@Tascha if you or anyone else that can send things back to the devs mind sending back some of the ideas that have been posted so far for the devs to look over?
Well technically i would still like to see thralls with shields block with them again then i would be close to calling it a complete system.
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I am completely opposed to the idea of feeding thralls, but I could live with it if there are some drastic changes to whatās in Testlive now.
Currently 2 stacks of roasted haunch will NOT feed a single thrall guard through a 12 hour period. This is completely unacceptable and needs to be toned back dramatically. Personally I think filling the thralls inventory should last more than a week, otherwise (and even at that amount) it turns into a huge daily chore to go find and cook food, leaving little time for other things. I just left a game that became a huge maintenance grind and I donāt need another.
I really like the idea of the decay system attaching to thralls like they do decor. This would be the āNuke them from the skyā solution that makes the most sense. Pets on the other hand, could totally take maintenance for upkeep. I find little problem with feeding pets as long as they allow the food to last a long time. We shouldnāt have to log in every single day and fill their inventory to the brim just to make it till tomorrow.
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Of course we will, no worries.
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Thank you as it makes me happy to hear that
If the shield blocking component were somehow tied to feeding, I think you would have a point. However - the shield blocking is/was complete at a time, and unfortunately has been bugged. I would tie that aspect more to the combat system than to the combat thrall system.
Adding a feeding component is net-new, and is a pretty drastic change. We, as players, had NO way of knowing or anticipating this to be a requirement. And now - it will require a drastic change in every playerās gameplay. Instead of picking up the fish oil, doing the farming, running the furnaces, building, running quests, hunting other players as a terrorist or raidingā¦ now feeding the thralls will need to be incorporated into that.
Apologies - I am a little more pessimistic. Passing on feedback, and the actual parsing and consideration of the feedback are two different things. 
Hey no worries as i have to admit if I was in your position Iād feel the same way.
The community as seen on this poll isnāt that divided:
Edit: (Oops, accidentally replied directly to you Cauthey, was meant to reply it to the thread, soz mate xD )
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I think the days of 40, 50, 80, 100 thralls is gone unless you want to spend the time to feed them. If you want to build a army of thralls, there needs to be a maintenance cost involved.
Iām guessing more a case of the age of diverse armies of thralls is over. Harvesting a big bunch of one kind of food is much easier than harvesting many small bunches of many kinds of food.
My suggestion is donāt freaking do it! Add a tame cap to all players so no one can have more than say 20 thralls tamed on a server at a time, boom reduced server loads immediately.
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The thrall/pet feeding system needs to be parallel to the 144 hour base decay system in my opinion. Introducing a soft cap via food requirements already means I will absolutely have to spend more game time getting food, I want that effort to last at least 144 hours if I have a fully stocked container.
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If I only have to spend at maximum 30 minutes to keep my thralls and pets alive for the week I donāt think thatās too bad, it should not be a major portion of gameplay introduced late into development.
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I understand specific food requirements for animals, but thralls should not get a choice much like they didnāt choose to get enslaved. Maybe at most the food must be cooked. Thralls donāt need an over complicated food system in my opinion.
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Fish Traps should also not require food, that type of trap is meant to catch them as they swim through as opposed to getting them to bite a hook. Shellfish Traps make sense however, because they do use bait in real life to lure them in.
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Ark has a food system but they also have big dinosaurs that harvest a lot of food at a time. Here the player has to do that and itās far less efficient in addition to food sources being less plentiful in comparison. If plants in planters returned seeds to continue growing that would help a lot toward feeding herbivores. You could simply stock planters with more compost to keep them producing.
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I donāt see a way to do that for carnivores as there isnāt a breeding system and youāll spend more time hunting around for babies and raising them to be food than it takes to go out and kill wild animals for a much better return on your time and resources.
I think itās an interesting concept, but itās a touchy one and needs to be convenient for players to use rather than become a huge time sink that no one is happy with.
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Exactly what I was thinking. Why didnāt the thralls get the same decay as the structures? If I am in their radius at the needed minimum then they all stay. Periodā¦ No extra time needed. This should be LOADS easier for devs and players and still combat server lag. Caps could also be made, but the proximity of thralls already have a limit. I already have to lug my PS4 around on vacation to keep from losing 100s of hours of workā¦ add this to it and it ruins the fun I have making village dioramas and playing the game of āchessā with the purge. If it becomes more work than playā¦ then Iāll be forced to quit.
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Hey yāall! I posted this in the main Testlive patch thread, so apologies for the re-post, but I think itās good to give this information to as many people as possible.
Thank you very much for all the feedback, guys! Several of devs on the team have already been looking at this thread and others to see what people are saying, and Iām reading all of it to compile into a document for the team.
Iāll be addressing specific comments further down, but first let me assure you that there are changes underway. The devs are overhauling the system in several ways, making it more user-friendly based on player feedback. This is the purpose of the Testlive branches, after all.
One of our designers has already made several changes in our internal builds and weāll get these pushed to Testlive for you to test.
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Donāt know if this has been said, but food preservation boxes should double as āFeeding stationsā for our thrallsā¦ (As in our thralls being āhumanā should know enough to realize that there is food in the fridge.)
In fact campfires/bonfires/stoves should also be considered āFeeding stationsā (As should drying racksā¦ Basically anything that can be used to craft food should double count as a feeding station.)
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And where should I put my food that I made for myself if thralls have access to everything?
Youāre the slave, theyāre the masters 
You do all the work - hunting, cooking, mining, building, fighting - while they stand around doing nothing.
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This so true itās sadā¦
Thatās why I keep the worker thralls and killed the rest
No eating on the job
All my fighters were replaced by layers of palisades.
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The benefit to hunter and gatherer thralls would be a reasonable population of thralls and pets sustained without constant upkeep. A large population would require more from players.
Only allow one food station in an area and have multiple thralls assigned to a station give diminishing returns. There is only so much food within range after all.
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