I think I speak for most ‘veteran’ players who have hundreds of hours in this game, that if you force this thrall feeding system on us in the current state, we will simply quit (if they haven’t already).
A couple things:
This is a tedious mechanic that adds nothing to the game. Anyone with 10+ thralls is going to have to spend a few hours every day grinding food just to keep them alive. Who is the slave in this situation?? Not fun.
Thrall AI is STILL BUGGED. This is a frankly insulting that the priorities are to push some new grindy system rather than fix the existing one, and is a huge disservice to existing players.
How to make it better:
The only way I could see this system making sense is in the context of a larger system where thralls are able to gather resources autonomously. For an example, look to Kenshi. In that game, you can set up thrall farms and cooks and they will produce their own food and keep themselves fed. A system like this wouldn’t force players to needlessly grind to upkeep their thralls, and would even be fun/satisfying.
Scrap it entirely and simply add a 6 day decay timer to them like anything else…
I really like this game but it’s been on life support to me lately. More than half my friends have quit due to the AI bugs and I’ve been keeping my base from decaying by logging in once every 6 days until it gets fixed.
But if this gets added… I’m not even going to bother. Add your thoughts guys, or we might actually be seeing this dumpster fire of a change going live.
I have over 3k hours on official pvp servers and completely disagree with jynx. I like the new Thrall feeding system and look forward to is implementation on live. Right now huge pointless thrall armies are killing server performance while being nearly useless for base defense. The thrall feeding system will end this practice and allow funcom to buff and modify thralls to be worth the time their maintenance requires.
Killing off all our thralls through starvation to improve server performance mean’s we’ll just have fast empty servers. Sorry, fast MORE empty servers, because MORE people will leave the game… on top of all those who left because they haven’t fixed thralls for months after launch.
Ah Lag I play on PVE-C. On PVE and PVE-C it’s a different story. You’re on a pvp server; Thralls are almost entirely useless there.
On PVE servers thralls (at least are supposed to be) good for base defense. You just need a lot of them to be effective. Which is why this change is AWFUL for people playing on PVE or PVE-C.
Some people also like to collect named thralls and gear them up to spruce up their base, etc. Named thralls require a lot of time and effort to farm, and this is a slap in the face for people who collected dozens of them, geared them up, and would like to keep them around.
I understand your point jinx but I think you are missing a bigger point. As the game stands thralls have little to no use outside of Role Play but yet players amass huge amounts of thralls because its easy. So these Thralls which provide maybe some visual content here and there end up killing the server performance. With the thrall feeding system you will see less thralls but they will have more uses. PVP and PVE servers will enjoy better performance and players will have more content. Win Win IMO.
I’m not missing any point; so far your only real point is about server performance. Which is a weak point if you ask me; we shouldn’t have to worry about a server lagging because players are playing the game as intended. And do we even know if the thralls are the cause of the lag?
If that is the case, Funcom should put a cap on the number of thralls that can be out in a base. Problem solved.
People play the game differently than you. On PVE servers where there is no raiding, one of the only endgame things to do is build up your base and collect thralls to defend it from purges. Without defense we stand to lose all that to offline purges.
But at least the servers will run faster because no one is playing anymore? lol?
I don’t accept your argument of “Well, thralls are broken and useless so this is a good change to improve server performance.”
That is madness, some of us have spent hundreds of hours filling our bases with named thralls and would like to not lose all that… how about we fix the thrall AI before adding a new grindy system? Thanks.
Server performance is a huge issue and one of the main reasons the game seems so buggy all the time. I have long advocated for a hard cap on player owned thralls and blocks but the Thrall feeding system will achieve the same goal while adding another survival role play mechanic to the game. I like this idea and look forward to the content.
If there’s anything affecting my performance is the amount of decorations I’m placing in every room in my base, not the 20+ thralls I have guarding outside.
Let’s not fool ourselves, this is their “solution” to floating thralls in pve and pve-c since you can kill them in pvp servers.
It’s like arguing with a robot. Good for you, lol.
This is not ‘survival role play’ it’s just another tedious boring grind to drive players away. If we are role playing, then my slaves should have slaves to keep them fed. Why should the slave owner have to personally gather food to keep their slaves fed??? Sheer idiocy.
Don’t forget the elephant broth in the corner of the room. This is going to cause a huge imbalance in the food system, one that’s already skewed waaay into the “laughably easy” category. The pots will surely get a spoil buff, resulting in endless exploited pseudo-fridges out there, thus defeating “Survive” once and for all.
If the server purges worked properly, you will need thralls to defend even on PVP servers. I don’t know about you but bases getting raided that have thralls (working thralls) are way tougher than an empty base, and tbh more fun to raid
I wouldn’t call thralls useless on pvp. Equipped the right way, they can definitely provide a good amount of defense against solo raiders in cramped spaces.
I hope they implement a setting to turn thrall feeding off.
I play on a PvE server and we have actually made a danceclub with an army of various named thralls in it. If it ‘kills performance’, its probably because your PC(or console?) cant handle it, not because of a server issue. I had zero issues with it. Large bases and especially having tons of decorations is far worse for performance than thralls.
I see no win win, This implementation would mean we would have to feed a whole army of thralls or have them die and thus see our whole project go to waste. If this is implemented without ability to just turn it off, then this might well be it for me.
I appreciate your very well thought out points. Each one of them resonates heavily with me.
The fact that you play PvE and have these concerns interests me since I play in PvP. In PvP 1,000,000 thralls isn’t a big deal. We just get the snake arrows / explosives / treb boulders, and get to work. 10 minutes, 10 days… they can be wittled down. PvE is an all together different arena that I had not considered. The attrition method definitely seems to be needed. However, I don’t feel that feeding is the answer to this.
I too remember the scene in Conan the Barbarian when he found Subotai the Hyrkanian, chained to the outside of the witch’s hut and begging for food. “Sorry buddy, you’re on your own” he said, and kept walking.
Oh wait no, he cut him loose and gave him some food.
