Is the caravan system even worth it?
GDX
Member
I mean in real life you don’t have much space since you don’t own an inventory or if you could carry the whole thing you don’t have enough energy to transport such large quantity of goods by yourself. In the Games is the complete opposite you have much inventory space and you can walk the whole way alone without getting seen since a caravan is much larger and has to go through a a main road, the only thing that is worth mention is probably the time that could be faster all in all but if you have a mount the speed point is gone so I hope they make caravans a must to transport goods.
0
Comments
Scrap the system.
Go on, we're all waiting.
Caravans can be used in the same manner. One person owns the caravan but ten or more others are paid to protect the caravan. Otherwise, every person would be the one person walking to and fro and all the guards would be on their own too. Bandits would love to pick lone travellers off.
I assume it'll be used in node development - not just for personal use.
The world does not revolve around you.
Most of the Caravan System is focused on Mayoral, Node and Castle Caravans. Items that are stored in warehouses.
If you prefer to transport via your backpack or mule, you are free to do so.
WoW had a decent idea with encouraging PvP by making it not as risky like with Ultima Online where if you were killed they could loot your body and take your stuff, but once you were fighting with people you probably would never see again with cross-realm BGs and the arena system as a whole it kind of just got boring. The saving grace of WoW's pvp in Vanilla was the fact if you killed someone in the world, you would undoubtedly see them again and maybe they got you, it created a sense of rivalry and notoriety within a community. Unfortunately, because WoW was the game to copy up until relatively recently, games followed suit on this idea so across MMOs as a whole, pvp is basically a joke with nothing to it aside from a cosmetic. There's no point to doing it. Hell in the current iteration of WoW they removed PvP servers and made PvP entirely opt in, then chose to slap bonus experience points for doing so while you leveled which created a problem of people opting into PvP, then bawling on forums that PvP happened when they thought it was supposed to be a ceasefire enjoy the bonus experience points and reputation gains setting.
In hindsight, that change wouldn't irritate me nearly as much if their sole reason for doing it wasn't to stop the deluge of people rolling pvp servers and crying about being killed in the world, or as we dismissively said "PvP happened on a PvP server" only for them to recreate the same issue by slapping bonuses to it and people somehow thinking it should be an armistice where you just soak up the bonuses without fighting, or as we say "War happened in War Mode."
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Inventory
I was hoping that inventory was more restricted, incentivizing the use of caravans. Weight doesnt appear to be an issue, but rather quantity limit is... and for a personal caravan, if you want to carry more than the backpack limit, you use a caravan...in the image they have in that wiki, I saw a quantity of 699 of somethingand multiple 400 quantities of other items in a backpack.
So I am skeptical of how many caravans we will be seeing for personal use.
I wouldn't rely too much on the stack size considering that this clearly been a very early iteration of the inventory.
What i'm more concerned in regards to Personal Caravans is finding a good balance between Inventory Space and the need to utilize caravans for the delivery of goods.
Where is the sweetspot? (Obvioulsy there will be side materials. Lets just ignore them for now for the sake of simplicity).
1 Inventory Full of Ore eventually ends up sufficient Material for 1 Gearpiece.
1 Mule Full of Ore sufficient for 1 Gearset.
1 Caravan Full of Ore sufficient for 10 sets.
Would this be appropriate?
I hear ya.
I do favor a horrendously small inventory space, with a willingness to go the encumbered route, and since weight doesnt appear to be a thing, there goes that idea.
Current wiki says mule is roughly 10x player inventory and caravan is roughly 10x mule inventory.
With a caravan having the capacity of 100 players it's definitely worthwhile for players but only really if they're a guild or under the direction from a town mayor.
At this scale of movement there are multiple benefits to using caravans such as hiring NPCs and the insurance mechanic which is now in development and will likely be fleshed out and balanced during alpha 2 (like I expect most of the caravan system will).
Without these extra mechanics I can see the ~10 mule run happening but a mule will still likely flag a player as a target.
I see a reflection of real life happening where many land caravans will travel to harbour nodes where naval caravans are then used. Naval caravans will then be a much different thing as it is no longer interchangeable with a simple footrace.
I'm not convinced by a horrendously small inventory space. We've been told we might need to carry specific weapons, armour and tools. If the whole inventory is taken up by these items it will not be a good experience. There must be a balance. If you want to risk a full inventory of resources you could lose 25% as a non combatant. Incentives for pvp would be limited if we start getting decimal rewards rather than whole rewards. Eqaully, Mules will also turn players corrupted if they are killed. Caravans will be pvp/combatants battling it out. Each has a separate purpose and all the systems work together.
You don't have to carry those. It was cobfirmed, that you carry your gathering gear as a secondary gear set on the character.
Mules turning people corrupted has never been mentioned by Intrepid. Don't make it sound like it was. In truth, we basically do not know anything about mules.
I mean Intrepid certainly talks about personal caravans to be an integral tool for the movement of goods/economy, hence i believe that's what their goal is.
Do you believe it isn't their goal or that they will fail in their endevaour to make it happen?
But on the off chance it doesn't, I'm gonna be PKing every single mule in alpha2 just to show Intrepid that the system is beyond flawed.
@NiKr i mean, me too.
I'm just against acting people like something is confirmed based on their own assumptions when we do not know anything about the system.
The only thing that happens is what we have seen with the Freeholds recently. People (incorrectly) assumed they were easy to obtain and based their decision to buy cosmetics for it on that fact, then lost their shit when Steven said it requires significant amounts of effort (as it should be).
I'll see if i can get them to give a quick run-down on mule mechanics on the next live stream or the QnA session Steven has planned for the next months. Maybe we'll finally get some clarification on the mechanics surrounding Mules.
I am 99.99% sure killing a mule/mount while the owner is a non-combatant (mount status follows player status) will cause corruption. It was mentioned in some interview or dev stream a long time ago, and I absolutely refuse to spend time digging it up.
I'm sorry to say, but this has never been said. The only source of corruption, that has ever been mentioned is the killing of non-flagged player character. If you don't believe me, then look at the Wiki. Unless you assume that everybody working on the Wiki/Ashes101 etc. has for some reason not heard that comment or decided that it wasn't important enough to put on either the Mount, the corruption or the flagging page. Collective amnesia must be scary
The idea is that it makes sense for siege because your going to be assaulting a node anyway.
Mayors have to do caravans to unlock trade routes and get materials for the town so its defiantly going to get used but for personal stuff i cant see if it much.
Vandals would get a similar bonus if they took over the wagon from the group protecting it. This way, there is a built-in pay system for anyone protecting the caravan. This would also help with the economy as it gives PVP'ers a chance to sell/trade goods without the effort of gathering. From my experience, PVP'ers don't understand in-game economics too well because they never spend time gathering.
If a player or mule is carrying a massive log of lumber or giant slab of stone in their bags, I feel strongly that this hinders the potential of the caravan system. Without weight mechanics, other means of restrictions would be required. So I disagree with what players can hold in their bags.
This increases the use of caravans, and by default, the need to protect them.
I read the resource section of the wiki and Im not sure what to expect in the final stages.
As an example, the harvesting of wood...I had envisioned a lumbermill, near where the trees are being hacked down(I assume trees are a limited resource as well and dont grow back for quite awhile).... a horse and sled(caravan)to haul the trees to the lumbermill, or directly to the nodes sawmill/lumbermill.... if they really go ham, hauled to a river, and then the trees flow towards to lumbermill. Guards/players patrolling the region for bandits/monsters/pkers... with further away forests, requiring players to be more mindful of dangers, as distant threats may pose more of a challenge.
Persistant transport routes, until no more trees are available in the local region. Visually watching trees grow back over time....waiting for maturity to acquire the proper type and size of lumber.
No idea if nodes will be close to specific rare resources or they will be more likely found further from nodes.... requiring caravans to transport those rare resources would make PKers more likely to attack those routes.... paying for NPCs escorts or player escorts of those materials.... if you can just mule and or carry this stuff individually, these scenarios dont happen as frequently, if at all, and can be bypassed entirely....
I really like the idea of having to wait for the resource to mature.
It can lead to more diverse player conflict. Someone defending an area of resources until it's a better quality for a better craft vs someone needing the resources more urgently and not wanting to wait for an upcoming siege, raid or other conflict.
I really hope siege equipment and mats for sieges needs to be caravaned over, would lend to open world PvP a ton.