Thrall nerf to far?

Conan Exiles PC Discussion Public Beta Client
461

Just to show another point of view.

Just recently, I did a test with an absolute newcomer to Conan (and newcomer to so-called survival open world games at all).

I gave him a relatively normal tamed Cimmerian Berserker with just around 4k life with standard armor and a Star Metal Great Sword and a horse to ride from A to B. So all in all nothing special and let him play through the complete Conan story. I only told him where he could find which artefact, when he asked for, to unlock his bracelet and where to find the entrances to the special not lore related dungeons.

It took him exactly 2 days, first day 10 hours and second day 8 hours to play through the entire story, even a few Legendary Bosses he ran into were killed and also the Wine Cellar, the Sunken City and Warmakers Sanctuary was visited.

He himself stayed out of almost every fight because his equipment was more than bad and let his Thrall do the work and was able to finish the game completely without farming, building or even dying. Yes, the Unnamed City was also visited unnecessarily and the Red Mother was killed once, just so that he could at least see it all. Thanks to his Thrall, he never had any problems.

And so I’ll just throw the question into the room. Is it really intentional that with a mediocre Thrall you can play through the whole game within 2 days without having to do anything yourself?

Now my friend has the feeling that he has mastered the game and played the game to the end and has seen everything, but he didn’t really have to do anything for it, except watch what his cimmerian berserker was doing.

4 Likes
462

SO TRUE! Not just the two of us, all the players that can cooperate in pve battles can do so much better than a player with a thrall! So much better and the fun is huge! All these years I literally BEG players from pve servers to follow and play this way. 9 to 10, or better 99 to 100 they never do :pensive:. I know that people cannot find fun in things I do and I respect that, I totally do.
This was one of my greatest reason I started years ago to participate in pvp servers. I was helping clans and admins with this in return, to follow me on a dungeon without thralls :rofl::rofl::rofl:.

464

Alleluia!!! This.
The game HUGE content, beautiful content!!!
It’s unfair to be judged so lightly and all we hear and read is about bugs and bad performance, it’s just unfair!

467

There is another point of view and question, “Is this what Funcom wanted as their game experience?” I’m sympathetic to letting people play their way. So is Funcom apparently as they gave us a means to adjust thrall power with sliders in server settings. If we want our thralls beefier again, we can just notch up their damage or notch down their damage taken. Funcom on the other hand is producing a product to their vision and if juicy thralls are not in line with that… well, its their art.

1 Like
468

We do not disagree!!! I know what you are talking about :blush:.
I loved the God thralls too, maybe the ones you didn’t had the chance to meet (except arena champion ofcurce :rofl::rofl::rofl:, I never spawn her), but I started the game weaker than this character you play now. I started the game with weaker thralls that they are going to be.
With no commands at all and greater difficulties (lava, bleeding, poisoning, etc…).
Without horses and op weapons, OK maybe they existed I just didn’t knew their existence :rofl::rofl::rofl:.
And it went fine, beautiful, really beautiful actually that almost 4 years after here I am.
Give it time, especially a player like you will loose 0 thralls.
Will it be difficult for new players?
Definitely…
Yet they have all the numbers and the feedback they needed to act this way!
I am not against anybodys fun, I respect all the members here and the way they have fun!
Am I happy with your sadness?
HELL NO!!!
I just played with worst conditions knowing literally nothing of the game and it went really well. This difficult Conan had the greatest player base ever, you couldn’t find empty servers and place to build :rofl::rofl::rofl:. Let’s hope these days will revive, that’s all I wish my dear friend :pensive:.

1 Like
469

This. This is the ultimate question. Did Funcom intend on thralls bring so overwhelmingly powerful in their design. I can say from coms throughout the years, they have not. IMHO, this thrall nerfing should have happen back in 2019. I mean the game morphed to Pokemon for God’s sake. During combat (pvp or PvE) it was literally like

‘Dalensia Snowhunter, I choose you’

‘hm hm hm. I see your Dalensia is strong but is she any match for my Beastmaster Teimos? Beastmaster Teimos, I choose you’

Seriously they had to change the damage multiplier on thrall to PC damage and nerf that because that little exchange was what pvp was. I think they were a bit scared to do the total nerf because the PvE community was still hot about weapon nerfing that were exploited in pvp and do they lost some goodies in the process. I digress. The issue here is that thralls morphed into something that was against design and this was designed to be a multiplayer game which is why bosses are tanks. If you play solo, you are already going against the grain and will suffer because the game isn’t geared for that…pvp or PvE. Yes that means it’s not fair for those folks…and? Get friends or get good.

472

I’ve been following this discussion. I just wanted to point out to everyone something every good developer knows;

"Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game,” and therefore, “one of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves .” If players finds a way to exploit a game, by optimizing and repeating a mundane task to get resources or defeat enemies, they will do that.

473

I dont believe the nerf had anything to do with pvp. In fact, I believe it had everything to do with pve.

Again, I am sympathetic to making your own difficulty. People will remember I made that point in the past. Funcom however has a different vision. They have adjusted our character to be beefier and given us methods mentioned above to compensate for the nerf. I can understand if after playing with the new rules someone is unhappy, but I suggest playing it first for full context.

1 Like
476

No. But you spoon fed the player every step of the way. So your test was meaningless.

You gave him a Cimmerian Berserker which requires a Purge (something he couldn’t handle), Mounds of the Dead (which he wouldn’t have reached in that amount of time), or Stargazer’s Crest (also wouldn’t have reached in that amount of time.)

You gave him a high tier sword that requires him to go even farther north.

As a new player he would not have known where to go find the resources he needed.

He completely bypassed the majority of the game. He never had to learn how to gather iron, or make steel. He likely never bothered crafting at all, because you babied him.

You even said yourself that the test is invalid.
He never farmed. He never built.
He never died because the entire thing was a cheat.

Legit surprised that literally NOBODY else commented on this.

You’re basing the argument on Thralls needing to be nerf because a player that essentially cheated and went out of bounds of what was even possible had too easy of a time with a game.

Come back when you have a brand new player like that, who picks the game up and doesn’t get everything handed to them from the start. Only going with online guides or maps to look for things, but nobody giving them gear or anything else.

Because sure, anyone can beat the game rapidly when they cheat like f*ck. As with any other game.

2 Likes
477

You give too much credence to forum whining impacting fundamental game design.

479

I am just going to say this. I pick thralls for a variety of reasons. I have some male fighters placed, but they are all Berserkers, and they are almost all in the same outpost.

The rest are female. I tend toward fighters, not archers. I have Berserkers, RHTS, Dalinsias, Nordheimer and Cimmerian III, and named fighters from the river area.

I also place the occasional Exile I, II, or III, because I find one with qualities that are rare. Have you ever noticed how few truly blonde thralls there are that aren’t dancers? I ran across a RHTS fighter with blonde hair in that short double braid style. Never seen one of those in the wild.

My point is, I leveled them all. I took them into battle where they were appropriate, and got them the best stats I could. If I stand the chance of losing a rare thrall, I’m going to move it to someplace where it has a chance. Bases in areas that get hard purges are going to get fodder, and lots of it. I won’t bother to spend all my time levelling thralls in between purges.

I will see what happens with the update. If it is too much, I will play enough to not get purges, and I will still leave my base naked and wear only armor I find on the dead. That’s a rather interesting game.

1 Like
480

The devs said nothing about pvp in regards to the thrall nerf. They said they want to player to feel like the hero fighting bosss etc. I’m ok with pvpers not running around with op thralls. I mean who’s going to spend hours leveling a thrall with 5k health and run out to fight people. The thrall will be killed in minutes. It could make pvp a little more pvp if you know what I mean. The issues are once again defense is overlooked especially now that you don’t need to farm arrows for anti climb. All you have to do is fly or bridge to the top of the base. That will be the meta and to all those who complain about the comments of meta you will see after this goes live how many ppl complain in the forums. So to your comment of this is about pvpers. All I can say is nothing about this update is pvp driven.

481

Food/fishing was not what Funcom wanted and is likely to be reworked in a future update. It was a design choice that stopping during a fight to jam a feast in your face was silly. Food was a carry over from earlier times before the game even had thralls. We have newer systems now and the game has proven successful since launch to provide an opportunity to be what Funcom fully envisions. You can’t ignore the business history of CE (which you can find elsewhere and I won’t dwell on here) which necessitated a game that worked, even if not the way they wanted it then. Now they have the freedom to fully implement that vision.

484

Thrall power is very high on live. Being such, majority of players will make use of it, whether its fun for them or not.

You yourself make a point of not taking Thralls with you because it makes the game too easy for you. Can you guarantee me that every other semi-capable player has enough restraint to do the same, or only take a Thrall thats just strong enough to not be dead weight?

Most people are just out to play the game and have fun but not every single one of them is going to realise it’d be funner if they actually fought enemies themselves.

This is where FC is protecting them from themselves. Its not just a net nerf overall, as players got buffed in return.

More work still has to be done.
DBD on PvP is a great start to the fix power shift there. Followers “down but not out” is another feature that I strongly feel should be out with 3.0. Lastly, Purges could do with a balance pass.

All in all, FC has to start somewhere. I agree with their changes, but not that they’re delivering only half of it at once.

486

It becomes a problem when FC tries to decide what is fun for a player and what isn’t fun for a player.

Nerfing thralls to enforce stuff on people that might not want it, isn’t a good way to handle things. They should look for other ways.

I mean, currently it runs like this:
Some people solo stuff because thralls make it easier for them.
Some people take a thrall and work with them.
Some people take a thrall and make them do the work.

Each of those options can be fun for those particular players.

FC should NOT step in and say, no you shouldn’t do this with your thrall, we don’t approve so we’re going to nerf them down. Your method of fun with our product is not valid to us.

I fall in the middle group. Even with overpowered thralls I don’t just stand back and let them do it all. I get in and cut NPCs or stuff down alongside them.

I don’t need FC to protect me and point me to how I should play the game. It’s supposed to be a sandbox. You’re supposed to be able to do what you want in the game, within the limitations of the engine and design of it.

To deliberately step in and enforce changes to govern how people play, feels wrong. It’s different if it were another game type. But it’s not.

If I want to take two thralls to a battle and watch for my own amusement, I should be able to do that. I’m not hurting ANYONE else with my choice of gameplay.

The only time thralls come into play where it affects others, is literally when it becomes PvP related. In PvE, it doesn’t matter one bit at all how any of us chooses to play the game.

That’s why I think the nerf is heavy-handed. It’s removing a perfectly viable playstyle that is fun to some people, for literally no reason at all.

Again, it’s not harming anyone else if you can let a thrall solo a boss. WTF cares? Only a PvP player might care, because of thralls with bases.

No PvE player should care at all. How you guys play the game is none of my business or concern. If you want to use or not use thralls that are “too strong” it’s your business. Just like it’s my business for using my own.

There are always ways to make a player more of a “hero” than just nerfing one of the tools in their arsenal.

They could have put in bonus rewards for doing stuff without a thrall.
All these dungeons, how hard would it be to set an option for a reward chest at the end, for those who can solo it with no thrall helping at all, from start to finish.
Same with purges. They are adding challenges and stuff to the game.
Why can’t they add stuff to reward players for surviving a purge with minimal base defense? Put down limits on the number of thralls that are guarding at a base, and if you can survive it you earn bonus rewards.

1 Like
488

Protecting people from themselves is already used all over the world. Im not gonna rattle off a million and one examples, but Ill give you a Ferrari one.

You can own it. You can appreciate it. You can rent a runway and go as fast as you want. But it is illegal is do such things on a public roadway. You risk your life, and the lives of others. So laws are in place to limit the speed you may drive at.

Seatbelts are another, better example. You not wearing one doesnt harm anyone else but you, but it still illegal not to.

489

Problem is, in PvE, thralls were hurting nobody at all. Each player could decide how they wished to play using a thrall. It affected only their gameplay and their own enjoyment of the game.

FC stepped in and decided to take that away from them and enforce restrictions on said gameplay, for no reason.

That is why we needed PvP / PvE separation of stats and modifiers.
Adjust crap like this all you want on PvP so it’s balanced and fair because everyone uses it.
And leave PvE alone because it comes down to personal responsibility and is entirely on the shoulders of the player themselves.

2 Likes
492

Actually I am defending that they are and supporting the crutch that prevents them for seeing it themselves. I mentioned the damage multiplier nerf that happened in Thrall to PC damage. Do you know what happened? The players starting fighting and getting involved and getting better. You what also happened? A lot more visibility on other unbalanced aspects to the game. Horses were always an issue but since most PVP was thrall vs thrall combat, it never got the attention it needed to until two things happened 1) Siptah OP stuff and 2) thrall nerfing on PVP that forced players to actually engage eachother.

No I am fully in support that players can get good but that crutch has got to be removed in order for that to happen. Authority helps transition this.

1 Like
495

This is true, it didnt hurt anyone, but using OP thralls is currently the most optimal way to play.
Ill admit that my quoting of “protecting us from ourselves” isnt exactly my view, but nerfing thralls is still leveling the playing field on the most “optimal” way to play.

Hell yes we do.

496

OMG you mean calling down a freaking god kills thralls that you snagged from a prison camp?

Yes PVP defense is now at an all time weak point…so you gotta ask why are they constantly nerfing base defense. It didn’t dawn on me until someone (I think @Palm523 ) said online you can defend a base indefinitely if it was built in the right zone and you got a repair hammer. He/she was completely right that it’s a pain to deal with someone that is locked up in their base with mats and a rotating two repair hammer system. So while we can cry all we want about base defense being nerfed to oblivion, we still have the ultimate magic of waving a repair hammer that negates 30 explosives and a avatar within 5 seconds.