Not because Godbreaker exists, but for a whole other list of reasons, but let’s not hijack this thread with that discussion please.
For like the, what, 5th time? I am not looking for perfection, I am looking to not spend time leveling up a Fighter guard so that they end up worse off at level 20 (by losing points in the only 2 values I care about) than they were at level 19.
Yeah, but 260%?! On an official server, I leveled a Janos (who starts with str 30) to level 20 on a diet of gruel and his melee bonus is something like 50% (I can’t connect right now to check the exact figure). Getting a bonus of 260% is … sorcery 
EDIT: I should’ve read the rest of the thread before replying. I see that it was a UI glitch, so never mind
In prepping for the patch to hit, we farmed a box full of fighters and one full of archers, plus the mats we needed to make flawless epic armor for a hundred thralls. After the patch, we’ve deployed them and refilled the boxes for when the limit goes live (to deploy if they raise it from 100 or replace the bad ones if they don’t).
Gotta be ready for stuff.
I’m pretty sure I tracked it down. To test attribute outcomes I did about 400 hyenas just prior to creating my Dierde, who sparked this whole thing. As you may know, hyenas do indeed get 280% STR bonuses at the end. Thus I was onto wolves this morning, and did about 100 of them before moving through 5 Dalinsias. I think the pet attributes glitched onto the fighters cosmetically. If I can get it to keep repeating it’ll go over in the Bug section. 
ETA:
May I ask which armor sets you settled on?
For the Archers we went with the new dlc Accuracy heavy Poultry or whatever it’s called, which was a huge relief given that the only set we don’t have an Armorer for us the Hykranian, and we had been on the hunt for a Steeltongue or a Horseshoe with little success (still don’t have either).
For the Fighters it was a tougher decision, but we ended up going Vitality instead of strength (cause they’ll probably be killed by arrows anyway) and decided on the Yamatai, since even though the Cimmerian Steel is better looking you need a specific armorer to craft it.
My personal Fighters wear the Guardian, it’s strength and looks decent with the Godbreaker helm (for when they might get gassed). I wouldn’t have minded the Hyperborian Slaver either but the armor values are messed up on it still.
I used some parts Hyperborean Slaver on my last server and it had the same armor value as any other flawless armor.
I’m on an official server on XBox, every other flawless epic comes out with one value, Hyperborian Slaver is lower:
I put in a bug report a while back and they said they would look into it, as of the mounts patch it’s still not fixed.
Its entirely relevant and not a hijack. A level 20 thrall will ALWAYS be better than a level 1. There will just be variance in how much better and its a gamble how high to go. The whole game is a trade of time for payback so you can choose to not hit 20 and miss out on an awesome thrall for the risk of not getting a mediocre thrall, but a mediocre thrall is also relative.
Honestly, this thing with perks is a mess. I can defend it up to a certain degree, but there’s no defending the totality of it.
I could defend it if the “mixed” perks (i.e. a bonus to something and a “malus” to something else) were better balanced, e.g. -3 to vit and +10 to str.
I could defend it if they were properly segregated by class, i.e. if a “mixed” perk with a bonus to accuracy could only be given to an archer and not a fighter.
I could defend it if the perks were properly gradated by level, i.e. if lvl 20 perks were much better than lvl 15 perks which in turn were much better than lvl 10 perks.
But as it is right now? It’s a slapdash job. They came up with a list of perks that sounded nice in theory, the slapped some preconditions on them (which, by the way, are buggy) and let the RNG pick them without any restrictions whatsoever.
It smells of being in a hurry 
And until it gets fixed/improved, I’m not placing the Purge-only fighter I got the other day. He can rest in his chest as long as I believe it’s for the best, until a test at my behest shows a lvl 20 perk won’t be a pest. 
Must be an xbox thing then, the parts I used (chest, legs, feet) had the same armor value as others (on ps4)
I think the new perk system is fine. What we had before was boring and now there’s some randomness thrown in. At least there’s a little excitement about what happens at 20 rather than just creating a fast army of gods to do your bidding. Ive got an Erii with 100% in strength but when he gets to level 20, if he takes a negative to strength, I’ll laugh at it and look for the next one, not mope about the unfairness if it all. You can literally olay this game for 1000s of hours and move your base because you dont like the look of the neighborhood anymore, causing you to spend days farming hardened brick and steel reinforcements, and I’m supposed to be upset that a perk wasnt good enough on a thrall? I think its fine as is.
Even if it’s arguably better than not having the leveling system, that doesn’t make it “fine”
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, unrestricted randomness is rarely good game design. Sure, “some randomness” is fine, but there are valid criticisms of the new system which can’t simply be disregarded because “we didn’t have anything before”.
Good on you, I applaud your resolve and fortitude. Meanwhile, some of us mopers will decide to bring it up as something to be fixed or improved
Sure, you can. You also can strip down naked and mine black ice for additional challenge. Doesn’t mean everyone considers it a good idea
I definitely wouldn’t place a purge thrall yet. I’ve just started collecting stats on the purge Fighters/Archers and I’ve only done the Black Hand so far, but there are some HUGE discrepancies in the starting HP and HP/Point values, even worse than the normal ones.
There is a big difference between excitement over gaining 10 levels in Vitality and having just wasted 3-4 hours leveling (and probably an hour finding) a piece of garbage that lost 5 levels in Strength. I’m not moping about unfairness, if I get a guard that gets 10 levels in Accuracy at level 20, well that sucks as it’s not a stat he can use but at least he’s not worse off for me spending the time to level him up. The system, as is, is broken, and if you think that being penalized for effort is a good way to build a video game I’m sure you can find a sadomasochistic Indy game out there to satisfy your needs. Me? I’ll take a garbage perk but not a harmful one.
Randomness is the solid core to most game design. Pick any board game you choose. Look at Vegas where your odds relative to the other players (House not included) are almost entirely random, and yet people flush their money like there’s no tomorrow. Randomness is where the excitement comes in and actually makes things interesting. Otherwise its just grind grind ho hum. Why dont we just make weapon drops depend on what we found before? Because its BORING. I think “fine” is a perfect way to describe it because Funcom could have done any number of approaches and this is what they felt was a balance of random and over the course of 20 levels, leaves your thrall better than they started (unlike Vegas where you actually leave poorer on average). I guess I’m not big into second guessing when someone gives me something I’ve been asking and paid minimal scratch to get.
I never asked for this leveling system, I protested against it.
And how about they just make it so that weapon kits might increase damage or else they’ll cut it in half? Or crafting a T3 foundation might give you 100k health or else it’ll be weaker than sandstone? I guess that’d be the perfect game.
There’s a difference between a solid core and the whole apple
I’m not opposed to randomness per se, I’m against unchecked, unrestrained randomness. And forgive me for appealing to authority, but a lot of professional, well-known game designers are in that same camp. Too much randomness is one of the “twinkie denial conditions” Ernest Adams defined in his “Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie!” column that I used to read on Gamasutra. One of my favorite books on game design, “Game Architecture & Design” by Andrew Rollings and Dave Morris gives several examples of how luck (i.e. unrestricted randomness) can be bad for game balance and overall game design.
But I think my favorite explanation is from Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw’s “dev diaries”, where he dives deep into how randomness can be put to good use and how unchecked randomness is almost always detrimental:
Oh, come on. I think the “gratitude” argument might be somewhere near the top of my “holy crap, how can people do this to themselves” list. It’s like people arguing that an employee should be grateful to the employer for their job.
I don’t know about you, but I didn’t pay “minimal scratch” for this game. I bought it back when it was at its full price and I’ve bought every single DLC since, on the day of its release. So that, right from the start, is far from “minimal scratch”. On top of that, if you think that staying with this game for 3400+ hours doesn’t bring anything to Funcom, then you’re severely underestimating the benefits of a stable, loyal playerbase.
So hell yeah, I do think I’m entitled to criticize a system that clearly needs improvement. If you’ll settle for it, that’s your right, but having a right is not the same as being right
It might just be perfect that way. But its not that way. We have the game that Funcom made for us. Its easy to Monday morning quarterback decisions when our leisure time depends on it. They have to do the best they can considering what revenue could come from it.
On average your thrall will get better not worse. Spending 5 hours on a thrall is nothing compared to the total time put into the game, and if you don’t want to risk negatives, level them to 9 and they’ll be better than they were before the patch anyway.
I preordered it full price too, and yeah, games are cheap. I think appealing to authority brings into question the “authority” when you look at games that have really stood the test of time. Games of chance have been around a whole lot linger than any video game, and video games have a very short shelf life considering modern attention spans. So just because somebody claims to know what a “good” game is, has no bearing in the fact that we arent playing their “good” game; we’re playing Funcom’s good game.
Also this is hardly unrestricted randomness. You keep leveling your thrall and they get better on average. This isnt some random walk where you can gain a stat, lose a stat. The baked in progression is just that; a progression. Even the negatives come with a positive, just maybe not the positive you want.
The entire point of this thread is that they don’t, I am really just amazed that you are unable to understand that.
But they do. The entire thread and I would be shocked if everyone didnt realize that.
Look at the bonus table. Everyone of those is a net positive. Put that together with the fact that every attribute has a percentage of INCREASE alone, and the thrall ONLY gets better on average. Just maybe not as better in one particular attribute as you would like.
