I believe the official word on it is that there are some exploits that they are worried about that need to be fixed first.

From what privates have shared, they haven’t come up against any of these in their game play…but privates don’t have the same type of abusers on them that officials do.

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Yeah, okay, you dug up a thread from 2020 because it appears near the top of the search. The trouble with the search function is that it can’t completely replace actually being on the forums all this time :wink:

Here are some nice examples of what I’ve been talking about, ordered from newest to oldest:

The point I was trying to make is not that “there has never been even one PVP player who complained about thralls being OP”. You simply picked that because it’s easy to disprove.

The point I was making is that:

  • PVE complaints about how thralls are more powerful than players have been popping up regularly on these forums for at least 3 years now
  • PVP complaints about how thralls are OP have declined with time because of Funcom’s balancing changes

And yes, there are PVP players agreeing with the nerf on this topic. It’s not surprising that, after all these years, there are PVP players who are really sick of PVP being “offline PVB” (player vs base) and think that raiding as a mechanic needs more attention than just slapping band-aids on it.

Sure I can. The way PVE players adjust difficulty right now, on live servers, is to choose whether to bring a follower or not, and how much of the fight to leave to the follower.

That’s not going to change after this patch hits live. You’ll still be able to choose whether to bring a follower and how much of the fight to leave to it.

You act as if this is not going to be the case, despite all the actual explanations to the contrary, from the people who, unlike you, actually played with the changes.

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No because, per normal, FC has kept their cards close to their chest. But many have spoken up about DBD being an issue because you can just log off and be immune to retaliation. DBD can be abused like all other systems in the game and that is probably where the issue lies right now.

Linking this other thread to this one because it has some merit to the conversation.

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But if they choose to take a thrall that is overpowered through their gameplay, that’s really their decision and their decision alone.

If you Min-Max a thralls stats and perks to be at the pinnacle of what the system allows, you lose the right to complain that your character isn’t stronger than that.

There is really no valid argument that can be made.
If I choose to take an AK-47 into a knife fight, I can’t complain that the fight was too easy.

I mean, literally aren’t the Named Thralls supposed to be heroes on a level with Conan, or at least in that area? They aren’t supposed to be weak no-name p*ssies, or else you’d never remember their name in the first place. The whole point of them being named is that they are stronger than the average Exiles.

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Or you could do what @SirDaveWolf showed in his thread :wink:

Yeah, well, here’s the thing. Funcom wants us to make more choices. They think this will make the game more engaging, because they believe videogames are about making interesting choices :man_shrugging:

Exactly. Which is why I stopped complaining about “OP thralls” as soon as Funcom balanced things enough so that hiding behind thralls stopped being a necessary strategy in many PVE encounters.

Here’s the thing, though. The biggest detractors on this thread – namely you and @Marcospt – act as if this ability to choose has been taken away. Considering that you haven’t even played with the new changes, it comes across as, how did @Marcospt put it? Ah, yes:

As for the “main point”:

That’s because you only look at changes as “solutions to problems players have identified”, rather than “improving and evolving the game”.

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Just saw one with 12k HP and almost 1000 armor.

But the damage was listed as 0, so not sure how they plays into anything.

If these come out like this…then it feels like: We nerfed thralls, but join our new sorcery feature to get back powerful ones and use. (And push more exposure of Sorcery and undead as it becomes the new optimal.)

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Desculpa @Marcospt mas tive que perguntar pois a atualização irá ser lançada e temos que tentar de alguma forma mostrar sobre assuntos que todos estamos tendo problemas ou estamos vendo ser usado como forma de trapaça dentro do pvp.

What player choice was removed?

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Apparently it’s not a necessary strategy because I’m hearing of any number of players who commonly DON’T use said strategy.

So it is more about FC taking away the choice for players who did employ that strategy. Because they don’t feel it’s an optimal one.

Commonly hearing how bosses can wreck thralls now if you aren’t helping them. That means my choice to let a thrall fight a boss as been taken away.

We’re back to the fact that it was my choice to play the game that way, it was PvE so it affected literally nobody else. Yet it was decided that my choice wasn’t valid or proper, and so it needed to be dealt with.

Yep, a lot of people are forgetting stuff like this.
FC is bottlenecking the gameplay in specific directions.

You want to use thralls. You MUST use authority to power them back up to pre-3.0 levels.
You want to force thralls to fight for your amusement. We don’t want that, you MUST step in and fight with them.
You want to use specific thralls because you like them better? Nope, you MUST use specific ones, because the others are too weak now and not viable.

You must be a warrior/archer exile.
You cannot play a character with a commanding presence to get others to do your bidding for you. They aren’t strong enough because you’re forced into a hero/anti-hero role.

Nothing wrong with making options for a player to be the hero.
Everything wrong with forcing said hero role onto the player as the only option.

They could have expanded player perks greatly to make more options.
One thing should have been to put these perks as Feats (as in D&D feats) and left attributes strictly alone as stat values.

And then have branching perk trees to allow you to increase your capabilities in myriad ways.

Weapon trees for varying weapon types to refine your usage of them.
Armor trees to pick and enhance your skills with your chosen armor types.
Leadership trees for governing thralls and enhancing them.
Construction trees for building and defending your base.
Mounted trees for movement and attack/defense while mounted.

To the extent you could choose to be what and who you wished to be in the exiled lands.

Don’t wanna fight? Push Leadership and let your minions do it for you.
Don’t want strong minions? Ignore the leadership and focus your talents on weapons and armor.
Want to be an architect and build beautiful structures? Pick stuff from construction and make it happen.

Yes there is a potion to reset your points. Yes you can hop between any number of these options. But the choice is there and not being forced onto you.

The Thrall nerf does take away that choice. It narrows down the viable thralls to a select group with a select melee or archery damage modifier because that damage is necessary. Further narrowed down to the thrall with the better HP modifier. Refined by shoving potions down their throats until you get the best perk trio you can for that particular thrall and deciding whether you want to pump their HP for tanking, melee for fighting, or archery for shooting enemies.

Edit: And saying no, you don’t need thralls like this. You can now do it yourself, is the equivalent of saying “git gud” and a BS argument. It’s not about “gittin’ gud” at the game. It’s about the freedom to play a sandbox game how you want to do so. Not how others feel you should.

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No, I’m not trying to get on your nerves, I’m trying to show you that they didn’t remove the choice you claim they did.

“Strong thralls” is not a choice, it’s just a characteristic. The choices players make are about what to do, what tradeoffs to make, etc.

The choice you call “strong thralls” is really a choice to delegate most or all combat to your thrall, and you can still do that. Hell, from what I’m seeing on the forums, you can even do it without sacrificing your own combat attributes.

What you can’t do anymore is make that choice once and maintain it indefinitely without any effort. And if that’s what you’re complaining about, well… that’s kind of a “you” problem, because most of us like having to choose what to do from moment to moment, day to day, etc. :man_shrugging:

Yes, didn’t you read what I said? I literally said “I stopped complaining about OP thralls” back when they stopped being necessary. Seriously, I wrote that.

No, it hasn’t. There has been plenty of proof that it hasn’t, from people who actually played the game, but the two guys who haven’t done it are insisting that it’s not like that.

I’m finally muting this thread, because I might as well go talk at a wall – at least the walls aren’t like this:
zA0t2zA1

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Greater Sabre killing red mother in 90 seconds.

“ermhagawd my followers are so weak”

Can this thread die already. Thralls and/OR pets are not weak in 3.0. I really hope @den and the rest of the team don’t cave to this insanity and buff them.

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But it makes no sense.

OP thralls were necessary implies that bosses and purges are simply too difficult for a player to handle on their own. As if the Named thralls were 100% mandatory to do a boss or purge.

Is that what you are arguing? So…an overly powerful thrall being necessary to clear content, then it makes no sense that said overly powerful thrall needs a nerf to weaken it.

I mean, you could always act mature and stop with the personal attacks or mockery of people who don’t share your opinion of the game. Since I don’t recall anyone else pointing to you with images implying you’re stupid (literally from the content your image was taken from) or childish, because they don’t share your views.

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Followers doesn’t automatically equal Thralls.

You’re showing that a PET is strong enough to take her out in 90 seconds.

Pet != Thrall

Nobody was talking about pets here. ^^

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yes because obviously a thrall couldn’t do the same either :roll_eyes:

It’s 100% overlooked. I’ll ask again what’s the point of farming arrows now? What’s the point of building walls? What’s the point of anti climb? I’ve heard how you play. You hide your base so this may not effect you but how is a bat or ive bridge flying above your base fair? It’s completely broken.
Years ago they had the weapon rack glitch where you could launch yourself up to the top of someone’s pillar base. Why didn’t they just keep that in the game? Because it completely ruins all aspects of building a base and obviously it was a exploit. There are still exploits like this in the game used by cheaters. no one should be able to bypass layers of walls and anit climb. Every raid will be the same “meta” with this. Get the recipes for bay or bridge, farm some bombs and wait till the enemy is offline. At least before you had to actually work for the offline work. This is not new player friendly in the least. I really struggle to see how people don’t see the issue here.

I did make another thread about the ice bridge and bat so I won’t say anything else about it here.

I’m sure some can. Just like I’m sure others can’t.

I’ll fully admit thralls are all too powerful. If you can provide evidence that they all can do it.

If you’re limited to level 20 thralls with the best gear + a highly beneficial stat distribution + perks as doing that, then I don’t see a huge problem in it.

When a level 1 thrall with the crappiest gear and no perks is capable of doing that in 90 seconds, then 100% the system is broken.

You’ve got a range of 20 levels for your thralls.
You’ve got random stat distributions and potential 1-2 point increases the more they level up.
You’ve got a wide range of weapons that may or may not inflict status ailments.
You’ve got a wide range of armors that can boost varying things.
You’ve got a selection of perks that can further boost or hinder things.

All of those factors come into play.

There is an absolute worst and best level 1 thrall with the poorest and best quality gear.
There is an absolute worst and best level 20 thrall with the poorest and best quality gear.
Those are the extreme outliers in the entire system.

If you choose to identify the thrall that can get the best possible damage modifier + the best hp range, then keep farming that thrall until you get the best possible perk combination to further enhance their damage and health, then further give them the absolute best weapons you can + the best armor, then sit and complain they kill a boss rapidly…honestly wtf did you expect was gonna happen???

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I think either you are misunderstanding my point or I’m just not communicating it well. I’m saying it isn’t overlooked because overlooked would imply that they would see you are right. I’m actually saying it isn’t overlooked and that they are most probably pushing for a different viewpoint of PVP and the defense of a raid. Everything you are saying is accurate but where you are outraged, they may be perfectly fine with because they view PVP differently than you (and a sizeable amount of players) do.

Whether you want to play this new PVP is up to you but the days of impenetrable bases are coming to an end and stealth play is probably the only way to maintain months long bases with any real consistent success. There are other methods of base building that is still valid at this time that can withstand the current raiding offenses but eventually these will also be removed as the players gravitate towards these.

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Say what you want but some walls and anti climb is by no means impenetrable. Personally I see this as a mistake and only really thought out for pve. I didn’t hear them say look at this cool new feature where you can fly over all the enemies defenses and bomb two doors to get in. You are missing my point. Why would they knowingly make farming explosive/poison arrows pointless when you simply don’t need them to raid a pillar base?

Stealth bases are for solos and duos. Once you start to get more people is is not an option and I highly doubt they want everyone hiding because they screwed up raiding mechanics

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You don’t seem to get it :stuck_out_tongue:
I appreciate your stance on the thrall thing, but pleeeease double-check the arguments / points / excuses you make and see how reasonable they are…

The choice thing that you keep mentioning for example is… well… In the nicest possible way: Utter BS :stuck_out_tongue:
Why? because choice here or there, the value of accomplishments in a game are set by their difficulty… If everything is just a walk in the park… then that’s not choice… that’s just bad game design…

And I’m sorry but this idea of “self-nerfing” to make it a challenge is just ridiculous… sure sometimes people do that for specific occasions, like if you’re roleplaying or actually streaming a challenge for viewers or something… but to suggest that the general public is “not required” to take a thrall so if they find it easy then they shouldn’t… is absolutely beyond ridiculous… It’s IN the game… obviously they want to try it… and it it spoils the game then “simply not using them” is not a comfort… and it diminishes the value of everything…

This would be the equivalent of idk… let’s take any random game… World of Warcraft - that’s a popular one, right? :smiley: So this would be the equivalent of telling Blizzard that you want the choice of getting all the high end dungeon weapons, exactly as they are… but you don’t want to participate in clearing the dungeon itself… because you don’t feel like it so you leave that choice to those who do… And if Blizzard doesn’t budge and makes dungeon gear only available… in the dungeon… (doh)… then you complain that they removed your choice and are forcing you to play the game the way they designed it :frowning:

Again, this is nothing personal, it’s just a bit like idk… “how dumb you think we are?” cuz I appreciate your opinion on it and I think that’s literally the best thing you got going for you to be able to push this agenda - meaning that it’s worth more than trying to twist random things like “What about the poor players who don’t know how to play?” or “They are removing our choice, because up to now people had a choice not to use thralls if they thought they’re too strong” or… hmm what else was there… “I can’t defend a purge with the new thralls” and so on and so forth… - all of these are BS excuses you’re attempting to twist to further the agenda :slight_smile: And good job on that, but they’re a bit too obvious.

The legit ones are simply the fact that you don’t like the change (which is worth the most imo)… and that the AI sucks and they sometimes get stuck and pummeled in a corner so they need a bit of extra HP (that’s more of an AI issue thou)

Anyway, I meant no offense obviously so don’t mind me, just making random points here and there :smiley:

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