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Group Mining/Lumbering etc.
Mike McQueen
Member, Royalty, Kickstarter
Instead of randomly coming across solo players hacking at trees or nodes I think it would be cool if there were set places (quarries, thick copses, deep mines) where groups could gather and/or contest other guilds gathering resources. Ore and lumber is heavyyyy, and for gameplay purposes we allow players to carry hundreds of these items, but wouldn't it be wild to have mule drawn carts to fill and escort to and from these sites. This would provide another layer of group content much like the caravan system. The only thing better than seeing a group of dwarves escorting a wagon full of ore and gems they just mined from the mountain to the city is seeing them try to defend it against orcs or bandits or even weather events etc.
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Its not exacly what you seem to be asking for, because you sound like you want an always available area to gather in thats competed for, and these veins come and go as they are found/spawn and are depleted by players.... but yeah.
To add to your comment, Intrepid is already planning dynamic resource nodes. Which means you won't always be harvesting in the same spot. Less boring that way.
Depending on the resource, the game should (will) have some contested spots through regular organic gameplay.
(Source: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Inventory )
My understanding is that each type of gatherable will have a moderate limit for backpack storage, and can be increased with 'weight training' (also discussed on the linked page). However, I don't believe Intrepid intends on letting individual players carry "hundreds", as per your concern, of gatherable items in their packs, as this would defeat the purpose of caravans. Caravans are intended to be the ultimate form of large scale transportation and profit, requiring you to make use of them if you wish to carry and sell items of significant quantity or weight. So as far as individual carrying capacity is concerned, I wouldn't worry too much. Their limits are inherently mandated by the caravan system.
As for group harvesting locations, I don't find it hard to believe that you'd see this already manifested in the game world. Trees generally grow in forests, correct? And I believe ore veins generally exist inside of cavern systems. I think the nature of open world PvP, guild and node wars, the corruption and bounty system will all facilitate a degree of rivalry over harvesting locations, as well as risk vs reward.
As for the concept of a group effort where you're centrally stockpiling immense quantities of resources and then engaging in a caravan system on its way back to a town, guild castle, or freehold, perhaps leaving it vulnerable while it's being loaded, I could see there being an opportunity for player interaction there, but in such a case, would it not simply be safer for each player in a group to take turns going back to a guild or home storage location and returning for another load to continually defend and harvest a location? I guess that's subject to debate, but I find it risky enough engaging in the caravan system to sell the goods, much less carry them from the field or quarry to my freehold or guild hall.
Additionally, as the caravan system stands right now, you do not gain corruption for attacking caravans. There are other risks involved, which are still subject to testing, but not as damaging as attacking another player directly in the open world. So you'd have to determine whether gathering caravans follow the same rules of PvP engagement and risk/reward as trade caravans. Without the application of corruption, it almost encourages PvP engagement, which is intentional in the case of trade caravans, so you have to ask yourself whether you'd want to open yourself up to the same effects with your gathering practices. You're no longer largely at risk of attack from roaming bandits or enemy node citizens, but from virtually anyone, even allies, as the system would then be viewed as a more 'consensual' form of PvP engagement. If it doesn't follow those same rules, and effectively gives you some expectations of who may or may not attack your gathering caravan (and likely reduces the potential of attack) giving you more power to avoid PvP engagement, then it would essentially be greater efficiency without equivalently greater risk.
Whether following general caravan rules would still be worthwhile for large gathering groups or not is up to public opinion, but something tells me it would be a royal pain for most average sized groups to defend against arguably encouraged assaults while trying to harvest at the same time. Attackers would also be more likely to bide time and launch an assault on the gathering caravan once it's fully loaded than actually fight over harvesting grounds. Thinking everything is safe and going great, investing a bunch of combined player-time on one cart of materials, then getting bombarded as soon as you leave by multiple groups of prepared attackers and losing combined hours worth of product from multiple harvesters sounds awful. When you launch a trade caravan, you don't spend half an hour or more announcing it to the general public. You get your 'paperwork', load it up from a secure location, and set off. I think I heard in one update that a local signal would be sent out announcing that a caravan set off, but still, it's more immediate and spontaneous than getting loads of prep time. Attackers have to decide in the moment whether to attack by themselves or with an improvised group, or risk losing out on the caravan altogether. With this gathering caravan concept, you're leaving yourself out in the open for ages, giving passing groups the opportunity to go back to their guild and organize an assault. In the meantime, all they have to do is wait for you and your friends to do all the hard work before they strike with an organized force while you're most vulnerable. So both the likelihood and experience of PvP in this system would likely not be symmetrical to trade caravan PvP, and would likely end up encouraging surprise attacks on caravans to reap the rewards of others' efforts, rather than the slowly building territory disputes I think we'd be more likely to see in the base gathering system. Fighting over harvested resources and the produce of others' hard work v.s. fighting over the opportunity for each party to invest their own time and effort. Speaking of group size...
Another fear I have is that if this were implemented, it could potentially end up being radically more efficient for very large allied groups, say a streamer community, and give them a further degree of efficiency, productivity, control, and power over the average sized groups within the world they're dominating. The more systems you introduce that exponentially reward larger and larger group sizes, the greater disparity in player experience you'll see between smaller guilds and larger guilds, which Intrepid is already trying to regulate via their guild talent trees. That being said, this could possibly be managed via other talents within the tree. Perhaps you could make it a talent with the potential for multiple point allocation, giving guilds of varying sizes the option to put more points in with the exchange of an increasingly smaller roster, rather than a simple on/off functionality. Some benefit regarding gathering caravan resilience or player damage vs enemy gathering caravans. Of course, all of these guild talent balancing systems are far from perfect solutions, since you can't possibly have as many degrees of power variation as there are individual numbers of guild members.
All that being said, from the perspective of not yet seeing it in action, it sounds cool, and admittedly realistic. I feel like this could potentially be good patch content further down the road, especially since it'll (hopefully) be a while before guilds and individual players reach the point where mass harvesting and crafting is a common goal. In such case, we could utilize the final version of the base game and our understanding of its intricacies to properly test the effects such a system could have on gathering via a public test server. Would it actually be more efficient? How would the inclusion or removal of corruption for attacking these gathering caravans affect that efficiency? Would this system create a less or more rewarding gathering experience? Would it create further disparities between larger and smaller guilds? These are questions we can't possibly have answers for at this point in time.
For now, I think the limits on carrying capacity and natural likelihood of contestation of gathering areas will suffice. I don't think the team needs any additional functionality in that area in order for a viable launch product, and the fact that such a system, as cool as it sounds, raises at least this many questions, says to me that it would only add bloat to the team's already hefty to-do list. But again, I agree that the thought of having gathering caravans and teams of organized harvesters sounds immersive and realistic. It's just a matter of how it meshes into the game space.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/51600/super-resource-events
TLDR.
Now that ive had time to read it, and have a minute.... ive been at work.
Hes against the scope creep, and has alot of arguments on why it wouldnt necessarily be good game design, or would just be worked around by individuals instead of using a gathering caravan. But says it could be a potential update later on if the idea does become something more fitting to the game.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the Daybreak devs on Ashes implement group Gathering as well.
I’ll summarize later.
The 3 page essays are the forum equivalent to eastern MMOs throwing hours worth of mind numbing trivial tasks at you. Maybe some enjoy it, but most will chose to opt-out at that point as it simply isn't worth their time to discuss a single idea of a single poster in that detail.
Agreed with him here. and Thank you CaptainPenguin
- Players cannot carry hundreds of gatherables in their packs, there are unique stack size limits for each gatherable type. These limits are what give purpose to the caravan system.
- Trees grow in forests and ore is found in cave systems. We already have the proper setup for territory PvP with a normal gathering zone, no need for a specialized resource pit.
- Having to defend your resources stacked up on a silver platter while you’re harvesting sounds like a PITA when you could just take turns mounting up and riding back to your guild hall/home storage so you can cycle through defending territory and harvesting at the same time without leaving your gatherables hanging around for the taking.
- Current trade caravan system incentivizes PvP by not giving corruption to attackers, so you’d get even more aggressors than you normally would while gathering for little benefit other than aesthetics and less riding back and forth per person.
- Attackers would see your caravan building up for ages before you finished, giving them the opportunity to organize a large scale assault on all of your hard earned materials when you’re finally finished doing all the hard work. It would devolve into surprise attacks over hours worth of effort rather than an ongoing territory war over the opportunity for either side to put in their own effort. Would probably feel bad.
- This sort of system would likely benefit larger guilds far more than average sized guilds, unless they made more guild talents specifically for this, which are never a perfect solution. It would empower groups who likely don’t need the assistance, putting smaller guilds at a greater disadvantage.
- No one really knows for sure how it would turn out. Admittedly sounds immersive and realistic, but doesn’t necessarily translate well into game form. Could be good patch content to test for after the base game launches.
Lol, TLDR.
Slightly condensed version of points stated before.
The reason/way i make TLDR's is more to just get your general opinion across, so that it tells someone if they care to read your post. Otherwise most long posts will just go ignored by most, even if it has good points or arguments.
I understand. I generally try to summarize my opinions in a closing couple sentences, as that’s how I’ve been taught how most arguments should be composed, so I figure that serves the same purpose. In this case, as per the last bullet point in my summary, I think it sounds cool and immersive, but it doesn’t necessarily translate well into the existing game space and might be good patch content later on after appropriate testing.
Keep in mind that players will also have mules to haul the heavy loads too.
Once a node has leveled up enough, a guild could pay a fee to license an ‘expedition’ from a related npc organization and have the resource pool unlocked for a limited amount of time. You could get a few npc harvesters / guards hanging around for limited protective assistance and to give the impression upon arrival that they’re responsible for getting the site prepped for extraction. The site visually changes from a suggestive looking location to a full on operation and you and your guild mates can go to town for your allotted time while remaining vulnerable to PvP attempts.
This could give rise to world events (the classic “dug too deep” scenario) that have a chance of occurring based on node level or present resource quality.
If you've got a link, link it. Most people seem to be here to just discuss things, not to actually learn about the game.
I understand now that what Penguin was asking for was a 1-2 sentence summarization of my conclusive opinion so they could get a feel for my argument and decide whether or not to read it. I made that understanding clear, then reiterated the closing segment of my prior summarized argument that provided the same value.
My argument definitely could not be summarized with a couple of sentences, and I reduced it to a single bullet per specific point. What does it take to read my summary? 60 seconds? Hardly a “page of text”. What more do you want from me?
And not necessarily better, just different.
- Solo
- Duo
- Group 2-3
- En-mass 15-30 player
sEn-mass could be quite interesting for events, guild, pvp
...as in Moria? And release a Balrog?
I'll bet a dollar that things like this are already in the game.
I’m aware. I’m simply stating that such a system as we were discussing could be another avenue for randomly triggering events of that nature.
Well, that’ll depend on the players within and outside them. Are the majority of the players involved in this grand alliance supportive of their largely peaceful way of life? Then they will likely continue to have a degree of control, peace, and safety.
But let’s say enough people on the server want to see a change, want to build up a different, currently locked out node, want to insert a new leader, or just want some chaos. If they form a strong enough group, they could theoretically take on one of those peace keeping nodes, and should their skills prove capable, take that node down a peg and insert themselves where they’d like as the new rulers of that region.
How does that effect the peace and security of the other metropolis? Maybe the warmongers still want more, and come for them next. Maybe they’ve had enough and simply allow their citizens to attack neighboring caravans and gatherers without worrying about the potential for retaliation.
Then more alliances could form, new wars start, etc. So it goes. As for me? I’ll probably be doing a lot of artisan work, so I think I’ll likely be in one of the peaceful alliances if possible. That or bounty hunting, which would fit a similar setting, I think. Perhaps I’d join a military node on another character if I wanted to do more naval content.
I know I’ve seen some games where harvesting large trees required two players with a two-person saw. Thought that was pretty clever. Bit of a PITA if there aren’t any high enough level woodcutters around to share the task with you, but hey, that’s what friends / colleagues are for.
Edited: typo