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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.
Remove Family summon
Strevi
Member
I think the family summon should be removed.
If guilds don't have it, families should not have it either.
If guilds don't have it, families should not have it either.
September 12. 2022: Being naked can also be used to bring a skilled artisan to different freeholds... Don't summon family!
4
Comments
Players can't be summoned if:
Plus there is a 30 minute cool down. Family summon has it's own restrictions so it doesn't feel like it could get taken advantage of like a guild would.
If they care about each other so much, they would not roam selfishly the world to places hard to reach, leaving the others behind when they are offline.
And if the purpose is to let them enjoy the game together, why punish guild members?
This assumes that random strangers in a guild are insensitive and cannot be friends.
Then make a family with your closest 7 guildmates? This doesn't punish anyone....as stated before, the intent behind it is to prevent large guild zergs instantly teleporting all over the place.
Also this ^^^^^^
My closest friends hate PvP and I will not even try to convince them to play this game.
I want to play with a guild and be friend with them.
I see you've never had a family with busy lives, sometimes random work emergencies, etc, where the teleportation is the difference between "something broke at work and I had to fix it, but I can still join late" and "guess we're not playing today". Planning ahead is good, but not everyone has the luxury of a perfect life. Family Summon is made for them. In a guild? Yeah, the guild was going to go on without you either way. But for a family? It makes a difference. There are potentially better ways to do it, but the base concept matters.
Surely you have a better example than this to support your point of view?
Not logging in and playing because you don't have the family summon optimized between all players sounds pretty lazy.
I'm not against family summon at all ... players just need to be prepared for the limited types of fast travel in Ashes. Otherwise, it might not be a game for you.
As @NiKr said, it will be interesting to test this mechanic.
lol so true
Teleportation exists and the world isn't that large though. The game doesn't seem to be designed around long-distance travel; it's more about a local ~10 minute radius.
But maybe you'd like my idea for how to balance progression:
Having something to do when low on time and needing to progress is why I suggest elsewhere 'Training' progression with a softlock past a certain daily and weekly limit [similar enough to real training]. . . . .
rather than the somewhat arbitrary "Kill, get XP".
Hit them with hammer = Strength and Skill XP. Use spell = Spirit? and Skill XP.
Being rewarded for running around and contributing sounds just fine to me.
Attempting and failing a 'dungeon' and still getting something out of it sounds just fine to me.
-you can only be in 1 family so you can't exploit and have 1 person summon 7 and each of the 7 summon there own groups of 7,
wiki
so they are paying to upkeep there family and keep it recognized,
Wiki
What exactly is it that you fear will be abused by this system? sending 1 player to a dungeon to summon there 7 friends in? Or a guild forcibly dividing it's members up into multiple families so that they can send a party of 8 unrelated players to a dungeon/raid and summon in 56 others?
in the later case of guilds forcing family membership on it's players I think we can wait to see how the system develops in A2 rather than cutting it entirely,
you could have a rule where summons can only be initiated in freeholds or nodes of t3 and up, for example depending on if/how we see it being abused.
The Wolves of Verra
are recruiting: https://discord.gg/Rt8G3sNYac
You misunderstand. It is not about being "low on time and needing to progress". It is about being low on time and wanting to play. If your friends can't all gather together easily because of scheduling difficulty, you still want to play with them in this multi-player role-playing game. @Strevi's non-solution is for everyone to go solo instead, if anything makes life difficult on that two nights a week you can coordinate everyone at once. It's not about progression. It's not about increasing numbers, or getting loot. It's about playing. Together.
8 just became 64.
So, what can be done to solve this sort of issue? I dont know how outside of completely making the character naked as a requirement for teleportation.
Something that has been suggested before, actually, and I think works well is this:
Instead of teleporting players, have them auto-path and auto-run to the summoner. This takes away all teleportation and 'sudden arrival' based exploits, and at first glance it looks like it would ruin the spirit of the thing, but if you look a little closer, a lot of people in the target demographic will have more time to AFK while they say, cook dinner, or deal with whatever else, which lets them get in position for content while they're able to actually play. It won't work for everyone, but it keeps the theme up, and it definitely helps with the teleportation-induced problems.
You'd configure it to take main streets to avoid mobs. Maybe have an optional icon that shows the player has no materials or such on them (if you keep that requirement) so they're less likely to get killed. Probably no immunity, but maybe you respawn at the spawnpoint nearest the summoner if you do get killed.
Suddenly it's a pain in the ass for little profit, to guilds, but still useful to most actual 'families'.
I honestly think that would likely defeat the whole purpose of family teleport, imagine you get home from work and only have an hour or two to kill, but before you can play with your friend you need to trigger an autopath running simulator, which depending on how far you're running could eat into a decent chunk of that time, at least if you made the summon only work if the caller was in a freehold or node you'd be able to run to your destination actively with your friends.
As you said suddenly it's a pain in the ass for little profit, for guilds but imo it's still just a pain in the ass, if the system was only auto-pathing I'd say scrap the family idea and just make that available to anyone on your friends list and if it were simply auto-pathing how would that work if you are being summoned off main roads? You would also need to scrap the resource restriction as what would be the purpose in restricting it to no resource carrying? The reason that restriction was put in place is to prevent circumventing transport risks, if you are simply running in open world the restriction doesn't make sense
The Wolves of Verra
are recruiting: https://discord.gg/Rt8G3sNYac
If you have 30 minutes to play during the weekdays and it does or doesn't coincide with friends that have 60+ minutes to play during the week, you can't keep up with their power scaling and are left behind though. jesus christ
So yes it's about playing with friends, and I'd like a 'Training' system so I can do something more physical lol.
Thus it's the Summoner's "Blood Pact". . . or however you name it.
Family could make in-game mechanics easier that involve a "Bond" like an enchanted trinket that permits long-distance communication; Mage item.
Cleric gets an indication of where you are when you're near.
and other stuff for the other classes.
Making it limited to summoner, no. limiting to one member of the family I would be on board with if the system proves to easily exploited, eg only the family head can summon. But as it stands I'm in the camp of the system should be left as is until testing proves it to be defective.
The Wolves of Verra
are recruiting: https://discord.gg/Rt8G3sNYac
one ur assuming all family members are logged in and everyone in the inital group are all in different families.
That being said they could combat this rather well just by having summon family member only works in certain area aka freehold they own or a Node town. this would mean the caravan and all that is long gone by the time they get there member summon also make a summon take 1 min to cast would also combat this since it take 5 mins or so to get everyone over from a full family
1. head of family that you must be beside to be apart of a family (also not easily changeable, if you choose to change it takes a day before it changes)
2. Teleporting players cooldown should be linked between all players in family.
3. Cooldown should be between 30min -1hr (cool down can also be longer if needed)
4. Can only teleport one person at a time.