Ideas to improve the upcoming Thrall feeding system

I have been noticing some reactions to the new feeding system so I decided to start a form here for people to post their ideas on how the feeding system for Thralls can be improved.

I have stated many times for my suggestion to improve said new mechanic is use of a new thrall type, a scavenger or even an archer thrall to put that bow to more use to go out and scavenge food like insects, berries, meat, etc. With how long it takes to scavenge and how much is bought back each time will depend on the thralls level as to make less of a hassle.

I want hear what others think and what ideas other may have to impove said system.

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what you are suggesting is a way of making food easier to harvest, right?
And this is not so difficult currently. I bet we all have huge stocks of meat and fishes in every single base we have.
for me the problem lies more in the way this food will be distributed (the fact that “WE”, the character has to move on the map and take the time to interract with all the thralls placed all over the map)

i you want to make it less of a hastle, the only way i see is to allow this mechanic to be programmed by sthing like a “big MAMA cook” thrall who will automatically feed thralls who need to be fed as long has we gave her all the tools to do so ( food + all kind of cooking / feeding equipement placed in her inventory)

So if i understood correctly, your idea of a specific thrall is good, but the job you were talking about doesn’t seem appropriate to me.

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I do like the sounds of your idea as mine was just so people won’t have to worry about feeding their thralls as often as some had worried about.

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A semi-translucent bubble that illuminates the floor at the cross section as a radial range indicator for feed boxes is highly advisable, considering careful spacing of feeding pots need to be made for optimal coverage.

Knowing that 10x cimmerian berserkers and 7 x hyborian archer III’s are around the feeding through doesn’t really do much if your structure is asymmetric. There will always be odd men out somewhere, and it’s a logistical tedium to build 3 boxes on each corner, if 1 carefully placed box would have sufficed.

Arguably, one could say “just build a base around a box” , but landscape might not always allow for that.

Further more, some say one tile is 2,5 meters, which puts 50 meters range at 20 tiles. Admittedly that is easy to count at right angles, but not if it’s a radius and your counting diagonal across tiles, or even worse: Counting at an upwards slope, diagonally across the floors of your base. There will be blind spots.

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Other option would be if the thrall had some kind of buff in his health bar, indicating if it was covered by the range of the box.

I think this would be easier to implement, and would solve the problem of blind spots.

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How are we to suggest ideas when we don’t know exactly how it will work just yet? We have to look at it and play it for at least a day first right?

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I would say for something like this is to take as much time as people need to look over it before posting I would say.

We all agree on that, but i believe the idea of Hrukk12 had more a purpose of “reuniting” the community around some "positive / creative suggestions rather than keep on dividing us concerning this new concept about the thralls feeding mechanic. Because it’s a fact the community is currently cut in 2 halves because of different opinions in that matter.

So his intention is good actually.

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I mean the fact that some people just want to complain about something all the time instead of actually jumping into the problems and helping fix them is funny to me. People could argue that “oh funcom isn’t paying me to test their game why should I?” But that’s also funny because they gave away free dlc to all that helped get the game tested…Now if most of the players did not report the bugs that they found and just took the free dlc and ran thats on them. This is actually really fun being part of the games growth instead of setting around for a mystery patch to pop up.

Feeding Pot - Whatever the range should be able to slot a cook, higher levels of cook extend the range and make food last longer. They make lunch boxes or do deliveries or something.

Thrall Edibles - They were already broken and ate whatever (lesser wheel i just fed them cooked human meat of their buddies that weren’t worth capture) they don’t get to pick what they eat. But higher grade food could last longer and then their favorite gives an extra bonus.
Early game, low grade food? you can only maintain a couple thralls per player. Later game, high grade foods? You can sustain more thralls per person. This can represent not just that they are full but if you are feeding them very well wouldn’t they want to stick around anyways?
Possibly modified by grade of thrall. Give a T1 thrall some exotic feast maybe they’ll stick around a very long time. T4s will still eat anything, but aren’t going to stick around long if all they get is shredded roast.
Or instead of grade actually connected to the amount of hunger sated.

Just give admins the ability to turn it off if needed. I know on the livestream they said that wasn’t going to happen… But … we have jobs, we have real lives… we have enough trouble trying to find time to login let alone spend hours feeding everything…

Please respect the free time of the player and allow us to turn off this mechanic…

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A couple of ideas based on what I’m seeing so far with regards to player feedback:

  1. Thralls should accept any food, not just their preference. But I’m not suggesting you get rid of the preference food entirely. Instead, the Thrall gains a benefit from eating certain foods; such as needing less food to survive, better healing, buffs to attack or defense, or some other benefit. This way, Thralls won’t starve themselves and suddenly become picky eaters, but also reward players for taking extra time to get specific food for Thralls who have a food preference.

  2. Add a temperature element to Thralls. If a Thrall is cooking in the heat, make them need more food. Too cold? Need more food. Kept warm or cool? Need less food. Alternatively or in addition to, make it so Thralls standing guard will need less food then a Thrall that follows you around.

  3. You could probably take number 2 further, having to keep Thralls warm or cool enough to survive the elements just as players do. But for the purpose of the new food system, we’ll ignore that part for the time being.

That’s all I got so far.

My only real idea to fix this system is to have hunger only apply when a thrall or pet is outside your claim radius- thus quickly killing off abandoned thralls. And throw the changes to fishing traps out entirely.

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The only suggestion i can think of the top of my head for this silly feature is to have also an option to deactivate it completely. At least on rented servers so that the admins can choose themselves if they want to run that feature in their server or not.

As been mentioned by others, it makes sense for pets and animals alike, but for Thralls it’s a game breaker for many and a cruel mechanic. In the end of the day, most worked just as hard to collect their Thralls already, tame them, dress them up, set their weapons of choice, even paint their different armor pieces one by one. If someone wants to be surrounded by their captured Thralls in their base it should be their choice.

Admins and server owners have the option to remove abandoned structures and kill said abandoned Thralls whenever they want, so to say this is to regulate this kind of cases sounded more like a cheap excuse to me to justify why the hunger system is introduced in the game so that people wont get into rage mode and angry about it.

Imagine having spent over 2000 hours in this game, and having anything between 5 to 10 bases scattered all across the map with lets just say 100 Thralls in each one of them. You already spent a good chunk of your precious time hunting for thralls, tamed them, set them up etc etc. Now go run around each camp and feed them all in a regular bases, and if you miss the timing or you go away for a week then come back, your precious Thralls all but gone. Yeah it’s not going to sit that well and more to the point, i have better things doing and spending my time with than babysitting Thralls.

But that’s just me, if this stays as is, i can smell a mod breweing to remove it or at least give us the option to switch it off for the Thralls

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Perhaps they need a “Greater Feed Pot” with a greater range and greater capacity?

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It would be a good idea to turn it off though in my opinion the feeding system for thralls should not feel like a hassle.

I think it should be ajusted so shouldn’t be hard to feed those 20 or 30 thralls as well as to make the food last for a long time before being consumed so people who go on vacation or have something happen to them won’t have to worry about comming back to find all of their thralls dead.

I agree with @Simone_Drake! Only difference is I play on an official server…I’m in that situation but I have 1 big base with a bunch of thralls and a vault full of named…I love collecting them and have plans on building different areas for them…Its a lot of work to farm these named,even more now after the spawn nerf…If this isnt thought out very well it could well be the end of this game for alot of us die hards. It sux,I love this game and 99% of people don’t have the time to hunt for food for all our thralls…if you guys are dead set on us feeding our thralls please make it as least time consuming as possible. We NEED the thralls for defense.Aoe feeding pot sounds decent but make the max feeding time the same as the decay time.please no special foods for different thralls,makes no sence.If you do, maybe make it where we can put feeding pots close to each other and put the special food in 1 pot for the special thralls…or…have a tier system for the feeding pots that match the tier of the thralls and those tier thralls are the only ones that eat from that pot…t1,t2,t3,t4…I would not mind spending a half hour once every 2 weeks (the preferred decay time) to max out my food for all my thralls. Plus the food cant spoil during that time,make it so you add raw meat and it cooks it all together, so the pot would need enough spots to add enough fuel to cook along time…maybe even make it have a flame and give off light…I think that sounds pretty cool now…:thinking::kissing_heart:

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Please do not incorporate any kind of manual, FedEx-style maintenance for the combat thralls system. Also, please do not incorporate any kind of time sink maintenance for the combat thralls system.

What I think would be better would be to incorporate/extend the decay system used for player structures to placed combat thralls.

This system was complete at launch. There was no indicator or hint otherwise from any of the game notes, or any other game information. This system was complete. Mucking with it now has the potential to be disastrous.

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Assuming that the feeding of combat thralls system is here to stay (very angry about that, btw), THIS needs to be the way it is implemented. Give a bonus, or a buff, to combat thralls that are fed with this desired food type. Do not make them starve and die because they are picky eaters. That is unreasonable. This system is already unreasonable.

No. Absolutely not. I would actually argue that the temperature system is not fully baked yet. Every patch seems to be wildly changing how the temperatures work, and we still have heat/cold deaths when players log out in volcano or far north bases that have plenty of temperature protection.

The game has already launched. Now is not the time to be complicating things with completed systems like the combat thrall system.

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This. ^^ So much this.

It is IMPERATIVE that Funcom understand that incorporating the feeding system into the ALREADY COMPLETE combat thrall system is a tremendous upheaval to the game. Proceeding down this road will have consequences to game sales, DLC sales, and player populations. I know that one player is insignificant - but I will buy Khitan (and potentially future DLC packs) if they pick the right path here. I may very well be done with the game all together if they pick the wrong path.