It just hasn’t worked out at all since they had it released, and then they disabled due to the huge amount of Technical issues it’s caused since. And every so often it comes back only for it be disabled again due to technical issues that come with it.
I want the system, don’t get me wrong. It’s fun, and whatnot. But it’s very clear how it’s currently written to work and the performance issues on the servers it causes, i think the current iteration of the system needs to be scrapped and just redone with better optimization in mind for the new engine. It’s clear it doesn’t work.
It’s immersive and most ppl would like it but i would rather see option put on thralls to manually set the range how far they would roam in the base, then we could set thralls, who’s work station is near the edge of the base to not roam as far as in the middle stationed thralls or put it completely 0 meters.
This feature is, by its very nature, quite difficult to implement. You have to give the NPCs precise locations and a schedule—like in Skyrim or in old Gothic 1—and then it will (mostly) work.
But in a player-built base, you can only set up random chaos, and that will never really work. For example, even in Windrose, there are NPCs wandering around the base who are more of a nuisance (they especially love standing on stairs and in doorways) than a help.
Maybe it could be left as a toggleable feature for single-player, but for MP—especially given the state of the official servers—it’s just something that will never work as intended. It only makes the situation worse and puts another strain on already overloaded servers. The fact that it doesn’t kill thralls yet is a nice bonus, but everything has its time.
I’m of the opinion it would be better off removed entirely. The same ‘added life’ effect could be far more effectively achieved by adding things like settable ‘patrol routes’ for fighter types and leaving bench thralls as the ‘items’ that they were rather than adding unecessary extra performance issues by turning them into full placeable thralls.
If they wanted to go for something more advanced, they need only look to the mod ‘Thralls are alive’ (UE4 only) and take inspiration from that - it created a huge amount of life, with patrol routes, scheduling, training areas, idling areas, sleeping (on schedule, in a pre-determined location) and even the potential for harvesting/crafting chains. And none of it needed to mess with the bench thralls, who already brought some life to the base by being animated to be doing their jobs. Instead, we got bench thralls placed in the world, wandering around aimlessly (and often in immersion breaking ways) while the benches stand empty and the fightertypes all just stand still and do nothing. And the whole thing puts more strain on performance than would have been the case doing it the other way round (not least by pushing everyone closer to the follower limits).
With this move they should add too the ability for us to switch on/off the living settlement when ever we players want, and have it unavailable when ever the server admin switches it off for technical issues.
Same with Enshrouded villagers. They mostly wander around, stand on things, get stuck between furniture, and aren’t where you expect them to be when you need them. In that game, at least, you have the option to set their wander distance to 0 so you can essentially make them stand still.
I had really hoped that Living Settlements would behave more like the Thralls Are Alive mod which is, perhaps understandably, very complicated to set up but it works pretty well and is on a per-thrall basis. Settings schedules, setting patrols, setting up different emotes/idles at different places in their routes, etc.
Fixing the bugs in the content would be nice. I still wouldn’t use it because it doesn’t work the way I’d like. But I’d like to see happy players.
Now I’m going to mention another game, take a deep breath, ready?
I’m, of the opinion the devs; whom ever they may be at this time, take a look at how schedule 1 has done it with a clipboard and setting the pathing to and from where and what. I also like that are on their bench when there is work to do but just loitering in one spot when not.
Yes, I agree a rewrite of the system might be the best fix.
I’d actually welcome this. Instead of a global setting for the entire server, I’d prefer the option for each player or clan to enable it themselves (with it being turned off by default to accommodate less tech-savvy players), and the ability to set how far each thrall can wander would be pretty cool.