In a single player game, you can cause all of the NPCs in Sepermeru to instantly respawn by simply leaving the area. It will also cause all NPCs to recycle, which means you can simply run in and out of Sepermeru until you get the named thralls of your choice.
This does not affect chest respawns, only NPCs.
Steps on how to reproduce issue:
Enter Sepermeru, look around
Leave the city (go to the Oasis of Nekhet)
Immediately return to Sepermeru
Notice that the NPCs have changed tier / race / gender
(Note, the following is what I know how the PC client is handled)
That’s just how single player is designed. You can do this with any settlement. Basically, single player loads the world in chunks. Areas not being used are basically unloaded, and then reloaded when you re-enter an area.
This is done for performance reasons since your PC, or console in your case, has to handle both server rendering and the game. Where as on a server, a separate computer is doing all of the world rendering and your console or PC is just handling the client side of things.
That certainly makes sense, but it doesn’t seem to happen quite the same way with other areas. For example, if you clear New Asagarth you can’t just walk down to the open field below and then walk back in and the city has completely reset itself. Likewise with the Summoning Place, you can’t clear out everything, step out into the desert and then walk back and everything has respawned.
With Sepermeru, you can effectively do this. You don’t even need to go as far as the Oasis. You can simply leave the western area of the city (through Westwall) into the desert there, walk back and everything has reset. So I guess I’m saying that it doesn’t seem to be tracking that the area that encompasses Sepermeru has been “in use” recently and should remain loaded.
I would completely expect this if, for example, you went to Sepermeru, then went north to the Highlands and returned back to the city. It shouldn’t work like this if you just take 10 steps out of the city. I believe requiring players to actively work to not cheapen their own gameplay, even inadvertently, is … suboptimal design, shall we say.
It’s plausible that the area boundary for Sep is closer then to other settlements, or something to that affect. I would have to open up the map chunks in the dev kit to know for sure though (and I’m not a super expert on the whole matter either, still learning how it works). Anyways, just a hypothesis, or wild guess for that matter.
The black galleon might be an area that could test that theory, I just happened to have loaded it into the dev kit because I was checking for spawn point bugs. It’s map chunk is almost exclusively to the black galleon and the immediate surrounding areas. Testing would involve moving away to the east, west, north, or south, and not vertically (since the camp sits on a cliff).
In comparison, New Asgarth, it’s map chunk is significantly larger (if I recall correctly, it’s been a while since I loaded it up), and it includes the grassy area around the town itself.
In my single player game, I had spent some time there taking thralls and had a wheel setup on the south side. That wasn’t causing the galleon to reset, but I wasn’t going all the way up the cliffside either. I think your hypothesis is a good one, I also just think it’s bad design if that’s the case.
Not really a bad design, just a different one. Of course I’m not a expert game developer in all things map design, but if I recall correctly, it was designed that way to allow a wider range of PCs (lower end) and consoles to be able to play the game. Could be wrong of course, but it’s not an unheard of game development mechanic (quite common actually).
Comparatively, Ark loads the entire map at once (as far as I know, though it too features a tether range in single player/co-op). Depending on who you talk to, some would argue Conan’s performance is better then Ark (though probably an equal number would debate its the other way around).
At the very least, it’s an interesting discussion, I’m all about this kind of stuff.
We can get off into the philosophical weeds here, but the reason I think it’s “bad design” is because it essentially forces players to police their own actions to prevent them from exploiting the game mechanics. (“Well, I shouldn’t go back into Sepermeru for the next 30 minutes…”)
The argument could be made “well, it’s single player and you can cheat with admin controls anyway, so who cares?” but for some folks, legitimately completing content without cheesing the game is a thing. Requiring players to actively work against cheesing your game design isn’t a good thing, IMHO.
No argument from me on that front, solid points. On PC you have a bit more control and options to help “police” yourself (there’s even a mod that will disable admin mode entirely).
It might just be something that has to be sacrificed in the name of performance benefits, but maybe something could be tweaked as well to help (I have no idea to be honest, but changing map chunk size is a bit drastic at this stage, if that is indeed the culprit).
One major change coming next patch though is that Sep’s Thralls have been hard at work and doing lots of pushups and cross fit. Their level will be equal to that of the Volcano Thralls, so difficulty wise, there’s more challenge making your way through the city now.
Unfortunately, on the Xbox version (which is already Funcom’s red-headed stepchild, to be honest) we don’t have access to mods so it’s just whatever they choose to do, or not do, as the case may be.
I’m coming around to just accepting that single player on the console isn’t the way to go. I can be stubborn (this is my second go around), but even as I sit here and type this, I realize it’s not worth the effort to get wound up over. I have the PC version as well, just tended to prefer playing as I lounged rather than at my desk.
I can, but it’s more about me enjoying the slug life in the easy chair out in the living room. All personal preference stuff, really. Routing my PC’s display to my television in another room is more hassle than I’m interested in investing in. So, it’s Xbox from the living room, or PC in my home office.
Fair enough. Or you can splurge like I did and get a 40 inch 4k TV display as a monitor, with a fully adjustable mount. Along with better seating options for the lounge mode I assume.
That’s why you need two of them! I got a 2nd one for Xmas, so now I can devkit on one screen and do a million other things on the other. UNLIMITED POWER.
It is not a matter of clearing (meaning killing all exiles). They are referencing the fact that if you leave all of the exiles alive after searching for named exiles that you can leave the area without killing anyone and then go back and the exiles are different which allows a higher chance of getting named thralls.
Along with better seating options for the lounge mode I assume.