Funcom Responds To Accusations About Conan Exiles' Development

In the latest Answers of the Week thread on Reddit, Funcom Creative Director Joel Bylos responded to a few accusations about the development of Conan Exiles. Players are alleging that Funcom isn't working fast enough and that it isn't listening to its community. Here's what Bylos had to say about those matters.

In response to the accusation that Funcom isn't working fast enough, Bylos had the following to say.

Let me ask this back to you. What should we do, that we aren’t already doing? The team is working as fast as they can legally work, we have opened a bunch of new positions to hire (but that takes time) and we are making steps to improve the game every patch. You say that we are fixing things too slow…okay, but if we cannot physically work more often or harder then what is the solution? We’ve already hired two external companies to contract with us and help out. You say that content is coming too slow, but again, are you asking that we whip the devs and make them work more than legally is allowed?

As for exploits – we have fixed a huge amount of exploits and are still fixing them all the time. Compared to other games that have been in Early Access for a much longer time, our client has a more stable framerate and far less exploits. Yet it doesn’t seem to impact the popularity of those games.

The only answer to what are we going to do about it is this – we’re going to keep working on it, we’re going to keep improving it, and maybe, just maybe, when we are ready to launch, people will try it and be pleasantly surprised by all the things we have done to make the game great.

Because, after all, this is Early Access.

He responded to the accusation that the company isn't listening to its community as follows.

As for forcing our “creative” choices on players, let me be clear: We are making the game we have envisioned, and trying to incorporate player feedback and ideas. But we’re not making a “community consensus” game. We told people what we want the game to be, and what our goals are for the game.

Finally, it is easy to sit outside and say “listen to community”, but the community consist of a large amount of people who all want different things. PvP players want very different things to PvE players. Modders want a different focus again, as do RPers. Server Admins also want a bunch of features. We try to align with what we are doing, and do our very best to give people the things that they ask for.

This week's Answers of the Week also include several other interesting notes. The upcoming biome will introduce a need for players to keep an eye on their temperature. "Fishtraps, Crabtraps, Beehives, etc." are planned for the new biome, as is a hand scythe tool that will be used to harvest fiber. There are no plans to allow foundation pieces to be set at different heights than adjacent pieces while also allowing them to snap to them.

You can find all of this week's Answers of the Week here.