Before I start, I would like to say that I have nothing but respect for the Conan Exiles team. You have a truly amazing game that I love to play. I am not trying to be rude or trolling in any way. I do have concerns about this patch that I hope will be helpful in the development of this and future patches.
I can’t help but feel whiplash from this. Not even 6 months ago we received the follower system for leveling thralls, in this patch. When it was introduced in the live streams preceding the patch, it was communicated that the intention was to produce thralls that you have a emotional attachment to. Many of us do have an emotional attachment to them now. Whether it’s because of a great roll of perks or because of the time invested in leveling them. For the record PVE players spend 4 x the amount of time leveling their thralls then PVP players do. We have an investment in them. So when you say we are going to throw 40% of your time investment in the trash it hurts. I know I’m not alone when I say this patch feels like it is tipped to pleasing PVP, though I don’t think that is your intention I really don’t see the purpose for the thrall nerfs across all three game modes.
Now my guess is that this is part of what you have called, “making the player the hero” sorry to tell you this but it’s not going to happen with this patch, and honestly I don’t see it happening down this road either. Buffs and nerfs to players and thralls are not what is needed in my opinion to make the player the hero. There needs to me more engaging content for players, I’ll give you an example of something that could be changed to create more engagement from players. The well of skelos boss just drops dead from his chair when he stands, now it’s been said that this is intended behavior. Honestly I just find that hard to swallow. You gear up for an epic battle through one of the most dangerous areas on the map you burnt, bloody, bruised, and scared from fighting your way down there. You finally make it to the boss and you pull together your last bit of energy through sheer determination to defeat what must be a very powerful creature, and poof he’s dead. This is one dungeon that most people don’t even take a thrall and the glory is stolen by a boss that just yields.
The addition of dungeons is always well received by the community, we rush to play them and defeat them and yes find the easiest way to complete them so that we can farm them over and over for awesome loot. I know this is costly and time consuming to do. But you have at least 5 dungeons that could use a revisit. Put your time and energy into them make them more challenging with buffs and mechanic changes and find us heroes running to them.
I fully believe that you will not find that the player is the hero unless you change the challenges and mechanics in the world. Heck for that matter you won’t make the world any more dangerous then it already is with this nerf to thralls as you can still take most of the high level thralls and let them solo the bosses. It just takes more time for you to do so. It’s also creating more grind the thrall perks will be so much more important and you will have to level more of them up to get a decent thrall. This will be hard to for a lot of PVE players to stomach based on the amount of time needed to level a thrall.
I also feel that this patch will again shrink the pool of thralls that people seek out to tame. We’re always going to go for the best and the path of least resistance. This just limits the “good” thralls to an even smaller pool.
Down to some numbers that I have seen already that I don’t think make sense. Dalinsia Snowhunter now has 2.21 damage modifier, why? she is not a 100% chance spawn, not even a common spawn for that matter. Now look at the Cimmerian Berserker and the Votaries fighters which are 100% or very common spawn and they have a damage modifier of 2.24 In my mind a more rare thrall from one area should not be less powerful then a 100% chance to spawn thrall. They should at least be the same if the more rare one is not going to be more powerful.