Conan Exiles - Balancing Survival Gameplay

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How to balance a survival/crafting game? Here's the answer for Conan Exiles on Gamasutra:

Balancing survival gameplay and RPG progression in Conan Exiles

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Building a game in the survival/crafting genre right now is a tough ask. It's a very crowded market, particularly on Steam, and particularly in Early Access, and there are a large number of high quality titles in that crowd jockeying for players' attention and dollars.

One tack a number of games have taken recently to distinguish themselves is by expanding their survival game with player progression, loot, or other RPG systems.

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"In general, we wanted specific crafts to feel like mini-projects, and tried to always have something waiting for the player right around the corner," says Lacalle. "We wanted this dynamic to not only encompass the basic survival genre elements of hunger, thirst and access to resources and technology, but also to include combat, equipment and the ability to build anything from a tiny shack to a fortress to a grand castle that will stand against the assault of other players."

While the system is designed to allow for multiple builds and playstyles, it becomes clear early on that it's impossible to master all of them. While a jack-of-all-trades character is viable in Conan Exiles, that character will trade basic competence in everything for never excelling in any one area.

The higher an attribute in Conan Exile, the more points it costs to increase it further. "It's a design that allows for specialization but presents the player with hard choices that steer them into a bare minimum set of attributes that make their characters functional all-around," says Lacalle.

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