Noob. Max enc is for loser 
Just kidding. But seriously, i use less of it now with a bearer/rhino. I let them unfollow back to base with 20,000 iron ore while i fill up on wood to 385 lbs in a semi fighter build.
Finally, some hard decisions being made for the good of the game.
100 does seem small, and it is said it is a starting point. Rather they go small and increase, than promise 200, then realize they need to cull it 150 and people lose 50 thralls they leveled.
This may be the price we pay for mounts. Reducing server load to utilize as much processing power to render makes sense. And for those with machines that can handle higher loads, it doesn’t necessarily mean the game engine can. The framework of this game is built on 3 year old specs max, so it will hit limits. It also may be a way for them to remove a lot of unused land claim only area so we can actually enjoy the mounts. I posted sarcastically (but not entirely untrue) that mounts may not be fun if i am constantly jumping sandstone claim threads and dodging altars/vaults all over the place.
As @Multigun posted, this will hopefully improve officials because every thrall that gets loaded has a lot of under the hood stuff that makes them tick, and thus more thralls, more drag on the game. Reducing can only relieve some of that.
And finally, There is a setting for Privates. Do not know if it is front end. If it is, then it will be available for solos. This mainly will effect only officials. hopefully bringing in a more dynamic group of players, and thus maybe some DLC buys and push the game thru to year 4.
2 Likes
All of our clan members have their own bases and our own outposts. How are we supposed to defend these places with such a small cap?
If the issue is server lag, then the obvious solution is to cap the number of thralls allowed in a land claim. Not by individual or clan size.
Our clan is already discussing splitting apart. Which obviously implies we are all going to have to rebuild and start over. I can’t begin to describe how frustrating this is.
7 Likes
If this benefits Official PvP servers, then I’m happy for you, really. But this sounds like the end of the road for how players on Official PvE servers have fun and build a sense of community. I’m praying that (for once) this is an issue that receives a separate setting between Official PvE and the PvP-enabled servers.
IMO, what would help the performance of servers even more is if they could fix the bug that allows orphaned pets/thralls to linger around months after the last member of that clan has left. Even improving the thrall/pet decay mechanic to being tied to landclaim (like we’ve both talked about before) would likely do the trick.
Also, as someone who is on a server that’s been hitting the player cap lately (because it’s apparently the only PC PvE in NA with an active population), I’ve got another performance-improving suggestion in mind. Instead of hiding full servers in the server browser, hide over-populated servers! Seriously, if half the players who have recently arrived on the one I play on (from the past 2 sales) had instead picked an empty server, that server would now be the #2 Official PvE in NA on PC.
I’ve noticed far greater performance impacts from having way too many players on the server than I ever did from all of the long time players having the large bases we PvE players all know and love.
@WhatMightHaveBeen: Can you, @zerog, @Barnes, and/or any other well-experienced PvPers comment on the question I asked in the first paragraph of my previous reply? I’m genuinely trying to figure out if PvP clans’ building habits are significantly different from PvE clans’ given the low thrall cap the devs are initially considering. To me, vinak’s suggestion of limiting population in a geographic vicinity or landclaim seems more beneficial.
6 Likes
Which raises the question: why can private servers handle more, as you can raise the limit?
3 Likes
Blowing a fart lags this game on and off line. If the devs would put way more focus on tightening up the performance problems and get the game well and truly optimized, these would be lesser issues for all.
Seems to me the game shouldn’t have been built on an old game engine which, in my humble opinion, made it top heavy and prone to performance problems. There’s got to be a better solution.
You can’t stop an arterial bleed by putting a box of Band-Aids on it.
5 Likes
It depends on a few things. What size is the clan? Duos operate differently from any other structure because you will live in the same base and share everything openly. In a raiding duo team, you will branch out and build together, and pull defenses in tandem.
Anything from 3-10 is “every man has a vault” mentality, with daily contributions required. Usually on a relaxed server each player will build on the main fortifications and be given a barracks room. Anything constructed outside of Community buildings needs to be built and maintained on the player’s time and dime. I’ve only played like this once, and it was when Frozen North dropped. Everybody joined at the same time so we were 8-10 strong. IOW, one major clan base, leapfrogging to another area, kicked off through expeditions by clan leaders.
However, most servers are an agglutination of players. Some clan members started out solo and joined in with the alpha when things went quieter. Others joined up with other solos on a friendly server. This means each member could potentially have his own substantial holdings, each requiring a great deal of defense.
3 Likes
i think this is a bad idea because people who have big bases wont be able to defend them because u need to have thralls at every one of your bases to prevent trolls from coming in and taking your stuff because u have no defenses but now that you are going to put a limit we cant defend our fobs our thrall wheels or our personal bases we can only really defend on and what will happen to our rare thralls or our good thralls will they die while our bad thralls live i think you should not do this because people like me put 100s of hours getting pets and thralls to defend our loot only to have devs get rid of them
4 Likes
Screw the mounts then. I really don’t care if they are in game or not.
9 Likes
Been a while since i was in an alpha clan. Been guerrilla warfare because i never was really fascinated with massive collection of…“stuff”.
In the alpha i was in we had a main base. The base above all others. It had 200+ thralls, and was huge as far as area covered. This was before pets. We ran 10 deep, but about 6 were actually active “fulltime”. We had operation bases. WE basically farmed and then retrieved pre raid time, so the op bases were there for targets to expose enemies. We also inhereited 2 bases from former enmeis, and those were repurposed by a few memers each as new sub mains. We actually tried not to over stash, and purges weren’t working…so doesn’t help in this convo.
For 12 months i ran with a clan 6-7 that would infiltrate and poke alphas for fun. We built multiple thrall wheels locations, farming fobs, and focused all our resources on a main base. mainly because we weren’t planning on staying long. So accumulating massive thrall counts was not our objective. It was gods, gods, and explosives. Then gods again.
So to answer your question, my clans were 1 main base and multiple non essential fobs made of sandstone that were basically a place to log off non raid time and save travel time. Sometimes we would throw out a few false targets as well, and possibly if we were playing the hiding game, a T3 altar base (pre timer). These were my favorite, Because nothing like having 2 altars going at once and crafting 9 coins 1 hour before raid time.
As for the clans we fought, they tended to have multiple giant bases all over that they were personally attached to. We would just hit the one we scouted as the most used, and possibly 1 or 2 of the others for good measure. Steal the loot, then drop it to the more passive clans who didn’t come off as d-bags day 1 on server.
Alone at my mainbase were 79 NAMED thralls and 72 pets. Pets i can more or less reduce to 10. No problem with that…
And If my “weak T4 cleansing” has ended, I would be at 60 thralls alone for my mainbase…
This 60 would all be volcano, female Cimmerian, female relic hunters and all T4 dancers I got (but 1 time only).
Every sidebase has 1 dancer and up to 6 fighters… I have 7 of such + 2 maprooms alone.
I have to kill a crap load of volcano fighters to come even near that cap…
Every T4 dancer is in one room… such fun rooms will be gone, because why should I have 6-8 dancers when I could have 6-8 fighters for defending.
I know a cap limit is in itself a good thing… but 55 is for me way to low.
I just want the save file from the public PvE and would start to play alone… seems more interesting then losing a massive amount of thralls, which everyone worked for…
8 Likes
dont do this as some on who has played this game day one and bought all the dlcs and put up with all the bug and glitches exploits and duping to have my work be removed from the game and than to have my stuff be raided easier buy people who just join due to lack of defense i would quit like tons of people have and go play atlas just like many people have or i would go back to ark and deal with all the stuff there because you only lose your stuff there if you cheat or you get raided
5 Likes
I would like this if it was a starting limit of 55 combat thralls and 20 support thralls. Combat thralls being the fighter, archer and the likes while support being the dancers and bearers. Hopefully this can be done
4 Likes
And now I see that we cant even knock our own thralls out to save them. Im guessing this is a fix for the duping exploit that was in the game, showing once more, a bloody band aid fix to an issue.
This is disgusting. I thought as bad as it was, I could just knock out my thralls and retrain them, to place them later. Apparently not.
Come on Funcom, what in the literal f— are you doing with your game?
3 Likes
I like this thrall cap change. I’ve always kept my bases to a size conducive to good community building on PvE servers.
What happens on your 1-man-Zero-G dominated PvP server isn’t of interest to anyone.
2 Likes
It’s about attitude.
Not everyone’s all about martial dominance at the cost of all others.
Thrall caps make the game more strategic and less megalomanic.
2 Likes
Say goodbye to community buildings.
Public map rooms and the like.
6 Likes
Let’s face it.
You need only have 1 well defended base. Consolidating your army of 100 to 1 base is sufficient. Offers all other people a chance to even play the game. You play PvP cuz you want a challenge - well now that you are being challenged by a system, why the cold feet?
All I see is the thrall cap inconveniencing you, because you own half the damn map.
You feel it’s unfair that you are now made to be balanced, which means severely compromised from a position of absolute dominance.
You don’t get to pick balance that is convenient to you alone.
To the rest of us, we’re ok with thrall caps because we already play sustainably.
5 Likes
But is it not also a challenge to attack a very well defended base?
Are we being punished for performance issues on consoles and low end PC’s?
2 Likes
In PvP, yes.
But in PvE you need only 3 thralls to defend a public maproom.
I know, cuz I’ve been maintaining public maprooms for 1 and a half years.
The smaller and more logistically sound you build your base, the less effort it is to defend it.
People only need 400 soldiers to defend their egos, not their actual functional base which can consist of a single 8x8 (on PvE)
1 Like