Can we just change this Pokémon meta for PVE content?

Conan Exiles General Discussion
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Like seriously. Conan Exiles has a very fun and responsive combat. I like the roll mechanics. I like how every weapon swings, their animations, hitboxes, i really do.

But then it doesn’t really mater VS 99% of the bosses because either
A: they don’t care, attack 2 times per second with 25k+ hp
B: They get stunlocked and becomes irrelevant (arena champion, most humanoid bosses)

Take most world bosses, for instance. Most of them, with some few exceptions are almost impossible to beat without our 20k hp 500 damage per strike thrall. You pretend that you are being useful and dealing damage, but the botton line is that the thrall is doing most of the work, including aggroing. To take even further the pokémon analogy, its not an uncommon scenario seeing players back behind using healing arrows to protect their thralls, keeping them safe while fighting.

My suggestion is changing player damage system
Make it so when attacking another player or player controlled unit, you deal the exact same damage as it is right now. When fighting bosses, it should be increased by a huge multiplier, so you become less irrelevant vs PVE bosses.

Bosses attacks should also be reworked, many of them are simply unfair in a 1v1, there is nothing you can do about it. ‘‘but its a multiplayer game’’. Well you can play solo(and offline!), and your only option is using the overpowered thralls.

Imagine fighting warmaker bosses solo. IMHO all of them are doable, aside from their massive hp. Their attacks are telegraphed, you have a nice time window to strike between each combo. The only issue would be that (arguably) some hits have some abnormal reach.

Just make PVE fights more ‘‘fair’’ and doable, so thralls become an option or support, rather than a mandatory thing.

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Wait, what? Okay, which world boss are you actually having problems with? There’s probably only a handful I haven’t soloed yet. Of those, only one is actually dangerous, the rest would just be too tedious.

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You CAN stunlock them, just the weapon required changed.

As the other responder said, while they are soloable, the tedium makes it more a lesson in patience and perseverance than a fun engaging epic encounter…

I agree with the OP’s point in so much as the “best” way to fight these things now is to use an uber-thrall. While most bosses are very soloable, doing so is unfun (and primarily I mean once you figure out the ‘pattern’ or solution to that bosses style, it’s just tedium).

I sure would like something in between that’s engaging and fun and where I feel like my thrall contributes to my epic adventures, not just me shooting him in the head to heal him up between fights.

(Although secretly…now not so secretly…I take great pleasure in shooting my thralls with the healing arrows. I aim for specific anatomical locations to ensure maximum healing and hilarity)

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My point is that there is simply no reason to solo any of them, its a matter of endurance and clearly not intended for the normal gameplay.

Thralls should be the help, not the other way around.

It feels like playing dark souls, but summoning spirits on every fight.

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Of course not the only way, but once again from a game design mechanic perspective, if one way is clearly and markedly superior than that is poor game design. In a competitive environment using other than the most efficient way is senseless. People that want to handicap themselves are still more than able and are in no way affected by reducing the power of the uber-thralls. In other words, if you’re already not affected by the uber-thralls, then having them reduced in power will not affect you in any way, so there should be no complaint.

Or am I missing something here?

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Your argument seems to consistently be “if you don’t like using overpowered thralls, then don’t use them”.

My argument is “if I’m not supposed to use them, then why are they there to begin with? Not to mention, if I’m not using them then someone else is and that puts me at a distinct disadvantage”.

I say “why would reducing the power of the uber-thralls be a negative”, and your answer is “because you don’t have to use them anyway” which doesn’t really answer the question or address the issue.

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It may be irrelevant to you, but clearly not to others…

…for the same reason that balance, consistency, and sensible game design and mechanics is relevant to me but clearly irrelevant to you.

If it's irrelevant to you, but relevant to others (like me, the OP, etc), then why are you opposed to any modifications/changes being done? If you don't use those thralls, adn are not affected by them as you seem to imply, then why would it be relevant to you to balance them?
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Oh, don’t get me wrong, I totally agree about the thralls. It’s just that there are people who are firmly entrenched in this discussion and anyone who picks their words carelessly – such as saying that most of the world bosses are “almost impossible to beat without our 20k hp 500 damage per strike thrall” – only makes those people feel like their arguments are valid :slight_smile:

In the end, it comes down to two sides, one that believes that using thralls for PVE content is just fine and that anyone who doesn’t like it is perfectly free not to do it (since it’s not actually impossible to do it), and the other that believes that it sucks that whole swaths of PVE contents are designed in such a way that you’re heavily penalized for not using thralls (or a player group) to do it and that the only PVE use for thralls is to “soft-fast-forward” through PVE content. And, unfortunately, never the twain shall meet.

In the end, even though I largely agree with you, I think it’s futile to keep railing against the status quo. The reason for the current situation is because it’s much, much cheaper to produce PVE content that relies on überthralls’ brute force than to carefully craft engaging PVE content. I doubt that the team is suddenly going to make a drastic change in their vision and approach. Hell, I doubt whether that would even be feasible with the tech they’re using.

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You have a way with words. Cheers!

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So this is another thread about thralls are bad. Well, I disagree. I very much enjoy the way the game is played now and I am against nerfing the thralls. If the characters get buffed fine, but nerfing the thralls, no thanks … Reasons? Already explained in this thread. It is a waste of time to repeat same thing over and over again: Fighter thrall Berserker +56 str, +33 agi and +54 vit ... (official PVP)

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Hmm, if something is obviously broken and overpowered, it needs to be changed/toned down.

If I would go with your argument then the devs could implement a weapon that one tap kills everything. Don’t like that? Don’t use it then :wink:

And here comes the PvP aspect, where it is possible to use this AGAINST YOU. Would be no fun to get killed by one hit, and not being able to do that as well, because “I don’t like it so I don’t use it”. It’s just a stubborn mindset.

It is also a waste of time raiding a base and getting killed with one hit by an uber thrall and lose hours of farm. It is also a waste of time hitting HP sponges of enemy thralls and bosses because it is simply no fun.

Playing games that are not fun is automatically waste of time (IMO).

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I already suggested removing the thralls on pvp servers so that you guys can do your pee v pee and be the heroes all you want. I have also suggested adding pvp damage setting. How we have fun is also subjective. I have fun in the current game while you apparently don’t however my money is worth as much as yours therefore we need to find a way to co-exist. If they make the game fun for you, they will kill the fun for me. If they give me a setting to have or not uberthralls, I couldnt care less about this topic but as we both know when they nerf, they nerf it for all and we rarely get any buffs or even means to mitigate the impact of these nerfs …

EDIT: what Funcom needs to do is not to nerf the thralls but add additional stats and allow them to be controlled by the server owners. We need pvp damage settings, we need AI settings which are separate from the NPC settings …

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Removing thralls from PvP or whatever doesn’t change the fact that the current state of thralls is just terrible game design.

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Again, we agree to disgree. You find the thralls terrible, I find them unique and enjoyable. Improvements can always be made but I would hate to see the thrall concept changed to the point of making them as useless as pets.

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Well then enjoy your Conan Autochess while it lasts.

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Ignasis has already said in a very self-deprecating message that the dev team is working on making thralls smarter, more intuitive and less buggy. I’m pretty sure they’re good for that promise, as I’ve seen continued improvements on this iteration of thralls. We took a branching turn at Update 32, where before, thralls were simply fun and seemingly made of papier-mâché. This was done for a purpose, and it led us down this path to where we are now.

PvP imbalance could be reset with a server setting, where thrall attributes are scaled to player levels, with a X1, X2, up to X10 slider to get us to where we are now.

I’m with @Narelle, though. Thralls are a great concept and very enjoyable, calling it a Pokémon meta seems unnecessarily dismissive. The game is about collecting: loot, hearts, gear, personnel. Am I supposed to feel bad that I go “Oooo, a Smelter I’ve never seen before” and then recruit another T4 that I don’t actually need? Isn’t that pretty much the game? :slight_smile:

They did. If one is Admin, all they need to do is press Shift + Delete to remove a difficult opponent. Thralls with a lot of power help bridge this gap for the single player, or the differently-abled. :sunny:

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25

Okay I try not to bring up my secret fantasies about what id really like to do with Conan Exiles … but i may have been baited here.

I would like to build a large aquillan tower positioned much like the tower of bats so youd have to scale it to reach me. And id sit at the top with my switch waiting for challengers for epic pokemon battles. That would be fun for me. So id say more pokemons in conan?

But to come a little more on topic, it kinda sounds like you want to play conan darksouls, where you solo bosses with lots of dodge mechanics. Frankly im down, it sounds like it would be a really cool single player narrative. Buuuutttt thats not the game we are playing here. I like the way it feels going from lone survivor to builder of a civilization with your trusty op champion wading into battle for you.

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Wait, whaat? People do this, yes; but not because it’s the only way to. They do it because it’s the easiest and takes the least skill. You can definitely shred bosses without thralls, it just takes a good build and weapon choice to do. I personally rock a combination of heavy armor and sword & board and I can take out most anything by myself. Honestly since the update dropped that changed thralls, I haven’t used them much besides levelling them up to act as better base guards. Mounted combat outside of dungeons is far more fun once you get practiced in it.

If you have a problem with how PvE’s current meta is, I advise trying something new. Experiment with new methods and find what works for you. Some people like having the thrall do the work since they can essentially afk fight bosses, whereas others prefer more hands on tactics which make it more fun and can often finish them off quicker. Stacking poison and bleed on applicable bosses can run them down far more efficiently than a thrall whacking them with a big sword over and over.

This game has so much variety to it’s armor and weapon choices, the possibilities of combat are near endless if you’re willing to invest into trying something new.

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27

I never farmed fighter/archer thralls for base defense. Maybe one occasional berserker. Not more. Back in 2018 after launch, I farmed dancers only.

Once I tried to collect an army of Dalinsias and Berserkers, I got to relialize relatively quickly that they were only equipment dispensers for enemy players (this was in January 2019). I think after that Funcom started to buff thralls more and more.

And yes true, we also collected every T4 crafting thrall on our homeserver. We wanted to catch them all.

But the main problem is that most players are too reliant on fighters nowadays, especially because of the dodging changes. Thralls are too overpowered if they can finish dungeons and bosses without much help of the main player. This simply screams to be a design mistake IMO.

Thralls should be more of a companion that can be used as a damage dealer or tank or carrier. A player should “train” them accordingly.

Since most players rely too much on their Pokemon thralls a change to those would produce a major outbreak in the community again. Just like we had with the movement acceleration system. I believe if they are going to change thralls, they also need to provide better AI AND give players a better opportunity to face strong PvE content, maybe as a perk/attribute rework or simple damage adjustments or possibly a change to the combat system again.

I think I ranted enough about the current thrall system. If you guys like watching AI fight AI in Conan,
well enjoy it while it lasts. For me, getting oneshot in PvP by thralls because of laggs/simple mistakes in addition with all the combat system changes/nerfs made me quit the game for a while. It’s just not fun anymore.

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I wrote a little story about getting poked by another guy’s Berserker, and I am implicitly happy he didn’t train the zerk correctly. It’s stories like yours that keep us up to date on what’s happening out there when a player is desperate to craft boss-level protection, and it wipes out the enjoyment for others. I don’t see it as ranting if you’re as reasonable as you are in this here post. It might not be sunshine and lollipops to hear about, but it’s very helpful to me.

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