Fighter thrall Berserker +56 str, +33 agi and +54 vit ... (official PVP)

You apparently don’t understand game theory or game design.

If one choice is markedly decidedly and quantitatively superior to another, then the inferior choice is…by definition…inferior. Choosing an inferior choice for RP/Fluff purposes is all well and good, but does NOT change the fact that it is INFERIOR. All choices should be equally valid from ANY perspective, NOT just RP/Fluff reasons.

Moreover, this completely misses the point I think the OP was making. High-end thralls are RIDICULOUSLY powerful and invalidate much of the game’s content. Why? What purpose? Saying we as players can choose other thralls does not change the fact that SUPERIOR thralls exist and that they DO affect the game.

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Although I agree with several of your points, I do think you’re being overly harsh here.

Yes, it’s true that dominant strategies are bad game design and that “just don’t use them” doesn’t work as an argument. But @Zeb is also right that there’s more than one way to skin a cat: if the thralls are overpowered, it can be because they’re too strong or because the players are too weak. And that’s not an “exclusive or”, either :wink:

Honestly, it’s even worse than that. Funcom already introduced bosses that were designed with thralls in mind, so you need a thrall for them. Then, they beefed up the thralls because of the follower cap. When they introduce new bosses in the future, guess what those bosses will be like? :confused:

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I’m not sure if you’re being obtuse on purpose or not.

If you have one hammer that is markedly superior to another, why would you choose to use the inferior hammer?

Your argument seems to be based on the premise that using an inferior tool is a sensible thing to do.

From a game design perspective, making one choice demonstrably better than another is BAD.

Why are you arguing against balancing thralls so that there is not one superior option? Why is that considered “voiding other options”.

If you want to use weaker thralls, they are still there. Tiers 1 through 3 are still available, right?

Maybe you just want to argue, I don’t know, but you sure seem to be obstinate about missing the point.

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I disagree. If you increase player’s strength to make them closer to thralls, then you haven’t fixed the underlying issue that game-content is too easy with the tools available.

Right now I get a thrall fighting something hard and go AFK or watch TV while it fights, shoot it in the face with a healing arrow, and go on to the next thing and AFK again.

I do not want to replace that with me being so strong that I just spam an attack button while watching TV and moving on to the next thing.

I’d like to have some balance that means I actually have to participate in some way other than getting my thrall to agro and working around bugs. :slight_smile:

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This is another thing that’s bothering me about thralls. When it comes to things like weapons, tools, armor and even crafting stations, there is a progression that’s tied with the player leveling. Once you’re level 60, you stop running around with an iron skinning knife or a Cimmerian battle axe. The exceptions are emergency re-equipping (which is temporary) and RP (hence @Malagant’s comment).

On the other hand, the thrall factions interact with the player progression in a really weird way. A T4 crafter will always perform the same, regardless of their faction, whereas the followers can be ordered into tiers according to their faction.

On top of it all, the new leveling system muddled things up even worse, by giving the followers for each faction different starting attributes while retaining their hidden multipliers. It’s like they tried to compromise between “let’s make followers tied to player progression” and “let’s give followers a variety so they’re all good in different ways”, and they ended up with this weird mishmash we have now.

Regardless of that, the point stands that the follower factions are currently pretty clearly ordered into tiers, just like you said, which makes them analogous to other aspects of player progression and puts the use of lower-tier thralls in the same bin as the use of iron weapons: basically for bootstrapping or RP.

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Yep. That’s why I said that I think it would be best if they did both: tone down the thralls and beef up the players, both to a certain degree :slight_smile:

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Caveat: racial t4 armorers that can craft epic flawless armor (tho they took away the “epic” in the item names).

It sure does take time to level thralls. I doubt everybody has that kind of time to keep 50-100 active. I’m not in a clan, so I can’t just pass one around to the next clanmate. This time doesn’t seem represented above.

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Because not everyone is as miserable as you are in regards to this content. If you nerf Thralls the game will be harder. If you want the game to be harder, there are options for you such as not having a follower. The fact is that you are only trying to hurt the players who enjoy the current system. You have options, we don’t. This whole argument is like crying about dark souls not being hard enough to alienate the community. Not everyone is a hardcore player that wants to dedicate a great deal of time to “git good”. This game is far from dark souls and you must allow for the casuals to enjoy the content since there has been casual gameplay from the initial launch.

In short, your asking Funcom to alienate the casuals that are buying content from them. Stop it. It’s choices like this that will cause Funcom to lose the financial stability that this game has given them.

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All NPCs are stupid.

Not all players are intelligent.

(Also, intelligence alone isn’t a solution to all bosses. Some bosses just require you to be a damn skilled fighter - or bring an über-thrall.)

So whats your post about? Its not like it is something new… Thralls before the leveling system, were also able to kill everything way faster than a human player…

Dont nerf thralls for PvE content. Reduce their dmg against other human players, if strong thralls are a problem in PvP content (which I totally understand, as it it is PLAYER vs PLAYER and not THRALL vs Player).

@CodeMage I would recommend a kinda new series from @Wak4863 and @Firespark81 are doing on their YT channels. Clearing dungeons without any thrall. And they are doing pretty well… Sunken city was also no problem.
Sunken city: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGbcOIhutrA
Wamaker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc8zlkjRxlQ

Thralls are great for single player PvE wise. If you are >=2, dont use them… Yet, I see crying threads about Uber-thralls were people run in groups with thralls?! :smiley: :smiley:

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That’s funny, because I’ve seen a lot of PVP players suggesting the opposite, because thralls are their “defense turrets”. The idea I’ve seen posted by different people over time is to make thralls do less damage when following the player, so they’re not making you into their sidekick, but they’re still good defense turrets. :man_shrugging:

Well, yeah. I think a lot of us are complaining about thralls because we don’t PVE in a group. Even when I have active clanmates, I’ll often do PVE content (Unnamed City, Warmaker’s Sanctuary, Midnight Grove, etc) on my own.

I guess you could say “Funcom wanted certain dungeons to be done in a group and the thralls are there to help solo players will that, deal with it” and I guess I would have to shrug and say “well, it sucks to make PVE content for groups when it involves stuff solo players will want to have”. It’s just my personal preference and opinion, but I think that PVE content shouldn’t be designed for groups; it’s okay if the content is “too easy” for a group, because I still have to get a group together :slight_smile:

Maybe I missed something like that in this thread. Feel free to point it out, because I can’t find it.

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They should and they are. I don’t think anyone is arguing that we should make the Frost Temple as easy as the Dregs.

My complaint is not about the difficulty scale, just like people who complain about 100% armor pen arrows weren’t complaining about the fact that different weapons have different armor penetration.

Yes, they can. I’m really, really not denying that. Over the time I’ve spent playing the game, I’ve soloed every dungeon except Wine Cellar at least once. I’ve also soloed most world bosses – again, some more than once – and all of the Unnamed City.

My argument has never been that it’s impossible to do certain things and I’ve stated that clearly. So I think by now it should be pretty clear that I’m not saying that there are dungeons – or any other kind of PVE content – that require thralls because they’re impossible to do without them.

On the other hand, I don’t think you can deny that there are several bits of PVE content that heavily penalize solo players who don’t want to use thralls in certain ways.

And I guess you think that’s fine, I think it isn’t, and that’s really something we won’t agree on, so I guess there’s no use for me to keep arguing about it :man_shrugging:

avberage, snowhunter has 23k hp and can dish out just has much dmg with a blade of crom( it can be swung infinitly with a thrall) and full pictish heavy

I think the problem with super powerful thralls is they nullify most of the games content. But at the same time, fighting a lot of the bosses or stronger mobs in the game isnt exactly fun either - plus feels a bit ridiculous.

Take something like the elite/corrupted whatever they’re called versions of the sabretooths - those things can 2-3 shot you. They’re ridiculously powerful and dangerous and yet even with super dodging and avoidance, there’s not much you as a player can do to avoid their aoe bleed swipes, bleed pounces etc. They CAN be killed and good movement will beat them - but it feels disproportionate to how much damage they can dish out which is substantial.

And mobs like the world bosses - they simply take forever and are just about dodging the same 2-3 moves if that. They’re hard because like the elite sabretooth their damage output is massive (to account for limited ai) but the fights are zzzzzzzz.

So on one hand, most content is nullified by these ridiculously beastly thralls, on the other - without them, that content is just annoying.

Personally I’d like to see thralls incorporated more into pvp so they’re not just tough, but have more utility/purpose. I think Funcom finally got the food system right with the new thrall levelling system, but the thralls still feel pretty one dimensional. They’re a super interesting part of the game, make solo playing much more viable, and open the doors to some seriously fun team vs team fighting, but they’re so powerful it’s just a bit whack.

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This is happening on PvP servers against über thralls, except you die with 1 hit when you do a mistake at stunlocking.

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I’m a 50 year old father of three that plays primarily on PVE-C or ‘casual’ PVP servers when real life time allows.

I’m only vaguely aware of what Dark Souls is, only because my oldest kid has mentioned it. :slight_smile:

I think your estimation of my playstyle is significantly off.

I am in no way asking to alienate casuals. I am in no way affecting FC’s ability to generate a fun product that people will buy or that will allow them to be bought by bigger companies and lining their pockets and continuing to make nice games.

So, like you say, stop it.

So maybe you and I are missing something. You seem to be implying that in order for casual players to have fun they must have absurdly powerful thralls (like the Berserker the OP posted). You seem to be thinking I’m saying that there should be no powerful thralls that we should all have to solo the bosses in the game and if you die too bad f*ck off you’re a newb git guud.

What I’m really saying is that thralls that powerful make the big bosses trivial and unchallenging, even for casual players like me. I’m un-casual enough to know where the good thralls live, it’s not like it’s some exploit or elite skill-based mechanic required to find or tame them.

I would rather have a system where:

a) all ‘high end’ thralls are balanced so there are no markedly superior ones. I’d like to use a Darfari Brute, as an example, but in this competitive (yes, even PVE servers are competitive to some extent…just like Monopoly or Mario Kart!) environment, and because of normal human game theory mechanisms, people don’t use them because there are better options. It’s not about being miserable or whatever insulting zing you threw in there, it’s about sensible, reasonable, balanced game design;

b) the most powerful high-end thralls are on par with how powerful players are, and the combination results in an engaging and challenging experience when fighting the high-end boss fights.

c) continued balancing and bug-fixing for long-standing issues related to weapon choices, thrall behavior, etc.

d) make all choices valid. If a choice is markedly and quantitatively better than all others, then it is a bad game design.

e) review risk-reward. harder critters should give bigger rewards. as it is there are many bosses and places that get little used or little attention because they have little reward for the challenge (ever see anyone killing the skeletons in Arena? nope…because they’re worthless!)

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i really dont care a dime about PvE. The game was conceived to play at its fulness mechanics, but there is always weak people whininh about pvp and wanting to dictate pvp community side. Just get good in this game!

Have to disagree with you. This is not Counterstrike or Fortnight. There are significant PvE elements in this game, by design, since the beginning, even on PvP servers. Making PvE fun and engaging is worthwhile for all server and player types.

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Some people aren’t head-crushing monsters, and prefer the pacing, content and skill level that’s appropriate for them. I suspect it’s for the same reasons why the Admin Panel still exists: it’s a Sandbox. People should be able to have whatever level personnel they can get. That’s Sandbox 101, IME. Also, that’s not meant to sound lectury, just my opinion. :slight_smile:

It would make sense if there were some setting like “Player-Scaled Attributes” under the Escape Menu, under the Thrall section. Has anybody ever sandboxed a thrall, limited to our power and health? Talk about brutal.

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