I saw most of the threads about the new thrall system were based on the follower limit. My concern is of the leveling system itself, and I’d like to offer some concerns I have.
From what I can gather reading the posts by the devs and watching the videos, existing thralls (and likely captured thralls) won’t change much in terms of stats. That is, existing thralls will be about the same, and capturing a new thrall will be about the same as it is now, but that new thralls placed will be able to be leveled up. My concern is how powerful these thralls can become. I can take a single berserker, give him some heavy armor and a decent greatsword, and clear out New Asagarth or Mounds of the Dead. Most world bosses lose against him, and even the toughest ones only require some assistance from me.
If this thrall levels up and becomes stronger, could it be game-breaking in the sense that all vanilla content becomes far too easy?
Good question. My hope is that they me toning down the 0 level versions attack damage. Because in reality that is the OP part of most named thralls people get from the volcano and relic hunters. It sounds like a nerf, but if the idea is for players to put work into leveling a unique version of a thrall, what does it matter if the 0 level can win by itself as is. That or NPC’s health pools may be increasing to counter the thralls possible op attack damage?
Put it simply, if i am already winning every race i enter with my V6, do i really need to put time and effort into upgrading to a V8?
I wouldn’t know. I don’t play Ark. I’ve never played a game where I’ve had to level AI characters. It seems redundant to me. There’s enough to do in the game to not have to worry about leveling thralls. The presets work well enough. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Either way, I’ll never experience thrall leveling in Conan Exiles if they don’t get the bugs and performance problems under control. I deleted the game because of that I won’t reinstall it until I’m fairly certain that the base game is squared away. After a year and a half post official release I’m not holding my breath, but I hope they do. I like the game and I gave them money expecting a finished product…not a game that plays like it’s still in early access 18 months later.
In the meantime, I’ll watch the forums and ask people who still are playing if it’s improved…for a while anyway.
A leveling system for AI followers is really nothing new man, Ark Atlas, heck even in diablo 2 your follower leveled up with you over time.
It adds a lot to the game and I can attest that ARK is filled with tons of players who focus almost solely on getting the best stats possible through the leveling system. It adds a whole new dimension to the game and actually gives you more to do, which in a survival game like this is never a bad thing, having more to do is usually preferable to getting bored after experiencing all the game has to offer. Now instead of being maxed out once you have the best kind of thralls you can find, now there will be the addition of finding thralls with good stats and then further growing them over time. It works really well and I’m afraid if you find that feature to be redundant and uninteresting then you are part of a small minority :/. this I know from experience. I have played many survival style games outside of conan including ARK. If funcom can get it right it will definitely add to the game and it has been a extremely popular feature in the games that have successfully implemented it. So I would say don’t bash it till you try it.
I agree with you about fixing bugs however, that should always be a priority.
There is a market here for leveling AI. There are multiple time sink games on phones that are just that. Any game where you build cities etc are really just AI leveling under the hood.
Exactly. I love the idea that I can have thralls leveled up and picking up stats from weapons and armors much like I do. Where specific traits mean certain advantages or disadvantages. It adds complexity. But there’s a LOT of thralls out there that handle things so well on their own now, giving them added benefits like that worries me. I give my cimm berserker a truncheon and put him up against another cimm berserker, and he has the other one knocked out very quickly and takes no more than 5% damage. Even with groups of mobs, I just have to climb up onto something so they can’t reach me and wait it out.
My thrall did have a problem where a monster sabretooth was cutting his health down perilously low while others ganged up on him, but I just laid down a healing arrow and he was fine.
I think they should have made the Level system much more simple…
T1 -> T2 -> T3 -> (T4 including free name choice)
That way they could have left most things as they are now & also upgrading existing thralls
The perk system seems to be much too complicated for me. That power should have better been invested in thrall AI, Active/ Passive mode, Agression level and all the other goodies like choosable dancing, emotes and interactions that has been asked for so long already.
They need to nerf the damage of thralls. They can’t nerf the health pool until they implement a command system where we can micro the thralls in and out of fights if they are taking too much damage etc. We don’t want to lose good level 20 thralls because we can’t command them to be passive or go back to heal mid fight.
Oh, I didn’t say I found it redundant; I said it seems redundant. I’ve never played a game with that feature.
Not too sure why my first comment got flagged and hidden. I wonder if it was because I said leveling thralls made no sense to me; it wouldn’t if I’ve never been exposed to it. Or maybe it was because I stated the obvious; that the devs should be focused on the game’s bugs and performance issues. I would think constantly adding features over top of a buggy game would create more problems. The OP’s concern is how powerful the thralls can become. Mine is not making the game performance worse by adding things before dealing with the bugs and performance. Hardly flag/hide worthy.
Whatever the case, thank you for at least trying to shed some light about the thrall leveling with your perspective. That’s what discussions are for.
Yeah, the leveling system with old legacy thralls is kinda…
Should PvP turn into “thrall VS thrall” fights?
Get ALL thralls just nerfed to minimal dmg output (or only the new ones - so old legacy stay the same)?
Alone Alex (lead designers) reactions at the stream at the 22k hp archer, was kinda, like he saw something like that the first time…
The problem is, that this leveling system comes way to late… It creates more problems then it will bring (at least at the beginning).
You have either way to overpowered thralls at lvl 20, or the lvl0 thralls (even T4 from volcano or relic hunters) are garbage and T4 from weaker factions are utterly useless or the progress will be so small, that the majority wont bother leveling up (and maybe stick to the legacy thralls anyway).
Balancing THIS is probably the hardest task Funcom ever had when it comes to balancing… Lets hope the thralls will not end like Lifeblood spear (utterly useless).
I too am not sure how it could be addressed. I’m thinking it MIGHT be possible to scale down the higher level thralls. There is a large difference between the strengths of, for example, a T3 exile and a T3 Cimmerian or Relic Hunter. I’d keep the strength of the NPCS in the wild the same, so as to offer the challenge needed, but consider making it so that when they’re placed, the upper scale is toned down a bit so that when they level up, they can still level up past what is now the norm, but not become so overpowered that you just let your thrall loose in any location and watch him win.
But this is the big question: How much different are lvl20 thralls to legacy ones?
If its not that much, why should I bother level them up? I stick with my old partner who I have a long history…
But at least in the stream, Jens said “lvl20 are significantly stronger”. Lvl20 pets are even on par with some lvl20 thralls.
Or reaching level20 is so hard, that you need several months when you play 4hours/day.
That’s the part that worried me. When they said that level 20 thralls will be significantly stronger. Yes, I’d like there to be a noticeable difference in strength, and I’d like my thrall to be significantly stronger than when I first caught him. I’d even like him to be stronger than other thralls I have that haven’t gotten my attention. I suspect that means a tweaking of the legacy strength levels. I wouldn’t want to see the low-level thralls lowered, but I can see the higher-level ones brought down a notch or two.
This could be a case where devs created the tools and features, but there is 2nd department number crunching and trying to balance the RNG and attribute windows for all levels inputting the data table for them.
I played Ark for a long time, and leveling/breeding dinos was definitely a huge part of end game that I enjoyed immensely.
But here’s the thing…
In Ark, my Dinos were kept in a barn, behind the walls of my base, which were protected by auto turrets and plant x. They were a valuable commodity, and the turrets/plants were my base defense. Also, if I took them out in the world I was usually riding them, and able to control where they walked/flew. If I died or crashed while on them, they would chill where I left them.
In Conan (PvP) currently, thralls are my only base defense. As such, they are completely expendable, used to slow attackers but usually die and be replaced from a box. My more rare/special thralls, the ones I use as a companion, are kept in the heart of my base. I keep them close, but can’t control where they walk/teleport, so they only die when they decide to swim in lava or fall down an elevator shaft.
In summary, leveling thralls is neat in theory but as long as thralls are morons and there is no other form of base defense it’s just not a good idea.
We cant really tell, untill we see leveling stat progression. But as of right now vanilla content is more tedious then hard. If I have to spend a day to fully level my Cimmerian Berserker, then I will have no problem with him killing crocodile boss in 1 minute, instead of 10 minutes.