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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.
Caravan System - No System Survives Contact With the Player
Asgerr
Member, Alpha Two
I was watching one of Accolon's videos, and he made an interesting point about the systems in AoC.
In particular he posits that the Caravan system in itself may be fun, but what happens when the players say fuck it? What happens when the players realize it's easier and safer to just form a guild of 50 people, and all carry the goods in their backpacks. Now they're not flagged as fair game for PvP, can probably carry as much as a caravan in total, and can probably use faster mounts too.
What would Intrepid do then? Should they implement negative game design (e.g. adding weight to items so that they're too heavy to carry in a backpack) to force the players to play the game the way they want you them to play?
What other systems could be worked around by players getting fed up with certain systems and finding alternatives, which completely negate the existence of a core mechanic?
What should Intrepid do to prevent this? Should they even do anything to prevent it, if it limits player agency?
Video for reference:
https://youtu.be/VTuf6sRhVs4?t=2859s
In particular he posits that the Caravan system in itself may be fun, but what happens when the players say fuck it? What happens when the players realize it's easier and safer to just form a guild of 50 people, and all carry the goods in their backpacks. Now they're not flagged as fair game for PvP, can probably carry as much as a caravan in total, and can probably use faster mounts too.
What would Intrepid do then? Should they implement negative game design (e.g. adding weight to items so that they're too heavy to carry in a backpack) to force the players to play the game the way they want you them to play?
What other systems could be worked around by players getting fed up with certain systems and finding alternatives, which completely negate the existence of a core mechanic?
What should Intrepid do to prevent this? Should they even do anything to prevent it, if it limits player agency?
Video for reference:
https://youtu.be/VTuf6sRhVs4?t=2859s 
5
Comments
If there are other ways, the most important thing is to not distort the game too much.
And finding an alternative to perform is a freedom that every gamer should have the right to do.
When you're transferring your own goods (or your guild's goods), you're free to do whatever. You can take way more time to transfer them if you're scared of losing them in a caravan. But when it's a node-based quest caravan or a mayoral caravan, and you want to do that quest or progress/support the node - you're made to do that, because there's no other way. I'd assume these will be the main caravans that run around - not the personal ones.
But on the topic of guild caravans. If you, as a guild, decide to transfer a ton of resources from one place to the other just with your mules, I'd assume you have a huuuuge value in those resources. I'd assume any rivaling guild would know about that kind of value. So that rivaling guild is now free to declare a war on you or, if they have a mayor in a different node block, they can declare a war on your node and have you as enemies. Now you're literally the same as the caravan, except you have less hp (caravans are super thicc bois), you have less resources per run so your overall speed of transfer is pretty much non-existent due to constant attacks, and if you did use mules - you are now losing a ton of resources per each death (even if flagged death penalty is only 10% of your stuff).
In other words, it is way easier to defend a single caravan with your 50 people than try to run several mules that will get killed way faster.
Now obviously that's just how I see it going down. We'll need to see how it plays on in practice in alpha2.
You could even use those people to chain caravans and do 5-50 at once essentially transporting 10-100 times the goods you could do with everybody on their mounts.
Also, i'd hope that regular mounts would lose movement speed when nearing full inventory weight. I think that would solve a lot of issues.
Well what I can see being an issue is that if a rival guild attacks your caravan with their own 50 players, then you're fair game, and could potentially lose the defense. That means losing all the contents of the caravan, plus having it looted by enemies, who will also loot the defender's body
If they go out in the world as 50 guild members, on mounts or mules (faster than a caravan) with the items in their packs, enemies will have a harder time catching them as there won't be a notification of a caravan being nearby. They also lose fewer contents upon death, and give the rival guild corruption if they don't fight back.
The barrier to that happening is having the numbers and the coordination.
Right, that's what has me scratching my head. Because to avoid players running this strategy and forgoing caravans, they would have to implement a number of restrictions which might feel bad to a player. You basically get game design limiting your agency to force you to use their system.... In a game which hopes to allow for player freedom etc.
Also a group of 50 chads could earn extra gold selling empty space on caravan runs.
This is one of the systems i'm most looking forwards to so I really hope it's well implemented.
With 50 people participating, filling up more than 1 caravan shouldn't be exactly a hard thing to do.
I'll echo some of the points already brought up by @NiKr There will likely still be a need for caravans - they are used, as far as I know, to help level nodes, deliver taxes/supplies to castles, and to establish trading routes between nodes. But absent that, if a guild simply wants to move goods outside of that system, I don't know that there are currently any mechanics, yet revealed, that would discourage a guild from running supplies using mounts and numbers to mimic what a personal caravan does.
Ultimately, I think Intrepid would have to severely restrict the amount of goods that can be carried via a mount. But, I believe that through the animal husbandry system, mounts can be bred to have a larger carrying capacity. Perhaps they'll remove the expansion of carry capacity, for mounts? For players?
Perhaps Intrepid could add "mount ware" if you are constantly loading up your mount? Yes, we can move goods via mounts/mules, in mass, but at some point, we may have to replace all the mounts/mules. I don't think players would take kindly to this type of mechanic, but it would certainly cause guilds/individuals to consider whether using the caravan system would be more advantageous and less punitive that having to constantly replace mounts/mules.
Wiki link for reference: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Caravans
I think speed will be the likely benefit of using the caravan system. Caravans on roads could be much faster than mounts, but it would need to still allow time for the caravan to be attacked.
well freedom within limit right. if i can stack oak planks up to 100 in my backpack, then theres no reason for caravans. the point of a caravan is to carry tonnage which players couldn't carry. kind of like the your friend with the truck when you have to move. carrying metals, stones, woods around is heavy. but something is saffron is super light. so a truck full of saffron would be worth more than a truck load of lumber. so there has to be a balance between the real life weight vs fun. If i got 50 guildies I'd run 2 or 3 caravans to transfer my goods. Because pvp is open anyways. the green, purple, red system so they can still lose part of it. plus with a caravan you can get randoms joining to in the defense of it. ie the moving pvp zone. this is just speculation base off the little info we all have. in the end, i'm okay with weighted items preventing or slowing down movement, prompting need/want for a caravan.
However, I would bet that most of the players will not have this ability, so the Caravan system will still exist for them.
I don't think there's the need to buff or nerf something so that people are dependent on Caravans, at least not yet. If Caravans are rendered useless, they can be buffed somehow. Maybe making Caravans faster than Mules, for instance.
How would you harvest/farm them then?
Yeah, that would certainly be an issue. You would have to create a caravan to just gather/harvest, if I'm understanding @Artharion 's response.
It's likely that backpack space will be so limited that, in order to efficiently gather/harvest, gatherers/harvesters will need mules, which I think is intended.
My understanding is you would be able to carry them raw but would need a caravan after they have been processed. You will be able to go out, farm them, and bring them back
As @NiKr has pointed out, I believe that players will be able to carry both gatherables and processed goods as both can be dropped on player death.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/PvP
When a player dies they...Drop...a percentage of carried gatherables and processed goods.[159][139]
As they also pointed out, there could be some processed goods that don't need to be transported or it might be the case you can transport them but it might slow you down, similar to a trade pack in archeage.
It's one of those things that is still being developed so i don't think it's worth sweating the details.
Each week, Caravans transport goods needed for Castle defense.
It's very likely that players who want the perks from Castle ownership will be attacking those Caravans to make it easier to Siege the Castle. (And there are 5 Castles per server).
It would behoove the Castle defenders to defend those Caravans in order to build up the Castle defenses.
I'm pretty sure we will not be able to adequately shore up Castle defenses just by what we carry in our backpacks.
mark 2:12
"Mayoral Caravans are what's launched when Mayors are trying toestablish trade routes with another Node. Or they may be trying to garner extra resources by doing a Caravan quest. Developing a City is no small process. It requires a lot of resources and the aid of a lot of players. The Caravan system is way for players to participate in driving that trade between the different Cities that exist to ensure that your Node has the resources it needs to continue development."
Transporting resources via backpacks will not establish Node trade routes.
Maybe only 25 players show up in opposition to you. Are you going to fight them? if so how many people are going? same amount? Is your 25 better than their 25? Will any other hostiles, random or affiliated show up while the best players are already engaged in a fight? Is there an ambush group waiting around the corner specifically to target the now broken up caravan? Any greens getting singled out and dropping more stuff for not fighting back? That's without really touching on the distance, how many trips your making, and somehow wrangling 50 people together.
All to say in my opinion, I don't think this should be too much of a concern. There's a lot that can go wrong, with the items being spread out so thinly making the group easier to harass and raid for a much smaller risk on the attackers part.
They aren't dum dums. They're not just going to let people circumvent their systems and turn their game into a meme. At least I don't think they will.
In the same way with this issue, if it actually became meta to just ignore the caravan system and transport everything by mule, they'd fix it. Don't know how exactly, many ways they could, but I'd almost guarantee they'll fix it.
And the two issues really tie in together when you imagine a bunch of level 1-10 characters being the mules in your scenario. Meme central. They'll fix it.
All of that said, to some extent I think it's intended that people can transport goods and make money by manually muleing it as opposed to caravaning it. There just needs to be an overriding and overwhelming reason to use caravans as well. They can alter all kinds of numbers to make this so.
Perhaps a bonus applied to successful caravan transfers, where you make a bit more money than the goods were actually worth. I dunno, I'd imagine they have a ton of ideas to keep this system they're creating relevant.
Edit: At the end of the day, it's very important that people speak up during testing and call out any potential flaws. And don't be intimidated by the people who argue back.
Also, there's freeholds that have their own storages and crafting/processing tables, so it's not only nodes that use resources.
And how do you differentiate between a caravan-brought resources and just farmed ones? Do you tag them as soon as they hit any kind of storage after being farmed? Do you then make everyone only move resources with caravans, even if it's literally 5 wood or smth? And if you remove the tag once the resource has been bought off the market, what's stopping the guild from putting up the resource for nothing on the market then immediately buy it back themselves and transfer it with mules?
This is the "bad design" that was talked about in the video. You're putting too many limitations on gameplay in order to prevent smth that's already intended.
You can emule that same system tocthe freeholds. Not “external” resources enters inti the freehold if it doesnt’t come from a caravan.
You can differenciate caravan brought resources creating a rule or something that makes that a resource only is accepted in a node warhouse or a freehold warehouse if it comes from a caravan. Of course if you gather a resource in a region and you want to store it in the same region node or freehold, the system would allow you to do that. Whag I propose will only apply to resources gathered in other or external regions.
You can use an individual caravan (bagpack).
In other words, these are all overcomplications of a seemingly well-designed system that seems to work as intended (well, according to what we know about it rn).
To restate my question then: To what extent would you be fine with Intrepid implementing what would be considered negative game design, to force you into playing the game the way they want you to play?
This is not meant as an attack. Rather I mean it as a gauging for what is tolerable to you guys, and whether this could set a negative precedent of the devs kneecapping player ingenuity in gaming of the systems.