15 days for thrall decay is wrong IMO.
You say that thralls create loss of performance, yet you allow thrall spam to stay on the servers for half a month, and even longer when a player just needs to log in anywhere to refresh all of their thralls on the server.
Please consider changing this BEFORE implementing thrall caps, thank you.
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Absolutely agree with this. 15 days is way too long for them to remain.
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I never really understood why they made the follower decay time longer than the building decay time, especially since you don’t even have to be near the followers to refresh them.
So yeah, bring that decay timer down. Make it B+24 hours, where B is the building decay time in hours. The +24 is to account for the abandonment grace period that buildings have.
That said, this really has nothing to do with the follower cap. It won’t affect the overpopulation and the excess some clans indulge in.
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My point being that FC says that thralls cause performance issues, and want to cap the numbers, but allow this spam to happen.
Agreed it wont stop the excess, but before capping legit players, they need to look at other options as well.
This is DMs thrall spam, and they have logged in and refreshed them, so now I have to deal with seeing this crap for another 15 days?
They have more thrall/pet spam by my base than I have thralls IN my base.
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Yeah, I get it. I’m just saying that I want them to do both and I don’t care which one comes before the other 
Worse. There’s a chance you’ll have to deal with seeing this crap indefinitely, if they keep logging on. I remember talking to one of them a few times, and it’s clear they don’t give a damn about sharing the server nicely.
So yeah, follower cap AND reasonable decay times, please. 
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Your point make sense. And this is an easier (quick fix) since nothing has to be programmed. Just a change in follower decay timers on the servers.
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The follower cap has been implemented for more than a year now, they just never activated it on official servers. Both of these measures are configuration-only, no more coding to do.
Yes, that is true too. Although, more controversy when they implement that one of course.
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Well, technically, it does. The thrall limit one anyways. Cause according to Dennis, they are working on some more stuff for it.
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I didn’t know that. I just saw it in your recap. And I apologize for my reaction, but:
I’m glad that they want to add QoL features, but all I really want is to be able to hang out on an official server without a clan spamming followers until they reach a thousand or more (not an exaggeration, ask JJ).
I really hope that they’ll activate the cap first and then add all the fancy new stuff.
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Actually they already had that implemented with the thrall pots and feeding thralls. The proximity was the distance from the feed pots. Back then you could not just kill off the thralls, so you would put them “out to pasture” so to speak and they would die.
That system also insured that people would not spam pets/thralls all over the map and would keep them nearby the bases.
It was a good system, but more work than people wanted, so they shut it off.
They can still turn it on, without the grind of filling the thrall pots every other day, and just make the pots dictate the proximity parameter.
That plus a thrall cap would go a long way to fix these thrall spam issues.
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A house icon above their health bar, just like the character’s 100% shelter icon?
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Mmmm… yes (? question mark, because I only meant for the indication, didn’t think any further!)
I suspect we’re not going to agree on this one, because we’re viewing the situation through different lenses. Your argument makes sense under the assumption that most players are well-intentioned and well-behaved, and the only problem is that some of them are clueless.
My point of view is that most players don’t give a damn about sharing the server with others and will gleefully go over any line not enforced by the game rules, should they feel like it. From where I stand, if you couldn’t log in for 8 days (or find someone to add to your clan to refresh your stuff), then you should lose your stuff and start over.
That’s literally what decay is for, making sure that servers don’t get littered with leftovers.
This is one of the pros of playing on a private server: a good admin will be understanding and supportive, and try to help you avoid losing your stuff.
I liked the feeding system. It provided an upkeep cost for the followers and it was also based on proximity. Sadly, it was really bad for the server performance. I’d love to see it come back, but there are technical hurdles to overcome there.
Yeah, that was an even bigger problem back when we couldn’t rename our followers. Nowadays, it would still be a chore, but somewhat easier to do. Of course, it would be nice if they could show the pots and their ranges on the map, but I suspect that’s a lot easier to say than to do.
The biggest problem I see with the follower hunger – apart from the server performance, which they would have to fix anyway – is that the followers don’t always come back to the spot they’re supposed to guard. They’ll go haring off after a threat and then stay there, so there’s a chance they’ll be pulled out of their feeding range and be left to starve.
I have my own theories about why this happens and I can’t think of a way to fix it without ■■■■■■■■with server performance.
Was that the premise? I thought it was more that people were complaining about spending half their in-game time filling feed pots up.
If they implement thrall caps then they will have to have some kind of indicator, since thralls over the limit will start to die off.
I would be highly upset if it was just RNG and one of my best thralls died, and the one stuck in the cliff didnt. I imagine very many players would be also.
This, really.
People rotate in and out of this game at an amazing rate. usually the first thing they do is start collecting cheap thralls and pets and spamming them all around their base. Then a week later they move on, or worse. leave that mess and go build somewhere else. Eventually the buildings decay but the pet/thrall spam never does as long as they play the server, and most do not seem to care.
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I don’t remember the exact details anymore, but the problem with the implementation was frequent inventory access. Either the thrall pot had to access the inventory of the thralls in its range, or the thralls had to access the inventory of the pot. Whichever it was, it had to happen periodically and very often, and it didn’t scale well with the number of thralls and pots.
When you put it that way, I’m forced to acknowledge that it only really makes a difference when I’m just waiting for a specific clan to slip up and fail to refresh their stuff, so that the server can finally be rid of their spam.
So yeah, I guess you’re right.
What can I say? You don’t come across all bitter and jaded 
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So close, but still a WIP. LOL
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Can you not place palisades in front of them?