It’s not just PvP. A lot of thralls in one place causes performance problems for both the server and the client. And no, new servers won’t fix that because it’s an issue of players stacking up more thralls than the server can handle. A new server just means it will take however many more thralls before it has the same effect.
I’m sorry that it came over wrong… My Comment About Servers was Always meant. for People who say " Don’t like it Play on a Private Server "
The Funny thing is Even after they Self Destruct and kill the Game off, it STILL will have Leg and Run like it was Designed on a PC with Windows 95. Just Leave the amount Alone, Your AI are bad anyways. This is so Lame that a Full Release game will get such a Overhaul that will hurt its players. 100 Pets and Thralls for a Full Tribe is a joke. This makes me not want to play this game, If i wanted to be limited on that stuff i would go play ARK! Even Ark has a higher number then what you are offering. Fix the game stop Braking it!!!.
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Even Better Funcom Your new DLC can Be called “Save the Thralls” Pay to keep them. Pump out more DLC then Fixes right?
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Precisely! Actors (such as NPCs, creatures, thralls and pets) are the most resource intensive entities in any game like this: they increase the processing load both on the server and the client. On the client, they have to be animated and synced with the server. On the server, their AI has to be simulated and, depending on how strictly server-authoritative the game is, additional simulation has to be executed, such as skeletal animation.
After that come the placeables – like torches, banners, crafting stations, and such – which increase the processing load on the client (animations, lighting, shadows, and such). Crafting stations also incur a small penalty on the server performance, due to the “catch-up logic” that has to be executed on the server when a player “wakes them up”.
The least resource intensive entities are the building pieces. They are static and their resource consumption boils down to memory usage, the network I/O when they’re loaded in from the server, and the rendering.
So yeah, too many thralls in the same place is a problem on PVP, PVE and PVE-C alike. Or any other server, really.
What I’m wondering about is something they said on the Dev Stream. Alex said that “once you hit 650 followers the game performs very differently”. I’m very curious about whether that’s 650 in one place (e.g. within the rendering distance) or for the whole game. If it’s the former, the cap should help, although I still insist that a density cap would be better solution. If it’s the latter, then the cap is of dubious worth, because I’m pretty sure that a decently populated server will hit 650 followers easily.
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Then maybe the answer should be to limit the number of thralls that can be in a certain area. Not by how close they can stand to one another, but actually be within a set amount of space. This would not only help performance, but make immersion so much better by being able to, let’s say, stand 2 thralls together as if they are talking, etc.
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It used to be like this and it was annoying as hell.
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It’s also possible there’s a kind of blending of the two. Like you can have 1000+ thralls server wide, but that performance dip only happens when players are in the vicinity of a total 650 of them. Like one player is in the desert next to 200, another player is in the jungle next to another 200, and a third in the snowy region next to 250.
Currently lost thralls are going to be an issue and effect players over all thrall limit bottom line if they cannot find them and dismiss them. Please Read: Where are all the thralls?!?
Just noticed this but thralls on my server are not fighting again… might be now and then but this should of been fixed long before this kind of update
Right, I wasn’t precise enough. I shouldn’t have said “650 in one place”, but rather “650 active” or “650 awake because there are players nearby” or something along those lines.
But I’m still curious about which one it is. I realize I’ll probably never get the answer, but I’m curious regardless 
Can we please leave the amount Alone Till AFTER the Update
Who gets to choose what’s excessive and what’s not. If your capable of holding onto them through purges and players it should be allowed. That’s not the players/clans fault for outwitting and outlasting everyone else.
If you earned it and can hold it then I see no issue with it
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You do realize that PvEers have paid for the game and DLCs as well, right? The reason we’re playing PvE and not PvP is because each clan member wants to build their own castles and cities right? This…
…is not what we were sold on.
Furthermore, it’s absolutely depressing if all those structures are ghost towns never mind if they cannot be defended from the Purge (whether your own or someone else’s).
So please don’t go volunteering others for stuff that you’re unwilling to accept yourself, particularly if you don’t understand how it will impact them.
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The problem isn’t PvP servers or PvE. The problem is Funcom make sweeping huge changes to game going against what we all bought the game for. Massive empires. Those of us on PvP enjoy building like everyone else. My main fortress from a design standpoint could compete with the best ones out there on a PvE server.
So stop complaining about PvP servers being the issue. Nobody on PvP is asking for this.
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Honestly, I could have quoted your entire post, but these 3 points in particular really hit home the hardest. I’m glad you reposted this here, thank you!
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55 thralls for 2 bases??? What kind of Purges are you getting?
Even with my T4 Purge Area Base I hardly need any thralls at all to defend the entire purge.
Considering you tend to get 3 attackers with up to two simultaneous waves that means 6 attackers at a given time. Even if you had 6 attackers at a given time you can only get up to 4 npc’s to aggro per attacker sop if you choose to not be present then maybe you could find a way to squeeze in 24 thralls per purge but really… If your relying on that many Thralls maybe you need to work on your own build a bit so you can get thru a purge without losing thralls…
And even if you do need 24 thralls for a purge, were talking about the current thralls that were already described as not being as powerful as the upgraded ones… When you got a couple thralls at 20k+ hp I doubt 24 will ever be needed to defend a single purge again…
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People up-thread have already answered this many times over, so I’m not sure how you missed every single explanation. You don’t merely need thralls at the perimeter, but also internally, on rooftops, etc. in case of bugged purge spawns. Also PvE bases are generally a lot more sprawling than the dense & compact bases you must be thinking of, and that’s part of the point. This makes the individual power of a single thrall moot if they have to be spaced so far apart that they can’t intercept properly.
And don’t forget, myself and others have already reported the fact that thralls don’t always return to their guard point when they’ve finished a fight. Nothing in the dev stream suggested that thralls are getting any smarter, only more powerful. This means if a sparse defense gets pulled out of formation, it’s likely to stay that way with gaps in it.
Also, in fixating on the 2-3 bases comment, you seem to have skipped over the part about building in every biome, and the fact that not every thrall is placed to be a combatant. PvEers like to build and populate taverns, have public maprooms with dancers and lookout, etc. Yet we also have to contend with what happens when a newbie builds too close to us, gets purged, and then our complimentary maproom gets demolished.
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Considering that Funcom has mentioned we will Not be able to gain any experience with all existing Followers, combined with concerns over the upcoming Follower limits, here is a solution adopted from the comments of someone earlier (I lost track of the specific poster, sorry).
Grant us the ability to pack up our existing placed Followers into the bundle that was first granted after breaking / taming them. Users can place these items into storage as opposed to culling their ranks.
When next unpacked, the follower will follow the rules of the new Leveling system, instead of being orphaned as something undesirable, in need of replacement. They will emerge as level 0 or 1.
For each Legacy follower, this can only be done one time.
The level of effort of adding this to the user interface is as trivial as the new Dismiss Follower mechanic.
The remainder of the code should be already established for kicking off the arrival of new Followers.
All gear that was on the Follower should drop in a Loot bag just the same as for Dismiss this Follower.
This is presuming that the level of effort for capturing or subduing NPCs is going to remain unchanged between the past and the future. No need to penalize players for expanding their empire in the past.
As players will probably need to visit one or more server to perform all of this housekeeping, giving them an option which preserves their investment of time, resources and conversion time on the Wheel or Animal Pens, is a great way to respect your player-base.
The existing over-capacity culling may still remain in place on official servers.
New Format followers will not be eligible to be packaged up. This will prevent abuse of ‘pocket followers’ or unintended portability, as the original placeable followers were not intended to be re-packaged.
TL:DR: Wrap-up Legacy Followers - will become Modern Followers on unpack.
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