One of the greatest concerns I have with the new follower cap is the Purge defense. Now, I play on servers with a great community, where people will rally to help you with the Purge if you need it. This community-organized help would be an excellent solution to the lack of thrall-based defense, but there are two problems with it:
Sometimes you just can’t be there at the right time. Maybe you got stuck in traffic. Maybe you had to work late because you had a deadline to meet and can’t afford getting fired over a videogame. Maybe your son had a concert and you’re not a crappy parent and want to go see him play. So you might come in late or even miss the Purge completely.
Someone built close to you, through no fault of yours. When they get purged, you don’t know about it. If the Purge spawns closer to your base than theirs, it will damage your stuff too.
I would like to propose a solution: announce to everyone who’s online that clan such-and-such is getting purged and put a marker on the map. That way, the community can decide to rally around the players that need help, if they want to.
Of course, I’m aware that this might not be something PVP players would want – I don’t play on PVP servers, so I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure it would be trivial to make this something that is configured for PVE and/or PVE-C servers only, if that’s the prevailing sentiment.
PvP players would certainly not want it and for good reason, being targeted while being purged and announcing the location of your base. I mainly play PvE and I wouldn’t want it either. Let’s be honest there are toxic players even in a good community that could use this to their advantage. They could swoop in and take named thralls from under your nose. They could take the purge enemies to someone else’s base and cause damage.
Generally I think the clan purge should be private and should only be shared with others if you wish to do so.
I mean, it would be great if they implemented it as a per-clan option instead of a server-wide option. I’d love that, too, and it seems like it would put your concerns to rest, too.
I think you are hinting to an Alley System, Which I would love to see implemented in some form or fashion. Maybe a list of options on what the other clan has access to. Purge info could be one of them. Maybe the ability to open doors and even wooden chests and so on.
I’m trying to be practical. I would love an ally system, but I know there’s no way in hell they will implement it. I’m looking for the simplest, easiest-to-implement suggestion that would leave other players happy and still have a chance of being picked up by Funcom.
What are the chances that a per-clan-configurable Purge broadcast change would be implemented? Slimmer than Slim Shady.
What are the chances an ally system would be implemented? A whelk’s chance in a supernova
I mean, if you have a simple option to announce it to everyone or just your own clan and the default setting is just to your own clan, then it wouldn’t really affect you, would it?
Yeah, I keep hearing that and yet I’ve been Purged offline and I know other people who have, too. Maybe not recently, but that’s just trusting Funcom not to (re)introduce bugs in their game.
Official servers are set to zero for minimum number of players that have to be online for the purge. Not sure I understand why you are referring to this?
Now that you mentioned it, wouldn’t an alliance system also be the perfect solution for this entire thrall limit debacle. They said 55-100 thrallS per clan… If they introduce an alliance system clans could team up to increase the cap that way clans alone cant strain the servers with 500 thralls each, but you still have the ability to amass a fairly large army if you band together with other clans.
The spanish guy at my server also said, that the purges dont happen offline (at least for him).
He was at the total max of the bar and the purge only started, when he came online in the purge window… But this was 2hours after the purge window opened.
@Zeb and @jot29 I could be totally wrong they may have changed it and the UI may just still have the option present. I’ll have to see if there’s a way for me to test this feature.
I play on a very full and very friendly Official PvE where the long-time players absolutely love to help others out with their purges. The standing rule that everyone observes is that the clan getting purged keeps any T4s. Works great most of the time.
Most of the time.
Recently, myself and my purge buddy @Soulstis have decided to collaborate just with one another because even well-intentioned and enthusiastic helpers don’t always help. At a couple of mine, some newer players who either don’t understand that thralls aren’t smart enough to not kill T4s (or don’t understand purge rewards) have gotten some valuable T4s killed. At a couple of his, he’s found T4s that were dragged away to another base and then killed there.
Whether it’s malice or stupidity, it’s worked out well enough with just us and my clanmate on voice comm that we’ve preferred to keep our purges private even though we’re still happy to help others with theirs. IMO, this is how it needs to stay.
Announcing purges globally, while founded in good intentions, would cause more problems than it would solve. Since people can already ask for help in global chat, those who want or need help can already get it, but a global announcement would be a fundamental disrespect to those who want to keep theirs private.
Now what I would support is that if you have land claim immediately adjacent to a clan that’s getting purged that you might see an announcement on-screen that your guards are reporting an approaching threat at a particular locale. That would be kind of cool, and I can see it having other uses outside of PvP as well (i.e. in PvP perhaps Event Logs could be more anonymous if instead thralls provide a “ping” on the map of a crime in progress, etc).
Speaking of a “ping” system, it would be cool if clan-members could broadcast an attention-getting symbol on the world map to other players. For instance, during a raid or purge, imagine being able to fire off a signal flare from your bow that also places a flashing star on the map for a couple minutes. It would be a handy way of communicating rally points, etc.
To be fair, it was @Wak4863 who suggested turning it into a fully fledged Alliance system, but I would love to write a suggestion – if that’s okay with everyone. I was defending my idea not because I dislike the Alliance system – on the contrary, I would prefer that – but rather because I was hoping Funcom might pick up this simpler idea and implement it as part of their Follower Cap update. A foolish hope, but like I said, better a slim chance than none
Alright, I bashed out a suggestion. I tried to cover as much as I could, but I’m sure you guys will be able to poke several holes in it. It’s your turn, now
