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Is the family summoning system needed?
Wandering Mist
Moderator, Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha One
After hearing Steven's reasoning for the family summoning system during the Ashes Pathfinder podcast, I've had a bit of time to think about it and I think that no matter what measures you put in place, it will always be open to abuse. With that in mind, I have 2 questions for everyone:
1. Do you think Steven's concern of players with small amounts of time not being able to play with each other due to lack of fast travel is valid (i.e. is the family summoning system needed)?
2. Assuming Steven's concerns are valid, do you think the benefits of the family summoning system outweigh the exploitation that can occur?
1. Do you think Steven's concern of players with small amounts of time not being able to play with each other due to lack of fast travel is valid (i.e. is the family summoning system needed)?
2. Assuming Steven's concerns are valid, do you think the benefits of the family summoning system outweigh the exploitation that can occur?
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And I only read the title.
Either that or maybe they could make a summoned player be nerfed in PvP for 30-60 minutes after summoning or something? People are absolutely going to be using this summoning for PvP to try bringing larger numbers to their side of the battle, and they need to account for that in some sort of reasonable way.
It would eliminate most of the potential avenues of abuse that I have come up with so far.
There will be more, but of the ones I can think of, I think this would end most of them fairly quickly.
I still don't understand the need for the ability though. It almost seems like they had a family system in place, but no point to it - and so they threw this in to give the family system a reason to exist.
It just feels so out of place with the rest of the game.
"TOI 11th...? Ye just summon me bruh....."
Yes.
2. Assuming Steven's concerns are valid, do you think the benefits of the family summoning system outweigh the exploitation that can occur?
Yes.
In your opinion, with any given system, how many times do you think it needs to be used for it's intended purpose vs how many times it is used in an exploititive way before the system is considered not worth it?
To me, if a system is used 10 times normally, and 1 time in an exploititive manner, the system is on the verge of being considered a failure.
With this system, it will be the other way around, with at least 10 exploititive uses for every 1 use as intended - if they don't make any changes to what we know of it right now that number could go up to 100 exploititive uses for every 1 as intended.
I really am curious to know where you consider this ratio to be acceptable, or if this is just a case of "I could use this, so I like it, to hell with the downsides" type thing.
2. Even if people have to put thought into how far from the “family area” they travel, it still doesn’t justify implementing a fast travel system we all know will get abused.
Still not convinced it would be a good idea even for the Scientific Node!
Distance is supposed to matter, and a fast travel system will be open to abuse and unintended consequences.
Therefore I believe any benefits of a family summoning system will be so minimal that they are not even worth the time & effort of designing & implementing.
My personal preference would be no fast travel, period.
However, I could live with only allowing fast travel via the Scientific Node system, assuming:
1) It is extremely limited to within the ZOI, between the town center, any vassal nodes and your freehold
2) Has a large cooldown (like 22hrs or something - basically a once per day thing)
3) Denies access to fast travel if you have:
3a) any gatherables in your inventory
3b) any processed goods in your inventory
3c) either a mule or caravan summoned
But is it a cool idear to summon your best friends to your position every 1-2 hours ? yes it is.
The Problem we all are scared off is the abuse of the system, but the thing is that ppl will abuse EVERYTHING if they find a way to abuse it thats just the way ppl work.
People will always look for the fastest ways or the biggest advantages, that could be bringing 20 summoners to a boss because they do more dmg than other classes or it could mean they ignore the normal mechanics of an boss fight because they found out a way where they can stuck the boss and just kill it without any danger.
so the decision we all have to make is "do we really wana compromise the game to a minimum just so there is lesser things they could abuse ?"
Every single thing that goes in to a game needs to have thought put in to it as to how abusive it will be, and in what ways. if it is going to be abused more than it is going to be used in the intended manner, then it is obviously a bad thing to have in the game.
This is one of the basics of good game design. If a game is just a collection of random systems and mechanics that have no thought put in to them other than "is this cool", then you don't have a very good game at all.
This summon ability will be abused significantly more than it will used as intended, thus without significant changes, it's addition will be bad game design.
Thinking about it more, I agree that the potential abuse outweighs the benefits of the system and its intended use.
1) A distance limit to limit crazy mobility around the map and use it for its intended purpose of helping people group up for dungeons and other stuff.
2) Increased cast time beyond the 30-60 sec stated. I'm talking about in the range of 3-5 minutes.
3) A possible pvp debuff which could be explained away by teleportation being disorientating or something.
5) If the cooldown which I believe is tied to the person who is summoned is also going to be so short at 30 minutes (I wouldnt mind even longer, 30 minutes seems like nothing) then some sort of daily limit on teleports is needed to prevent people using it for easy material transportation.
5) Related to the above concern, possibly an inventory/weight limit where if you are carrying to much some of your materials could be lost in transit.
Just some added restrictions to think about if the system is seen as a big problem in alpha/beta testings which while all of them together may not be completely viable but can in some ways reduce the pvp and material transportation abuses without significantly hampering the intended purpose of the system.
Additionally a lot of my opinion on the family system may be changed by other transportation systems like flight paths which may negate most of the need for the family summoning.
No
1. Do you think Steven's concern of players with small amounts of time not being able to play with each other due to lack of fast travel is valid (i.e. is the family summoning system needed)?
No
2. Assuming Steven's concerns are valid, do you think the benefits of the family summoning system outweigh the exploitation that can occur?
No
If you only have a couple of hours to play, wont your friends who has more time to play, out lvl and get way ahead, making the content they do out of your reach.
45days 4-6hrs each day to reach lvl50 according to peons video atleast.
If you only can play 1-2hrs each day, 90+ days for lvl 50?
Good point.
I have friends, they wait for me, and I wait for them.
If yours don't, I would suggest that what you have is something other than friends.
Aha and then you wait like a dork for 30min or so instead of just playing.
No, we find something else to do for 30 minutes, because waiting 30 minutes for a friend is nothing.
There is always some gathering, crafting, looking at the market, organizing things in a freehold or even just killing mobs for certs that can be done.
Do all that mundane stuff while you're waiting for your friends, then when they are all ready to go, you go.
As far as I am concerned, that is what friends do.
That's exactly what im saying if every time when you login you need to do something mundane, boring, annoying, then are you really looking forward to login in? On normal working day I don't have that much time to play and if i need to spend some portion of that time for this then will I really want to play AOC. I am sure im not alone in this....
Have some faith that the developers will address any inbalance or abuse issues regarding family teleport over the course of Alpha and Beta.
Hello Mr krojak ^^
I mean, if you are waiting for a friend, you are probably not doing the most interesting content anyway - because you will want to wait for your friend to do it.
What difference does it make as to exactly which not that interesting thing you are doing?
As do I, but that faith in Intrepid leads me to assume they will get rid of this idea, as anything that could be useful along these lines will be exploited far more often than it will be used for it's intended purpose.