As a suggestion for Funcom, as a point to discuss for all of us:
Set all thrall’s damage mutipliers to 1.0!
Reasons:
Most players don’t know about damage multipliers at all, which makes them a source of confusion and frustration. How many threads have we seen here where people proudly post a seemingly good thrall due to its strength stat, then learn about damage multipliers and go through all the five stages of grief? Away with that!
They are now pretty close to each other anyhow. With a range of about 0.50 to 1.20, they still do make a difference, but the ceiling is much lower than it was before.
A damage multiplier below 1.0 is weird, at least imho. How is it that, for example, a level 20 Darfari cannibal manages to deal less damage with a weapon than it does in the hand of a level 1 Aquilonian player character? He/she is an experienced warriror, grew up in a savage culture, and rrreally needs that sword to hunt dinner.
Thralls from low-tier factions need some love. If you get yourself some epic weapons from boss chests, they are okayish, but with level-appropriate gear, each fight is a slow spiral downwards. It’s somewhat weird to see a tier 4, iron-geared 5 Exile fighter duel it out on a pretty even basis with a naked level III Darfari fighter with a stone club.
The differences in stats and health still would give higher tier factions a serious advantage, but it would level the playing field a bit. When you get your volcano thralls, you already have great gear. Help is needed most in the beginning.
Thralls shouldn’t be equal. Low tier factions such as Darfari, Dogs of the Desert, Black Hand, Lemurian shouldn’t have thralls that deal the same amount of damage as an end game thrall. Volcano, Cimmerian, Relic Hunter.
It’s very easy at level 20 to go to mounds and throw a berserker on the wheel or go to the volcano kill a gold rocknose get the gold turn it into coins and go buy a t3 fighter from the jungle to get you started.
Also Relic Hunter Treasure Seekers and Cimmerian Berserkers shouldn’t be perm spawns.
Which they do, at least in some part. Exiles start with 15 attribute points, relic hunters with 45. That could be used as a basis to replace damage multipliers.
I agree. As its been said, initial stats could replace it (hidden multipliers). In addition to that, the actual damage % gain per strength could be higher for high tier thralls.
On a related note, diminishing returns on follower stats would be great at balancing things out.
Endgamensurmoses that level 60s would never ise any low are thralls, and that a noob cannot use higher are thralls. Whichbis not the case. A level 30 with blinted arrows can capture and use any thrall.
Players should be the stars. Thralls are supporting cast. The drop in thrall damage was the first step in that and now the HP is being reduced as well. The days where thralls we’re 1.0 were dark days where Conan was a Hubbard Pokemon challenge. I don’t miss them.
Thralls shouldn’t be equal, or it would be pointless to settle in more dangerous area to farm better thralls if you can stay in easier ones and get the same.
Lower Level Thralls shouldn’t be useless as well, or it would be pointless to even have them in the game. Also, it’s not cool that there are named Thralls that are crap.
Honestly, I don’t have a solution here.
Best thing would be that weaker Thralls should have some “special abilities” that put them on par with stronger ones (or even better than that), but only at certain conditions.
For example, Cannibal Brutes can have abilities that gives them +2.5 on Melee Multiplier if they fight against Humans (NPCs or Players), but they will still have low health and will go down pretty easily.
Basically, they have the strongest Melee Multiplier in the game, but only against Humans and will still have pretty low health.
I don’t understand this. First you are saying we should get rid of hidden multipliers and then you are saying we should add a new kind of hidden multiplier?
Example:
If Lemurians get 1% damage per point in strength and at level 20 they end up with 40 points in strength, then they will be at +40% damage.
If Relic Hunters get 1.25% damage per point in strength and at level 20 they end up with 40 points in strength, then they will be at +50% damage.
In this scenario you have just traded one hidden multiplier for another. Obvious I’m omitting all the crude details that would have to go into balancing these new modifiers. For instance, the difference between T1, T2 & T3 Lemurians, they can’t all be the same 1% multiplier.
To give a rough concept based on what has been proposed so far:
All hidden modifiers are removed (or set to 1.0).
All thralls have the same starting health and get the same amount of health per point of vitality.
Differences in damage and health among tiers and types are expressed through their attributes,
– e. g. Exiles get 10 survival, RHTS get 20 agility and 10 vitality, Cimmerians get 30 strength and so on,
– e. g. fighter thralls get 10 extra strength, archer thralls gets 10 agility instead, dancers 10 grit, bearers 10 survival and extra inventory.
Higher tier thralls get more attribute points to compensate their lost damage multipliers.
The overall strength of thralls in 3.0 remains unchanged, with a slight bumb for low-tier thralls to make them more useful.
I like this idea. Having them be a flat 1 with different stats would make it less confusing to find what’s better at what.
Instead of just starting stats, I would like to see higher tier thralls also have a higher median in growth %. Some variance would allow rng luck to make a weaker faction thrall stay viable, whereas a stronger faction would be stronger on average as a whole. That way if you rolled a really good early game thrall, they could stay your companion for longer instead of throwing them out or skipping entirely in lieu of a berserker
Yes and no. As the system stands now and if it was done this way, it’d be half and half. You’d actually see the full final damage multiplier, because of the strength damage bonus number in the stats screen.
At the same time we’d have to have that addition muliplier visible. I realise I’ve ultimately asked for what we already have but with visible numbers.
Okay, so instead of setting them all to 1.0, set them all to 0.5, or whatever, and take it from there. The point is that the hidden multipliers are a bad idea and it would be better to get rid of them. Like others already pointed out, thralls have stats. Let’s use those and simplify things.
Blunted arrows are still decent, but with 3.0 Truncheons are the thing. Stamina regen(at least with my build) makes it tricky to knock thralls down with blunted arrows. Strafe left or right, but still rolling sideways is what gives you that safe distance. As i said, tricky now
I agree with this. The simple fact that berserkers/Dalinsia Snowhunter/Teimos have best stats, makes all the other thralls useless and not worth the time.
Everytime I start on a new server, i go at lvl 10 in Mounds of the Dead, with a tier 1 trucheon and capture a berserker, and that’s the end game for me. No point in trying to capture anything other than berserker because of the damage multiplier. Same for health multiplier, I go for Dalinsia or Teimos, because why would I settle for less?
Personally i think that multipliers are good tool for developers to do fast adjustments balancewise without having to change every single value in all single thrall (there’s a lot of em).
Maybe they could get rid of it, set everything to 1 and adjust every single value but for now i don’t see the point - not until we have good balance achieved.
I don’t see how hidden multipliers would be good for balance. I’d say they are quite the opposite.
And if it is true that the devs are using hidden multipliers to make balancing easier, they need to lose that crutch now and start balancing properly.
The “point” in getting rid of hidden multipliers is that they are far more influential than the visible attributes and it is confusing to people who don’t know they exist and assume more Strength = stronger thrall. Something with that much power should not be hidden from players.
Balancing between factions may be easier with the multipliers. But even without them, it ain’t hard. Add 10 or 20 strength or vitality, done.
If faction balance was changed on a daily basis, I’d see the point in making it even e tiny bit easier. But… how often did we have that? Twice? In five years?
First you are saying we should get rid of hidden multipliers and then you are saying we should add a new kind of hidden multiplier?
