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Killing a summoner's pet should flag you as a combatant, but not cause corruption. It should function like attacking you - has consequences but not the full you-killed-someone consequences.

Hello!

I know there is active PTR server engagement at the moment, but thought I would bring up a topic that's on a lot of folks minds: Caravans.

I am not going to come in and try to Product Design/Project Manage this part of the game, but thought I would offer some suggestions for a way to improve the current iteration.

Current Problem:
Mules are 'too safe' and allow for relatively frictionless gold generation. Though not the pinnacle of gold income, it is a close #2 and accessible by everyone(unfortunately, bots included). In a true PvX game, we'd love to see a return to some variation of P1/2's caravan systems.

I'm also aware that the new 'turn materials into crates' function is not going away. So, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, let me offer a few ideas on ways to improve the wheel:

• All crates should require Glint, regardless of Mule or Caravan.
• Caravans should have special 'basic' crates that require only glint, and can only be carried in a caravan
• There should be another crate type that combines the GLINT version and the CURRENT materials version. This will serve as the highest risk/highest reward crate. It requires both glint and mats, and can ONLY be carried in a caravan
• Making caravans great will relieve pressure of carpenters and animal husbandry artisans having half their profession being useless

What these improvements would ultimately help with would be twofold:
1) The playerbase would finally have a true PvX system that is enjoyable and engaging, while also balancing risk vs reward.
&
2) The glint required for EVERY type of crate would make it so glint finally has a use besides vendoring and citizen taxes.
2. (b) - The glint requirement would also force 'bots'(we all know they exist) to farm mobs as well. This could allow for healthy competition for player, while also reducing the bots' code to killing mobs effectively.

There's always going to be holes in any idea, so I am welcome to feedback. Please let me know your thoughts!

Thanks :)


As a possible, additional, side note that I thought of, but didn't want to take away from main caravan conversation:
**Possibility of a new crate type: buy order crates. These could be strictly materials + commodity tickets(like right now) + a potential unique ingredient related to a specific buy order(think slate, bluebell, etc.), but can be traded to other settlements on behalf of your current settlement for citizen experience, citizen tickets, and would act as a 'buy order' to that node. This could help both mayors, players, and build some initial 'settlement to settlement trading' that will come to the game later on.

The process of being dedicated to any given MMORPG is largely a matter of playing what you have, while imagining that you are playing a better game.

This has how it has been since the inception of the genre… no, even before the genre actually became what it was in the 'glory days'.

It's part of the nature of MMORPG players to 'imagine a better game'.

Ashes should be fine as long as no better version of the same type of game exists. For some, sure, better versions of a different game exist, or 'worse or similar versions of a different game exist and instead of hoping that other game becomes a better version of itself, they come here to try to change Ashes', but we're still mostly here as 'dreamers', imagining a better version of AoC that can exist.

Figured I/we'd say something to 'support' this post without just repeating everything in it, because we don't want to give the impression that we are out here all 'Fix this NOW!'. But we also want to make it clear, you do need to fix it. The OP is a pretty clear list of things that are 'yeah you don't get to ignore most of these' (inb4 new Tank Name thread). Many people will take breaks or limit the time in the games they play that do have at least most of those things, to help you test and get up to quality since you want to join the Market…

But I don't know a single person that will consider leaving the games they play if you launch without fixing most if not all of this list. So just a reminder not to go 'well we decided to prioritize X and cut Y' and then expect everyone to go 'Understandable, I'll log in shortly, have a nice day!'.

"The intent for crafting isnt meant to be BULK crafting just for profit/fodder, its supposed to be done so that you make a great item and sell it, customized even.

the issue you are all complaining about is that you can't just bang your head against a wall and level it up 1000x, its not balanced because its placeholder. its functional until the finished system is done."

How is the focus not meant for "Bulk crafting" as you put it when you consider the XP requirements they have implemented for crafting vs say gathering/processing. If what you said was true (which you won't find the quote of intrepid stating such), they would not have the xp requirements to level to reflect such a large sum. To reach such amount of XP, you must refer to the original post and craft in bulk.

This is especially true if you know how XP modifiers work for crafting currently in game. Which tells me this is intentional at the moment. If you are unaware, I'll help educate. If you craft let's say a wood crate that take 5 timber and larger crate that costs 10 timber, you get the same XP based on the material quality. (5Tx2)XP=(10T)XP. When you add in XP modifiers, they benefit each crafted completion as a flat rate. So the more you can build with the same quantity of mats, you get more total XP. The current form quite LITERALLY is telling people to bulk craft low quantity mat items for more overall XP.

This is EXACTLY how it is.

Putting in multiples and letting the timer tick down? A Re-Craft last selection button? I'm sure there are people who can think of something more elegant, but those are a start.

The dev team has recognized the following issues with the game/alpha test.

-The impact of RMT, bots, and cheating on fairness and progression
-PvP and corruption systems that don’t yet feel consistent or fully realized
-Issues surrounding caravans, crates, and risk-versus-reward gameplay
-Content and system bugs that interrupt gameplay
-Performance and stability problems that pull you out of the world

BOTS: This SHOULD have been a TOP focus from day 1. How it has even gotten to the point it's at is unbelievable. I ran from Mira to Joeva this morning and more than HALF the characters I seen were behaving like BOTS!. Gathering and trade routes are completely toast because of this. Not to mention the markets are fucked because of it.
RMT: The game is designed to allow players to BUY power. A player can simply purchase gold from a seller online and easily surpass someone who's played for weeks. This DESTROYS progression for EVERYONE. There is no joy in a game where you can buy power, legally or illegally. The players who buy it, basically get bored in a week and leave until the next iteration. The players who suffer it are discouraged and leave. No one wins EXCEPT the gold sellers. You've designed the game for RMT.
CHEATING: Fly hacks, overlays, duplications, ect. The realms are trashed. Wipe them.

PvP: What PvP? There is no PvP. No one kills unflagged players because corruption is a joke of a system. It's a half thought out shower thought, no one thought about the second, third, or fourth order of effects of such a simplistic system. Wars? Those are joke too. The open PvP areas are probably the best place for it, IF you can ever find anyone there that's worth PvPing. The chances you find a fair PvP fight ANYWHERE is near zero. You're either zerging or being zerged. It's SHIT PVP!
TRADE PACKS: THERE IS NO POINT TO THIS SYSTEM THE BOTS HAVE DESTROYED IT. THEY HAVE WON! Value reduction needs to be individually based. How many times YOU have ran that route, not how many times EVERYONE has ran that route. BOTS RUN THIS ROUTE SO YOU CAN'T, TO FUNNEL YOU TO BUY GOLD. Sure if you catch it when the node pops, then yeah you can get gold. But GL with that.
Risk vs Reward: This is a generalized statement, that means there should be a reason to X or do Y. No one risks corruption until they're 25 on purpose. Risk vs Reward is a joke right now. When there's risk there's no reward, where there's reward there's very little risk.

CONTENT: It's alpha… FINISH THE SYSTEMS/FEATURES. Why are you worried about CONTENT when there are MISSING FEATURES. What happened to a MVP? A minimal viable product. The demo of all the working features? Or are we still making the MVP?
BUGS: It's alpha, the gameplay will be interrupted, we signed up for this.

PERFORMANCE: Good luck with dynamic towns. None baked assets are never going to give you the performance needed. GPUs will be tac'd out.
STABILITY: It's gotten better.

The design choices have put you in this position. And you've been warned by the testers for YEARS. Corruption, crafting, bot, rmt, exploits, wars, and so on. There are numerous posts here on YOUR forums, from testers that have been here since it opened, telling you about the issues YOU FINALLY decide to recognize.

Design flaws:
1. System that supports RMT. You can buy power. Your gear is the ONLY thing what matters. You can't EVEN ATTACK without a weapon.
2. Wasted gear assets. Having each race show a different skin for each gear set is a waste of artist hours and breaks immersion. You could have 5x the assets at least had you not chosen this.
3. Unreasonable requirements for making low level high quality gear. No one will make epic apprentice gear. There's no point. You level so quickly through it. The only reason we see journeymen heroics and epics is because it's end game. BASIC MATH would have told you this would be issue.
4. Wasted opportunity for crafting gear. Crafting could have so much more depth. Using different ores, or gems, or leathers could have affected the type of stats or bonus's the gear got. Want more intelligence, put in epic emeralds. Want more strength use epic rubies. Want dex, use tendonite not copper. Region pieces can still govern the base status. Give the player a choice, not the server.
5. 18G boat gets destroyed, with no way to recover. You basically just cut off every causal from using a boat. Make them recoverable. Make a smaller cheaper boat for 1 to 3 players.
6. No fast bot reporting. Who did you make this game for? Gold sellers? How as this not in day 1? Anyone who has ever played an mmo before would have told this is would be a massive issue.
7. Harbringers. Why? What the hell was the point? To give people at end game more shit to do? Why don't you FINISH THE PLANNED FEATURES first?
8. Hunting, tanning, leatherworking. With huntable mobs so few, tanning and leatherworking are beyond ridiculous to do. Yes you can grind the reliable spots for wolves, raptors, otters, ect. If there's no bots, or other players contesting it. Maybe there's some spots I don't know of, not everything is on the codex/forge maps. But there's a reason those sell so well… How was hunting put behind harbingers?
9. Physical Power/Magic Power. The most basic system for scaling power. It's a GEAR SCORE. Want to invite a physical dps to your group, 'what's or physical power?'.
10. Gearing of 1-9, 10-19, 20-29. Is flawed. You go from being over powered to swinging a wet noodle. Sure IF you get a recipe that you can actually craft you might get 1 or 2 pieces that help you hit harder, or take less damage. But it won't matter until you roll over to the next 10s and equip that level blocks gear.
11. TANK. Why? just why did you name it that? Why isn't the Cleric called "Healer". You named a class a party role. WTF?!? does it really matter? No, but it's indictive of your other choices.
12. Where's religion? Is that getting scraped? Is it not important enough to add in now for testing?
13. AOE grinding. This is trash, it's trash leveling. You have to fix this. This is power leveling. It's not fun. Solo exp should be the slowest, 2's 3's groups should be next up, full 8 at a poi should be the best. But no go to a place with mobs that hardly leash, gather in as much as your tank and healer can handle. And burn it down with aoe.
14. Lack of PvP. There's no PvP in the game. There's ganking and zerging. Without meaningful PvP there is no PvP. There is no end to good ideas for meaningful PvP. Just read the forums.
15. More PvP. If you flag up before 25 you get exp loss (call it debt all you want but it's lost time.) As a 25 you don't lose anything. No exp loss if you die to a 'max' level player, or no exp loss in pvp. If a 25 goes corrupt they really only do so with friend around to kill them and pick up their stuff. It's what I do… There needs to be a chance of your items going to the void. Corrupted players should have a risk of de-leveling.
16. Corruption: It's incomplete. It's anti-pvp, and that' by design, to police the players in the open world, but there is really no other PvP.
17. Where the hell is the Arena? I want an Arena with Power Level classes, like weight classes. 0-100, 101-200, ect.
18. Where are the factions? There's your guild that's it. Your citizen ship doesn't mean anything. An extra storage container? Relic bonus, if you care about it. Mayorship? That's a joke in itself.
19. Town storage stacks to 44? I can hold more on my character than I can put in storage…
20. Guild storage limitations. No way to upgrade it.
21. Guild bank, no coin storage?
22. Flying mount advantage is way too high. People want to be mayor JUST for the mount, then they ignore the town.
23. Class skill choices? There's hardly any choice for the classes. At 25 you'll be able to select just about all of them. The only thing that will differ between you and another player is how much time you spent crafting your epic bis or how much crypto you spent on game gold from a RMT site.
24. The markets are basically an AH with an extra step of having to click on each 'store'. Was this the best? Lets not remake amazon market place, but there could definitely be a more immersive and functional way to setup the base markets.
25. Lack of instanced dungeons/pois/content. This is a HUGE missed opportunity. Not just for PvE content but for actual PvP content. I'm okay with there being limited instanced content, but currently there is zero, and there is nothing on the horizon. I like the POIs and pocket dungeons, but a lack controlled area where skills can actually be honed and tested is a critical miss by the design team.
26. The VFX is overwhelming, There's too much damn glittery, flashy, effects on the mobs from the other party members. YOU CAN'T SEE ANYTHING PASSED THE VFX!
27. The UI crafting. It's boring, crafting isn't engaging. There are great systems out there they could pull from but what do we get? Data entry levels of fun. And so many clicks to make one item, then you have to do it again, and again.

This is a critique of the design choices, not the developers actually making the things happen passed to them from the idea fairy team. God speed to those engineers, developers, and artists.

Can Ashes of Creation rise from its own ashes?