New Follower Limit - Feedback thread

Conan Exiles General Discussion
1843

Yah, actually haven’t had much lag recently on my server either.

My base is big, and as such there is a bit of a initial loading time. But once it all loads, its usually pretty smooth after for that session. But outside of that right at the start, really no lag at all.

Then again, my server that did have 5-6 medium sized clans that were fairly consistently active have not been logging very much at all since the new of this upcoming patch started circulating.

I think its pretty accurate guessing (and some past discussing) that the patch is the cause of their activity dropping. But hey, maybe there were some other convenient excuses for not logging on for some of them.

Already have witnessed several big bases that have been standing for over 15 months disappear in the last couple of weeks.

I have been refreshing my base out of some masochistic hope that the heavy handed, poor sighted decisions get at least partially walked back, but I lose more hope with every day, and hell, my server community appears to have already been killed off by Funcom re-imaging their game from the roots, so at this point… I guess its just ‘whatever’…

Still playing with the idea of starting back up my private server to retain the fun I was having in the game as the absolutely foolishly low cap is manageable in that environment, but even then, its still grating and potentially motivationally ending to lose our complex base that has been a project for over a year and half, the community we grew with, enjoyed and made friends with (although, now already deteriorating), and gods know if my friend is willing to migrate over with me to rebuild. He hasn’t really made up his mind about it yet, is spurned even more so then me, and as I stated before, I probably wont continue solo.

I used this game to relax socially also and that’s just one more side of this patch that is rotting away due to poor development foresight.

We picked officials after initially starting on a private to be social, but I suppose that’s not something Funcom wants to promote in this game.

1844

Try to see it from an RP point of view and that there are actually 2 issues here.
One is the limit itself which will hit long time rp players the hardest and the other is the way it is being introduced, by not being able to exempt certain thralls from culling

3 Likes
1845

The negativity as a whole is easy to understand. It’s a matter of setting up expectations and then doing something completely different, arguably opposite. In somewhat harsher terms, it’s called “bait and switch”.

I will point out yet again that Funcom didn’t merely tolerate a certain PVE playstyle that is now being jeopardized, they actively encouraged it. Exhibit A: the building contest. Exhibit B: Debaucheries of Derketo.

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1847

It encourages building non-functional structures with lots of decorations, which includes using thralls as decorations.

1849

Depends on what you mean by that. If you mean that Funcom didn’t ask people to use thralls, sure.

If you look at the submissions and runner ups, quite a few included thralls.

You might see it differently, just as you see the motivation behind clan formation differently, but the point isn’t how you “see things”. Your question was “why the negativity”. My answer is “because people have been encouraged to build big and to build decorative builds and they use thralls for defense and decoration”.

And it all boils down – yet again – to that exasperating habit of dismissing other people’s playstyles as somehow less valid. At this point, it’s literally déjà vu:

  • Why are you complaining about this?
  • For this, that and this other reason.
  • Well, you shouldn’t play like that.
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1851

I don’t take any issues with your questions. They’re not the dismissive part of your posts.

It’s directed at the trend in poster’s post. Take it as you will, I tire of nitpicking.

Ahem.

Again, we can argue about interpretation till we’re both blue in the face, but that’s not the point. Like I said, you’re the one who asked why so many people are so negative about this update. I’m explaining why:

  • The game supports their playstyle.
  • The contest was perceived by many to encourage that playstyle.
  • The Debaucheries of Derketo DLC was perceived by many to encourage that playstyle.
  • This update jeopardizes that playstyle.
  • There was no indication that this playstyle would suddenly be endangered in any way.

Sure, you’ll probably disagree with their perceptions and interpretations. But just because they didn’t interpret things your way, doesn’t mean they “want the changes that favor them but do not want the discomfort of the balancing that comes with the changes”. And no offense, but your personal disagreement with them does not in any way invalidate their playstyle.

6 Likes
1852

As a winner of both contests, and as a passionate advocate for individuality and personal playstyle, as well as a fervent follower of this topic and an admirer of Shadoza’s unique take on gameplay, I feel qualified to pipe up at this juncture. When @Spynosaur_Nicole invited us to build big, build whatever, just make it a copy of something, it really made me think hard. I was forced to emerge from my T3 box of crude, mean and tiny PvP structures. It brought something new into my game, and my playstyle evolved.

When I built my fortress of Pembroke Castle, I envisioned it as an in-game asset, that predated the modern world and even the Druidic foundations upon which the real-world castle is deposited. The attack I launched with Jhebbal Sag – as the lightning struck the tower his beam once inhabited – is the essence of the game, in my opinion. That is the canvas.

It was only after some review that I realized I’d forgotten to give it a pulse: and thus the personnel are what I’d ration for an outpost like this in-game, PvP. For me, at least, this contest was no invitation to overpopulate.

Similarly, the Tiny Home brought out a whole new take, and that was hewn from excellent competition among my server-mates. My intent was to make an ornament, a tiny aviary, where the birds themselves were the majority of the coloring, the furniture and the decoration. In other words, I used a lot of followers. In that regard, a limit wouldn’t have mattered because it was on a private server.

I have subsequently created an ornament at Godsclaw Passage on our official PvP server. Because it’s PvP and so very vulnerable, I have staffed it with exactly two standing thralls.

My point in all this is that this topic is not just hot, it’s nuanced. The main problem I’m registering with friends and subscribers is that the cull will be a chore and a half. It would be great to have an assurance that there will be a tool to help us manage our legacy and lega-she followers.

4 Likes
1853

Yeah, this is another key fact that gets overlooked and lost in the noise. It’s quite easy to assume that anyone criticizing the cap is one of those players who cram 400+ followers in a single spot. :stuck_out_tongue:

And thanks to the heat, the nuance is the first thing that gets thrown under the bus :frowning:

1 Like
1854

I was thinking this same thing. We have to be careful with reference the word ‘overpopulate’ as that can mean very different things for different people.

I think thrall density needs to be considered in this as well. A big base can would be sparsely set with thralls hitting the limit of 55 (hell, a base big enough to accommodate 10 players will be very sparsely populated by 100).

I’ll repeat (although anecdotal so certainly subjective) but on my official, my clan’s base is pretty big (with plans on becoming bigger. Call me a nuisance, but as stated, building and thralling is our thing. We are built off in a far corner of the map, not blocking anything, and while I can’t speak for others, small amount of initial lag, then the thing loads and for the most part everything is fine. We roughly cover about 2 squares of the map (with interesting buildings and themes. Its not just a mishmash of crap, nor big uninteresting buildings…)

We are roughly at 180-200 thralls (for essentially 2 people). I wouldn’t see us ever going over 300. Our base is certainly not overpopulated. Sure certain structures like the bar and bridges and walls have a higher amount of thralls in one place, but still the area has about 8-10 thralls max.

This was some of support behind the idea of a cap per area verse a total cap since lag seems (at least to me) certainly locational to lost of placables.

Understand this all would not be viable in a PvP environment… But thats why we chose PvE. I try to not comment on the PvP side of things, nor tread apon what they enjoy.

But it still blows my mind the amount of people still of the idea that its just fine to tell others what they do or don’t need in a game about freedom of choice and pursuit. I assume Funcom is intelligent enough to understand that weather the intent in this game was to foster a building community or not, a building community did grow within it, that community is a significant number of their players, and the current patch heavily effects how that community interacts with their game.

Weather or not other players or Funcom themselves don’t want players to use the game as a art tool, they do and represent a potential loss in revenue if they are simply ignored. They are upset as they don’t have great alternatives if they want to continue, they just have to accept getting shat apon and then decide weather starting over again without the aspect of community or be done with it all.

Anyways… think i’ll go back to lurking. At this point I just feel like I am repeating myself and that doesn’t really serve any purpose.

1 Like
1855

Apologies for quoting out of sequence, but I wanted to clear up interpersonal stuff first.

Don’t feel like that on my behalf. Your opinions are valid, and sometimes a different distillation sinks in differently with people, like in my case. I see your predicament, and as a player on Official servers, I’ve got more followers than I’ll publicly admit, so kudos for your honesty. :smiley:

I’m the one who recently introduced “overpopulate,” and I was using it as a self-jab for my proclivity to put every crocodile I find into my pocket. :crocodile: For the contest, the art-shot I was capturing was about PvP, and although deep down I wished to represent a more bustling village, it wouldn’t have been true to the form for me to put too many people in the picture.

Pertaining to official servers, there are openly-discussed ways to disband and work around the limit as it is. Barring that, as someone with a history of starting over as frequently as most people put oil in their car, I would suggest a private server curated by one of our esteemed members here.

1856

I apologize if that seemed directed at you. I value your input as well. That last sentence I wrote was more self reflective then anything. I feel like I have stated my stance and a few of my last posts was more like i was just rehashing what I said before but with different words rather then providing anything all that new to the conversation. It was self criticism :stuck_out_tongue:

I understand what you are getting at. I think i was just trying to touch on the big disconnect between people that don’t have a problem with the patch vs. those that do, and it seems like me the underlying disconnect is the perception of what a person uses to have fun within the game.

Obviously on the scale of too little to too much, there is clearly ligament samples from either extreme. We as a community just have very differing ideas of what a ‘reasonable’ amount was and a lot of subjective words like ‘overpopulated’ have been thrown out on either side as a defense or a reason of support.

I do agree with your final position of a private server. I actually have my own box I can run to avoid the cost and have full control. If something else doesn’t pull my attention away from Conan, this will probably be the solution. I haven’t restarted much however and thats part of the sting.

I started on my private server and we messed around as noobies for a while there. Then with the desire to try PvP, joined a PvP server that might as well just been a PvE server (the big clans of the server were always trying to be diplomatic and not piss each other off so PvP was sort of dead in the water and it was just a server for building as well). The PvP environment was a let down (in my particular case, i understand I didn’t get a very good sample of it) and from there restarted once more for the third time on a PvE server. Been there about 1.2 years or so.

We can continue on our private server, but its still a bummer and a big knock against Funcom’s ability to managed and develop, to be in this situation of having to restart (lots of work gone, it is what it is), losing our community (people we have talked to and built on the same server as for a year + (this is probably the side of this patch that most effects/effected us), and of course, the underlining fact that Funcom has shown new colors of having whishy-washy and unclear ideas in regards to the direction in their game, as well as the failure to communicate and listen despite stating they were. It seems clear to me that they struggle with sustainable development practices as I see emerging habits reflective of other failed developers cropping up when referencing decisions from Funcom like this.

We can rebuild as annoying as it will be to do (as well as the time invested… considering official, every stone and log was farmed, the private server, if we do, will probably god-moded to catch up to where we were), but nothing will replace the connection with other people.

kinda sucks to be forced into the situation of having our play style taken away from us and then forced into a situation we’re we have to choose between how we like to play or playing with others.

Not very bright via Funcom in my mind…

1857

I’m actually glad they are adding the dismiss thrall option. I have so many cruddy thralls lying around that I’m too lazy to trot one by one to certain death. It will be liberating to give them their walking papers one by one.

The limit on thralls also sounds good to me. With everyone having the same limit, it will level the playing field a bit and those who play a lot can focus on quality over quantity with the new thrall leveling mechanics. I suspect having a few well trained thralls will be superior to wall of man-flesh while at the same time smoothing out the game play. Sounds like a good compromise to me.

2 Likes
1858

This completely disregards the issue people are having with the patch. But restating what has been posted above would be beating a dead horse.

Simply stated, we play this game for a specific reason. We rather Funcom not remove a key aspect of the reason we play for a new system they just ‘expect’ us to enjoy as a replacement. Thats short sighted and damning for anyone that enjoyed thralling for populating their structures.

I do agree with the thrall removal option. Though the ability to pick up or at least save some of our more rare thralls with a single roll on stats would be even more appreciated.

4 Likes
1859

Hey, @FrogBiscuit, you know I agree with you in general on these issues, but there’s something I wanna point out.

This thread is called “New Follower Limit - Feedback thread”. Don’t take this wrong, but I think everyone should be welcome to leave their feedback even if we disagree with them. I’ll be the first to jump on a post that directly dismisses other playstyles as less valid or claims everyone who complains about the cap is wrong, etc.

But what @darthphysicist posted was his (or her) feedback, without arguing about other playstyles or disparaging them. I don’t think we can realistically expect everyone to carefully think through all the ramifications and consequences of this update if those don’t affect their own playstyle. I also don’t think we can expect everyone who just came to this thread to read all 1800+ posts in it.

TL;DR: I agree with your feedback on the cap, but let’s not antagonize everyone who didn’t think about how the cap impacts us :wink:

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1860

We have started to kill some followers (pets) to get under the threshold. I hope that the follower limit will have a positive impact on the AI behavior (NPC/Followers). These guys can make you crazy sometimes…

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1861

Are you guys still arguing about this ?
It’s clear that FC is not going back on that (stupid) decision: in the last stream recap they’ve made it clear.

You are going to have a follower cap, no matter what you say.
(Yes I said you, cause I’m going to unistall the game as soon as I get home … I’m just sorry I bought a couple DLCs and wasted my time playing it).

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1862

I’m not asking them to.

Yeah, but I’d like Funcom to help out with some consequences of that cap.

If that’s so, I confess I don’t understand the point of your reply.

1864

You are so wrong … the experience would be so much more enjoyable if there would be a structure limit for 1 building! Less lags more enjoyable servers!

It is a sand box but doesn’t mean has to be a free for all,

I’ll give you an example of one of the most popular sandbox game and way before conan, “ARK” 34k players average , 62k peak! They have structure limit , they have turret limit! They even put that poke ball kinda thing to store dinos! Conan has 5k ,10k peak! The game has to improve and move forward, not stay static

So in my opinion and I love conan and my 2k+ hours in it . It is a step on the right direction to limit thralls but is only 1 step !

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1865

Also for all those of you that are complaining and calling out funcom names … I mean what is wrong with you? This guys have been trying since day one to move the game forward I’m pretty sure is not an easy task and I think they deserve alot of credit for that!

One lesson that everyone should know in life is that you cant please everyone!

So for those who want a better game, instead of complaining, you better start buying them dlcs, money doesn’t grow on trees and making the game better requires money!

1 Like
1866

Yes and in this sandbox its quite limetid space, many other have almost endles space to expant on.

Yes to have limetid buildarea and Nr of outposts to.