In what way is that an insult? I am being very clear that I think Funcom intended the tethering mechanic to be an improvement that didn’t work out as well as intended.
My reference to it being a conscious decision is a response to what Taemien had just said:
Sorry, but I disagree. Every time someone uses the word cheesy it is a male, and thier text is dripping with disdain.
Then they need to get rid of every rock you can climb on in the game. Doing the event at the mounds, I just jump on a tall rock and blow up each tower with one explosive arrow, then jump down and kill everything. Why would that bother Funcom?
Again, I think you misread Funcom’s motivations on tethering. I believe it was primarily due to people in PVE being able to kill other peoples thralls with a mob. I seriously doubt if they care about shooting a mob from a pedestal.
I do not really have a problem with tethering, though I agree with Tephra, it is not the solution.
I have a problem with the word “cheese” as used in context to peoples play styles. It just seems demeaning and rude to me, sorry.
I should have stated why the tether system is flawed earlier, but I mistakenly assumed it was obvious. I guess everyone’s perception of the game is a little different, and not everyone notices the same things.
I believe there are four significant issues with the current tethering mechanic (there may be more issues, but I can’t think of any off-hand, so they probably aren’t significant). I will list them in order of how much of a problem I personally consider them to be.
Again, I want to be very clear, I think the tethering system was well-intentioned and does not work as well as Funcom had expected it to. If I am wrong about this, and it works exactly as Funcom wanted it to… well, I would have a pretty hard time believing that, but I doubt this discussion would change their minds if that were the case. And if Funcom states tethering is working exactly as intended, I will have nothing more to say on the topic.
Why even jump down. I just use poison arrows on the boss after the towers are gone from a perch. Shoot one at its starting point and another below when they aggro. takes 8 poison gas arrows.
I use this method to capture vs kill the boss NPC. When I jump down, I kill the remaining skeletons, meanwhile my follower has a truncheon and knocks out the boss.
is the Boss a fighter or crafter? Just wondering.
I think two of them are taskmasters (Mounds and Buccaneer Bay) and one is a Priest (but I might be wrong about that one)
Obviously I misunderstood or misread your intent there. I still maintain that I don’t think Funcom would like it as a permanent feature, or at least a feature that doesn’t see any changes. More of a placeholder to be fine tuned over time, or replaced entirely with something they prefer. But again, time, resources, priorities, etc etc.
Can I do both, agree and disagree? I’m not a fan of it healing up as it’s running back. I think it would be appropriate for the NPC to start healing only after it returns home, and at a slower rate. But even as I type this I can already see the problem with that. People jumping on rocks and pew pewing the bad guy to death, which is likely why the rapid healing happens to begin with.
Every “tethering” system I’ve seen in many different games utilize a similar mechanic. Either healing, or prevent doing damage at all if the system detects its being exploited. So I don’t really understand why Conan Exiles is getting so much grief for a system dozens of games use with little to no complaint from the userbase. Then again, I’ve never seen so much pushback to a paid expansion either, where as literally any other game its usually just met with cheers. I’ll never understand that as a whole, where Conan Exiles is met with such disdain over features that are considered standard practice industry wide.
These can be fine tuned and improved on. I can see why that would be annoying and immersive breaking, but to use them as a reason to rip out Tethering all together and revert back to the other system isn’t something I’ll agree with (especially Teleporting, which once again, is very standard for this type of system in other games).
I’ll get behind any argument that states that Tethering could use some work and improvements. I won’t agree in any shape that it should be ripped out so players can go back to jumping on a rock and shooting things without any consequences (along with the MANY ways of exploiting that was the old system), in a game that is advertised as survival no less. (And just to clarify, not saying that Tephra is suggesting that, just stating my opinion since that seems be the common suggestion).
I’m starting to become a broken record here, but I’ll type it out one last time for the sake of clarification.
If they could wave a magic wand and make it happen easily, I’m sure a system in which NPC’s could climb, all have range attacks, etc, they would prefer that to a tether system. They’ve said as much in dev streams/interviews where they would like to have enemy NPC’s to be able to be able to counter players climbing. But that’s a heck of a lot more work/time/resources/etc then implementing a Tether system.
They surely added Tethering to deal with something they weren’t happy with seeing (the various exploiting, etc etc). And being involved with this game as long as I have, my hunch is that was the quickest way to address it, but not the ideal. Given the right opportunity, I’m sure they will either improve the Tether system (and again, that’s what discussion and the suggestion forum is for), or go further and add more complex systems that make a Tether system redundant.
You mean the Tethering can be configured via server settings? How’s that?
In terms of “Memory saving”, that wouldn’t surprise me at all. They’ve taken great effort into lowering memory costs, and mostly for the sake of lower end PC’s/consoles.
I would support improvements to the tethering system, but it needs a lot. In its current state, I would say that the old system, along with every single flaw that comes with it, is less bad than the current system.
I do not support reverting to the old system and then keeping it that way. I absolutely do support reverting to the old system until a better system can be implemented.
I think it works as much as it can. Think about this for a moment. When a mob attacks you, it has to do a pathfind to you and then initiate a set of actions once its in a certain range. That’s how every engaged entity on a server works.
Now when they disengage (or tether as you all call it) they have to reverse course. Funcom chose the simplest way to make this happen. Why? Because when you agro everything in New Asgarath, or accidently punch a guard in Sepermeru and invariably run the hell away. There needs to be a simple function for now dozens of NPCs to return home without bogging down the server.
Would FC love to do some sort of complex AI that makes NPCs indistinguishable from players in their decision making? Sure they would. But that’s a fantasy. The reality of the situation is when a player disengages from a NPC, the NPC no longer needs to do any sort of complex calculations on how to attack or follow.
So when a player decides to run away or kite the enemy for over 10 minutes, its going to simply go back ‘home’ for the next adventurer to deal with. This is also why number 2 happens. If the pathing back just fails for whatever reason, the server gives up on the NPC. It has hundreds of other entities to worry about, consider it a write off.
As for massive healing. I dunno about you, but this happens to me whenever I get back to my base after a nasty fight. My HP usually goes from nearly nothing, to full in a few seconds. Course I have methods of doing this. If that breaks your immersion. Well it broke then. There’s still people who believe you should be able to do this to yourself in combat. So consider it a compromise.
But again, I don’t know what it is you all are doing that is triggering this all so often that its a problem. Or are you suggesting that when you ride across the lands that you expect to have the several dozen rocknoses, crocs, wolves, and whatever else still following you back to your base?
Because I seriously think you all are conflating a feature with a bug. Because for me, I literally need to run away for several minutes (without doing damage) to get a NPC to reset. In addition I need to run quite far (like half a grid square).
If you all think you should be able to run a NPC halfway across the map for like 10 minutes or more. You’re simply be unreasonable.
Same here. Sometimes I am like " Geez, did I steal your tacos, cimmerian berserker!?"
Also, I will say I do sometimes miss having all of eyelid lake following me to the frost obelisks while half naked and power leveling. Killing me is the least vulgar thing those horn dogs would do to me.
I don’t know if it’s online gaming 101, but I always understood “cheesing” to mean “taking advantage of edge cases in AI logic”.
Some examples:
Stuff like that is taking advantage of the flaws in the game’s logic. I’m not really invested in calling it “cheesing”, but I would like to have a simple, short name, rather than saying “taking advantage of edge cases in AI logic”. It sounds way too pompous even for my tastes 
As for the current tether, I understand why it’s there, but I don’t like it. In my case, I don’t like it precisely because I can’t kite bosses around. I liked being able to kite a boss, because it offered several opportunities for more interesting gameplay.
One thing it allowed me to do was to build an arena with a special enclosure big enough for a world boss. Then I could kite a boss there and have a fun gladiatorial spectacle, either with a few other players or with some AI followers. Or both.
Another thing it was useful for was cleaning up leftover followers people sometimes leave like little turds on a map. A building will decay in a week (and a day), but followers require 15 days or so. Worse, to “refresh” your followers all you need to do is log in – you don’t even have to go near them. As a consequence, people will sometimes forget to log in and all of their stuff will decay, but then – for whatever reason – they’ll keep logging in periodically and their thralls will remain where their bases were and there’s no way to clean up that mess until the owner stops logging on.
And this whole complaint about how kiting bosses could be used to harass other players? I mean, maybe it’s something PVP-specific, but on PVE(-C) servers it’s really trivial to protect your own followers from being mauled by a world boss someone kited over.
Anyway, sorry for the rant. I dislike the current system enough to complain about it, but not enough to ask for it to be removed or offer good ideas on how to improve it 
I doubt that, and if that were true, then that is a reason to scrap it.
Not asking for fantasy, asking for the best possible option, which I firmly believe is currently the old system.
No, this is why #4 happens, #2 is the standard mechanic.
You have somewhere around 400 health, you can be a splatter of entrails in a couple hits from all but the weakest of enemies. Bosses can heal thousands of health, equivalent to several minutes’ worth of combat without needing to use up a limited stock of potions.
This is true, and shows that the tethering system isn’t even accomplishing its primary objective. You can call that #5.
I see that the majority of this topic is centered around the idea of kiting, I honestly couldn’t care less about that issue, one way or the other. As you even point out yourself, some enemies still follow you some pretty ridiculous distances. So the tether really is only solving for kiting bosses right now, whose tethers are extraordinarily short.
The reason I have issue with the tether system is because it is broken in its current form, not because I thought the old system was perfect the way it was.
Exactly. I spent almost a week kiting the red dragon into DMs thralls at their pyramid base after it decayed. Since they are now banned their thralls at the springs disappeared a lot faster.
Also,
In a gaming scene the word cheese is used to describe strategies or ways of playing that are really powerful and do not require much skill from the players side at the same time. The term is widely used both in video games and tabletop games alike. (From: Origins of the gaming term "cheese strategy)
The Crux of the term is tied into “skill”, and that is total BS in my opinion, since it takes zero skill to mash a keyboard button and heal up 90% with a potion. Just my humble opinion of course. Some people may consider healing potions to be skillful.
So to summarize, it is “cheesy” to avoid damage by standing on a rock out of reach, but not “cheesy” to mash a keystroke over and over doing heavy damage while mashing another keystroke occasionally that heals you. THAT takes real skill apparently.
I am done.
Oh, so that’s why people get prickly about it. Meh, that’s why I don’t play online games a lot, and when I do, I avoid hardcore competitive modes. I don’t need more salt in my life, especially when I sit down to relax and have fun with a videogame.
I hope you didn’t take my little rant about “cheesing” as one of those “my skill is bigger than yours” pissing contests 
Hmmmmmm. I remember a post where I was complaining about people killing my thralls by doing that and someone said they did that and I was super irritated about it. Gosh. Cannot for the life of me remember who that terrible person was. 
But they don’t, unless you run away.
I’m sorry, but you need to finish your fights. It seems like the system you all want is some weird stop and go fantasy of timeouts and whatnot. This is not and will never be that game. Sorry.
Edit: I take it back, there is a way for you all to have the game you truly want. Open up a singleplayer world. Enter makemeadmin into the console. Then type cloak into the console.
The game will play exactly how you wish it to. Mobs will NEVER tether. You can use both ranged and melee as an added bonus.
I don’t know how to respond to that. It seems you are no longer interested in having a genuine conversation and have stooped to attributing intentions to me that I have have in no way implied anywhere within this topic.
If that is the direction you want to go, then I am done talking to you.