preface: I’m sure others have made suggestions, & there are likely plans to improve the Thrall system. I wanted to toss some ideas into the hat.
— Alternative to the wheel of pain. Thulsa Doom style cult recruitment. What if we could put a captive thrall on the religious alter, & the priest converts it. Conversion by religion. Thulsa Doom would approve.
— The ability to “Walk” a thrall to the wheel of pain, rather than just drag them. Allowing them to teleport to the player in a similar fashion to the thrall Following mechanics. (I’ve seen quite a few thralls vanish into the ground never to be seen again while dragging them across the map.)
— A thrall UI that will list your thralls, let you track them. & teleport a specific Thrall to you. once every 1 minute so it’s not abused in a battle. (A great option to find those lost thralls that seem to fall through the map, or wander off. Or Glitch into oblivion when you use the MapRoom.)
Customization, the ability to name, And even level up Thralls in said UI. Possibly even adding behavioral ticks to add character to them. (Leveling up thralls adds more gameplay, Customization makes them more Unique & appealing.)
A minimap, or compass on your bracelet, that lets you track the bracelets of your team/thralls. So you can track down wayward thralls. (Maybe a horn call, Marco!.. Polo!)
Dancing Thralls (The ability to teach it a new dance, Or emote to do.)
A war horn, that calls all your Thralls set to Guard status to you, They all come to join the battle if they can get to you.
— The option to turn these options of for players that don’t want them.
Tactical UI Thrall control improvements.
A pined Thrall Status in the UI. Which shows you your thralls health, & has a few commands that can be used set a Thralls Status. The Thrall, or Thralls set to follow you would show up in this UI.
A Teleport to you command. With a 1 minute cooldown. encase your Thrall gets lost/falls through the map again.
A command that has a thrall attack the target you lock on to, or point at.
The ability to set a Thrall to hostile, so it attacks all potential enemies on sight.
The ability to set a Thrall to Passive, so it doesn’t fight, or engage if a fight starts, Unless it’s directly attacked.
The ability to set a Thrall to Guard, It will engage in any battles that are within a set distance from it’s Guard position.
The ability to set a Thrall to attack the target you are attacking. “Attack my target.”
The ability to set a Thrall to attack/ignore anyone that is attacking you. “Defend me.”
“Go Here” A flag, or area affect icon appears, When clicked. The selected/Companion Thrall will walk to that spot.
Patrol flags, That set up a patrol route. That you can assign Thralls to walk.
Examples of great minion control UI/Mechanics in games.
Guild Wars Hirling NPCs. (I loved this game, to many nerfs made me quit unfortunatly.)
Star Trek Online Away Team Customization/Mechanics.
City of Heroes MasterMind class. (I had all my minions bowing down, & dancing with emote commands!)
Moded Skyrim (Specifically the best Companion Mods: Inigo, Vilja, & Sofia. All had mechanisms to command them, Inigo’s Whistles, Vilja’s Horns, Sofia’s commands. & had dialogue options to set their limited tactics.
Many Isometric games like Baldurs Gate tends to have party control mechanics.
Saw this in another thread. All of this to! yes!
Edit: Structures Decay after time if their owner is away to long, leaving behind armies of Thralls. Some just stay there floating in the air. Their owners never to be seen again.
It would be nice of those thralls reverted to a Thrall list, in a Thrall UI window. So their owner can re-summon them if they ever log back onto the server.
Importantly, This would remove the Thralls from loitering/cluttering after their owners base had decayed long ago.
Hopefully also, reducing server lag, and removing the armies of floating Thralls scattered across the server!
If there is a level up thrall system then all thralls max hp they should reach is 2000.
I want weaker thralls the ability to get stronger. Unnamed tribe thralls are already strong. I want thralls to get the ability to rank up too. After blank level your t1 thrall becomes a t2 thrall. The Max is t4. Default T4 thralls should get special voices.
I want the ability for thralls special weapons and armor making to be modifier by the player. This way I pick what flawless or perfect my thrall makes. Also this makes all thralls special.
I want to make thrall titles. Like Captain of the gaurds,honor gaurds and etc.
I would like to be able to assign “builds” to Thralls (be able to open up their stats). For example, giving archer thralls points in accuracy. Giving fighter thralls points in strength. Giving mining thralls points in encumbrance. Giving patrolling thralls points in stamina (they can chase longer). Or whatever I decide to do with my thralls since they are my primary base defense (part of the strategy of the game).
Maybe even make it so that you have more customization if you get a T1 thrall and level them up rather than just grabbing a named T4 thrall and relying on pre-existing stats. The younger they start, the more stat points you’d have to ‘play’ with.
I want a thrall lab now. A place to ram a gem into a thrall’s back to revive thralls on death. Of course fallen thralls required a tribute to be revive. Life for Life.
Commands for Thralls are really something that should be, being able to stop them attackig every idiotic crocodile or something and then vanishing, etc.
Maybe even protect them, by setting the weaker Thralls to flee danger.
And renaming at least for the named ones is important, not funny having 10 Frigga Falsehopes hopping around.
Yes. It would be nice to add an option for thrall control to the radial menu that pops up when you select them. This could also apply to the pets, and would be a large improvement for the city life feel.
A passive position for when visitors come or during sparring (gladiatorial) matches
A defensive one where they do not become aggressive without outside hostility
A full on aggro everything mode for when you’re away
This is such a great List Thank you @Leo for this awesome overview.
I would like to have more diversity for the Thralls. Give us the possibility to change the appearance of the thrall as we are able to determine the view of our character at the beginning of the game.
Very good list. I think companions (thralls) are a great opportunity to expand the game. One thing I would love to see are trade routes and caravans. In a more co-op setting being able to trade goods via a caravan would be a nice way to move resources (especially rare ones that are location specific) between settlements and players.
It may require something like the bearer NPC, you have to send guards, pay for them, equip them, etc and then mark a settlement to go to (kind of like how bedrolls can mark a location for rezzing). And there is always the chance that the caravan may not even make it. Maybe craftable guideposts that would allow safer caravan routes but take longer.
It may be the Exiled lands but at some point it would be nice to conquer or settle the lands. And oh my gosh, I would love to set up a trade route with the relic hunters!
Edit 8/5/2018,
Edit: Structures Decay after time if their owner is away to long, leaving behind armies of Thralls. Some just stay there floating in the air. Their owners never to be seen again.
It would be nice of those thralls reverted to a Thrall list, in a Thrall UI window. So their owner can re-summon them if they ever log back onto the server.
Importantly, This would remove the Thralls from loitering/cluttering after their owners base had decayed long ago.
Hopefully also, reducing server lag, and removing the armies of floating Thralls scattered across the server!
Having Thrall Merchants, That you can add trade goods to, & set the price/Trade goods for would be fantastic.
We could build our own little villages, And let our Thralls sell our trade wares.
Set up Thralls that sell food at Taverns,
Thralls that sell high end tools, in trade for resources for lower level players. & so on.
Hotkey set Commands would be really helpful as well, in combat situations.
thrall system is an important mechanic of conan exiles, and yes, it would be better more parametrable, more option, feature about thrall system…Having thrall merchants, with abiliy to have a living city even when you are away, would be a very good thing for game exploration intetrest.
Thralls need more purpose, work orders, a few more inventory blocks of space [2 rows be nice] . If we need to feed them then they are living and breathing so why do they hardly move. Patrol, move from workstation to station, something. Turn the lights on at dark to keep them from being always on & lagging down servers [I’ve seen lights on servers, holy crap. Maybe have them only come on at night]. Help us gather resources maybe or at least turn the resources into something without being told. Give us a reason to use thralls. As it is I don’t really use them, much less do not need to feed them, come on. Let them starve. Do they feed themselves when they are huddled around the campfire on their own? I don’t see them running to the water to keep from dying!
Thank you