  • MMORPG
  • Roundup
  
  My Week Last weekend I tried Fortnite Battle Royale for a second time and I haven’t played much else this week. It was a brand new gaming experience for me and that pretty much trumps everything else when I’m in the doldrums of “every game I own is boring” that dominates roughly 50% of any given year. And hey, it’s free! Admittedly, I had more fun spectating and making videos than I did actually playing the game. Also, I kind of stopped playing already, since, being an adult, I (and my sore finger joints) can’t commit to the mandatory 500 minimum hours of practice time required to keep up. And once the thrill of discovery is over, there is not much fun in playing battle royale without the mindset of playing to win. 997 words.

May, 2019

• Games Played – April 2019. 2019-05-01 4:54 PM.
  • Roundup
  
  It’s been another odd gaming month. I thought I would be playing a lot of Sekiro, but it turns out I’m just not in the mood for it, or any games really. I’ve gotten much more enjoyment from consuming plain old non-interactive video content in my free time (ie. mostly Critical Role). Sekiro, 28 hours. I am currently on the “Guardian Ape” boss and not terribly interested in putting in the repetitive practice needed to get past it. I’m also recording my playthrough so I not only have to be in the mood to play the game, but also in the mood to record and talk about it, so it’s doubly difficult. Honestly I’m not enjoying it as much as the previous Souls games. 7 Days To Die, 16 hours. I’m pretty surprised I played for this long actually-I feel like some of this might be AFK time. Anyway, this is the game I’ve turned to when I want to do something with my hands while listening to Critical Role. The newest version (17.2 I think) seems to have a lot more difficult survival mechanics than previous versions. Albion Online, 3 hours. I tried out the free-to-play release. I found it was surprisingly interesting in the first hour but it became apparent in the second two hours that the gameplay would probably never change, so I felt like I’d seen everything the game had to offer. Conan Exiles, 2 hours. I tried it again for the first time since the Early Access launch. I thought more would be different, but it’s still pretty similar. The new combat didn’t seem like much of an improvement to me. Anyway, since the map was the same, I didn’t really want to repeat what I’d already played before. Elder Scrolls Online, 2 hours. Continuing the search for the elusive hook to get back into that game. Just can’t find it. No PS4 games. I didn’t even turn it on in April. 327 words.