Why? Grinding is about mindlessly cracking on a task until the outcome is achieved. Personally, grinding is not productive or terribly psychologically healthful, therefore I think a whammy at the end of one is exactly what I deserve.
Case in point: if I grind in GTA toward a goal or purchase, then try to sell my goods in a public lobby, I will 9 out of 10 times be destroyed by another player. Meanwhile, when I’ve simply played and acquired millions in my nightclub, I sell in any open lobby with no recriminations. Do you believe in karma?
Variability yes, risk not so much. I have no problem replacing my personal thralls when they don’t get the “perfect” perks, but when we’ve got 80 guards to level and half the Fighters are pulling negative Strength/Vitality perks at 20 and half the Archers are pulling negative Accuracy/Vitality at 20 that’s just rediculous. My guards don’t have to have the absolute best in class perks but I don’t want to have to level 185 guards to 20 just to get 80 useable ones that don’t have a negative in the only stats that I need them to have.
Playing devil’s advocate - because I recognize that thralls when leveled regardless of perks perform better than legacy thralls.
I think we should be asking what kind of behavior and actions is this system causing. An RNG risk/reward system imho is not optimal. It’s interesting to see what the perks are but in practice, it’s a lot of wasted time and effort if you end up with a thrall that’s demonstrably worse than it was a handful of level ago. So if people are leaving thralls at lower levels because it may be optimal and the risk is too great, that’s not a great system. If people spend time leveling thralls and abandoning them because they are capped at how many they can keep - that’s not a great system.
There is already an RNG if they even gain an attribute per level without perks, so hitting a “perfect thrall” is already stacked against you. And if you are like me where cosmetics and voices are an added level of RNG you are looking at 100s of hours of just thralling - so that really leaves you with “good enough” and shelving a thrall at a level that you feel is optimal because the risk is too great for the amount of time/effort you put into it.
I’m good with attributes RNG per level, but I would like to see a path that you can help shape and choose and do away with thrall type. And train them in certain weapons and skill sets. Make one a dancer by going down a path at an early level, etc.
If you want variability and choices, a system to customize thralls with trade offs would be better than risk vs. reward. Thrall lottery isn’t all that engaging in the long run.
In this case, I put those fighters in the parapets with bows and appropriate armor/weapons/buffs to fill in the gaps, and put the archers in melee position with their appropriate weps/etc. I’ll then dispatch the archers one by one when a better replacement is available. Just did this yesterday with five underperforming Hyborian 3s. Despite coming out of the wheel with a 70707, H3As can sometimes turn into real pew pew monsters.
I suggest Mandughai or a humble Treasure Seeker. Two of my RHTSAs have become tanks at LVL 16, with one breaking 8333 HP. I can’t wait to see how they turn out.
Maybe it’s because I play Age of Empires, but these troop things are expendable. Furthermore, in real life and in the gaming realm, sometimes the things you love just don’t turn out the way you like. It’s when they do, wow, what a reward. To me it’s as if they turn 20, which is the legal drinking age in my part of the Hyborian Era, and choose a good, bad or mediocre path.
I understand you are speaking hypothetically, and I appreciate that. I do believe Funcom will be enhancing this system, like all the others, over time. For right now, though, I’m getting a bit of a dopamine pop from my hyena RNG. Don’t know if that’s a good thing.
Problem there is the lack of damage values shown on the thrall stats page. Fighters and Archers get different base HP and HP/Point in the higher tier factions (at exactly a 2/3 ratio). I would hope their melee and ranged base damage would also differ, so I don’t like the idea of using a Fighter as an Archer.
Again I have no problem going through a dozen or so of my 3 personal thralls until I get the perfect follower, but having to level 160 guards just to get 80 mediocre (non-terrible) ones is just super tedious. If a Fighter gets a bunch of survival bonuses I can live with that since he’s just a guard and at least he’s still level 20, but when he ends up with -8 Strength and +5 Accuracy I have just completely wasted my time leveling a trash thrall to 20.
Problem is that I’m a hardcore gamer, and therefore a total snob. I can’t have T3 thralls when I’m stuck having only 100 total, they must be named!
Afraid I don’t know your examples, but not sure how to explain that time investment is a negative already.
I’ve gotten about 3 followers to level 10 or more since the update. I’ve discovered my time was absolutely wasted on one of those because of the obfuscated “base damage” stat.
With the time I have to spend, I can get maybe one follower to level 20 per month unless I make it all I do while playing. Altogether the systems seem to be in place to punish for trying to use them instead of reward.
I gotcha. Thanks for explaining. Please do keep in mind that although I’m trying to be humorous here I’m not making light of your situation.
Some day soon we’ll have a convenient table for their base damage numbers. Anecdotally, the extreme end of the scale in terms of STR bonus is quite rewarding. Take a calculated base damage of 57 and then get a 260% STR bonus at LVL 20 – this is a Dierde (sic) Deathbringer who kills things so rapidly her weapon rarely appears to come out. You’ve got me genuinely curious about how yours will mature.
Out of the 20 or so I’ve personally leveled so far, I’ve had at least 7 Fighters get Warden (+8 Accuracy -5 Strength) and 3 or 4 have the one that gives -5 Strength and +8 Survival. With no other +Strength perks. That’s not useable.
It was the fifth one I console-leveled on a private server with Admin rights: if you crank them up to LVL 20 in one shot, they ignore the food buff. So I did it level by level, shifting the gruel in her inventory each time. The downside is she received very low vites, such that an ~8k freshly-rolled Dalinsia ended up with maybe 13k HP. Until I can do it officially via personal leveling, it’s anomalous. I hope Santa is stuffing his sack with 25 Dalinsias and 10 Greater Wolves for me.
But tbh they still are usable. They can still kill stuff just fine.
I’m not arguing the current system is fine. I also think it’s annoying to get terrible perks. But thralls are OP enough that most thralls will be good enough even with bad perks. People are acting like you have no option but break bond if you get a bad perk.
I play PvP, so putting a guard at my base with negative Strength/Vitality or an Archer with negative Accuracy/Vitality would make my defenses weaker.
Given that my server is still being besieged by cheating hacking glitching trolls (that were reported through the proper channels on November 17th with hard video evidence showing them undermeshing, because even though they were using many other glitches that we could tell, they were not ones we could really capture on video) that still haven’t had any repercussions taken against them. They recently messaged one of my clan mates to let him know they found a new glitch they’ll be using tonight (Merry X-Mas) so sub-par guards really aren’t going to work for us.
I play pvp too and against cheaters no thrall is gonna cut it. But generally speaking, with a good weapon a top tier thrall only need about 40 str to one-shot most players, so you actually don’t need that perfect str. (I know they lowered thrall damage a bit on pc, but I’m on ps4 so I don’t know what the new numbers are like yet).
And generally cheaters, the amount of evidence Funcom expect of players and their reaction time, isn’t really relevant for the thrall perk discussion. It’s sh’t, but it’s not what this thread is about. Also, the cheaters have the same thralls and perks, so it doesn’t really make a difference anyway.
Once again, when we’re talking about guards (not personal thralls), I am not looking for perfect strength. I am just looking not to get screwed at level 20 with a +8 Accuracy -5 Strength stat on a Fighter. It makes them far worse than had I just not leveled them past 19. I would consider a +3 Accuracy at level 20 to be a bad perk on a Fighter, but at least it doesn’t wreck their main requirement so I wouldn’t throw them away.
That was a bit of a rant, sorry, but my point was that in the time I am still waiting on action to be taken and before the cheaters find a new glitch, my clan is working hard to level as many guards as we can. To get a stat that detracts from the Archetype at level 20 which makes all of the time we spent leveling it wasted, puts us in an even worse position. So while the particulars of the situation may not have been overly relevant the point still is, wasting time on a thrall and having to level multiple ones to fill a single guard position is a bad thing to do to players.
The only way we kept these guys from raiding our old base for 4 days was the sheer number and quality of thralls we had. When they killed a hundred one night, we had another hundred to deploy the next day that were just as good. Now, if they kill one that we’ve leveled that doesn’t come out total garbage, we not only need to be able to replace it but probably level 3 until we get a useable one.
Its a bit like saying silent legion is garbage because godbreaker exists. A level 20 thrall is still going to be good on the whole. I think people are a little too min/maxy to stop and reflect that the point is to just enjoy playing the game. If everything has to be perfect to enjoy it, I suspect most if not all games will disappoint.
Hey there, I’m on PC in this case. To clear up my conflation in my earlier posts, the monster I created/referenced was in fact a Dalinsia with 260%. When I logged on this morning, the Deirde (sic) who’d ended up with 200%+ was “normal” with a ~32% increase, so thinking I was onto something I forced a reboot of the server after creating the Dalinsia. The 260% was instead replaced with 11 percent. It appears to have been a cosmetic glitch. Sorry if this got anyone’s hopes up.
Dierde levels really quickly in case you want to try her out. Definitely a fun two hours around the Darfari Zone with a tiny bit of UC at the end.
I’ve been on the treb-hurling side of that story. Imagine a 3-story Home Improvement Center absolutely packed to the rafters with dudes wearing Hyrkanian Heavy. After a few hours it’s like “maybe I ought to just go home.”
Nowadays, your manpower is so precious and valuable, it’s important to not lock them in position unless you’re willing to have them be sitting ducks. I have begun including catwalks for some archer positions, plus one backup melee fighter hidden on the deck, and a fresh Dalinsia in the archer position’s strongbox…
Good on you going for the cream of the crop. Is your personnel vault becoming pretty empty?
Please do keep in mind that although I’m trying to be humorous here I’m not making light of your situation.
