Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
PVP and post release tuneing
tiltowait
Member
Wondering how open the game will be to post-release PvP tuneing? It seems a lot of games get released and the PvP system is left mostly unchanged, despite intended systems not functioning. Of course there's upcry when anything is done to change a system that someone is enjoying, but does that outweigh fixing issues?
Thinking about Risk vs Reward with the caravan system made me think of this, that with no corruption for hunting caravans that it would be the favored target of PvPers, while all the risk would be carried on the shoulders of the caravan makers (as well as the setup). Not saying I don't want caravans to be risk/reward pvp targets, I emphatically do! I just think it's going to need to be tuned heavily to make it work just right.
Thinking about Risk vs Reward with the caravan system made me think of this, that with no corruption for hunting caravans that it would be the favored target of PvPers, while all the risk would be carried on the shoulders of the caravan makers (as well as the setup). Not saying I don't want caravans to be risk/reward pvp targets, I emphatically do! I just think it's going to need to be tuned heavily to make it work just right.
2
Comments
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Game_balance
I like turtles.
_________________
And back to the point: totally agree with OP.
Carrying a slow caravan full of trading goods is already putting a mark on your head.
If, besides that, you "force" PvP gankers to those events, risk vs reward should be fine tuned for it to be worth it.
The problem with trying to balance the classes at any point is you often have to compromise between PvE and PvP. This is made even harder in a game like Ashes where the majority of the PvP is open world. Games like GW2 for example can balance classes differently in PvP because it is instanced rather than open world, but Ashes doesn't have that luxury. I honestly don't know how they will manage it.
If the return on resources isn't valued high enough to transport the goods to another node or ZOI then players won't do it, there is nothing forcing them to. So I doubt it'll be a situation where players are going to constantly take on the risk if the reward isn't worth it. All that is going to happen is the attacking (pvp) side of caravans are going to be limited or non existent if the reward to do it doesn't translate.
Based on the shared information related to how the economy is going to work, I imagine the caravan system may ebb and flow with frequency.
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
The balance for a game like AoC seems to be more difficult due to players ability to build into skills, abilities and build their (attributes(yet to be confirmed but i'm hoping)) in addition to weapon/armor/augment variations.
I think it's probable they could balance the classes if they were going to force a cookie cutter build on each class so they always had specific stats.
The greatest thing about this game will be player freedom and frankly I love the fact that not every class is going to play the same. This means not every mage is going to have a staff, maybe a mage/fighter build goes 2h axe or something crazy and you won't know exactly how to beat that build the first time you see it...
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
to build on this:
Obviously the person owning the goods is/should be carrying all the risk. Somebody that isn't owning the goods can't be carrying the risk for them.
The reward for the caravan owner is the ability to move the goods from a Node where they are common to a node where they are very rare, which significantly increases their value.
It’s not just about the reward. It’s actually mainly about the risk. What are the attackers risking?
Its their turn to carry the risk once they have the goods themselves.
Because if there is no risk for the attackers you will barely see anyone join the caravan as a defender which will mean that all randoms that come across the caravan will choose to attack it. This could lead to a great imbalance and break the caravan system.
The game is built around risk vs. reward and as far as we know so far the attackers have no risk associated with their task.
Aquisition of items never has as much risk as retaining it.
Parties, Families, Guilds will primarily be your Defenders.
The People transporting the goods will be exactly the people that do have people to do the trade run with. If nobody else wants to risk transporting mithril from Node A to B then the group doing it will profit most.
With a decreasing number of people doing it the reward will increase.
The increasing reward an increasing amount of people will bother doing it.
Its a self regulating systems. One that has worked perfectly fine in games like Eve
Let me ask you this. What kind of risk do you think makes sense in this regard for the attacking side to take on?
The "risk" for attacking a Caravan isn't so simple as you may imagine it is. There will be political backlash for these kinds of actions and just attacking Caravans for some percentage of the loot may not be worth the risk of going ito war over it. The risk/reward system in the game isn't limited to loot since the bigger picture will always scale with guild/node/castle's as meta play any loot lost or gained during Caravans will pale in consideration to long term strife caused by those actions.
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
In games like Eve/Albion Online if the attackers lose the battle they lose progress as well (ships/gear). With what we know so far from the current system in AoC, if the attackers come with nothing but their equipped gear and lose the attack on the caravan they lose nothing at all aside from gaining some experience debt.
Edit: word
Here, both the defender and attacker have less risk, as they merely suffer the death penalty, but their gear/loadout is save.
I’m so confused as to how you don’t understand this...
In AoC the defenders are subject to losing their entire haul/transport and the attackers aren’t subject to losing anything. There is no risk to being an attacker.
In Eve/Albion the defenders are subject to losing their entire haul/transport and their ship/gear and the attackers are subject to losing their ship/gear. There is a risk to being an attacker.
Well it's not always about what the other side risks. That being said the attackers still suffer death penalties, anything they had on them can be looted like normal, and like Warth pointed out political repercussions will most likely be a thing. Not everyone should want to be an attacker due to these factors.
Now obviously this is not as much risk as the transport itself but this is just the risk of trying to gain more reward. You will most likely make big money when you complete a caravan. So think of it that way if it helps.
I totally get what you mean.
It's still not relevant at all.
It's not meant to be a risk for the attacker. It's meant to be a risk for the person owning the goods.
The same way, the Attacker in a Castle Siege don't suffer any risk. The same way the Attacker in a Node Siege don't suffer any risk. The risk is with the people owning the goods/Castle/real estate in the Node.
Once the attacker get the goods or the castle, they will be the ones carrying the risk next. It's not a balanced like a scale for both attackers and defenders. It's a circular systems, where you carry the risk once you have the goods.
On the caravan owners side, the reward has to grow with the increased risk. That's the only real requirement for this system to work. If nobody but you dares to run a caravan with materials to Node B, then you will make a whole lot of money upon achieving that.
Comparing the risk and reward between attackers and defenders is nonsensical, as it isn't a system that's designed around having equal Reward/Risk on both the attackers and defenders side. The flucuating risk/rewards is primarily meant to work on the side of the owner of the goods, as stated by intrepid themselves.
If less than a handful of groups/guilds dare to run a caravan full of mithril ore to Node B, then that is completely fine, as long as they reap significant rewards for doing exactly that. They will profit from the large amount of mithril in Node A (cheap to buy) and profit from the scarcity of Mithril in Node B (high price when selling it). Not everybody is supposed to run caravans, not everybody should run caravans. Doing them should carry significant risk, otherwise there won't be any meaningful rewards tied to it. By minimizing the risk the attacker carries, you automatically increase the risk the defender carries and in turn the rewards attached to it.
The attackers in castle and node sieges do have a risk. They risk losing all the materials and resources they invested in declaring the siege. Declaring a siege is supposed to be a monumental task and losing all of that investment is definitely a risk.
All I’m saying is that the system needs to be balanced because otherwise all random people will decide to attack the caravan because it has no risk and potential for great reward.
Then go attack them afterwards for the same incentive. That is the risk of starting this cycle with a neighbor.
I'm pretty sure there is no investment for a castle sieges and they automatically get sieged every month. Yes, there is an investment to initiate a node siege.
That said, I think the core of their argument still stands.
The risk is supposed to be on the person running the caravan. The person running the caravan also has a bunch of advantages. You can plan for it and be organized which allows you to curve your risk. You choose when you launch, the path you take, and how many people you bring to defend.
Your potential attackers don't have this luxury and are at a huge disadvantage because of it. For starters, they shouldn't know a caravan is launching until they see it which can be anywhere between where you launched and your destination. This means they can't organize or be ready like the defenders are able to. Giving them further risk beyond the death penalty means a decreased risk for the defenders as less people are likely to attack a caravan because of the risk.
Do you think that caravans should be like sieges and you have to declare you are running the caravan prior running it so players can organize and pay some investment to attack it?
Has the mechanic for caravans been details yet?
@Percimes this was actually adressed by Intrepid.
Attackers don't loot the goods that are carried by the caravan. They loot certificates for the goods it was transporting, which they can turn in at the node of origin for the materials the caravan was carrying initially. These certificates allow you to carry much more goods, than the physical goods would.
This is being done to avoid the issue you are describing: Robbers only being able to loot a fraction of the destroyed caravan.
@mcstackerson
castle sieges there allegedly isn't a cost to starting the siege. The siege is happening every month on a timer anyway.
Node sieges most of the potential attackers don't have a cost either. Everybody (except allies of the defending node) can join the siege as an attacker once it was declared without paying anything at all. Those attackers that see a siege happening and jump on top of it to loot the warehouses and Freeholds don't carry any risk/costs at all. I was refering to those, that randomly join the siege as attackers as they would equal the players randomly stumbling across a caravan to attack it for the loot.
Otherwise, i agreed with everything you said of course.
I'd hope that these are meaningful perks you can unlock and at the same time be mutually exclusive.
Either specc into the Guard Tree or the Bandit tree. Progressing through the trees should require you to successfully fulfill the role (guard or bandit). Failing to do so should give backwards progression, which should ensure that people don't randomly join either side without wanting to see it through.
(That's how I'd design it at least).
Choose the bandit tree to improve your raiding skills, but at the same time miss out on the perks that would help you do the caravan of your own or choose the guard tree to improve your chances of successfully performing your own caravans, while suffering from worse bandit skills.
That seems unusual. Would the original node not be expecting that quantity of material certificates, after having one of its caravans destroyed? I mean, if my caravan of 30 Wolf Hides had just been robbed, and someone came to my town with 30 Wolf Hides, I'd be a little suspicious. I'd have thought it'd make more sense to have to take them to any other node.
you have to take them back to the original node, otherwise it would be abused.
Fuck lore/logic if it brings bad implications to gameplay.
Also, why would the node give a shit if you personal goods were to be robbed. This is literally of no concern to them, they don't profit of it in any way.
Seems fair to me.
It also means that the attackers now have goods to be caravaned to another city for profit XD
Exactly this. Stealing the goods from the previous owner is only half the rent. In order to turn a good profit the previous bandits will be the ones who have to ship it next which opens the good up to be stolen once more.