Hello CodeMage,
I agree with you for the most part and maybe i was not clear enough.
Indeed, in no way would be weakening thralls the one and only solution.
As you have said, there are other issues as well, AI in general, Bosses AI, no real mechanics, just tank&spank.
The lack of challenge in PvE has problems on various ends, i already said that in one of my posts here, but reading the entire thread is not something one wants to do now.
Just to make it clear, i also do not want to turn this game into an “hardcore” game, this wouldn’t work and only would frustrate a lot of other players.
Lag in various shapes and forms + latency issues are obvious and as soon you even get packet loss almost everything is unplayable anyway. But theese factors count for nearly all online/coop/multiplayer/mmo games and shouldn’t be used for reference when it comes to “balancing” game content.
If your servercode and/or networkcode causes Lag/Latency or sends wrong data between server-client then it needs to be fixed.
If one clan can pop 400+ entities in one small area to kill the fun for all other players, then yes this needs to get fixed.
As for the AI being crappy in Unreal Engine 4.15, well, Funcoms UE 4.15 Engine is already heavily modified and you always can write your own AI Systems or add upon it. Ofc. just simply writing a new AI System is something that you won’t pull off in just 1 week and is actually extremly complicated too, so that’s maybe not an option.
Also making bosses one-shot players is not really a hard mode, and as you have said already, it makes it only frustrating to play, this is not what we want. I have never said that anyway.
The Arena Champion already hits like a truck, but doesn’t one shot you.
But take one Relic Hunter Thrall with you and he is just a normal mob, zero challenge.
You don’t even have to equip the Thrall with the best Armor or Weapon, it is a cakewalk.
I am also no fan of dying because of lag or latency, this is obviously another problem that needs to get fixed, expecially if one clan can pop 400+ entities around 1 small area to completly eliminate the fun of other players.
Yes, thralls are here to balance the difficulty problems, but as it stands now, the better ones are not balanced. If i play around with serversettings and sliders and mods, the only thing i am archiving here is maybe balancing the lategame Thralls for me and other endgame players… yes, but the huge drawback here is it also totally imbalances all other tiered thralls for lower leveled players or new players on the entire server!
Look, i posted this thread, it is my opinion and ofc. not everyone has to agree with my opinion.
That is perfectly fine.
But this was my experience so far:
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People right on started with “just don’t use them”, everything is fine.
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Then some told me to play around with the server settings and i clearly said over and over again some server settings are not even working, not supported, leftovers from early access. And even if they would work it would only totally unbalance a lot of other things for lower or newer players on the entire server.
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Then people all of a suddon think i want a hardcore game or Bosses that one shot you, i never said that. I don’t want that, it would be only extremly frustrating for everyone!
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Then people thought i want to nerf everything with just T1 stats and what not, that is not balancing either, instead it would totally imbalance the entire game for everyone on the server.
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Then one even calls out i am trolling, that’s just not helpful at all
I know this “topic” here is not new in the community, but you gotta ask yourself honestly why this topic always comes up again and again…
Before i was posting this i found several threads about the same topic from past years and the replies there were no different, “just don’t use them”.
Just don’t use them, everything is fine, let’s move on, all is ok.
That’s what i got out of this thread.
Only CodeMage actually understands that PvE Challenge in general needs work on various ends.