On Isle of Siptah, I just took an Accursed Berserker at level 10 with a star metal greatsword and non-epic heavy armor to vaults and world bosses and it deals with them all.
I have 0 authority.
I have 20 strength - corrupted - and a better weapon and the thrall sometimes out-damages me.
I understand that many players enjoy having a strong thrall that wipes everything for them. This is a power fantasy game, so it’s completely expected.
But the problem is that even if you make a build dedicated on player damage, thralls still outperform you. When you play with someone who has a maxed authority and maxed equipment on their thralls, then you are absolutely blown out of the water and are reduced to the role of a bystander. There’s no point even trying to participate in combat, it’s more likely you just get in the way than that you contribute usefully.
I want to feel awesome and strong with my player-damage focused build when I’m in a vault or other dungeon with friends. But I can’t when my friends’ thralls out-perform me by a significant margin.
The problem of thralls being this powerful is ultimately in that they make non-thrall builds feel weak and unsatisfying. In my view, a thrall build should be used when you want to focus more on grinding or maybe if you find no other way of dealing with combat. At most a thrall build should do damage comparable to a strength build, but now it does more. Much more.
As much as I love levelling up my thralls, enjoy seeing great perks being achieved, watching them take on hordes single handedly… you are dead right. I think the balance that needs to be struck is this: make them able to SURVIVE (but not automatically - we should need to strategise, use tactics, heal them when they’re struggling - not just have them survive every encounter on auto pilot) but not to DOMINATE combat. They should be a useful distraction, not a weapon of mass destruction. And despite the nerfs, they definitely are still WOMDs.
So far everything being said here is true and accurate but I don’t think FC should do anything. I think it’s all about self control!
For n00bs and people who don’t bother to learn the perk systems and races, thralls can be too weak even - yet for those who have learned to min-max well and do so, thralls can be OP and a half.
If you’re in the later group and wanna recapture that hero feeling, I think it’s just about self control (and maybe some thrall control ). Leave your mega thralls at home. Do min-max tuning for you and not your thralls. Put your thralls in medium or light non-legendary armor. If you need a T4 bearer, give him a low-ish level bow and some HS arrows or something - maybe just a strong shield? Decide to play with only level one or two thralls. Tell them not to attack anything or as soon as they do, send a STOP command. And other OP mitigating tactics.
This way you get to play how you like and FC covers everyone and all their preferences.
So because your friends thralls out-class you, you feel inadequate? Maybe you should force your friends to play like you do, because we all know it is all about you.
After five years of playing this game, over 7k hours played, I personally think Funcom has finally nailed it with the new thrall/ attribute system.
You can spec yourself very powerfully, or spec a follower build. The game gives much more options than it ever did, and people can make choices that were never available before.
Thrall balance has been achieved, and thralls are a part of this game, so deal with it.
Have you told your friends how inadequate they are making you feel? Sounds a bit like thrall penis envy to me.
If you’re in the later group and wanna recapture that hero feeling, I think it’s just about self control (and maybe some thrall control ). Leave your mega thralls at home.
But I’d also have to convince four other people to do the same.
At least to me it also feels less satisfying to achieve something by restricting myself, since I always know that this would have been easier or faster if I just used all the tools available to me.
I do though leave my own thrall at home when I’m looking for a bit of challenge or playing with friends.
My experience is somewhat different here. I’m playing with max Authority and max Agility, with Skelos Master robes (which give a bonus to both Agility damage and follower damage), and when fighting similar opponents we tend to be equally fast at finishing off our opponents. But it depends on what we’re fighting. If the enemy staggers or knocks down with its attacks, the thrall spends a lot of time tasting the floor, whereas I can dodge such attacks and immediately continue murdering.
Also depending on enemy, a thrall is now quite mortal. I lost a level 13 RHTS wearing Voidforged Dragon armor to a Blood-Moon Fiend when I let her solo it. (I had no idea back then what the Ritual event was all about, and wasn’t properly equipped for a boss fight myself, so I had to focus on not dying and couldn’t really help her.) On several other occasions I’ve been close to losing a thrall and had to take personal risks to bail them out - including a level 18 RHTS in the Portal to Yuggoth event where the Mi-Gos kept blasting him to the ground because the idiot can’t dodge. He had got down to ~700 hitpoints when I stabbed the last Mi-Go to death, and at that point I was kinda low on health myself.
Oh, and a Cimmerian Berserker NPC casually murdered my freshly recruited level 1 Berserker wearing a mismatch of looted Cimmerian and Vanir armors. The thrall wasn’t following me at the time, he was guarding my door. I’m not sure how the NPC berserker actually got there - NPCs seem to randomly spawn in or next to my base.
They can’t be made much more fragile or we end up leaving them home rather than risk losing them. The damage output, except for the handful of top-tier thralls, has also been reduced.
So because your friends thralls out-class you, you feel inadequate?
Also my own non-maxed thrall outclasses me as it simply does more damage per hit than I do, despite I having max strength and a better weapon.
Maybe you should force your friends to play like you do, because we all know it is all about you.
I think it’s more effective if the game does the balancing for us, instead of us creating our own rules.
You can spec yourself very powerfully, or spec a follower build.
But you’ll always be significantly weaker than a follower build.
Thrall balance has been achieved, and thralls are a part of this game, so deal with it.
I’ve not suggested removing thralls or anything like that, so idk what you mean by “deal with it”.
Have you told your friends how inadequate they are making you feel? Sounds a bit like thrall penis envy to me.
Yes we’ve talked about this and mostly agree with it, and do often leave thralls out when going to vaults or kill world bosses together.
Now to me, you sound a bit like an ■■■■■■■. Why do you feel the need to talk like that and to belittle me?
You say “we all know it is all about you” but at the same time YOU seem very hostile to someone having a different opinion from you. So I’m not allowed to have an opinion about thrall balance because YOU believe it is now perfect and shouldn’t be touched more?
when fighting similar opponents we tend to be equally fast at finishing off our opponents. But it depends on what we’re fighting
Yeah, it does seem to depend a lot on just how the AI happens to be working that time.
Like you say, sometimes the thralls end up getting staggered repeatedly and don’t launch their own attacks; but other times the enemy doesn’t attack and instead the thrall is allowed to freely hit them repeatedly…
The bugginess in the AI combat is kind of frustrating.
Oh, and a Cimmerian Berserker NPC casually murdered my freshly recruited level 1 Berserker wearing a mismatch of looted Cimmerian and Vanir armors.
To me it seems that leveling them now has a bigger impact. Difference between level 1 and 10 is staggering. Which is nice, really.
They can’t be made much more fragile or we end up leaving them home rather than risk losing them.
I don’t think they need to be more fragile either.
I’m not sure what the best solution to the problem is. I suppose either players need to do more damage or the top thralls need to do less. It might also be that Isle of Siptah thralls - like the Accursed Bersker - are more powerful than Exiled Land thralls. I’m not fully sure to be honest.
There are problems in players doing more damage and thralls doing less damage. For example, the top level purges/surges would take even longer, while there already are damage sponges in them.
The best solution would be a complete overpass of monster HPs, armor values and then appropriately tuning the balance of player/thrall damage. I don’t think that’s going to happen anymore though.
Very perceptive. Opinion away, but do not expect to not get critiqued about your “opinion”, which, in MY opinion, is ridiculous.
You sound as if you want to be the great killer of the war party, but cannot, because someone’s thrall is better than you. How amusing.
Opinion away, but do not expect to not get critiqued about your “opinion”, which, in MY opinion, is ridiculous.
You confuse having an opinion and having criticism with being mean and rude.
You sound as if you want to be the great killer of the war party, but cannot, because someone’s thrall is better than you. How amusing.
I don’t have to be the great killer of the war party, but sure, the experience feels less significant and less interesting to me when thralls with their owners being half-afk are dealing faster with enemies than I am. That is what this thread is about.
Your OP is basically saying this is all about me, I should be the great killa, these thralls are making me look inadequate.
Lets just change the whole game concept to fit your idea of what it should be.
If your friends thralls are more powerful than you, then maybe you should just solo everything.
The bottom line is, I am ready to settle in with the new changes, and am very weary of the nerf cryers constantly whining about how it does not fit their play style.
There must be other games out there where you can be the "Hero’ and beat your chest and howl.
Opinions about balance and what’s enjoyable gameplay are highly personal. People do have a habit of trying to frame their subjective beliefs about game balance as a part of a greater good for the game or as a majority opinion, but in view opinion that’s never been a very honest way to go about it. It’s better to talk in the terms of “I”. What I would enjoy, what changes I would like to see, etc.
We only ever know what we would like to see and it is easy to be mistaken when trying to speak or others. Hence, I do not try to speak for you, and I expect that you do not try to speak for me.
Sure, as long as you pay me the appropriate salary and give me the appropriate title, work contract, responsibilities and accesses…
Game concepts typically are the handiwork of just a few people. Sure, when a game grows large enough, it needs more designers, developers, etc, who handle their own area of responsibility, but when it goes to larger scale decisions - like how strong thralls are in comparison to players - it’s not exactly a democracy and typically these decisions require the agreement by a few key people.
Why’s that? I like playing with my friends and we often do do stuff without our thralls.
If you don’t want to hear about balancing suggestions, why not just ignore these topics? I don’t think it’s very likely that people will change their opinions when you come belittling and ridiculing them to their suggestion threads.
Could you try making a full comment without needing to add this kind of stuff to it?
I know no one talks like that to people face-to-face, so they shouldn’t be doing it online either. It’s more enjoyable to everyone on the forums if the people on it at least try to be polite and respectful.
You’re again mixing up criticism and rudeness but more than that, my question wasn’t about what you suggest but it was about you saying you were tired of people suggesting what you believe are nerfs. I asked if it wouldn’t be easier for you to simply ignore those topics if it’s something you’re tired of. I did not ask why you’re criticizing me or why you think you’re allowed to do so.
That’s not how forums and the internet automatically are. Unmoderated forums tend to become like that because people who want to enjoy their time and discuss things politely are driven out by the people who want to make fun of others and who enjoy toxicity, but moderated forums certainly exist even among popular games. One example I often bring up is Project Zomboid’s forum where moderators actively remove posts and ban people when they’re talking too much shit. They are good forums, too.
You’ve made these forums less enjoyable to participate in, for sure, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you were a little bit happy about that.
But I also know this isn’t the way you’d talk in real life, so it’s just a facade for you, and in a way I do feel a little bit sorry for you also.
It’s unfortunate you feel the need to ridicule others online, but in the end, it’s not a biggest of deals for me.
EDIT: Soo this comment was flagged as inappropriate?
Mm, rather than answer questions just stop the discussion, right?
In the end, you haven’t provided any sort of a counter-argument beyond “I don’t like it”. To be fair, that is not a worthless counter-argument when discussing game design, but it is a little bit ironic how you blame me of wanting to design a game according to how like, and then you use what you like as an argument for why I am wrong.
Feel free to have the next last word, but I just wanted to summarize this.
As currently with the lag the thralls do nothing (online official)
I had to kill each boss alone since my thrall keeps running into walls or stay in the same spot for over 30 minutes before it spawns back behind me
With this experience I can’t really tell if they’re too strong or too weak (I don’t play single player, only for building). All I know is a lot of players doesn’t wanna sacrifice points in authority to make them stronger.
I’m kinda glad with the changes so far… we’re slowly becoming the hero once again, making the thrall the star of the show is still possible when someone decides to put points in it.
One of my thralls died yesterday into a swagger stagger fight with tons of ghosts hitting her (Thag spawns way too many adds…) :')
Tip:
Master Skelos Cultist armour gives extra “Agility” and “Follower damage”, pretty strong with Agility build and followers
I’ve only briefly visited the official servers and the lag was way too much for me. On our private friends-only server with max 7 or so players online simultaneously they still work pretty fine.
I’m kinda glad with the changes so far… we’re slowly becoming the hero once again, making the thrall the star of the show is still possible when someone decides to put points in it.
Agree. I do kind of feel that originally the high damage output of the thralls was meant to compensate the high health pools of the bosses…
But it’s gotten all a bit inverted. Stats get buffed because some other stat is too high to begin with, etc.
Agreed. Yesterday I was on a random self-imposed quest to go murder Beastmaster Teimos and maybe nick some gold from the pirates, when I came on the ‘demon egg and slaves’ event. Me being in full Auth build yet with no thrall, I figured I’d give it a try anyway. Was a lot of fun beating the demon snake thingy.
I ended up getting a bunch of keys that have no functionality on EL (afaik), which seemed a bit random. But the point remains - the game can be as hard or as easy as you want it to be, even playing solo on Officals. And to me that’s new in 3.0 where more ‘builds’ are viable.
I do wonder however what it would look like from the other end? Would it mean thralls die more easily? Or just do less damage? It seems like the alternative is making fights last longer, or losing thralls more often.
Maybe the balance is leveling thralls faster?
So you can replace them more often?
Maybe T1 thrall come with 1 if three perks already unlocked, up to T3 and 3 perks.
No leveling them anymore. Then you can replace them faster and make them weaker?
). Leave your mega thralls at home. Do min-max tuning for you and not your thralls. Put your thralls in medium or light non-legendary armor. If you need a T4 bearer, give him a low-ish level bow and some HS arrows or something - maybe just a strong shield? Decide to play with only level one or two thralls. Tell them not to attack anything or as soon as they do, send a STOP command. And other OP mitigating tactics.
