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Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Stevens reply on family summoning at Ashes Pathfinders #84
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Sounds great how he explained its "anti-cheat" mechanic. 30sec-1min cast time for the summon and a 30min CD on the ability. But, anyone else concerned how easy its to chain it? For 10 people it still means 5 people needs to travel, but if everyone has chained their summon to 1 more player, its still only 5 needing traveling. Boosting your raid/gank/war party from 5 to 10 in 1min, they can then summon 5 more people and so on. Adding a 30min CD on the ability for the person being summoned aswell, would solve this no? Or add a reagent cost to the summon. Or some kind of PvP debuff on whoever is summoned. Just abit worried about shock PvP partys with this mechanic.
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I also like the idea of potentially making it a daily cooldown. And also making it so you drop certain base materials when you take it. Meaning if you're out farming or crafting, there is a cost to dropping everything(pun intended) to go help your family to attack or defend something. However, if you were just late to the party, you can get a quick summon from town or your freehold.
This would also prevent the abuse of transporting goods free of cost, although from what I understand the amount of goods a single character can carry isn't that large. With only a 30 minute cooldown I could see people either running multiple accounts or logging onto alts every 30 minutes to do a quick teleport run.
From what I've heard Steven say, they will be keeping a very close on this mechanic throughout the Alphas, Betas, and even on launch. I am sure they will find systems to put in place to prevent any abuse, just throwing some of my ideas out there.
Yup. This one will be closely watched during testing. Dual cool down is another idea I’ve had as well
I am confused as to how the system as I understand it could be abused.
If you can only have eight family members then how would you chain it into a zerg? 1 person summons the others but to turn a group from 10 to 100 you would at least need 1 person from each family already being in the same spot... I dont understand how that would be abused.
Using it to abuse the goods transportation system is another possibility.
Given more time I personally could think of a few more and you know others will find even more. Also doesn't mean there aren't potential systems available to prevent a lot of these.
The scouting party summons 1 each, scouting party now has 30min CD, the summoned people does not.
The summoned people, summons 5 new people and so on.
A scouting party of 10 would turn into 80 in 7mins, if cast time is 1min.
It wouldn't be abusing the system, if it is the system. But a game without fast traveling, it
seems to be a quick way of moving people around.
Another issue that comes to mind is alts + multi accounting. Group them as family members, and have them logged out around the world for fast and easy travel.
Looking forward to see the end result tho, after all the testing.
I appreciate that guys. I get it now. Yeah now that you spell it out for my dumbass I can see the slippery slope the system presents. That being said I suppose it will get changed or removed as a feature if and when it presents issues. As far as transporting resources between nodes with no risk simply dont allow people to port with resources in the inventory.
Assuming this is what you have in mind, anything less than an 18 hour cooldown on being summoned is ripe for actual full on abuse - though sadly not the kind of abuse that will manifest in alpha or beta.
18 hours or more should see the potential avenues for abuse that I already have in mind minimized - though honestly not entierly neutralized - you can't have an instant teleport system like this in a game like Ashes without there being some abuse happen.
As an aside, one of the avenues of abuse I can see happening is guilds will have a designated looter, and as soon as the guild has finished what ever content they are on, that looter will be summoned to somewhere safe to deposit the material drops from the evenings content. This will mean that crafting materials that drop from boss encounters will either rarely or actually never be on the line in PvP.
I can't see a possible way to have this system and keep the notion of PvP battles over PvE encounter dropped materials short of actually cheesing the entire game (creating items that players can't be summoned with, as an example - pure cheese).
Hence a part of the need for a long cooldown.
I see. What about the idea of distance related cooldown?
That family member would have to be online or filled by an alt to guarantee an escape. If part of your strategy is weakening your party in order to have a teleport back I think you should be able to do that. I also find an 18 hour timer too restrictive, but would prefer something like a combat timer that requires you to get away to a safe space or kill the enemies to teleport out.
The base argument I believe noaani is trying to make is that try-hard players are going to meta-game the mechanics and try to make it become something unintended, which is why Steven stated earlier that it is a point that will be closely watched.
18 hours is the minimum timer needed to not make this system a de facto replacement for caravans.
The idea of this teleport is to assist people with limited time being able to join their friends that are already out running content, all the talk about using it for teleporting guilds and such is people pointing out the obvious avenues of abuse of this system that will be common.
With the idea of the teleport being to get people that may have logged in late to join their friends - the notion of an 18 hour cooldown should prove more than enough to meet this.
I actually agree.
I can't see a why to add the summon ability to the game in a way that won't be easily exploited in some manner.
I think there are other means ensure that caravans are more efficient than teleporting than one large timer preventing you from being summoned.
If you have to be ported to your group every time you log on to play, you should organize yourself better.
A system like this shouldn't be relied on as always being there. It should be something that is there to use if - as an example - you are held up after work.
I see this as a viable solution for the caravan problem. A variable timer based on how far the players are from each other. In the same town the cooldown may only be a couple of minutes but if they are on opposites sides for the map it could be several hours.
Also seems like a way to get around a potential ambush, or quickly pass through an otherwise hostile area.
Literally anything done to make the use of this easier or more common will result in more situations in which it can and will be used to bypass key aspects of the games risk structure.
You can use the current time to achieve the same thing. This would make the timer longer over longer distance so it doesn't make it easier or more common.
If you are using that as a point to remove teleportation completely, I'm not going to go there.
You could, but then you are locked out of it for the day, meaing you still had to get back.
Again, if this is in the game, it will be exploited no end. The idea of limitations to it are not to prevent exploits, it is to cut them down as much as possible.
The best suggestion to that end remains to simply remove the teleport from the game - but that is not what I am suggesting. I am simply pointing out how easy other peoples suggestions are to abuse.
Essentially, when ever the timer for this is up, it will be abused in one way or another. This ability will be used in an abusive manner an order of magnitude more than it will be used for it's legitimate purpose.
Groups in Ashes are supposed to actually go to the in game location of the dungeon if they want to run that dungeon. This system is not an over all bypass of that - it is a way to get that friend that was held up at work or whatever in to the dungeon easier.
There should be no need for the whole family to need to cast this more than twice every 18 hours. If you have a group of 8 friends, and more than 2 of them are not there yet, you wait for them.
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You are assuming you can be the member of more than 1 family which they said you could not. Meaning you would have the same family list as the person you summoned you. So you summoning after you were summoned wouldn't summon anyone who didn't already get the same summon you got.
If your whole family gets the summoned with one use of the ability (as per Archeage Hero summon abilities) then you would only need one cooldown to turn a group of 5 players to a full raid of 40.
So instead of it taking 7 minutes to do, it would take 1 minute.