Spent an hour gathering ??? (really?) in the maelstrom to do a summon at a leyshrine. Did a max summon and got some T4 thralls (3 fighters, 2 archers, 2 smiths, 1 armorer, 1 mitra priest) and nearly died a few times. Place the first t4 FIGHTER thrall down (they were all Colvric the Blade thralls, btw) and…
Wow, that’s pretty bad ass. Ok I’ll load her up in Poitan Heavy and take her out and clear vaults for a couple hours and see what she gets for PERKs (you already know what’s coming, don’t you)…
Can the Perk system just be positive? If there needs to be attribute caps for thralls, fine. Put the attribute points when leveling in somewhere else, but don’t take away. That’s not a positive PLAY experience after hours of WORK.
The only thing we would need are means of manipulating said RNG towards desired outcomes. Why can’t STR food guarantee STR perks? Why can’t we add a tool/weapon to influence what kind of thralls will spawn from surges, between crafters and fighters?
The only excuse would be “because most thralls would become OP, too much damage”. But then, this should not even be possible, to begin with. How can you afford to let 1-3 lucky players to have OP stuff and not everyone? Doesn’t make much sense to me.
Either provide us ways of manipulating RNG or remove it altogether, thats what i think.
I played another game (which shall go unnamed) that also tried to substitute RNG for content. The reaction was similar to what we’ve seen here, but far more vehement. So, of course the new lead developer responsible for the switch held a livestream to address the outcry. At one point, he literally said “RNG is fun! RNG is exciting!” He lasted maybe another year, while the game hemorrhaged players as they slowly realized that grind is not a “fun” or “exciting” substitute for content. The game finally went back to a rational approach - some RNG to prevent boredom and grease the design wheels where necessary, but nonetheless a realistic effort/reward ratio. I’ve got my fingers crossed that FC comes to the same realization much more quickly.
Personally I kind of like that your followers can get bad traits, it makes good traits all the more special. BUT I think followers should be able to respec. For an example. Feed them a “Potion of Unending Servitude” and it resets them to lvl 0 and keeps their modifiers. Perhaps other tiers of potions could exist, ones that roll back 5 levels at a time, etc etc.