Yes, which is what I said in multiple places in this thread, the last one being:
And believe you me, on the official Siptah server where I’m playing these days, there are already chuckleheads saying that they will do this regardless of its impact on server performance.
Official servers. Go figure.
I mean, I honestly don’t get why they would make it work like it does right now. I can’t really think of any way a solo player or even a small group of players could kill enemies at that rate, without cheesing. I really would like to hear the reasoning there.
And I’m not talking about stuff I haven’t tried, either: I’ve been farming the Maelstrom the hard way, and once you start getting a lightning strike per second, you either run or you die. Or you try to run and die anyway.
The most memorable occasion was when there were two of us, with a level 17 T3 fighter in epic gear. Each of us got killed at least twice and we ended up losing that fighter.
Anyway, there are several ways they could solve this. I hope they pick one and do it soon, instead of relying on the threat of bans, because most players don’t give a damn about that threat.
TBh the rate at response from Funcom on this issue along with the underwater temple “tear my retinas out” texture bug, is concerning… I don’t feel they get to play the “early access card” either, they’ve been around long enough and tbh a lot of the bugs i find in this new DLC makes me openly question if they did any regression testing for the new work. I would take a wild guess that they’ve gone down the code branches, picked a very old branch and moved forward with it instead of taking the existing most up to date one and modified it.
As some of the bugs i’ve noticed have been fixed prior to the DLC and now they are back again… eg. healing bugs (ie no heals despite the food source), thrall positioning, elevator teleportations etc etc.
The entire DLC seems like the art department had a few changes, devs helped where they could and the rest has been pretty much lazy effort a lot of the way. Especially the NPC repetitiveness … ie how many spider 3 skull bosses are there now? …
The centre of the maelstrom is just a glaring example of how badly you can break the game with minimal effort or testing shown.
First you get a small easy wave, you clean that up. Builds confidence. You can do this!
Then the waves increase until they overwhelm your defenses. Run, Forrest, run!
I think it’s supposed to tie in with defending the convergence traps, because the longer they survive, the more resources they suck in. That’s supposed to be the payout. The carrot at the end of the stick.
Obviously, they haven’t quite worked out how they are going to handle the --all mobs target the convergence trap like a beacon, swarm, swarm, swarm-- mechanic. The trap can only be placed on building pieces btw, (which attracts the storm’s attention even more), so it stands to reason you are supposed to create an actual defence for it using thralls and additional structure.
Of course, it’s no use, because the game behaves like Pac-Man after that. Your building pieces become the pellets and the ghosts (Eldrich horrors) run around and eat the pellets, while Pac-Man (the player) protects a chest at the end (the convergence trap).
It sounds like a great idea, but dang, they didn’t pull it off.
At least these players weren’t placing blocks on unreachable terrain that contained many convergence traps. That would have been a little bit much. But I agree that before judging them, the design needs to be clean and defined as to how it’s supposed to be engaged. Right now, the whole thing is vague.
What is intended, what isn’t, how you’re supposed to engage this mechanic and so forth.
When they first released the purges, they clearly outlined that you are supposed to build a base in order to defend and that the purge will be attracted to it in order to destroy it. --The rules-- were clear. The whole convergence trap / maelstrom zerg seems to follow the same pattern, but it’s not clear about the overall design. It’s inherent --rules-- are not clear. (This is the fault of the devs.)
The design is kind of all over the place. It lacks that clear vision and sharp implementation present with the Purges, which leads to this level of confusion in the player base as to what constitutes fair play. We are guessing the internal rules of the maelstrom because the designers have not clearly iterated it.
No one should be banned for life over it. Early access is going to have hiccups. The devs need to take these issues in stride and not punish the player base for unintended gameplay. Especially considering the existing factors behind the current functionality of the maelstrom and the vagueness on what exactly constitutes as being “resourceful”.
The maelstrom also needs to not crash the server or bring it to a crawl for everyone else. This is a tech issue. If they can’t resolve it, they are going to have to gut their concept, and honestly that would be a real shame. I see a lot of potential for a completely new way to play Conan. But, it needs work.
I have also ran away overwhelmed in the storm with near dead thralls. (Thralls that are bugged on using healing food - or when they use the highest tier (cooked pork chops), they only regen 1 hp per second. They won’t even touch the lower tier food after you give them pork chops and they no longer gain healing from it either.)
I hope there is a beefy bug fixing update coming. It would streamline a lot of these issues, except for the ??? zerg. And yes, it literally is a zerg. It’s funny.
I think the ideas behind the expac are good, but I feel like the game designer didn’t quite appreciate the specific function that each existing mechanic served in the game:
They removed static NPC camps, and replaced them with vaults that have a 1-hour lockout, in an environment that is much scarcer of resources than the original map anyways. On our server, we are already seeing conflicts over vaults/chests. I’ve run to a vault numerous times to find it locked out. This seems to be a common occurrence on our server.
They gated access to T4 thralls behind more stingy RNG and a grind, but left that mechanic out in the open. So not only does an unscrupulous player take your lucky spawn, they literally steal your hard work. In PVE, there’s nothing you can do about it.
They placed the “camps” where you get thralls in the middle of a no-build zone, so you have a decent drag to get your thralls back to your wheel. But, the mechanic also spawns numerous thralls at once, meaning multiple trips since you can only drag one at a time, and multiple instances where, if you’re a solo player, you’re potentially leaving usable thralls on the ground for anyone to take.
On top of all this, they gated the fuel to make that thrall mechanic more productive behind a zerg-inducing mechanic that their servers/code can’t handle.
Again - good ideas, not-so-good implementation in view of the game’s existing mechanics.
So after about a good solid week of doing PVE official, I want to toss out my opinion on the new thrall mechanic.
I like the change, but definitely needs tweaking. Here is why
Almost impossible for a sol player to get named thralls on officials. If a solo player grinds all the mats needed to do a top level surge, there is no way to insure poachers don’t take thralls. On PVE, this will lead to grief building as retaliation. PVP, established clans will be able to insure no one gets the benefits of crafters, thus having a lopsided advantage as far as war goes.
I have beaten 4 Vaults (multiple times each) solo starting at level 50, or with a Dancer 2 level 10 or my crusty lizard plus a mount in tow. No need for T4 fighters, unless I have to get legendary weapons. But because the new schematic weapons, I am okay with out the OG legendaries. I enjoy the anticipation for a new schematic that allows me to build the Legendary of my choice. And I can farm the all mats easily enough, getting the reduced cost for tar, steel, and shaped wood is not worth the effort (time sink) of going thru the waves of summoned surges thralls. That and the eldarium is way more fun using it doing the delving bench.
So as a mechanic, it is not needed on PVE to get thru almost the entire island, and for PVP, once a clan gets super established, no new clan will ever get the chance to catch up tool (t4 thralls) wise, and it will make trolling the only counter, or people just not playing PVP (raid).
Kinda sad seeing just how much Twitter has rotted people’s critical thinking and reading comprehension skills. Maybe that’s been the problem this whole time. I didn’t put it in a hashtag.
Kinda sad seeing just how much Twitter has rotted people’s critical thinking
I just wish we were back in Conan times. Eating human flesh, making sacrifices to gods, stealing and killing people for their goods. Now people just lay around on their social media like zombies, man.
No, unless it can be proven these people are using hacks or exploits, they will not be given any penalties for using this method.
This method is an intended feature currently; there has been no statement that it isn’t one. Feedback on this, in combination with high spawn rates and user experience, has been posted by other users.
New servers in general will be added when there is enough demand for them.
In the beginning this is mostly determined by whether all in-game servers for a given server type and region are full most of the time -or always-, or only a few servers and for a very short period of time each day.
I adjusted the name of this post to better reflect its contents.
IF someone knows how to make the that mechanic break the game when done a certain way, then yes. The idea is not the mechanic itself, but THE EXPLOITING of coding error in said mechanic to create issues on the server, whether because they fell it is the only way to accomplish something they need, or to lag out the server on purpose.
Finally. I don’t have anything useful to add, but I just wanted to thank you for pointing that out. It’s really annoying to see that one the one side of the argument you have people who don’t acknowleddge that knowingly killing server performance is an exploit and on the other side people who don’t acknowledge that cheesing the AI is not an exploit in and of itself.
Lagging the server out or purposely breaking a server is indeed exploiting, but the fact that the servers cant deal with that is a server issue that is likely caused by it being in early access… hardly a purposeful player action.
