One of the things I really enjoyed about this game when I first played it was the “Pokemon” effect of collecting thralls. No matter how many named thralls I captured, it never felt like enough because there was always some armourer or blacksmith out there with a specific recipe that only they could craft that I couldn’t access until I found them. And whenever I found a T4 that I didn’t have, there was a bit of a thrill to it (sad, but true). This kept me playing for hundreds of hours beyond what I otherwise would’ve invested in the game.
I’m coming back to the game now after about a year out and I’m finding out that there now seems to be little point in collecting multiple T4 crafting thralls because, beyond their 3 fairly arbitrary specialism variations, there’s no longer any meaningful difference between them. No need to look for Bnaru in order to get that Epic Darfari set(?) etc etc. It seems like you can now collect all of the crafters you will ever need from the Exiles and Darfari early on in the game and then you’ll never need another for as long as you keep playing. Obviously fighter thralls aren’t affected, but it felt more important with the crafters and their distinctive recipes.
This, to me, is a sad development. I feel like the game has really lost something fundamental when finding a rare named thrall is no longer a pleasing event, because they add nothing new to your collective. Perhaps I’m missing something and this isn’t the case… I hope so. But as it stands now I can’t see any reason at all to hunt for T4 crafters from the higher level factions beyond mid-game. What a shame.
See, I sorta feel this way. But I also have read a lot of feedback that said the opposite. They hated having to hunt for that one specific armorsmith or whatever, for a number of reasons (PvP, time, etc). And I don’t blame them for feeling that way either. Both are viable feedback.
But you’re right, what’s the point in hunting for a Votaries Carpenter when an Exile Carpenter will do the same stuff? Obviously we know a Tier 4 carpenter is better then a Tier 1, but faction wise, there isn’t much incentive besides the “gotta catch them all” goal.
So, where’s the middle ground? What do you think could be done to help give incentive to hunt specific thralls over others?
Perhaps unique recipes that are cosmetic? I don’t think it’s feasible to go back to “faction armor,” but maybe there could be some unique things on them for people to aim to get that one specific thrall from a faction (decorations, cosmetic armor or weapons for RP, etc etc).
Maybe a Votaries Tier 4 Carpenter does just a little bit better then a Tier 4 Carpenter Exile. Obviously only a small bonus isn’t a game changer, but when min/maxing and going for the best that you can possibly get, maybe that’s an incentive.
Purge Thralls being Tier 5 again I think would be good, just a bit better then Tier 4 map Thralls.
I’m gonna be the minority here (or completely alone):
I loved the cultural armor setup, and I would like to see it returning. BUT I also like the new specializations, and I like challenges, when the game says: “f*ck you, this is a survival game, work hard and be a badass or just whine and die”.
So I’d like to see these 2 mixed together: you want a darfari armor that is light as feather? Go, catch a darfari armorer with a weight specialization! You want a cozy warm vanir set that lasts for eons? Get a nordheimer armorer with a durability specialization!
I think all of those ideas you mentioned are good. Although personally I would also like to see a return to faction armour. It makes perfect sense to me that a crafter from a particular faction (eg B’naru) should be more experienced at crafting that faction’s armour (eg Darfari Light) and therefore produce a better product. Whether this takes the form of being the only crafter that can craft the epic version of an armour, or just a modest boost in stats above what other crafters can achieve, anything is better than what we have now.
Blacksmiths and Carpenters should gain increased bonuses as you go up the factions. Alchemists and Cooks should have different faction appropriate recipes. Tanners, Taskmasters and Smelters I don’t care about, although it would probably help if they got slightly increased bonuses as you go up the factions again.
We just need something to keep us hunting for more all throughout the game and not just stopping with the first crafter thrall we happen to pick up at level 20. I mean, currently there is no point to having crafter thralls in factions like Votaries, Cimmerian, Nordheimmer etc because no-one is going to get that far in the game without having already picked up all the crafters they need now.
I think its good that they did away with the whole flawless / epic flawless system, because that was needlessly confusing for new players, but by getting rid of the faction-specific armourers especially it feels like they’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
I completely agree. The more specialization amongst the T4 thralls the better as far as I’m concerned. It adds depth and unpredictability to the game that is now sorely missing.
Or maybe introduce a new game mechanic: Clan-based base bonuses.
If you have one T4 Exile cook, you get maybe a survival type bonus radius at your base (say better temperature resistance or food doesn’t spoil as fast). If you have one T4 Cimmerian armorer, you get maybe an increased vitality type bonus at your base (say your buildings are a little stronger). The effect can be cumulative (say a base with all T4 Cimmerian thralls). To stop spamming insane numbers though, keep it limited to one type (one Cimmerian T4 per station – to multiple types of armorers or blacksmiths or whatever don’t add to the effect). And I’m thinking low level bonuses (like maybe +1% gain per T4 thrall type, so that a maximum bonus is around +10%-20%).
This is just an idea, but it would make the T4 thralls “special” again and give incentive to collecting thralls, especially if there were cultural bonuses to be had (given to a base). This is just a rough idea. I’m sure it would need to be fully-fleshed out to be viable.
FWIW, I’m one of those who absolutely loathed cultural armor system, or rather the way it was implemented. And yet I dislike the effects of the crafting update.
I didn’t hate the cultural armor system because I thought it was a bad idea. I hated the low spawn percentages for some of these armorers, and the fact that Funcom would keep tweaking T4 spawn percentages without saying anything in the patch notes, so the players couldn’t even rely on their knowledge of the game to establish their thralling routines.
Despite all that, I was okay with the way things were, because the system had a rather neat “escape hatch”: if the system bothered you as much as it did me, all you had to do was shell out the money for DLCs. It was an advantage, yeah, but not so much “pay to win” as “pay for the privilege of being lazy and spoiled”. Things were fine, until Siptah rolled along.
Siptah revitalized the progression curve and made me appreciate T1s and T2s again, but what it made better on that end of the equation, it screwed up royally by setting up even more ridiculous RNG via summoned surges.
The “solution” initially made me happy, but when the euphoria wore off, I realized that the cure was worse than the disease.
That’s definitely a great idea. It doesn’t have to be just armorers. Witch Doctor is an alchemist that makes black and white dye. Give named crafters unique recipes. You don’t even have to give each crafter a unique recipe of its own. Have a pool of recipes and give each crafter a subset of that. For example, if you have 6 recipes, there are 20 ways to choose 3 of them, so that’s enough to make 20 crafters “unique enough”.
Here’s another riff on that idea: give different crafters a small bonus for certain products. Maybe, for example, if you put Jaes’Pliis (of the Votaries) in charge of a carpenter’s bench, you get 11 serpentman arrows, instead of 10, for the same amount of mats. Or if you put Valenso Da Reyn (of the Black Hand) in charge of a tannery, you have 3% chance of getting 2 tar instead of 1 for each hyena pelt.
You can play with the advantage the crafters give. It can be small enough to not upset the balance, but still spark an interest in collector-type players. Or it can be bigger and provide some actual tactical advantage.
Cooks. For the love of Mitra, go nuts with the cooks. Everyone has been complaining about how the new healing system screwed up the cooking. Well, here’s a perfect opportunity to address that by giving different factions cooks with different recipes with special effects.
The whole idea that factions need a clear order in progression has always bugged the crap out of me. It’s fine for T1s, T2s and maybe even T3s. But T4 crafters should not have a progression. It’s much better to give each faction a reason to stay relevant in the endgame by giving each faction’s T4 crafters something unique and special.
CodeMage:
The whole idea that factions need a clear order in progression has always bugged the crap out of me. It’s fine for T1s, T2s and maybe even T3s. But T4 crafters should not have a progression. It’s much better to give each faction a reason to stay relevant in the endgame by giving each faction’s T4 crafters something unique and special.
I completely agree with this too. I was just trying to think of a low-effort solution for Funcom, because its unlikely they’ll want to implement anything too complex after just having nuked the entire system.
But yes, in a perfect world all factions should be relevant throughout the game, which is why their T4 thralls need to have faction-specific advantages that other T4’s don’t have. Even if its just cosmetic, as Multigun suggested, I’d be happy enough with that.
Ideally all T4 thralls would have both faction-specific cosmetics and stat bonuses (or faction specific recipes in the case of Cooks and Alchemists). For example, B’naru giving a slightly more heavy-duty looking version of the Darfari Skin armour with +X% armour bonus over and above what other T4 armourers can achieve. But thats a lot of work for Funcom, so its just a dream really.
This seems like the best answer to me, combine the two! Maybe remove the fact you need the named crafter for the non-Epic version and just keep it for the Epic armorers and blacksmiths, etc. Everyone who unlocks the feat should be able to craft whatever they want of the lower grade gear, it’s the epic flawless versions that should be difficult to get!
Yeah I much preferred the old system. Due to the time it takes to break a thrall and how fast you level up I find it completely pointless to put a t/1/2/3 at a station, by the time I’m 60 I might not even have the brick for the improved station version. When I’m ready I’m already 60 and tent to find t4 easily. Just one armorsmith (don’t care what type) a darfari witch doc, any t4 blacksmith…then done.
Maybe I’ll ■■■■■■ a t4 carp if I find one along the way (which I do sooner than later) and all my thrall hunting thrill dies right there.
It’s pretty obvious that they made this change because people like me were complaining about the ludicrous RNG baked into Siptah summoned surges. And, of course, you’re going to blame us for complaining, instead of Funcom for picking this solution out of all possible solutions. None of us “casuals” ever requested a solution that would completely change crafting. None of us asked for a solution that would affect Exiled Lands. But sure, go ahead and blame the “casuals”.
And that bit about people who spend less time in a game always being at a disadvantage is disingenuous. The (dis)advantages associated with time spent can scale in different ways.
So I have been away from the game for ages now as I was very unhappy with a number of choices Funcom made in the last year or so. Considering firing up the game again, now that enough time has passed for me to “reset” my expectations and give it a new start.
This topic is interesting and I was hoping for clarification: Am I understanding it correctly that any T4 exile crafter will have all recipes or that craft type, or is it just armorers that have all the racial/clan armor types now? Thralling in all the different clan lands is primarily just for the fighter classes? Maybe I am reading more into this than it is.
It’s not about what you’re discussing, it’s who you’re blaming. Since you’re suddenly talking about purge thralls and not T4s, let me remind you that most of the complaints about purges were complaints about bugs. The rest of them were about how hard it is to fill your purge meter if you don’t have clanmates (or leave your toon logged in overnight). Nobody ever said “hey, purge thralls shouldn’t be unique because I play too little to get them”.
I’m picking victim-blaming comments that you and other people like to make here. Every time Funcom decides to ruin a game mechanic, there’s always a bunch of people crawling out of woodwork to point fingers at “complainers”.
If I “take it personally”, it’s because I’m tired of toxic crap like that. You wanna point fingers at someone, point it at the people who made the actual decision to devalue thralls instead of fixing bugs and making RNG percentages more reasonable.
Did I write that? Did you read what I actually wrote about the scaling of advantages and disadvantages? If the concept isn’t clear, feel free to ask for clarification, instead of putting words in my mouth.
Crafting weapons and armor has been reworked. There’s no exceptional or flawless gear anymore. There’s more information on the wiki pages for armorers and blacksmiths.
As for the other crafters, they don’t give you material cost reduction anymore. Instead, they only give you crafting speed bonus, and the material cost reduction is handled by new benches.
Ohhhh, I see. You aren’t pointing fingers, you are analyzing the root causes of their decisions, in order to make a valuable contribution to this discussion, on par with other participants. And what, pray tell, was the conclusion of your analysis? I await your contribution with bated breath.
Yes, any T4 crafter thrall (including the early game T4 exiles) now has access to all recipes. So if you pick up an armourer at level 20 from the exiles faction, they will give you access to all armour recipes, normal and epic. You will never need another armourer after that if you so wish. Same goes for all the other crafter thrall types: Blacksmith / Alchemist / Cook / Carpenter / Smelter… etc etc you no longer need a specific named thrall - any named thrall of that profession will do.
The only small variation you will see in T4 crafter thralls now is 3 specializations for each of the classes for Armourers, Blacksmiths, Carpenters and Priests and 2 specializations for Taskmasters.
For instance, an armourer might now be a Scoutwright (best weight reduction bonus), Shieldwright (best armour value bonus) or Temperwright (best durability bonus). So at most you can fulfill all armour crafting possibilities with just 3 armourers. No more need to collect particular named thralls from various factions anymore to access specific recipes.
As you say, thralling in any part of the world is now mostly just for combat thralls, sadly.
Well I am new to the game so I do not know the old status quo on thralls. However what I kind of miss in endgame is the ability to craft whatever armor with whatever perks I need. There is a lot of DLC armors, but it makes no sense to craft them when they do not match my needs. So I have to run with cosmetic armors I do not like but have the perks I want.
I do understand that the farming might displease on pvp or in a timely manner for a lot of people. But how about give the specific T4 crafters the ability to change the appearance of a specific armor (without chaning its perks)? This would make it purely cosmetic, but still something to farm for for longtime players?
Ah… btw I play on Console, I know this mod is available for pc.
