Caravans - Small idea

Strangeape

Correct me if i'm wrong as i may have missed some info.

From what i read/remember, you can essentially "rent" mercenary. I think it would be a nice little addition to have the ability to buy a disguise that would make players look like mercenaries. The way i see it, it would drop the moment a player attacks another player.

It would add an element of danger for anyone attacking a caravan and provide some more depth to the mechanic.

Anyways, just wanted to share the idea with everyone.\

have a good one guys!

daveywavey

Maybe it could be linked to the caravan cosmetic style?

Strangeape

daveywavey wrote: »

Maybe it could be linked to the caravan cosmetic style?

as great as the idea is, i think it would be a lot of work for the devs. Maybe further down the line?

but picture this. you about to attack a Caravan protected by 7 mercenary npc's. You're expecting to fight AI but no, 4 of those npc's turn out to be actual players. i feel it would add something to the caravan mechanic, make you think twice about attacking, or rethink your strategy. It would add an element of danger or unknown to that scenario

neuroguy

It sounds great but I don't think people will have the patience to just walk/march along with NPCs for many minutes up to hours just to protect it often enough to make this worth it. It's either that or you auto travel with the mercenaries which will make people AFK and be more useless than mercenaries. I think if you want to defend your caravan that badly you can set up a perimeter around it, have 1 player on it and voice chat a convergence of the defenses if there is an attack as 1 example strategy. There are lots of ways to organize for defending caravans that are already interesting and strategic, this doesn't add anything imo.

Strangeape

I don't necessarily agree with you on that one. Caravans will be a huge part of trading and to some players, like me, its a nice activity.

neuroguy

I'm unsure what you disagree with, I also think caravans will be huge and a nice activity. My point is that if you have to manually keep pace with and pretend to be an AI, it's not an interesting endeavor and lasts far too long for the potential to surprise attackers. Alternatively, if you get auto-movement to move like AI, people will just AFK because it requires no player input until an attack occurs, at which point, if you are still AFK you are useless.

Blackford

Can you not easily differentiate players from NPC's regardless of their cosmetics?
Not in the alpha, but I know in most MMORPGs their nameplate or health bar is a different color to differentiate them.

Ferni

It sounds like a good idea but maybe a mechanic like that could lead players who are running a caravan to just hire a high amount of mercenary NPCs and discover that this is enough to avoid being attacked by other players.

I think Mercenary NPCs are just additional protection and should not become the main defense system for caravans. I prefer that merchants always find more useful to hire players because it will increase interactions between those players.

tautau

If you spend too much on NPC guards, your profit from the caravan will just go to guard pay.

Strangeape

neuroguy wrote: »

I'm unsure what you disagree with, I also think caravans will be huge and a nice activity. My point is that if you have to manually keep pace with and pretend to be an AI, it's not an interesting endeavor and lasts far too long for the potential to surprise attackers. Alternatively, if you get auto-movement to move like AI, people will just AFK because it requires no player input until an attack occurs, at which point, if you are still AFK you are useless.

i got it now. basically it sucks to have to fake move like an AI merc. i hadn't understood it that way first. and i get it, but i don't know how the AI will act, theey might move around during the trip or act randomly. but its true that if they basically stand around doing nothing, it gets boring faking it for a few hours.

Blackford wrote: »

Can you not easily differentiate players from NPC's regardless of their cosmetics?
Not in the alpha, but I know in most MMORPGs their nameplate or health bar is a different color to differentiate them.

True but the way i see it, the disguise would hide the player icon, it would show up as an AI merc, until the fake AI merc attacks a player where he would loose the benefit of the disguise

To me, it's a way to add something to it. If a caravan you wanna attack has 20 players with it, you might not attack, but if its 20 AI merc, then since its mob AI it might be easier so you might attack since they rarely as good as an actual player. But if you can never really tell because of the disguise, i feel it adds a risk vs reward component to it.

tautau wrote: »

If you spend too much on NPC guards, your profit from the caravan will just go to guard pay.

exactly that. I used to play Eve Online a few years back and convoys to bring goods from one place to another were common since it was open pvp. the way i understand it, Ashes will have something very close to that for those people who want to make professions their main activity as i am sure is gonna happen with a concept such as economic nodes.

Dygz

Seems very likely that Mercenary cosmetics and transmogs will be available.
I doubt the transmog will drop unless the battle becomes as large as a siege.

Profit may not matter as much as successfully delivering the resources to progress the Nodes.