IRT[469733] - Make it easier for (spider) followers to retain their loyalty

[archidus]

Heyo!

Okay so first of all, I'm loving the Webber rework, and I love that the game update 469733 helped with keeping followers when leaving the server or going to/out of the caves, but I still have a big issue with it and would like to know if it would be possible to make my (and problem other people's) life easier.

"Followers will now retain their loyalty to you upon reconnecting to the world if you are close enough to them when rejoining."

This is a very useful change for a character that's supposed to gather a large army and keep them for prolonged periods of time. And yes, I'm talking about Webber here.

My problem is that if I ever need to rollback, or just happen to get a lag spike that kicks me out of a server or any other reason that makes me reload the game/world and I'm not near my followers, I know they will probably lose their loyalty and, in the case of spiders, will be soundly sleeping wherever they were left off. 

Now I imagine this isn't a big deal for other characters, but Webber kinda wants to have a large army by his side, and it's kinda strange that you get this punishment just because your spider friends weren't near you when the day changed or when you got disconnected. And yes, I understand you can re-recruit them using more food, but it doesn't feel exactly fair that I have to spend a bunch of resources just to get them back to following me. It would be great if the spiders' special "get 3 for the price of 1" trait worked more nicely and ignored spiders already following you, but unfortunately it doesn't and most of the times the 'extra 2 spiders' you would get from a recruitment usually are 2 spiders that are already loyal to you because they're always near you in these situations.

So with that in mind, I just think if would be nice if we could get rid of the condition in that game change, so that the distance from the player doesn't affect whether followers will retain their loyalty or not. This would most certainly help not only Webber but also any other character that's got a few followers behind them and run into the same issue.

Another suggestion would be to just allow the Webby Whistle to 're-recruit' spiders in the sleeping state. I feel like this would be a huge improvement to Webber's playstyle and also kinda fits him - spiders are only sleeping because either 1) they lost their home or 2) they got forced into it by expensive means like a Pan's Flute or 3) their Webber master wasn't near them when he logged off. In any case, it's kinda like they're "lost" and have nowhere to go, so allowing them to be re-recruited using the whistle doesn't sound like it would be too OP. HOWEVER: I could see this being exploitable by people using the pan flute to just recruit a bunch of never-recruited-before spiders (like maybe an army of white spiders chasing another player in the ancient guardian area, or just from spiders awakened from their den using a whistle, then put to sleep, then whistle'd again so they would all magically become Webber's army without a single piece of meat being used), and to avoid that, the whistle could only work on spiders that have already been previously recruited.

A third suggestion, one that would also be very helpful and mild at the same time, would be to just improve the "get 3 for the price of 1" trait so that it doesn't target those that are already loyal to you.

I would also like to know if I'm the only one facing this issue - I mean, if this is a 'me' problem, then perhaps I could find a mod that deals with this situation...

 

Oh, and thanks for your time c: And sorry about the wall of text, English isn't my first language and sometimes it's hard to find the proper words to express my thoughts :<