risk vs rewards for caravans

Jexz

Didn't see anything on the wiki for it. I know it will all change in 2 years but...
I don't really see much risk for attacking caravans. The rewards are scaleable as you can change the reward %.
But as far as I see the caravan owner is risking quite a bit. I guess for potentially great reward.
Part of the profit will go into guards and the cost sink into their caravan and repair if destroyed.

So is the risk from the attackers just loss of XP (wont matter if they are lvl 50) loss of loot (wont mater if they have nothing on them ) or is the % of the loot going to be so low that it's not worth the time. low risk/reward in attacking the caravan and time spent searching.

Kneczhevo

The risk for the attackers... Failure?

Beeper

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Caravans

There's going to be a lot of vested interest in protecting caravans of all types. This means in attacking you'll often be at a significant disadvantage. On top of that, one of the major risks will be being labeled a troublemaker by the community. If you constantly attack caravans, then you probably won't be welcome too many places.

Jubilum

Strategic caravan assaults will be a thing. If a siege has been declared on your node, it would be a good strategy to attack your enemies moving supplies to the front lines. If you have been selling the ore you've been processing into ingots to the local armor craftier to make his high end armor to sell on the market. He comes to you one day and says he can't buy your ingots anymore because another craftier in a nearby node has been shipping the same armor and is undercutting his price. Then it is time to organize a caravan assault on the incoming armor shipment to both sustain your customers income as well as yours.

My hope is that assaulting a caravan just because it is there will not be a frequent occurrence. It should take planning, and be very difficult to be successful.

Creighton

After reviewing the wiki, there do not appear to be any inherent risks unique to attacking caravans. It's likely that the limiting factor on attacks will be that they can happen at any time, so it will be hard to organize and attack one effectively. Additionally there will be NPC + the potential for player guards who will escort the caravan. So an attacking group would need to be able to surmount that.

I predict this system will change in Alpha/ Beta. Traders are going to hate that they're getting hit on nearly every caravan they send out. There doesn't appear to be a significant enough downside to just attacking every caravan you see when you have a group.

One way this could be addressed is by allowing bounty hunters to pursue people who attack caravans, but that idea would require a change in how bounty hunting supposedly will work.

Jubilum

creighton wrote: »

After reviewing the wiki, there do not appear to be any inherent risks unique to attacking caravans. It's likely that the limiting factor on attacks will be that they can happen at any time, so it will be hard to organize and attack one effectively. Additionally there will be NPC + the potential for player guards who will escort the caravan. So an attacking group would need to be able to surmount that.

I predict this system will change in Alpha/ Beta. Traders are going to hate that they're getting hit on nearly every caravan they send out. There doesn't appear to be a significant enough downside to just attacking every caravan you see when you have a group.

One way this could be addressed is by allowing bounty hunters to pursue people who attack caravans, but that idea would require a change in how bounty hunting supposedly will work.

You are probably right about being little risk other than death. The main deterrent should be the very low chance of being successful.

Boom1

I would think it's much easier to attack a caravan than it is to defend one unless certain buffs are given for the event.

Reward - You get the caravan's stuff. You impact the economy of someone else's node.

Risk - Your armor is damaged from all the dying, and you become known in the server as a bandit.

Jubilum

Boom wrote: »

I would think it's much easier to attack a caravan than it is to defend one unless certain buffs are given for the event.

Reward - You get the caravan's stuff. You impact the economy of someone else's node.

Risk - Your armor is damaged from all the dying, and you become known in the server as a bandit.

Attacking will be easy, but will it be successful. You and 3-4 of your buddies may be able to kill the guards both npc and players. But, can your dps bust open that wagon loot box with a couple million HP, before a posse can be organized for a counter attack. Busting that loot box open with 4 people could take upto an hour, every thieve I have ever talked to is looking to get away from the scene of the crime as fast as possible.

Unless you are just looking to kill people then by all means go for it.

Jexz

I don't imagine it will take more than 5-10 min to bust it open. If it takes any longer the caravan owner can just exploit it and DC. Maybe that will be a thing though. Soon as its attacked owner DC's and the party just has to stall for 10 min
I like the idea of tying the bounty system into it. Since the current corruption system is too prohibitive to give consistent content to Bounty hunters. Make it so Bounty hunters can see you on the map till you fence the goods. Creating more Risk for the caravan looters and more pvp action. Given bounty hunters probably wont have any loot for the caravan robbers, Bounty hunters could drop scalps/tickets to turn into the thieves guild for a bonus.

Xenantaya

I think the OP is basically correct; there's a lot of upside (in terms of both PvP content and resources / gold) for attacking caravans, and low downside. The only real drawbacks to attacking caravans seem to be (i) time spent locating caravans, which could be substantial; and (ii) getting a large enough group together to overcome any defenders, which I'm guessing most of the time will just be NPCs that the caravan owner has hired using caravan skill points and which a small group of (4-5?) relatively skilled players should be able to take out.

While there's a been a lot of discussion about open world PvP and how some pure PvE players dislike the system where they can be attacked at any time, I actually think there won't be much open world ganking because corruption is so punishing in terms of XP loss upon death, potential gear loss on death, any one can attack you, bounty hunters can track you, you can't use nodes, etc.

Instead, I think most gankers basically will become groups of caravan bandits, destroying caravans and leading to a lot of complaints from solo or small guild PvE players whose goods are lost (i.e., "I spent 5 hours gathering ore and 3 jerks came by and destroyed my caravan and made me waste my entire day; I hate this game"). Players may have to join merchant guilds that pay people to protect their caravans, but if my experience in Albion Online is any indication guarding caravans is a boring job that few players will want to do.

Unless the NPC caravan guards are exceptionally beefy at launch, one of my predictions for AOC post-launch is the Intrepid will make destroying caravans more difficult, either by increasing NPC strength, applying a limited form of corruption or stat loss to personal caravan attackers, and/or something else.

Yuyukoyay

Technically by dying to the groups protecting the caravan you are giving them more resources to stockpile. So there is a minor risk associated that you are giving someone who will have a powerful economy a slightly more powerful economy if the defense is successful.

It seems to just be a system to force pvp than anything else really.

BlackBrony

If I understand correctly, caravan routes will happen between friendly nodes. This means that if you're a citizen of a node that is receiving this caravan, you actually have a vested interest in allowing such caravan to arrive, because it might allow better items for crafting in your node, or improve your node.

Now, let's say you attack anyway, maybe caravan's owner gets to see who you are, and now he/she can complain to the attacker's mayor because you're ruining in trading business.
Or this could cause an issue with politics between such nodes.

I'm not entirely sure how does that system work, but even if ALL caravans are open to PvP, there's a risk beyond death that involves other players/nodes.

Xenantaya

There's a discussion here of the three types of caravans: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Caravan_types. I don't think that mayoral or quest caravans will be at too great of risk, as likely some players will travel with and defend them, discouraging bandit groups. I think the bigger issue is personal caravans, where a solo player is trying to move goods around using the caravan, which will be prey to players who like PvP and aren't too concerned about their reputation.

Yuyukoyay

Ya it's one of the big reasons I don't want multi box to run rampant because solo players being punished by the caravan system seems like a pretty core part of the game. It will be equivalent to running lowbie dungeons in WoW. It's where you are probably going to meet the most people doing it. It's the core of the social aspect of the game. Every other social aspect is going to branch from this.

So hopefully it works out because I'm kind of sick of MMO's being a formula now.