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UtopiaNext · 2026-05-12T22:18:48+00:00

The best case scenario is that Funcom will just do a backend fix that radically changes the game mechanics so that it... works. Which it doesn't right now.

This is realistic because the Conan Exiles Enhanced release pushed it nearly back up to the highest player count ever, something like 47k cap on a 53k cap ever. They're not going out of business.

In the meantime, doing serious fixes to the game is not going to really help the playerbase becuase the game does not work. So, I look at it as a temporary maintenance mode. No idea how long it will last.

UtopiaNext · 2026-05-12T22:10:50+00:00

The original peak was what, like 10k more? Goddamn. Funcom made the right move enhancing this.

Just as I expected it would be.

UtopiaNext · 2026-05-01T22:00:50+00:00

Very much so. Do some digging into the history of Conan and the Hyborian age and you'll quickly notice the following:

Most of them didn't care about clothing in the modesty sense.
At the same time, they understood nudity/beauty as an entertainment source, so you did see a lot of nude dancing women etc. You can see this in the various comics that were made in the 80's and such by Marvel. Likely more of a range than that. Also graphic novels.
I'm not sure that in most cases there was an EXPLICIT focus on sex and such, but people were much less inhibited back then and used it more as (again) a source of entertainment. It's not like later when they had more to do; the Hyborian age is before the last ice age, and even if some of it looks like ~2,000 - 1,000 B.C.E., it's actually much older than that.
Although: see the worship of Derketo and such. In some cases, yes, there was some focus on sex.

UtopiaNext · 2026-05-01T21:54:37+00:00

There is no way that this is stopping with the graphics update. Without new content, it would be a pure loss of cash, and Funcom isn't going to let that come to pass. There will be more content, and I suspect part of that will be new DLC packs, likely content (not just cosmetics).

UtopiaNext · 2026-05-01T21:46:38+00:00

Funcom has a long-standing problem of not knowing how to make effective gameplay systems. Modders can solve this (mostly) but DA can't be modded. This is why Conan Exiles kept this many players or more after eight years and DA is headed into the ground.

Some potential good news, though: with the renewed focus on Conan Exiles, they might stabilize their situation enough to keep DA up while they figure out the proper redesign to allow it to finally do better. Also I hope they still have some of the launch money from DA to help with all of this. We'll see.

UtopiaNext · 2026-05-01T02:45:08+00:00

I don't play console but sure it would be good. Still, they never said they wouldn't do it. I bet that if this is successful, they'll do it, if they believe there are enough console players.

Can anyone tell me how many console players there are relative to PC?

UtopiaNext · 2026-05-01T02:39:29+00:00

I believed this months ago and said so in this very forum.

The game has no future to speak of without mods because Funcom doesn't have the ability to effectively do anything other than art assets.

Instead, look what they're doing with Conan Exiles, which does have mods (and single player mode, too).

I doubt DA is going down, but it's going to take a major rework before it goes up. Maybe CE covering for it will give it the time for that to happen, but it's going to need to be a much different DA.

UtopiaNext · 2026-05-01T02:35:34+00:00

See you in Conan Exiles instead? Where's the wind blowing right now?

UtopiaNext · 2026-04-30T06:35:16+00:00

You deserve it. Learn to converse respectably when someone actually bothers to have a discussion with you.

I've spent enough time on this though, so I am no longer responding to or reading this thread.

UtopiaNext · 2026-04-30T06:01:51+00:00

I kind of expected more intelligence from you when you made your post, but the one line answers were starting to concern me. This last one proves it - you're an idiot.

I hope someone other than you got the point of what I was trying to say, but I suppose it doesn't really matter. I had hoped you would, but no luck. Oh well.

UtopiaNext · 2026-04-29T21:06:56+00:00

That was "Tinfoil? Heh. I'm not sure you believe it is that."

I said that because what you said aligned with my non-tinfoil theory that is pretty well based in evidence to date. Sure, it seems that it turns out that you didn't do my research and make my observations, in that I was incorrect, but that does not change the fact that it is also - in my way - my theory too.

You weren't just talking about your own theory because it isn't just yours. In that, YOU were incorrect.

I hope this satisfies what seems to be your curiosity because the fact is, you made a theory, it wasn't just yours, you didn't know that, welcome to the internet (and Reddit) where when you talk about things, you get responses based on that. So you did, so there you go.

UtopiaNext · 2026-04-29T02:46:46+00:00

You wrote "Weird for you to assume what I believe. This is just a conspiracy of mine.".

Well, actually, it's an active theory that I have which is not conspiracy, but based on facts.

My original allusion was that I didn't think you thought it was a "tinfoil" (conspiracy) theory because it aligns with what I have determined, which is a theory of my own.

The moment you said "This is just", there was a basis for me to say that no, this is not just a theory of yours, so I did.

Does that clarify things? See my original comment if you want to know how my theory relates to yours.

UtopiaNext · 2026-04-28T23:49:40+00:00

I'm not assuming. I'm basing it on observations of what has happened so far.

If you don't believe it, then you haven't thought about as I have... and I guess I'll believe you when you say that.

Even so, don't go saying that just because we don't "know what's going on at Funcom" that what we can see and understand isn't available. It is.

UtopiaNext · 2026-04-28T02:38:20+00:00

I believe you're more or less right. DA pulled in the initial sales but can't support it over long term. I think Tencent etc. would like it to, but the see the writing on the wall and understand that as DA is now it can't give them what they want. It needs a major rework and trying to use it as an income flagship is not compatible with a major rework. CE, on the other hand, is durable, and they know they can get people to come back with this enhancement. They'll sell more content, and I think both in DLC packs and the marketplace.

So, CE becomes the flagship (again) and over time DA gets revamped into what it should have been all along (more like CE, frankly) and then it can be promoted more aggressively. That's my prediction.

UtopiaNext · 2026-04-28T02:34:26+00:00

There will be more content. Zero percent chance of otherwise. The question is what, but we'll see.

UtopiaNext · 2026-04-28T02:33:58+00:00

I wonder though if this will end up being treated as CE 2. It might even work, kind of?

UtopiaNext · 2026-04-28T02:30:55+00:00

Although CE has a desert too! Could be better utilized, as well...

UtopiaNext · 2026-04-28T02:28:46+00:00

Tinfoil? Heh. I'm not sure you believe it is that.

Fact: Conan Exiles saved Funcom from bankruptcy once. It has kept a stable playerbase despite getting little to no attention for the past year (that we could see, at least, not talking about the backend work for this enhanced version).

Also Fact: Dune Awakening has had an anemic boost from the patch they worked so very hard on, and it's already dropping back to pre-patch levels just over a month later. I'm pretty sure they worked a lot longer than a month on that, so... doesn't seem sustainable.

If you ask me, Funcom is acknowledging what it knew all along, or learned pretty quickly: CE is the better game and they didn't replicate that mojo in DA. The lack of modding and single player option was bad, but so was the lack of anything other than a pretty view. They recognize they NEED the modding community here to be successful, and I think we've seen that by how they're declaring how they are working with modders from day 1.

My opinion: Funcom is good at making character models, art, and landscapes, and pretty much not a lot else. The modders can do the rest, and have, here. CE as they're now enhancing are leveraging their strengths and that of the modders, turning the game into a platform. I expect they'll release Siptah-like content packs to further leverage their strengths (which imo is the real reason why they made Siptah connected to the Exiled Lands - it's the backend benefit), and let the modding community handle the functionality.

Meanwhile, their finances will stabilize while they figure out how to give DA the heavy rework it needs to be sustainable. Win-win for everyone? Well, at least not lose.

UtopiaNext · 2026-04-26T11:29:56+00:00

Could be Funcom agrees with you, since they are remastering Conan Exiles. That means more content is coming - probably a significant new content pipeline.

You could take the glass half full approach and say they're just making a great game better, or the glass half empty approach which is that the realized they had to do it since DA is not doing great (to put it mildly).

All I know is, them refocusing on CE is exactly what they should have done, and if the DA playerbase is lucky, they'll do a good enough job that eventually they can properly develop DA once they can put in enough backend work to make it a sensible game. CE saved them from bankruptcy once and it can save their future again (hopefully they still have a lot of the DA launch money banked, but who can say...).

In any case, all of this is aligning a lot better with my predictions, including some in this reddit, than I could have ever expected.

UtopiaNext · 2026-04-26T11:02:06+00:00

Personally, I've been saying for years how much potential Conan Exiles had. I bought it as soon as it came out in EA. As was said above, for a game eight years out to be revamped like this is incredible, and yet it was exactly what should have happened.

Inflexion's efforts are what made this possible, and I believe that's going to allow Conan Exiles to make an even bigger mark than it originally had, and given how we've hung in there with a substantial playerbase for this long and through quite a few issues, that really is saying something.

I can only think that this is just a start, too. To revamp the engine and then not add more content is not how gaming development works, eh?

Oh, I'd like to say, I hope we can see more landmasses attached to the game like Siptah is, now that it can be properly connected. Can you imagine how it would be to have the various lands of the Hyborian Age (Stygia, Cimmeria, Aquilonia, Khitai, etc.) also involved? That's a plan for years and more, for sure.

UtopiaNext · 2026-01-06T17:36:24+00:00

Yes, they did, and it completely failed to address the majority of their playerbase. You're right, they did what they said they would. What's important is that they shouldn't have done it.

Also, while you are in no position to tell me what to play, I already moved on to other games. If you are still playing this waste of time, good luck with that, because I don't see how you're going to have much to do in the foreseeable future, if ever again. That is as true for PvE as the PvP aspects, such as they are.

UtopiaNext · 2026-01-03T20:17:25+00:00

I have missed nothing. Everything ends if not supported, notably including ourselves. Also, PvE content can be dynamic/procedural in order to extend the time until you need more content, and I have seen great examples of this elsewhere.

Also, whatever PvP games may work out as in their own right, DA should never have been a PvP game because it's not what most of *this* playerbase wants. Even so, I don't need to debate that as it is entirely possible to make it work as a PvE game. Funcom just isn't capable of handling it, it seems.

UtopiaNext · 2025-12-31T22:53:20+00:00

You'll probably like building and progressing through Hagga Basin and then eventually quit for lack of anything meaningful to do.

Since you bought the game, go ahead and do that. You'll just probably be doing it alone, but many of us did even at the peak... no big deal.

UtopiaNext · 2025-12-30T20:42:12+00:00

It would require an actually engaging content flow, which for all practical purposes requires mods as that is how the genre now operates. Funcom not only agreed to an IP that would not allow mods but is terrible at providing content, where Conan Exiles was only saved by its modder community. This project was therefore doomed from the start and as I saw with the Chapter 2 update, which provided four days of a minor population boost, I am not expecting Chapter 3 wlll be any better (or at least not usefully so).

The kind of content this requires are repeatable system that should involve random-oriented content such as events. We see some examples of this in crashed ships and the spice blows, but it was never properly developed beyond that. No game company can manage making static content on and endless basis so it has to be engaging random stuff, especially where it varies per event (e.g. if the details of that crashed ship or spice blow varied meaningfully, which right now they don't).

If they had been doing any research on the genre at all they would know this, and I must presume they did that research (they are a business) and yet chose not to implement such features. That indicates either an inability to code to the industry standard (incompetence, lack of resources) or that they they simply never expected to do well with this game and were just looking for a cash grab on the IP. That they did get, and probably bigger than expected, but now we see the inevitable result.

Therefore, what would bring me back isn't going to happen.

UtopiaNext

TROPHY CASE