Feature Spotlight:
The Tavern System
Conan Exiles
From Survival Camps to Civilization
The Goal
The tavern feature was a cornerstone piece in a multi-year strategy aimed at evolving the Conan Exiles endgame toward a "Conan the King" era, where we wanted player settlements to feel less like static survival forts and more like living, breathing cities.
The Problem
Exiles’ iconic "knock them out and drag them" method of acquiring thralls is very Conan the Barbarian, but its not very “Kingly” and it doesn’t exactly make for the most fun (or marketable) gameplay. If players are going to be building cities, they need more than a rugger warband; they need allies, traders, and travelers.
The Intent
We wanted the world-state to matter. If you rescued a cage full of hostages from cultists, you may find them later in your tavern looking for a hot meal, or a job.
The Tavern was designed to be a narrative and mechanical hub: a place to trade goods, hire mercenaries, advance quests, and listen for rumors.
Screenshot of a Slack canvas drawn during the initial brainstorming session
The Process
Pathing, Persistence, and Production Realities
Un-Hardcoding the AI
The existing NPC pathing and avoidance algorithms were strictly tuned for chasing and combat. Getting an NPC to casually navigate a crowded room and sit on a barstool required hunting through legacy code and consulting with principal programmers to eventually expose and manipulate deeply hard-coded combat values.
State Persistence
To manage "Patron Pools" that could be shared across player clans, I repurposed the backend of our existing shared-clan inventory systems. By treating patrons as hidden items in this inventory, we had a robust, ready-made infrastructure.
Production Triage
During development, a communication breakdown led to an external programming team charging ahead and building out a misunderstood version of the architecture. Faced with tight deadlines, I made the tough call to salvage and adapt their work rather than scrapping it. It resulted in a clunkier dev-facing system, but allowed us to focus on more player facing content and polish for the release.
The Outcome
NPC Farms and Bar Brawls
Player Reception
I envisioned the Tavern primarily as an immersive roleplay hub with the added benefit of hiring NPCs. The players, with terrifying efficiency, immediately gamed the system and turned it into a hyper-optimized NPC-hiring mill.
The Takeaway
If I were to build "Tavern 2.0," I would want to build gameplay directly into the act of engaging with and hiring new people. Instead of a flat exchange, I’d look towards mechanics for leveling and customizing the bar to attract more rare and desirable clientele, and meta-games for “courting” potential new allies.
Iterative Polish
I later mentored a summer intern to address some of these "farming" behaviors in a very Conan way. We utilized new AI tech to build a "kick out" feature, allowing players to initiate fights to violently clear out unwanted patrons.
Documentation & Architecture
Because the backend implementation required compromises to hit our deadlines, having crystal-clear documentation was paramount. As a Technical Designer, I believe clean hand-offs are everything.
I maintain a steadfast dedication to making sure my systems are easily understandable for non-technical designers and perfectly primed for the modding community.