I would love to see an armor display/stand added to the game, it bothers me that we have really good options for displaying shields and weapons but no way to show off armor other than dressing up thralls. I mean even ark is going to add an armor display of sorts with their next dlc. Not that ark should be used as a benchmark for features but it would still be nice to have IMO.
That would certainly be nice and easy, right?
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IT was already stated a long long time ago, that a simple armor stand will not be feasible. The armor stand would have to be able to act as both a storage container and also a visual that stores the unique upgrades and colors a player applies to armors. 1 per player would be okay, but players tend to overbuild in Conan, and thus you would have the equivalent of 1000 player objects if players built 10-15 each for their unique armors. If you are on a pure PVE server, even PVE-C, just use thralls as your mannequins. Just thrall a bunch of level 1âs and you can dress them in your different armors.
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I mean they can do it with weapon and shield displays, even if the armor in said stands does t reflect that is dyed I would be fine with that.
Weapons and shields are static objects that donât need to bend, and âflowâ. And again, for RP purposes, thralls are great armor racks. Now if they could make an idle animation contorl that would be great. Like stand still weapon out or In, weapon out attack pose, and weapon out defense pose, and weapon out at attention, etc, that would suffice and be way better than a whole new asset.
I have to disagree with you, weapons are static when displayed on a weapon stand and the game does just fine. I donât see the armor stands being any different than a weapon stand.
Again, yes static non dyed armors. But the whole point of armor stands is for it to be replicant of the armors I have. Plus, weaponsâ are smaller assets in general than armor pieces. Just because you arenât actually wearing it, the game still has to store each armors unique info. Weapons and shields are a little les unique. there are x amount of mods x amount of weapons/shields for total possible unique assets. With armors, you have x amount armor pieces x amount of dyeable sections x amount of colors x amount of mods exponentially growing that number. then the visible part of polygons and how that draws on engine when in view. And remember, thralls already do this technically, and they were maxed on officials at 100 per clan for a reason.
All fair points, I would still like to see it, I absolutely hate using thralls as display racks for my armor. And seeing as Iâm an Xbox player I donât have access to mods. But to any extent it would still be nice to see an armor stand. Iâm honestly of the opinion of wildcard can do it so can funcom, and probably ten times better. I understand that there are inherent hurdles to doing it but it would still be nice to see.
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You know how they did it in Skyrim? They used actors as puppets to exhibit equipment. These donât act during game, but when you load a cell they spawn somewhere and walk into positions. Thatâs funny if you teleport there with console commands and watch it. The benefits would be that you only reuse the â â â â class of a thrall without actually allowing damage or behaviors.
Cheers
P.awn class In unreal
using pawns is not really a good idea. the overhead is significant and not a good option for servers. same with the armor physics. an armor piece is a skeletal mesh, a mesh with animation capabilities and physics. display a full set of 5 pieces at an armor stand results in 5 additional skeletal meshes with physics. itâs a significant strain for the game, especially if you know that players will not only have 1 armor stand. they have dozens of armor stand, one stand for every armor set at every base.
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That is a very good point. But if you look at an average user maybe they donât have the oldest pc. And then, you could also limit the armor stand numbers. I understand people would debate this number, once it exists, but itâs still an improvement from not having arnour Displays.
Cheers
add the consoles to your formula and it is way more complicated. a funcom feature is always for all platforms and therefore itâs an additional limitation for funcom
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I am in agreement with you @Twitchy. And as is the case every time this suggestion recurrs, (which is quite frequently!) it has my support and advocacy. As numerous past threads have demonstrated, this often requested feature has enjoyed consistent, and high levels of support and popularity for years now. If anyone would like some numbers then see Example Thread 1 and also Example Thread 2. Armor Display Stands are a pillar of fun and enjoyment for numerous open world and survival games, with other titles such as Fallout 4, Skyrim, Ark: Survival Evolved and The Forrest all featuring armor display stands.
Much like Twitchy I do not abide the idea of using thralls as Armor Display Stands/Manequins. For one these âarmor standsâ have a tendency to move around and face the wrong way at best, and get killed by Purges and nearby roaming mobs, in addition to getting stuck in meshes and requiring rescuing at worse. The outcome for the worst is the same; loss of our rare and hard earned armor. Moreover, I also find the concept rather unwholesome on a fundamental level. I mean who among us can honestly say that they would invite their friends over then have them stand around our home wearing our finest clothesâŠ!? No takersâŠthen how about criminals or hobos, which is basically what enslaved Exlies are. It doesnt sound appealing to me. Kings and Conquerers dont dress slaves and peasants in their own finest attire, and certainly not in Hyboria.
I know that this issue presents challenges in the form of potential performance issues, and other users such as WMHB and Testerle were correct and justified in pointing them out. However, I would add that almost anything in the game has the potential to negatively impact server performance if spammed: excessive foundation spamming, thrall & pet spam, lighting & torch spam, fish trap spam, crafting stations all with a backlog of tasks spam. The list goes on. If we witheld or removed every item which has the potential to negatively impact upon server performance, half of the game would be missing!
A number of users such as myself have offered up potential compromises and solutions in the past which I am happy to repost here. I do not care if this post makes me unpopular or draws scorn. This highly requested feature has enjoyed an enduring multitude of users both calling for and supporting calls for Armor Display Racks/Manequins to be added since the game lauched. As such, I dont feel that the best approach here should be âtoo hard, too risky, dont tryâ, but rather a âlets keep trying to find a working solutionâ discourse.
Sorry for the wall of text, Faithful out.
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So itâs performance fine to have 100 thralls, but not performance fine to have 100 armor displays? whatâs the difference?
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Theyâre absolutely correct about everything they said, but they failed to take it just one step further: people who absolutely want to show off their armors will end up using thralls for that if they donât have an armor stand. So whatâs worse for the server, a dozen armor stands or a dozen thralls?
In both cases, you have skeletal meshes with physics, but only one of those cases also adds the strain of absolutely unnecessary AI. Worse, a properly implemented armor stand will only affect the client performance, whereas thralls affect server performance.
Sure, thralls are supposed to be limited via the follower cap, but the cap hasnât ever been activated on official servers, and at this point I suspect it will stay that way.
I suspect that the real reason for the lack of armor stands in the base game is the same as ever: lack of development bandwidth coupled with higher scrutiny. In other words, the team doesnât have the time to implement this properly and they canât do it half-assed because theyâll be criticized to hell and back even if they do it well.
I think the cheapest solution â not necessarily the best, but perhaps the most doable for Funcom â would be to add a âmannequinâ AI behavior to the thralls. It would be kinda like a combination of âguard this spotâ and âdo not attack anythingâ, but with two important differences:
- The thrall would absolutely not move from the spot. It wouldnât walk, run, or turn to face in any other direction. And it would still be in that same spot and facing that same direction after reboot, too.
- The server would know it doesnât have to run any AI code for that thrall while itâs in that state.
This way, they donât have to add a new item and implement a bunch of stuff for it. They can just reuse thralls. And the âarmor standsâ would be subject to the follower cap, so there would still be an option to limit the total strain on the server.
Again, not the best solution, but who knows, it might work 
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Thatâs what some old RPG games did btw. Some âarmorâ mannequins were actually NPCs with disabled/locked AI, the only way to tell difference was to use developers tools 
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the thrall limit per player/clan was introduced for a good reason. itâs the emergency stop if they canât find other ways to reduce the strain for the server. with this in mind the answer is really very simple: donât add more stuff in the same row if it is not absolutely necessary for your game. armor stands are a fine visual gadget, but far from essential and not worth the risk to add with the already limited resources, especially in consoles.
we donât talk about already existing stuff or removing existing stuff. you are right that we have a ton of systems and ways to make the server burn, so why should they add more to the list? if you know that something is not good for your server health, donât add it. and always remember if funcom adds something it is for all platforms! thatâs a massive limitation but nothing they can ignore
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Funcom has since introduced a number of AI optimizations, hence the reason thrall caps were never instituted on Official Servers. Funcom never wanted to limit thralls, but their old AI was much less performant.
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Itâs nice that they optimized the AI, but the cat is out of the bag now. Players have been consistently complaining about âmassive buildsâ and requesting building limits way before Funcom introduced the follower cap. By introducing the cap, they validated that kind of thinking.
Hell, I was vehemently opposed to the follower cap and one of the loudest voices against it on these forums, and even I have come around to not only accept it, but actually want it activated. Why? Because I can see the effects of too many followers on the servers where I play. No optimization will be enough when people can stuff hordes of followers in and around their bases, without any limits. You just need to get into render distance of certain bases on those servers and the server FPS goes into red.
If they ânever wanted to limit thrallsâ, they should never have announced and implemented the cap. They should have focused on working on those AI optimizations that they introduced later. Now that the cap exists, they should use it to ensure the official servers are a place where everyone can play without bogging the whole server down.
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