I thought of an alternate way of implementing this that could potentially be easier to code with less system impact.
Allow the clan leader and officers to mark followers as favorites from the radial menu.
- When a thrall or pet is set as a favorite, it is removed from the automatic culling lottery.
- When a thrall is marked as a favorite, clan members will see a message in clan chat stating
“Anos Preyfinder (-100.02, 36.45, 11.87) marked as Favorite by Larathiel. 1 of 60 favorites used.” - If the clan has reached their cap, and another thrall is favorited, the oldest favorite is removed:
“Erii the Ravager (55.34, 22.13, 4.37) marked as Favorite by Thulsa Doom. 61 of 60 favorites used.
Anos Preyfinder (-100.02, 36.45, 11.87) has been demoted. 60 of 60 favorites used.” - A similar message would be displayed if a favorite follower is manually demoted, or if a favorite follower dies.
- In the event of a new player being admitted into an established clan, the favorites from the established clan remain intact, whereas the favorites from the player being added are demoted until within the clan’s new cap. (Thus a player joining a clan should do some house-keeping before merging.)
In this way, clans are provided with both a heads-up as to what’s going on, and the location so that there is more transparency about what’s going on and where they stand. This also will take care of the thralls that are stuck under the map, up in the clouds, or hopeless trapped inside foundations without hitting the database with a call to delete 100s or 1000s of entries at once.