Greetings, glorious adventurers! If you're joining in our Alpha One spot testing, please follow the steps here to see all the latest test info on our forums and Discord!
Options
Suggestion: Family Summoning
Rivani
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
I would like to start by acknowledging that we havn't even seen this system in action yet and disclosing that I am personally not a fan of the family summoning system. I do, however, understand its intended purpose and can see the positives of such a system on the health and diversity of this games playerbase. In addition, I acknowledge that we don't know everything about how Intrepid intends to implement the system.
So for those that don't know, Steven has relatively recently introduced 'Family Summoning' as a planned system in the game, in order to allow for groups of players (8 if it is a full family) to play together without necessarily needing to undertake hours of travel to group up. It is safe to say that this system is designed with the more casual playerbase (I would include myself in that group) in mind, since someone who is not a hardcore player could potentially lose very significant amounts of their available time to play the game just travelling to... play the game. I believe Steven has stated the cooldown on this system/cast/channel to he thirty minutes.
*Edited for clarity, adding a quote of the current anti-abuse measures Steven has outlined*
There has been a significant amount of discussion about it lately (particularly on the discord), and as a result I have some suggestions on how the system could be modified to help mitigate potential metagaming of the system while allowing it to work as intended:
1. Modify the cooldown of the family summon to twelve (12) hours. This allows the system to serve its function while not allowing the system to be exploited and metagamed in a way that cheapens adventuring in the game and 'shrinks' the world for players. Casual players that have only a few hours each day (or however many days) are still able to use the summon on their next log-in if required.
2. Make the summon a 60 second 1:1 channel, or something like a 5-10 minute multi-target passive channel. This would work hand-in-hand with the other countermeasures Steven has outlined to prevent metagaming and abuse of the system by slowing summoning down.
These are my two main suggestions. I'm interested in what the community thinks- I cannot claim these are original ideas, I just havn't seen anyone else make a forum post about it. Very interested to hear everyones thoughts.
As a third half-suggestion, it would be great to get Stevens thoughts on potentially locking 'Family Summoning' to geographic locations. In particular, potentially to taverns. I'm not sure who frist came up with this idea, but I saw Milky posting about it on discord and I think it has multiple layers of positive effects.
1. It would work really well with the above suggestions to mitigate metagaming and abuse of the system by forcing people to summon on taverns rather than exactly on a dungeon or raid entrance etc.
2(a). It would add an extra incentive for players to have taverns on their freeholds- and perhaps to be as competitive as possible in the 'buffs' those taverns could have on offer.
2(b) It would add a new factor players have to take into consideration with freehold placement. Is it worth it demolishing and moving my tavern to near that new dungeon? Etc.
I can see some potential drawbacks of requiring taverns for family summoning- particularly the argument that taverns won't exist at the start of the game. I think this can easily be solved by expanding the summon locations to the starting camps/world gates. Other then that people will have to develop nodes for dungeons and raids, which means by the time such content is readily available feeholds and taverns should be popping up across the map.
I am excited to hear the communities thoughts on these ideas- and perhaps even Stevens thoughts? I apologise if I've gotten anything wrong in my post (like missing something Steven has said etc.).
P.S: Here is a strawpoll I made on what kind of cd people think should be on family summoning- it is in no way an official poll, nor intended as feedback or to apply community pressure for anything. I'm just interested in gauging where the community stands as the discord can be a very echo-chambery place sometimes. https://strawpoll.com/8kdpu1sqz/r
So for those that don't know, Steven has relatively recently introduced 'Family Summoning' as a planned system in the game, in order to allow for groups of players (8 if it is a full family) to play together without necessarily needing to undertake hours of travel to group up. It is safe to say that this system is designed with the more casual playerbase (I would include myself in that group) in mind, since someone who is not a hardcore player could potentially lose very significant amounts of their available time to play the game just travelling to... play the game. I believe Steven has stated the cooldown on this system/cast/channel to he thirty minutes.
*Edited for clarity, adding a quote of the current anti-abuse measures Steven has outlined*
Long duration cast (30 seconds to a minute) with an approximate 30 minute cooldown that slowly summons each of your family members to your location (up to eight members).[1][4] Players cannot be summoned in the following cases:
While in combat, if they are corrupted, or if they are engaged in an event, such as node wars, guild wars, sieges, arenas or participation in the caravan system.[5]
If they have mats, gatherables or certs in their inventory.[3]
There has been a significant amount of discussion about it lately (particularly on the discord), and as a result I have some suggestions on how the system could be modified to help mitigate potential metagaming of the system while allowing it to work as intended:
1. Modify the cooldown of the family summon to twelve (12) hours. This allows the system to serve its function while not allowing the system to be exploited and metagamed in a way that cheapens adventuring in the game and 'shrinks' the world for players. Casual players that have only a few hours each day (or however many days) are still able to use the summon on their next log-in if required.
2. Make the summon a 60 second 1:1 channel, or something like a 5-10 minute multi-target passive channel. This would work hand-in-hand with the other countermeasures Steven has outlined to prevent metagaming and abuse of the system by slowing summoning down.
These are my two main suggestions. I'm interested in what the community thinks- I cannot claim these are original ideas, I just havn't seen anyone else make a forum post about it. Very interested to hear everyones thoughts.
As a third half-suggestion, it would be great to get Stevens thoughts on potentially locking 'Family Summoning' to geographic locations. In particular, potentially to taverns. I'm not sure who frist came up with this idea, but I saw Milky posting about it on discord and I think it has multiple layers of positive effects.
1. It would work really well with the above suggestions to mitigate metagaming and abuse of the system by forcing people to summon on taverns rather than exactly on a dungeon or raid entrance etc.
2(a). It would add an extra incentive for players to have taverns on their freeholds- and perhaps to be as competitive as possible in the 'buffs' those taverns could have on offer.
2(b) It would add a new factor players have to take into consideration with freehold placement. Is it worth it demolishing and moving my tavern to near that new dungeon? Etc.
I can see some potential drawbacks of requiring taverns for family summoning- particularly the argument that taverns won't exist at the start of the game. I think this can easily be solved by expanding the summon locations to the starting camps/world gates. Other then that people will have to develop nodes for dungeons and raids, which means by the time such content is readily available feeholds and taverns should be popping up across the map.
I am excited to hear the communities thoughts on these ideas- and perhaps even Stevens thoughts? I apologise if I've gotten anything wrong in my post (like missing something Steven has said etc.).
P.S: Here is a strawpoll I made on what kind of cd people think should be on family summoning- it is in no way an official poll, nor intended as feedback or to apply community pressure for anything. I'm just interested in gauging where the community stands as the discord can be a very echo-chambery place sometimes. https://strawpoll.com/8kdpu1sqz/r
1
Comments
My suggestion would be for the entire family to share the summon cooldown which would allow you to have a cooldown ranging from 30min to 2h but only enable one summon at a time (there's also the option of offering two summon charges with a slightly larger CD), I generally believe this would fit most friend groups as either most people log off in the same general area or dont all log on at exactly the same time.
This removes the ability for one person to consecutively summon their entire family which I believe is the most detrimental part of the system. While still providing people a system to keep their friends together.
So far I only know the family summon is 30 minutes cooldown with about 1 minutes cast time, 8 player per family (no restriction on have alt in the same account joining the same family), multi account is allowed as long as no script/bot and finally there is no hearthstone/town portal item/skill in the game yet. (please correct me if I am wrong)
As a hardcore gamer, this is too good to be true and I am going to abuse the crap out of it with multibox to get every advantage as I can when I am solo.
Below is just theorycrafting base on what I know about the game right now.
Need resource for node/freehond: Create 3 alt on main account and 4 alt on 2nd account, invite all to same family. Run main to the destination node that you want to buy resource from > teleport 3 alt in as mule > use remaining 4 to teleport everyone back. "BUT Caravan carries 10x more stuff than a single player" you said, well you need to spend X amount of time travel X amount of distance with X amount of player as escort and HOPE you will win EVERY gank on the way. Each time a gank happen it delay your delivery and longer your caravan is exposed the higher the risk more people join the raid. While I just...summon myself out with 40% worth of caravan resource and it only cost me the summoning time (no risk). And I will just repeat it since cooldown is so short that I should be able to repeat it when I run back to the market and repeat again.
No hearthstone/teleport item in the game yet: solved by having alt on my freehold/nodes/outside dungeons. Everytime I summon myself that is X amount of time i saved from travel which I can spend on improving my level or craft.
There should be more I can think of but these will do.
In case anyone is wondering, I would like the system to be removed and ask Steve to think of something better but I doubt that will happen, so I voted 24 hr cooldown on the poll.
For one thing, the events listed limit some of the abuse already - if you're in a node war, guild war, siege, arena, participation in the caravan attack/defense system, or corrupted - you already can't abuse the family summoning to quickly get large amounts of people to one location.
I think that already weeds out a lot of larger guilds that might be trying to abuse the system because they're often going to be involved in such events, or at least enough of their members would be that summoning several families worth of people would be like herding cats. You only need one person in a family to screw up the summon for everyone. Sure you can summon the other 6, but if that one guy is off doing his own thing - and there's always plenty of these in a guild - they don't get summoned, it's on a 30 min CD, and now everyone has to wait for them to manually run over to wherever you are.
Even many smaller guilds that may just want to summon one 8 person family would have to deal with those things before being able to organize.
Secondly, having crafting mats, gatherables, or hunting certificates in your bags means you also can't be summoned. I'd venture a guess that this eliminates almost any player whose hasn't just logged in and has been playing for a while. You'll have to go back to town and empty your bags before you can be summoned, which already almost guarantees your tavern request is already a necessity.
For the casual who just logged in and wants to go dungeon running with friends in the short amount of time they have, they'd easily be able to be summoned no problem. I'm sure there are loopholes that exist but I think the restrictions they already have in place serve to limit abuse fairly well already. The only thing that's unclear is whether the 30 min CD is shared amongst all family members. I'm going to assume it is, because otherwise the CD would be useless.
Wait where do you read that?
It's in the description of the skill on the wiki and there's a corresponding quote from Steven.
Steven either said it on forums or on the discord- I do know I have seen proof that this is the case.
There's no reason there shouldn't be some barrier to entry or condition required to family summon. Can't do it until a node is relatively leveled up so that there are taverns you can meet up at? That's just how the system works.
Can't do it unless one of you is a summoner? That's just how the system works.
If you give limitations, players who want to use the system can plan around being subject to those limitations.
I agree with the principle behind this suggestion. One thing that World of Warcraft did properly was building this kind of I guess you could call it group-ulility into Warlock, allowing them to summon party members for dungeons. I still think it would be a cool unique idea to at least try out something like tavern-locked summoning during a testing phase to see what happens. That's the beauty of those testing phases, if Steven and the team are open to trying these kinds of suggestions out, right?
You're on AOC forums, it's not possible to bore someone to death here!
Also I would add in there, to prevent its abuse in PvP / Sieges, there needs to be a long PvP specific debuff (call it summoning sickness)
I have been a hard core nerd for 2 decades, DnD, MMOs, comics, if it's nerd culture, I'm almost certainly down.. when I learned about ashes, just like most of you, I felt like our culture was under a full blown assult from every direction. Corporations were farming us for our money, Hollywood was stealing our creations, politics had totally infiltrated our hobby to the point we couldn't escape for even 5 minutes..
Steven was something akin to the geek Messiah. He knew what had been lost, and he was willing to sacrifice so much to get it back. Like most of you, I was sceptical, and like an abused wife, who had finally left for good, I was terrified that this was just one more deception to prey upon my hard earned money yet again... But he delivered... Years on he was still grinding, with a team of dedicated people who seem to genuinely understand how much our imaginations mean to us in a world where a hobby can stand between ourselves and a bullet... (No I'm not suicidal, but I have seen hobbies save soldiers from my unit)
Now I am watching almost trivial aspects of the game create a rift in our treasured community, at a time where Ashes is creating it's much needed, and DESERVED momentum..
I have a 65 hour minimum work week, a newborn baby, and multiple dependents. Family obligations, etc... But I'm a hard core gamer at heart.. my wife, my family, and I all play games together. It's how we bond. It's how the Democrat and Republican spend time together in a meaningful way without fighting. It's how the Christian and the atheist enjoy one another's company without moralizing and philosophising everything.. games are more important to my family than I can even explain on a forum. The family summon is quite possibly the single most important feature to this game for people in my situation.. my wife might be able to play for an hour, or just 10 minutes before the baby needs fed.. then play again for a few hours after he takes a nap.. if you knew how much that time means to people like her, you would not be disparaging this system.. when we are playing, then her youngest brother gets home from his 9-5, the ability to join up with his family is more precious than most people realize, and possibly the only way he will socialize with his sister and brother-in-law. Many of you younger gamers don't know what tabletop DND is like, or how it felt to play Neverwinter.. but the magic was palpable.. I've been longing for this for 17 years.
Tldr; (but you should read it) Trust Steven's judgement on this one.. he is right to have family summon. Those of you who disagree, I have read your gripes, watched "this video" by every YouTuber and their two cents.. they are wrong. Steven gets it... And you are only wearing him down, when he is completely in the right.. let it go and trust him
Also: I plan on pasting this in multiple threads..
I was wondering about this workaround to help balance the issue.
1) Only allowing the head of the family to summon (whoever starts the family would be the head of the family)
2) Use a blanket summon (summon the entire family at the same time, NOT one player at a time)
3) Use a Four-hour cooldown
I know a lot of people don't agree with the system but Steven is doing it for the right reasons. I feel that having a family leader with a blanket summon on a 4hr CD would drastically cut down on exploiting while still allowing it to be used how Steven wants it to be used.
I believe "Perfect World" has a family teleport system along these lines. Don't quote me on that.
A small rant:
How far are you planning on traveling in a 2-4 hour CD window? Are you straight running in one direction non-stop, soo far that your family members are going to have to travel non-stop to get to you? Is there some reason you can't wait if you expecting someone back who only needed an hour or so to take care of something? Why not work on trade skills while you wait for them to come back or any of the other billion things to do in AoC?
2) this would have no real negative impact on any potential exploits.
3) a cooldown is about the only real way to get around exploits - but it would need to be longer than 4 hours. 18 hours should be about right - a summons like this is something you should only cast once each play session, and should only have cast on you once each play session - which means a cooldown on being able to be summoned is also a good idea.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/comment/230017/#Comment_230017
My argument is, it will be exploited. I'm already planning for it:
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/45939/marry-me-and-my-family#latest
Point is, I want these advantages too. So, I will exploit the system, just to be on par with others. And I am not the only one thinking this way. I'm just being honest about it.
So... grief me, and remove these features, or just allow everyone to participate legitimately.
If you want to completely destroy a node you should have to escort a convoy. If that node is across the sea then you should have to load said convoy on ships. Teleporting some infantry, scouts or flat out casual players is fine.
Teleporting a small team of backpack Trebuchets on the high ground behind a node is a no-go.
Teleporting your homies to help you in PVP scenario, or to get ready on a boss pull I'm okay with that.
If they make the family system account bound it'll cut down on alt abuse.
People most likely to form families together are probably going to play in the same part of the world anyway. I'd be willing to compromise if it had like a 10 minute channel time and a 2 week cooldown and cost as much gold value as a house. That's how much I think it's a bad idea to be in the game at all.
The game is already meant primarily for hardcore players. The casuals in the game are going to be more hardcore than half the MMO's out there. Thus I don't think there is a audience this option is going to be for. This option alone is going to promote zerging to the point that zerging is going to be the meta as it is.
Since it requires the family system means not every player is even going to have this advantage because most aren't going to want randoms in their family. So it's only going to benefit people not using the family system as it was intended.
U.S. East
Saying that only abusers will be benefited because other people will not use randoms in their family does not make sense. The system is for people that play together regularly, not for groups of random players. You do know that many people make friends and play together regularly in MMO's right? If anything, the family system should encourage people to play together more as it will be easier to do so. Remember, there is no LFG. You need a group for many things in Ashes.
In the end, this is going to be a very closely monitored and tested system with no guarantee of making it into the game. However, we have not reached the point of testing it yet.