I completely agree. When I’m farming fragments or legendary kits in Unnamed City, I always take a thrall. Not because it’s impossible to do this without one, but because I have limited time to play Conan and, even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t want to spend it on a dull, mindless grind.
Problem is, if I say “it’s impossible”, people will say “no it isn’t, I can do it”. If I say “it’s not fun”, people we say “we have fun in different ways”.
Like I said, I think they should scale thralls down and beef players up. I guess what I should also have added is that they should make PVE content more fun and engaging, so you don’t want to rush through it with a thrall. They should make thralls more fun to use, too.
To illustrate my point, Midnight Grove remains my most favorite dungeon so far. I always solo it*, because: 1) the fights are fun without thralls, and 2) I don’t need so much shadebloom that I would have to grind it endlessly. I don’t feel like I want to rush through the Grove because it’s tedious and repetitive. Same thing with the Frost Temple and Well of Skelos.
In the end, one of my dreams for Conan Exiles is for Funcom to make thralls useful sidekicks that complement players’ in combat (instead of boosting their brute strength and/or replacing the player) and to rebalance the PVE content so it’s more enjoyable and people don’t need thralls to rush through.
* The only exception is when I die deep inside the dungeon. Since they changed Midnight Grove to auto-close the passages when you die, so you can’t reach your corpse, my strategy for not losing everything in my inventory is to grab a thrall and use it to rush back to my corpse. No idea why they made that change
I’m not sure I understood you right. They are theoretically killable by PVE enemies – NPCs, critters, bosses, and such – but not by other thralls and players. If you’re advocating for the latter, I don’t think that’s going to happen.
For my part, I wouldn’t want them to be automatically hostile to other players and thralls. I like being able to visit other people’s bases without being attacked by their thralls and I like other people being able to visit my base without the same hassle.
On the other hand, I would love to have battle standards affect thralls, so we could have some real Pokémon fights, but that’s something completely different
Now this I could get behind. Being able to build an Arena and let my thralls battle it out, yea that would be fun or ever be able to bring your best thralls in and battle against them in the Arena.
Just pointing out a difference in what people are saying in the thread related to the Pokemon topic…I think the OP was referring to us throwing our respective Pokemon in to a fight and watching and cheering for them, but not actually fighting…not about the “gotta catch em all” thing.
part of this inbalance was made worse with the dodge roll changes, while I like them for PVP for PVE it actually changes the game entirely, while I had less health than my thrall I could always time and distance myself in PVE, with stuff like the crocs leaping attack or the tail spin of the dragon, short of dagger flips you have no avoidance timing mechanic.
Even shield doesn’t work the way it used to, you used to be able to block with the shield 100% of the time, stun and retaliate, now they can break through it so you just now have this chance to block instead of the defense and attack.
a game this developed is hard to mess with the fundamental mechanics and not have this happen, Testing is the solution, they don’t do enough, they need to reincentivise it possibly with a game currency that could be used in a DLC store for hours played on test, bug submissions etc.
But the major issue is we have had our defensive capabilities stripped away and our health pool not balanced to meet it.
This was what I assumed the OP meant as well and it’s true. Better or worse, this is what the game has become. You can’t even group up to overcome it. The way collision works, you are just asking to get pinned in to a corner and end up being mauled down if there are 3 or 4 people trying to hit mobs.
Solo with no follower equals, how do I cheese it because being hit 2 or 3 times is all of our health. That’s not 3 skull, the 1 skull Relic Hunter mobs with their 40 foot spears can take you to quarter health in seconds. You better have a large cache of a variety of healing items. Add in, if you wear flawless epic, expect to have your heals just stop on a regular basis because of transitions between soothing, hot and cold.
I like the follower system. I like that they make solo viable but the disparity between us and followers in absurd. Even with ‘better AI’ lets face it, if our characters were follower options, we wouldn’t take them. 500 health follower who ran out of stamina every 10 seconds, 2.0 damage multiplier? Garbage.
Blocking with a shield seems to make mobs immediately being able to hit again, rendering them almost useless solo.
Try it! Block an hyena attack. It will hit you so many times so fast, you won’t be able to do anything in the meantime between each hit.
Same for any other boss creature, aside from (maybe) humanoids.
And some hitboxes are infuriating. I’ve been messing around the croc boss, and while its doable with lots of regen, you skill imput is barely makes a difference. Some attacks are too fast to dodge, some have broken hitboxes (you get hit while standing on his side), and so on.
One well rounded boss is Thunderfoot. His head sweep is dodgeable, if you get the timing (then there is lag), the footstomp followed by a circle is also manageable. And the groundsmash simply have a bigger area. It’s an amazing boss to solo.
I find every thing can knock me back or go right though my shield like its not there, pretty useless whatever they have done to shields but I on the other hand do not have the same abilities.
Which other survival game has thralls? I know at least 2 with tames (Ark + Atlas) but which other survival game gives you the possibility of creating your own human army to protect you and fight for you? It feels unique to me, at the end of day each of us speaks from their personal perspective here.
Just out of curiosity, do you think games like Ark and Atlas have better and more balanced follower system where the main character is the true hero?
And the word unique is laughable when it comes to the CE thralls. As far as being a mechanic, I would not know. But since they are an army as you put it, i would think the mechanic is more comparable to it is RTS where you have unit types. I do play XCOM (XCOM2 right now), where i would consider my recruits a comparable mechanic (helpers in battle) and they by far are done better. MGS V had a recruiting option as well. Hell old school wild arms had “follwers”, as well as bards tale. I think CE was going for those mechanics, but have not fully implemented the AI like they want, or may not be able to.
As for survival games, not many employ an army. But calling a CE a survival game is getting harder and harder, when in reality, it is a building game, with multiple mechanics thrown in that candy coat it as survival.
Lets be honest, surviving PVE on officials is a joke. I am currently 16 hours of game play in on a PVE official, where I have a level ii fighter thrall at level 15 and have never ventured out of the small south west corner by Set City. And I am already poised to farm out a T3 base to fend of purges (which i am not even close to triggering), and have started farming the war makers dungeon for black ice and boss weapons, all because my thrall is OP and kills any danger, thus i have not died once in game yet.)
The only thing i have seen so far on the PVE server is huge builds that, although impressive and cool looking, do not signify survival game.
It seems that we are just into different type of games but I wont laugh at your choice As it stands, it appears that CE is the right game for me and not the right one for you which is perfectly ok.
This is a great experiment you’re undertaking and I can’t wait to see your results. There have been times, including during game release, that NPCs and situations were much more challenging and difficult. I tried to lighten the mood a week back with a lousy anecdote about dying in the jungle, but the inference was lost: you and I play PvP because for us the game lacks a pressing survival interest. Until we make a mistake, or until our weakness is found, exploited – and we’re put off balance – we’re pretty much immortal as far as the Environment goes.
If Funcom had designed thralls the way I wanted, and built upon them, we’d probably have a very strong RTS following right now. If they’d done it your way, you’d have an action HUD helper with strong command sets and abilities, and we’d have a butt-kicking FPS-style raid bust 'em up. Based on the players who flooded the servers after release, I’d say Conan Exiles appealed then to the MMO-oriented. In other words, many viewpoints within the constructs of this convo alone.
That means it’s a stew of concepts, attempting to make a broad base happy. What I think we’ve ended up with, however, is a salty jambalaya that for now more than satisfies the Ark crowd, and the Rust crowd, who are coming to CE in waves. Now we need. Dare I say it? Spice.
