Conan Exiles Balancing Survival Gameplay and RPG Progression
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Talking to Gamasutra, the lead designer for Conan Exiles, Oscar López Lacalle has explained how the game manages to balance survival and RPG elements. Considering that the game's progression is based around gathering resources and crafting, it's interesting to read how the developers deal with the need to provide adequate challenge and new things to explore without resorting to level-scaling, especially considering the multiplayer nature of the game. A few paragraphs:
With the bones of progression in place, the focus shifted to matters of balance and providing a steady ramp. Lacalle says the team focused more on providing visual information rather than coddling players or ensuring they didn’t wander into areas they weren’t prepared for.
“We created a world where dangerous-looking things are dangerous, and it's up to the player to make a judgment call about their ability to deal with them. Even though the beginning of the game is relatively safe, the gloves come off once you cross north of the river.
They also got rid of levels as a concept for monster power progression. "A crocodile is always a crocodile and a dragon is always a dragon," he says. "There are no easy crocodiles and hard crocodiles. If you've managed to beat a crocodile once, you're very likely to do that again. This allows players to easily identify levels of danger and emphasizes the power of gear as a progression mechanism.”
While there is no clear delineation of difficulty in the traditional sense (like zones marked out by suggested level or bridges that divide sections of differing challenge), Lacalle says that the basic idea was to turn up the heat as players ventured further north.
“Moving north from the river to the iron-rich areas is sort of a rite of passage when you are still sporting primitive stone weapons, but things ease up dramatically once you manage to make your first iron weapon," says Lacalle.
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Of course, because Conan Exiles allows for multiplayer servers and unrestricted open world PvP, one of the most difficult tests for the team has been designing those interactions. Ensuring high level players feel powerful without encouraging the persistent griefing of new players is a tricky feat, but one Lacalle hopes the team has designed for.
High power players are dissuaded from inhabiting the southern areas of the map due to lack of resources and the need to repair their equipment with materials that simply don't exist in the south. Monsters in the north can damage Tier 1 buildings too, pushing players to create bases with Tier 2 and Tier 3 building pieces, which also require northern materials. "In general, high power players want to live in the north, low power players want to live in the south and everything in between is a gradient of deadliness and risk-reward,” says Lacalle.
The idea isn’t to to eliminate encounters between high and low level players completely, but to make them a natural part of the game world. “High power players can of course just go south to raid and grief people there just for fun, even if all they gain from that is blood and bitter tears," says Lacalle. "This is typical behavior in sandbox environments and in a way adds to the feeling of danger of the world itself. Raiding is as much part of the game as gathering, crafting or base building -- the threat of being raided is a major driver for creative building and the whole building progression path.”
