The upcoming follower cap is going to create some new in-clan tensions when the new member plonks down a Shaleback, inadvertently making someone’s Lvl 20 Purge Fighter a victim of the Hyborian Flu, and it got me thinking about some ideas to improve on clan management.
Storage / Dismantling
The first thing I’d love to see a clan revamp address is the insidious lowball tactic of ‘insiding’, whereby someone is accepted into a clan, only to dismantle storage containers, rooms or whole buildings and hightail it out of the clan With the loot (often into the welcoming arms of another clan who’ve recruited them to perform this act of espionage.)
Valid gameplay? Sure. But an absolutely crushing blow to the victim of such a conspiratorial act, with almost no means of mitigation.
If the Recruit(?) rank was prevented from dismantling building pieces, clans would have some measure of protection from this behaviour. The tactic could still be employed, but it would need to be a longer game, building trust enough to progress in rank before shattering the hopes and dreams of the target of your nefarious subterfuge.
Rank-locks
The [?] rank is already restricted from accessing a vault owned by the clan; I’d love to see this tweaked a little to solve a few problems, with an option for clan members to set doors and storage containers they lock to only be unlockable by/accessible to someone of the same rank or above (with the option able to be turned off clan-wide by the leader). This would add a new layer to clan dynamics and minimise intra-clan grievances about the ‘borrowing’ of those items we’ve formed an attachment to, with the additional benefit of mitigating ‘insider’ theft.
Follower Placement
As stated in the intro to the post, I can see quite a few players & clans losing valued thralls as a result of zoological fervor, particularly where newer and less experienced players who might simply be unaware of the existence of a follower cap and the consequences of passing it are concerned.
The simplest solution seems to be to extend the limitations on the Recruit rank to the placement of pets and thralls and (although not strictly related to the use case, certainly ideal to mitigate new potential insiding tactics) bond breaking.
This gives more established and higher ranking clan members a bit more control over the make up of the clan’s followship, and proves a mechanism to limit the likelihood that a valued traveling companion isn’t randomly blinked out of existence because the new kid had to do their own version of a TMNT gag.
and on the topic of sudden death…
Allow Followers a Rank to protect from culling
There are a few ways this could work. A single rank to protect from cap-roulette outright or application of existing ranks with higher rank decreasing the chance of selection seeming the obvious choices.
It would also give clan members a visual reference as to which Pets or Thralls are valued & therefore might be better left to be wrangled by the player/s most attached to them, rather than say, taking that Verat bloke the clan leader caught personally four purges ago up for a cheeky wander around the volcano and risking an accidental Anakinism.
UI / Config
We’ve already seen feedback following the announcement of the cap asking for a menu option on the clan tab giving us a way to break bonds remotely.
Ideally this would be limited to Officers and Leaders, with Leaders having additional options to enable, disable &/or configure those things listed above.
The main challenge with the follower management aspect of this one will be in differentiating between a couple of dozen Relic Hunter Treasure Seekers when looking for a thrall to scrub. The more organised of us might do periodic purges of our own, which would would be greatly helped with visibility of level & perks, but there are other ways this might be approached let us name un-named thralls .
I think that’s it for my brainstorm. Any other suggestions out there for tweaks to the clan system?