A few ideas that could make thralls and pets a bit more helpful, behaviour wise. Mostly movement related.
Nudge -
would like to be able to nudge/bump friendly thralls and/or pets out of the way by walking into/bumping them.
When set to follow, they sometimes block narrow paths, and I then either have to climb around them, or physically move them via their scroll windows. A simple little nudge/bump past them would help with this.
Settings -
the player to be able to set a thrall or pet’s movement behaviors.
Patrol (setting) -
Set a path for a pet and/or thrall to patrol along.
Meander (setting) -
Allow the pet and/or thrall to wander about within a certain distance of their set down location.
Guard (setting) -
Current standing guard, not moving around setting. Just that it would be made into a setting for the npc, rather than automatic.
Home (location) -
A spot selected for the thrall/pet to automatically return to. This spot is where they would go after attacking something, or once they are no longer set to “follow” any longer.
Stay (location) -
A spot, other than their “home” location, the current location where they are told to not follow the player character any further. A temporary or new “home” location. Instructing the pet/thrall to “go home” clears this location.
Just having a thrall go to bed, shut down their AI, and stay there until something comes under attack, would be absolutely fantastic. Most thralls don’t need to be on the lookout for enemies. They’re only needed as backup forces for when you come under attack. I imagine this would also lighten the load on servers, since there are a ton of people who would want their thralls “out of the way” for vanity reasons.
You could have one or two gate guards, with another six thralls sleeping in a gatehouse. If something attacks, the gatehouse guards wake up and activate their AI until combat is over.
Oh good idea
Could even have a sort of garrison (similar to the animal pen) that houses fighting thralls as objects inside until they are summoned, at which point, they spawn in and move to their posts. Once a friendly player gives an “all clear” - perhaps a prompt through the garrison - the guards then move back to where they’d been in the garrison. Guard reserves, so to speak. They might appear inside the garrison similarly to pets inside the pens, or worker thralls at work stations, only becoming npcs in the world when the garrison is triggered to release them.
level the garrison up to hold more guard thralls.
as a side… would also like the ability to return pets to the animal pens.
i have had many similar thoughts and well said on all of your ideas some were the same i had… definitely need to have settings for the thralls and pets individual settings for a path to walk , to stay put ,return home, set home set gaurd or follow another thrall player or pet and vice versa the same commands to the pets. and both should have commands to wander close or wander whereever give them the ability to chose where they wanna roam if you want to who knows you might set some to wander around and you didnt take none with you but you get in a fight and it pops up helping you its hey thanks for the help but that needs to player choice. , and i way so agree on the nudge when they swarm you and get you stuck in tight spots… yes… and for the garrison idea that is very good idea and to level it up to hold more, or you can build it and you put the beds in and to according to how many beds you build or how many garrison buildings you make determines home many thralls can find a bed to sleep in it…but they need to know how to open doors to go out when a threat is near in and out… they need to have all options available to how you want them to react in the game…
If they ever work on Thralls/Pets deep A.I, the game will become much more alive, I would love to see Thralls having random speech and talking to each other.
Great ideas, though given thralls’ penchants for falling off cliffs or wandering into lava, the nudge idea makes me a little nervous. Still, given the number of times I’ve gotten stuck in a building in NA because of them blocking a door, a good swift kick into lava doesn’t sound so unreasonable.
In fact… perhaps using Kick to nudge would be the safer (and more gratifying) trigger for getting a thrall to move out of the way! :o