Feeding System Breaks Survival and Opens Up New PVE Grief

[Leevoth]

Why not just tether 20-25 thralls to food bowls (food bowls have decay timers) only allow food bowls to be placed within a certain range of one another the range will limit the number of thralls you have and if food bowls decay the thralls" run away".

Only allow 20-25 thralls to be placed in the radius of the food bowls. Food bowls would not need to be filled with food because you’re not just limiting the number of thralls but also removing them if the food bowl decays.
Food bowls with a cook T3-T4 could hold more thralls in the radius.
T1=5 thralls, T2=10 thralls, T3=15 thralls, T4=25 thralls,
Same mechanics for the pets with pet feed troughs but through and food bowls can overlap each other. The pet could be manned by an animal handler thrall.

Food placed in the food bowl and the through could be to help Health regeneration and the better food the faster healing the NPC gets.
AND make the purge specifically target food bowls and animal feed boxes

[Septimus]

All this talk about realism. Why? Conan is a video game. There is nothing realistic about it. There are no giant snake people, there is no magical corruption debuff in real life nor can you put braclets on people and if they walk through a magical wall they die. Come on guys, stop the realistic crap. What about taking a poop and piss? You don’t do any of that in game. What about women have a menstrual cycle? That doesn’t happen in game either.

With that said, the current feeding system is awful and should not be implemented as it is.

[Vitani]

Then why do the players need to eat and drink? Why build shelters from the storm? Why dress for the weather? It’s just a video game.

But it’s a survival video game.

The thrall feeding mechanic is a nice touch but like you said - should not be implemented as it is, it needs some changes to be a fun mechanic - not a daily grind.

[Barnes]

Changelog says thralls will eat Gruel, Shredded Roast, Grilled Steak, Roasted Haunch. The ultimate grief is starving enemies of these finite resources. I’d say we should all start filling our bunkers with seeds, especially PVE players.

This is not a good mechanic when we eat the same food, yet I can subsist on sickled berries, scrounge and what’s left of a Set-skinned human during any given 6-hour session. Any rate of consumption entirely diminishes our own daily struggles to the point where you just feel kinda worthless. Why not just be a thrall?

I think there needs to be a simple overhaul which allows them (in addition to all human foods) to eat a long-lasting thrall stew and grog that stays in the kettle/Pot like zeal. This proposed meal fueled by a T4 cook, so there’s some achievement to it.

[Azzend]

TG there are T4 cooks that are easy to find unlike the T4 Carpenter or Alchemist. But if they went with that idea they would probably nerf those spawns too.
Right now it seems they are trying to nerf everything fish traps thralls staying alive ect.

[Hotaru99]

One of the changes that they said was coming (and then deleted) was gruel being usable. It as deleted, but still on the dev tracker:

Jens [ Community Manager ] posted in Ideas to improve the upcoming Thrall feeding system

Hey y’all! I posted this in the main Testlive patch thread, so apologies for the re-post, but I think it’s good to give this information to as many people as possible.

Thank you very much for all the feedback! Several of devs on the team have already been looking at the Testlive feedback and I’m compiling it into a document for the rest of the team.

Let me assure you that there are changes underway. One of our designers has made these changes on our internal builds and we’ll get these pushed to Testlive.

Changelog:

• Make human thralls eat Gruel, Shredded Roast, Grilled Steak, Roasted Haunch
• Reduce rearing costs by 50% in terms of food
• Reduce costs of Shadespiced pet food to match the reduced rearing cost. The amount of Shadespice required to make Shadespiced food will also be lowered
• Change in pet health (no specific numbers were given, and values for these may fluctuate quite a bit during our Testlive pass, since this requires a lot of feedback and testing)
• Reduce how fast food decays in pet pens. Higher tier pens give even less reduction
• Increase inventory space for Tier 2 and Tier 3 Pet pens
• Make pet eggs hatch twice as fast (Note that you do not have to hatch eggs in a pet pen. Your inventory works just fine)
• Increase preservation box inventory space
• Make preservation boxes preserve food indefinitely (as long as they have ice in them)
• Make Thrall Pots and Feeding Trays reduce decay rate of food to 10% of normal rate
• Make fish traps require only 1 Insect/Fat Grub to catch fish (to match Shellfish traps, which had the correct values)

[Vattende]

Ok, if we talk realisme, and like it would be in real civilisation, then i fact many things would be different.

At first, i doubt i would be sweating and mining in the desert, while my slaves are standing around and looking at me. I would use my slaves to cut my stones, and mine my ore.
Of course, alone i would not be able to hold an army. If i chose to have a group of slaves, i would need some supervisor. A person looking for safety, but also that they don’t escape, think mutinery, and do the works they asigned to.

Maybe this could also a way in Conan. You want let’s say 5 worker thralls, you need a supervisor thralls, let’s call it a kind of taskmaster. If you want 10, you need 2 of them. They’re harder to get, rarer, and have highter needs.

You can add to this still more. If you have several groups, you need a commander. Maybe one player could just have one commander, what would limite tralls, and people would have to chose what thrall they need realy, and which are a luxe.

Of course, this is an total other way we go right now, not just about food, and a pure extrapolation. But i think, it would realy look more real to me.

For the moment, of course, feeding thralls is way to extrem. When i look at them right now in testlife, i don’t think “slaves” but luxury good. They’re picky as hell, and eat like a full army, ever if you have only few.

Food should be hold way more simpler, gruel, or similar for most slaves. Maybe some exeptional ones who need special treatement, but thats.
Like i said in an other post, slaves shouldn’t have to eat more and better than the player. This make no sens, and is not fun for most.