New Follower Limit - Feedback thread

Hey everybody,

Since we announced the new follower leveling system and limit, you’ve all been sending us your feedback through different threads and sections, so in order to keep all discussions focused we’ll merge them into this thread. This way we can also provide updates and address the feedback efficiently.
Seeing that there’s some details that might have been overlooked, we’d like to invite you all to read the official announcement here:
https://forums.funcom.com/t/follower-leveling-system-and-follower-limit/92642

We answered to the most frequent questions sent to us after the announcement on a devstream, which you can watch in its entirety here:

@Multigun also kindly put together a written recap of that stream in this thread:

We have also compiled this document that covers most of the questions raised:

Please watch or read the questions answered in the stream to see if your concern is covered already.

And once again, we welcome all your feedback as long as it is constructive and respectful towards each other.

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So who else was extremely disappointed with the announcement of the thrall limit coming into play? 100 per clan, really? One of my bases has a defencive wall on it with about 200 archers, and that doesn’t include the 120ish pets behind it, or the 140 relics inside it. I guess Funcom thinks that if you invest time into your defenses that they should just remove the defenses for people.

Their answer, “a server of 40 people would mean up to 4000 followers”…and that’s going to lag the game? Massive building cause far more lag then thralls do…THATS where the issue needs to be fixed.

Since Im in a clan of 8, each with our own bases, our total thrall/pet count is likely closer to 1000…how are we to know which are going to disappear when this patch hits? Will a basic level scorpion pet survive the culling but I will lose Relic Hunters?

This is, in my opinion, a terrible move.

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Many people will split up clans to have more thralls… There was not much background thinking behind many decisions Funcom announced with the thrall rework.

Only good thing: Break up bounds = setting them free/killing them.

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And the only problem with groups splitting to overcome this new limit, is then everyone will lose their bases…and since you will no longer be in the same clan as your friends, their thralls are aggressive to you, and vice versa.

Its an idea, but its got bad consequences.

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I hope they consider increasing the number drastically. It’s a disappointingly-low number, to be sure, but @Jens_Erik makes their motives clear:

Since we need to implement a limit for followers, random followers will be deleted periodically until the cap is respected. We recommend organizing any thralls you definitely want to keep before the patch hits. We are not able to allow you to keep “legacy Followers” that go over the Follower limit (let’s be honest here, no-one should have 400+ Followers strewn about their base as a means of lagging out other players).

To sum up their motives:

  • We need to implement a limit.
  • Random followers will be periodically deleted.
  • No one should have 400+ followers.
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I don’t buy that excuse at all. Thralls don’t lag the game out, the building size does…and that’s simply because they don’t allocate enough resources in the game to load it faster.

How will this affect clans like mine, that have in the neighbourhood of 10-12 bases, with 8 players? That means 90 thralls total…8-9 per base for defence.

Who in their right mind thought this was “good enough” so it doesn’t “lag out other players”?

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A company who DOESNT play the game or run around in godmode…

Because they were surprised, that people would have so many thralls that the idle-sounds would be annoying…

“BIG SURPRISE” here… /NOT.

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Lol, I know right? I was right in the middle of composing “Hyborean S.e.x Sounds Volume 2” when it was patched.

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A point you are forgetting as well is they say it will make large land claims harder to defend, which can be a valid issue depending on the server you are on.

Are you on a PvE or PvP server?

Thralls were never a good defender against human players anyway. For purges they are good. Not for some players with brain who knows how the AI works (or works not).

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You play on a relatively high-spec PC, as do I. I also test on a low-spec PC and a mid-spec laptop. Please ask your servermates with lesser PCs and they’ll tell you the truth: more duders does indeed affect performance.

I feel you.

A dev team that is paying consideraion to the greater playerbase that also consists of lower-spec PCs, and consoles. I’m not defending it, but as I am also a console player, a limit makes good sense.

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PvP

Punishing players because people have low end PC’s is a really poor excuse. I mean, you play on what you can afford, or what you have, that’s ok…but in todays day and age, games push your PC’s boundaries. Having an old or low end PC comes with a price.

I remember year ago, having a lower end Pc playing on an Arma 3 multiplayer server. My computer would slow the FPS down horribly when I shot one of the light machine guns…so bad to the point I was dying in fire fights due to it. Would the correct course have been for the developers to change the dynamics of the game to suit me? No. I either had to live with it or upgrade.

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Okay. You definitely don’t need that many thralls on a PvE server.

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Don’t forget there’s a server side aspect to this game. Some of the adverse effects people experience near lakes of thralls have more to do with problems on server side, I would imagine.

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Of course it comes with a price. I started PC gaming again because I want the best Conan Exiles experience possible! But that shouldn’t mean that I can use my cash advantage as a tactical advantage vs people who can’t afford Cheyenne Mountain under their desk.

In Arma, PUBG and SCUM, having a low-spec PC can/could actually afford tactical advantages in a firefight. I’m not sure if you know this, but days back, you could play Conan Exiles on an i3 with 8GB RAM, and actually straight-up see through Tier 3 doors. Funcom patched that out, along with a number of tactical (and unanticipated) bonuses for low-end PCs. The devs of the 3 games above are still trying to remove this aforementioned combat advantage from their own titles.

Just don’t forget about consoles. Other than running the digital-only version and improving your hard drive, you can’t up-spec a PS4. Consoles are important too.

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Do i think the 100 per clan is a little harsh yes i think 200 maybe 250 would be better especially seeing the initial per player is 55. i believe in reality a solo player should be limited to around 40, a clan could be based on how many members like they said but say you take instead of an increase of 5 per clan member make it 30 so a clan of 5 could have a max thrall/pet pool of 160 a clan of 10 could have 310 or they could round that down to even 300. Or they could even leave it as a clan up to 5 (if they are wanting smaller clans…) have the initial value of 40 so a clan of 5 would have 200 then any members over 5 add half that up to 300 this would add an incentive for smaller clans as the per player cap basically drops drastically. There are many ways they could make it better but while i agree the limit should be there 100 for a clan of 10 is way to low

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It might sound harsh, but I personally don´t care about consoles. I don´t own one and I don´t want to play on one. But what I care for is pc. I recently bought a 3.000 dollar pc and I intend to use and enjoy it. I don´t like to have to make compromisses just because of console players or low end users. Sorry guys but this is the true. Don´t take it personally. I´ve had a very bad computer before and know exactly how it is to have to deal with bad grafics and all. I couldn´t enjoy conan the way its meant to be. But now I can. And it took me some time to make that happen for me. So this limitation of thralls is a burner for me.

I don´t love Conan because of the pvp aspect but for the freedom of building what I want how big I want it. It comes with the price that I have to be online a lot and also spend a lot of time farming, taming and so on. But thats a price I pay gladly.

I am a day one player in this game and we went through a lot bad decissions funcom wise in the last years, because we love this game. But now we need to swallow another big one just because you can´t fix was causing the issues. You once again take the easy way around things. Starting to limit thralls and pets and in further updates building will kill this game. You barelly find good privat pvp server nowadays and if you go this road the pve crowd will follow. Limitations are never a good thing in gaming. Find another way to improve serverstability.

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This is the main sticking point for me. Having 400 thralls/pets in the same location to cause a lag-fest is one thing. But having 400 spread out at many bases across a server is quite another. Just spit-balling, I’d estimate my 2-man clan has…

  • 100 at my main base
  • 125 at my clanmate’s main base*
  • 35 at our Frost Temple base*
  • 25 at our Jungle base
  • 45 at our Mounds base*
  • 25 at our New Asagarth base
  • 25 at our Volcano base
  • 10 at a public Pagoda maproom
  • 10 at a public Sink Hole tavern/maproom
  • 25 at a public UC tavern/maproom
  • 10 at a public boss kill base
  • And I know I’m forgetting some.
    EDIT: * = Updated a few to reflect actual counts, rounded to the nearest 5.

None of those are enough to meet the judgment of being an intentional 400-thrall lag troll, but that’s still over 400 just to have adequate defenses in case of a Purge or someone kiting a world boss into our area for fun and profit. Don’t forget, we can’t just man the perimeters of our bases — thralls/pet are needed internally and on roof-tops as well because sometime the Purge bugs out and spawns on your roof even when you’re on a flat plain.

Point is, when you have multiple bases, as every PvE clan will (esp those w/ multiple members), you’re going to go thru the currently suggested quota rather quickly.

Now, if by some chance the AI is drastically improved and a single thrall can cover a lot more ground, navigate stairs and multiple floors properly, etc. then yeah players could decrease the density of their defenses. However, the announcement didn’t seem to make any mention of thralls becoming smarter, only more powerful.

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