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*
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
