Personally I think if they can’t make a solid balance, they just need to remove thralls from PvP servers completely and increase building HP. We Have only one defense for bases while offline, thralls should present a challenge for the raider, if the person cannot be online to defend. We all know the time it takes to acquire a thrall, and the mats costs of gearing and making a solid base. It SHOULD be difficult to essentially steal what someone else worked for, Even with restricted raid hours no one can be on this game 24/7. I recently raided a base that had 40 thralls, took me 2 1/2 hours to kill all the thralls it was a task, but I did it and I profited greatly, most people complaining think things should just be handed to them. “Aww they have 50 thralls in the base, it won’t be easy now, I am going to go complain because I don’t want to work to get lewtz”
This give me stuff free mentality that has taken over ruins the game, everything is doable in this game with current mechanics. Then there are thralls are to OP in PvP, well then they have probably never run into anyone using the claws properly, If I engage you there is no getting away (IMO way more overpowered than thralls but still in the game). And thrall AI is too easy to work around in PvP even while raiding to be a major threat. I have killed people with OP thralls following them, I lure the thralls away cripple them with a bow, use the claws to close distance and kill them = profit. If there were no means of dealing with thralls I would say sure nerf them, but as it stands people just want things handed to them without any effort.
Personally I’ve found the thralls and pets very overpowering in PvE as well. A single T3 Fighter captured from the Mounds of the Dead can, after a few levels under them, clear the place on their own while you watch them go. A single greater wolf/tiger/etc means you’re now safe from anything the open world might throw at you. It’s silly.
I think that games like this last longer if they’re very challenging and if doing the supposedly more difficult content in them requires resource expenditure.
I think the combat system really is better than given credit for in many of these topics. Aside of certain balance-wise broken aspects - like kiting with a mount - you really do have the ability to dodge enemies if you’re playing on a server with good sync. You can use crippling and sundering effects to very high effectiveness. The main problem really is the poor sync and sometimes unclear animations (not easy to tell what can hit you and what can’t). The mechanics though are more or less there, they would just require some fine-tuning.
There is no Nerf to enemy players only to followers. So if you or he means that enemy players followers got the nerf then yes all followers got the nerf but only followers not wild npcs.
“Absolutely horrible adjustment to thralls. No one asked for this and the information in the update notes being accurate regarding thralls is extremely suspect. The devs have just succeeded in basically turning this game into a grinding korean MMO.”
My thoughts, it is good that bosses are not just loot farming. TBH, as much as i do it for PVP official to stay in the fight, the fact that one of us in party will say “i have only 1 hour to play today, so I am going to boss farm us a BUNCH of weapons/FoP’s” seems completely absurd Making it an adventure to beat a boss should be exciting for a gamer. Imagine all other games if you just face rolled the bosses at the end of levels? Wouldn’t you feel cheated. Like WTF? All that time to just get what a 5 year old could get? No real feeling of individual achievement? If the legendary stuff becomes a bit more unique, then maybe it would not need to be nerfed as often. Then the reward would match the effort.
And secondly, thralls are a very renewable resource. Actually the highest end resource. I had a discussion with my clan. We could not remember the last time an NPC killed any of our thralls. Which means as renewable as they are (15 minute spawn timer on some very high tier versions), we don;t need to really farm them all that much, other than to stock pile them.
For PVP, it does hurt the smaller clans a little, as well as more casual time available players. But you know what, don’t over build what you can’t protect. Also, it would be nice to be able to skill clap an alpha, but them having a ring of even level 0 Dalinisa’s takes that away when you raid them. With Avatars in the works to come back that can be an equalizer as well. It will allow clans to maybe not loot the Alpha, but you sure can eff up the land claim around there bases.
for PVE, the purge is a way to “cleanse” the server. And i know i keep hearing how hard they are, but i have experienced a lot of purges as a solo on PVP, and not one has taken down a base i have with just 5 or 6 half leveled Cimmerian Bersekers. And this was a mounds higher level purge. Again, if you build so big that some of the base is destroyed, just rebuild it. It is supposed to be part of the game loop imo. Build, have stuff destroyed, then rebuild better each time. Otherwise it is a farming simulator. And I don’t remember “Conan’s Mid West United States” adventures being in the Howard’s lore.
Whilst I don’t agree with everything in your post, it was a refreshing read as opposed to all the other posts lately haha. I do agree that on a PvP server, we do have a high turnover of thralls, due to players of course. In PvE unless you do something really cruel and unusual to your thrall, it cannot die. I think that is fundamentally broken and just not fun. I personally dont bother with legendary weapons on PvP only for the fact I cannot realistically make a build around them. If I’m killed, my stat boosting legendary items are taken so my build becomes useless and I’ll need a respec. I find them a useful by-product from getting frags, which I normally just loot boxes instead.
Same here. But i do like to have them as an extra of sorts in my build. IE, i will set up str or grit to be able to utilize the +5 some weapons have to jump to the next perk (4th for str, 3rd for grit). but i do not depend on them. I depend on armor bonuses, and special fish. both renewable and replicatable as i see fit. Weapons are hit or miss, so yeah, just extra ooomph.
But mainly i eat the FoPs’ half the time to try and unlock as many armor and god tiers as possible, making it easier to run solo with all the main recipes available on a whim.
I am guessing that one example is all you are able to come up with. If you are trying to claim that Funcom bases its balancing decisions primarily around PvE then I am sorry, but that is absolutely ludicrous. Please, permit me to provide some counter examples of balances done for the benefit of PvP, almost ALL of which were not well recieved by PvE and Singleplayer, and have negative impacted upon our gaming experience.
Sword of Crom was nerfed
Lifeblood Spear was nerfed (into utter worthlessness at that)
Spears were nerfed…repeatedly!
Captains and Bandit Leaders can no longer be captured
Everyone’s legacy Vathis thralls got deleted
Vitality 30 perk ‘Fierce Vitality’ was nerfed despite fierce opposition
We can no longer cross fence foundations, undermining many creative options
Repeated calls for the The Dismantling Bench to be removed
Summoning gods was apparently too easy; the amount of Manifestation of Zeals nerfed
The Volatile Gland drop rate was previously nerfed
Silent Leigon armour was nerfed
Exotic flesh drop rates too high, they got nerfed and are no longer dropped some creatures
Cleaver harvest rates were nerfed previously
Obsidian wespons nerfed
Acheronian weapons nerfed
Serpentman weapons, yeah you guessed it…nerfed
Nerfed the EXP gained for discovering new locations
Its too easy to gather Brimstone, its nodes were nerfed
Golden Lotus potion is too strong, it and Bandages were both nerfed
Obsidian arrow recipe changed to composite obsidian
T2 Insulated Wood structures are too easy to produce, extra ingredients required as a result (now revised)
Warmaker dungeon books bonus reduced from +8 down to +4
Acid arrows and Snake are overpowered, they needed to be nerfed
Axe of Violence critical chance removed entirely
World Breaker and Annihilator armor penetration nerfed
Strength 2 perk ‘Salting the Wound’ nerfed from 25% down to 15%
Steel recipe component changed from Brimstone to Black Ice, despite it being more difficult for newer players to access
Vitality 5 perk ‘Glutonous Gains’ nerfed
Bestial Claws have had their drop rate nerfed to absurd levels and a vast array of other downgrades
There have been repeated calls to remove Maprooms and Chairs; thank the gods common sense prevailed
Boons granted at Hannumans Grotto offering chest all had their rates reduced
T4 spawn rates have been reduced time and again
Multiple weapons have had their animations, resulting in their speeds being reduced
Damage from first blow of war axe and mace reduced
Healing arrows were nerfed
Sobek armor recieved a hefty nerf
Aaannd thralls nerfed
I am quite confident that I could unearth even more if I did some digging. So please do not try to tell us that PvE holds the sway as far as balancing decisions go, because it is blatantly false.
Ok so what was the point of my list (other than disproving a false claim) you ask? No it wasnt to say PvP is lousy or blame you guys for all of our problems, or for that matter vice versa. Instead it is this. I am not denying that PvP has had balance issues. What I AM saying is that the two modes are too fundamentally different and we are encroaching on one anothers needs, fun and playstyles. We need to add some additional Sliders and Dettings start balancing the modes seperately! Period.
@Croms_Faithful sliders aside, how hard do you think it would be to have thralls react differently to their damage taken?
For example, if you go and spawn a Legion Warrior and ding it to 20 and give it some brimstone, it can face tank literally any boss with very little issue, even with only 2k HP.
If i change clan with pippi and fight it, I managed to do about 7% of its hp in a full combo with good gear.
I assume this is an error/bug but it is interesting.
Generally speaking, those items which get collected in the world are essentially useless without it, and dead weight.
The dismantling bench gives a semi-viable way to reclaim those materials and get star metal, composite obsidian or even explosives back from items in the game. If the amounts aren’t “balanced” for PVP, you literally did not have to farm certain items - one pass through Asagarth would give thousands or more of steel.
At the beginning, there were flat out exploits to be fixed (arrows gave 5 materials per arrow, the blunted javelin disassembled into a Fragment of Power, you’d get more materials from an exploding jar than it took to make them).
Honestly, I suspect the calls for nerfs after this probably stemmed from someone getting their base looted, with their opponents dumping all their gear and tools and weapons into a bench.
Thank you for clarification. What you said proofs that the dismantling bench was simply broken and this was not a “nerf PvE to balance PvP” thing. Just as thralls. Devs are nerfing thralls not because they are too powerful in PvP, but because thralls are essentially broken (that affects both PvP and PvE in a bad way)
To be honest here, the “nerf” isn’t as bad as people are making it out to be. Thralls just won’t be gods that you can stick in linen armor and give a stone sword to and they can take out the giant spider at level 1. I’m exaggerating a little bit here, but a fully leveled thrall with 72 STR was overkill for every encounter in the game except one (Arena Champion).
This just forces us to use healing arrows (instead of ignoring health entirely), use our thralls carefully, and gear them properly before they become the finely honed killing machines they used to be from Day 1.
Agree, they are still godly. I crafted some epics for a darfari fighter 1 and went to new asagarth, I didnt worry about his hp even once. He was still a Chad. Even with its 2k hp and like15 str
I just put a Level 0 Dalinsia in normal heavy gear, the lvl 10 stuff, and gave her a war axe. She still solo’d the warmaker. But im sure that doesnt mean they are too strong, no. It’s the pvpers that are wrong.
We only wanted the exploitable numbers fixed. And Felt it should not have been released without that fix. As a pvper, it is pretty useless. And it was stated by Funcom it was never meant as farming replacement, but more of a garbage disposal to get extra loot, which is actually easier to farm than bring back and dismantle.
What are you trying to ask me or say in this post. Would you please be kind enough to clarify?