As the time aproachs to delete all our placed fighters, archers, dancers, etc, how about instead of deleting them, we get them back as an item?!
5 Likes
It would be nice, but it’s not likely to happen. I don’t remember if they’ve actually said they wouldn’t do it, but they did say it was problematic.
The problems stem from the changes brought by the follower leveling system. Before those changes, the way things worked was that each type of follower (e.g. tiger, Nordheimer Bearer II or Spinas the Marauder) was like a “template” and each follower you placed would have a “link” to that “template” which described all of its characteristics. Each individual follower had to store very little data: its health, the link to its “template”, its inventory, etc.
With the leveling system, each follower is unique. As long as it’s an item in your inventory, it’s just a “link” to its “template” and that’s all. As soon as you place it, it becomes an actor that has a link to its “template” and a whole bunch of other info: growth chances, attributes, level, perks, inventory, etc.
So if you wanted to “pick up” the follower, one of two things would have to happen:
- The follower item has to track all the information a follower actor does. This would blow up the resource usage on the server, because there’s no cap on how many items you can store in your containers.
- The follower item reverts to being a simple link to its “template”. This would allow people to “game the system”: if they place a follower and don’t like its growth chances or a perk it got at a certain level, they could pick it up and place it again and restart the leveling process. Personally, I think this would be splendid, because I’m not a fan of “drudge gameplay”, but I think Funcom game designers are and that’s why they won’t do it.
TL;DR: I love your idea, but I wouldn’t hold my breath 
6 Likes
There could be some sort of requeriment, like be level 5, to get the option to pick up
edit: hmm, level 5 is kind easy to get, how about level 8? or 10? Could be worth to level some thralls to level 10 to get the option to pick up, but, most thralls we would be better of getting a new one anyway, faster
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I think Funcom just plain doesn’t want you to be able to pick the thrall back up.
You could pick them up back in EA, but that feature was removed.
2 Likes
that’s exactly the way pickup is implemented in my mod better thralls. as a modder I can’t change the game item and add additional data (e.g. current level, growth chances, …) and therefore you lose all progress if you pickup a thrall with the mod. the re-placed thrall starts with level 0 and new random generated stats and growth chances.
8 Likes
And I’d love to see that in the core game, much more than the ability to pick up a follower and place it back the way it was. I don’t agree with Funcom’s idea that you should have to catch the thrall again if you didn’t like the cards RNG dealt you.
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Leveling system does not make it impossible or heavier on servers since these thralls are already in database. Picking up thralls makes sense with leveling system and gives rescue option some value (I don’t see any at this point). Picked up thrall could still count as placed thrall and that eliminates chance of having 1k+ level 20 thralls in storage if there is cap for max thralls.
If we could reuse them as a placable armor rack would be handy. Not really considered about animals.
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I don’t know how to respond to this except read the detailed explanation. I didn’t say it was impossible. I did explain how there are two possible implementations, one of which would definitely be heavier on the servers, not in terms of CPU load, but in terms of memory usage and database size.
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I wouldnt complain if it wiped the stats and made it an item again, I cant be the only one who targets dupes incase someone i like has an unfortunate end …
That being said, I get were that might really cheese thrall leveling. But in this instance I dont see an issue. Wether you tame a new one, use a potion to reset levels, or an item to pick up thralls to revert them to items you still gotta put in the time to level um up.
Not down on savef lvl 20 thralls being stockpiled tho. I could see pvp trolls having a field day with that and body vaults.
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I don’t see an issue, either. The biggest impact it would have on follower leveling is that you would be able to place a follower, look at the growth chances and, if you don’t like them, pick it up and place it again. Growth chances affect the stats immensely. However, I still don’t think that “cheesing” this is a big issue at all. And it can be prevented by limiting the pick-up action to level 5 or 10 or whatever.
2 Likes
I will repeat myself. Thrall is already in database. If thrall still counts as an active thrall to prevent massing boxed level 20 thralls, it would not make any difference on server load or database.
Detailed explanation just for you CodeMage: If thrall is counted toward placed/active thralls, you can’t mass them over the cap even in inventory and because they would not reset, you won’t be able to exploit pick-up system.
yes and no.
a thrall item is currently only 1 value in the game.db: the template id. all the other stuff is static content and some generated stuff when you place the thrall.
a placed thrall is a hell of data in the game.db
your suggestion: keep the placed thrall data after pickup. with the current thrall item this is not possible. so we need an extended thrall item or we replace the normal thrall item always with the extended version. both solutions will add a hell of data to the game.db and that’s not a good idea. to reduce the data volume in the game.db we have to extend the thrall limit from placed thralls to thrall items in chests. believe me but this is nothing the majority of player really wants. more limits is not a good idea, especially not if it is introduced for such a simple use case as pickup.
if we ever see the pickup feature in the base game again it will definitive reset the thrall to a level 0 thrall. all other solutions a counter productive to all the game optimizations we have seen in the past.
2 Likes
Maybe you’re confusing the template with an instance of a thrall. Each archetype of thrall – e.g. Nordheimer Bearer 3 – will have one template that is shared among all T3 Nordheimer bearers. That template stores the initial attributes, the range of growth chances, the hidden stats, etc. No matter how many T3 Nordheimer bearer thralls are placed in the world or stored in boxes, this data will not be repeated in the database. The cost we’re talking about comes from the instances of the thralls.
As Testerle and I both tried to explain, there are two types of these instances: thrall-item and thrall-actor.
Thrall-actor is what you get after you place the thrall in the world. It has all the data associated with level, attributes, growth chances, perks and inventory, and a reference to the thrall template. A clan can have a limited number of these.
Thrall-item is what you have in your inventory before you place the thrall. It has none of the data associated with leveling. It only keeps a reference to the thrall template. There is no hard limit on the number of thrall-items a clan can have in their chests, vaults, crates, etc.
Being able to pick up a placed thrall means somehow converting the thrall-actor into a thrall-item. The simplest way to do that is to check what template it’s linked to, destroy the thrall-actor and put a new thrall-item in your inventory linked to that template. That means you lose all the info about the level, attributes, growth chances, perks and inventory.
Another way to do it is to change what data is stored in a thrall-item, so that it’ll “remember” its level, attributes, growth chances, perks and inventory. That is a lot of additional data to store. Given that everyone has a habit of hoarding thrall-items in their chests, the resource usage would blow up.
3 Likes
I don’t know what to tell you. If thrall is already in database, you can link item to specific database ID instead of template. It would not make any difference on resource usage.
“This is not possible because it is not supported”. Well, if you ever make something possible without putting work into it, tell me, that would save me a lot of time…
Maybe you should read what I wrote already before blowing up databases …
Client side optimizations brought us performance and quality degradation while server side had ups and downs, it’s kind of hard to tell.
This is where I will stop posting, I already posted same thing more then I should…
yes and pickup a thrall will not remove it. regardsless if you store it to your chest or re-place the thrall.
short example:
- I have 20 placed thralls (full dataset) plus 20 thrall items (only 1 value) in a chest
- now I pickup all my thralls and put the thrall item in a chest (20x full dataset + 20 single variables)
- now I place all my 20 thrall items which where never placed into the world (40x full datasets + 0 single variables)
this short example doubles the volume in the game.db and thats a problem and it’s not a question of possibility, supported or not. it’s simple mathematics
and believe it or not but allow pickup of thralls for no cost and the players will love and use it, extensively
and you did not get the point. from an optimization aspect it’s a no no no and therefore very unlikely that it will ever happen
4 Likes
If you actually read what I wrote, you would know that part in bold would not be possible if thrall limit is 20.
I am very shortsighted person, especially when I know how something can be done. I am sorry if I would be able to do it without making exploits or duplicating/hoarding data into database…
Good luck and have fun in game.
So what you’re saying is that it’s possible if you add a new cap which says “you can’t have more than X picked up thralls in your storage”? If that’s so, you’re right, but I have no idea what the use case is for that implementation. If you ask people why they want to pick up their thralls, their motivations aren’t likely to be compatible with your new cap. 
1 Like
I’d say “level 15”. It takes some time to reach so one would pick up only rare Thralls “spoiled” with bad perks. Maybe some Purge Thrall or female Cimmerian Berserker (25% chance to get female) or some Entertainer with rare hair color for example. All the others would be easier to catch and tame anew.
But, the problem lies in that why even bother leveling the non meta. The idea behind thrall leveling is committing. IF this was added, then would it not be easier just to make all thralls level to a meta? Remove the RNG all together. Thus, all thralls would be exactly like before, the same based on region/class (named). So, a whole mechanic just tossed aside.