How does pvp work around caravans?

How will scouts be associated with the caravans? Will there be a no punishment pvp circle around the caravan? If you send out scouts ahead of the caravan and they aren't within the pvp enabled area can you still kill them without fear of repercussions? Do you still become a baddie for non consensual pvp? What are your thoughts on other ways to abuse this system with the way it has been described so far? Im hoping loopholes like this can be closed up before launch.

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Ludullu

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Caravans

Strevi

what is a loop hole?
somehow I get the feeling that nice mechanics some people want to prevent are being called loop holes

Gandalfthegrape

Strevi wrote: »

what is a loop hole?
somehow I get the feeling that nice mechanics some people want to prevent are being called loop holes

Like I can avoid pvp entirely if the caravan isn't marked on the map by being in discord and having people ride ahead in 2 layers of a circle formation around the caravan and just altering the course when they see anyone. The players after my caravan can't kill my scouts without being punished. So there is no loss whatsoever with me. All I do is communicate to everyone in the party the new heading and go around those players. With forward or flanking scouts rotating to a rear position with the center scouts replacing them at their location when the course is shifted. 2 layers to artificially extend the effective view distance by double making my caravan effectively invisible if the course is altered whole allowing everyone to stay in formation through visibly seeing everyone. but the attacker not being able to see the caravan, all they see is a couple of people riding by and then moving slightly tot he left or right with them never making it to my second layer max view distance as the course has already been changed. I could also get people in my discord call to all stream to the call giving everyone in the call an effective 360 view of the entire caravan making moving fully as a single unit quit easy. If the caravan is map marked the way a delivery is in gta then it would make this obsolete. Personally I think map markers should only be used for non consensual pvp cereal killers but it is an option for this.

Ludullu

Gandalfthegrape wrote: »

Like I can avoid pvp entirely
if the caravan isn't marked on the map by being in discord and having people ride ahead in 2 layers of a circle formation around the caravan and just altering the course when they see anyone. The players after my caravan can't kill my scouts without being punished. So there is no loss whatsoever with me. All I do is communicate to everyone in the party the new heading and go around those players. With forward or flanking scouts rotating to a rear position with the center scouts replacing them at their location when the course is shifted. 2 layers to artificially extend the effective view distance by double making my caravan effectively invisible if the course is altered whole allowing everyone to stay in formation through visibly seeing everyone. but the attacker not being able to see the caravan, all they see is a couple of people riding by and then moving slightly tot he left or right with them never making it to my second layer max view distance as the course has already been changed. I could also get people in my discord call to all stream to the call giving everyone in the call an effective 360 view of the entire caravan making moving fully as a single unit quit easy. If the caravan is map marked the way a delivery is in gta then it would make this obsolete. Personally I think map markers should only be used for non consensual pvp cereal killers but it is an option for this.

I mean, you can if you have the people for that. But imo, if you have that many people who are that well-coordinated, it'd be just easier to defend your caravan in its pvp zone.

And if you, as a guild or a constant group of people, have any kinds of enemies who are explicitly targeting you and your caravans - your scouts would just be an indicator to them that you're doing a caravan run. And considering that mounts will most likely move faster than a caravan, they'll just find you by running around a bit.

Gandalfthegrape

NiKr wrote: »

Gandalfthegrape wrote: »

Like I can avoid pvp entirely
if the caravan isn't marked on the map by being in discord and having people ride ahead in 2 layers of a circle formation around the caravan and just altering the course when they see anyone. The players after my caravan can't kill my scouts without being punished. So there is no loss whatsoever with me. All I do is communicate to everyone in the party the new heading and go around those players. With forward or flanking scouts rotating to a rear position with the center scouts replacing them at their location when the course is shifted. 2 layers to artificially extend the effective view distance by double making my caravan effectively invisible if the course is altered whole allowing everyone to stay in formation through visibly seeing everyone. but the attacker not being able to see the caravan, all they see is a couple of people riding by and then moving slightly tot he left or right with them never making it to my second layer max view distance as the course has already been changed. I could also get people in my discord call to all stream to the call giving everyone in the call an effective 360 view of the entire caravan making moving fully as a single unit quit easy. If the caravan is map marked the way a delivery is in gta then it would make this obsolete. Personally I think map markers should only be used for non consensual pvp cereal killers but it is an option for this.

I mean, you can if you have the people for that. But imo, if you have that many people who are that well-cooperative, it'd be just easier to defend your caravan in its pvp zone.

And if you, as a guild or a constant group of people, have any kinds of enemies who are explicitly targeting you and your caravans - your scouts would just be an indicator to them that you're doing a caravan run. And considering that mounts will most likely move faster than a caravan, they'll just find you by running around a bit.

Maybe. I feel like that would only work if the enemy targeting my group had large amounts of scouts for their main force and already and knew the names or had a kill on sight tracker add-on for everyone in my group. If the caravan is under 60% mounted speed my idea would be completely irrelevant. But if it was like 90/80% it would still probably be fine. Do you happen to know if they have given out a chart for running, mounted, and caravan speeds yet by any chance? Or has it just been the estimated time to walk across the map?

Do you happen to know if the health pools are able to regenerate or you can repair them? I wonder if its possible just to ignore the people defending pop all your cds and nuke the caravan and then get wiped after. Oh god do caravans operate as re spawn points for the defenders? So many questions i'm sry XD.

Ludullu

Gandalfthegrape wrote: »

Maybe. I feel like that would only work if the enemy targeting my group had large amounts of scouts for their main force and already and knew the names or had a kill on sight tracker add-on for everyone in my group. If the caravan is under 60% mounted speed my idea would be completely irrelevant. But if it was like 90/80% it would still probably be fine. Do you happen to know if they have given out a chart for running, mounted, and caravan speeds yet by any chance? Or has it just been the estimated time to walk across the map?

Do you happen to know if the health pools are able to regenerate or you can repair them? I wonder if its possible just to ignore the people defending pop all your cds and nuke the caravan and then get wiped after. Oh god do caravans operate as re spawn points for the defenders? So many questions i'm sry XD.

We got no info on any of that, but here's a video from pre-alpha. People could outrun it on foot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq5ybMyF8nc

And I somehow doubt that caravans will be changed to being much faster than this. Mainly because the whole point of attackers and defenders is to be able to stay on pace with the caravan itself, while pvping each other.

Talents

Gandalfthegrape wrote: »

Strevi wrote: »

what is a loop hole?
somehow I get the feeling that nice mechanics some people want to prevent are being called loop holes

Like I can avoid pvp entirely if the caravan isn't marked on the map by being in discord and having people ride ahead in 2 layers of a circle formation around the caravan and just altering the course when they see anyone. The players after my caravan can't kill my scouts without being punished. So there is no loss whatsoever with me. All I do is communicate to everyone in the party the new heading and go around those players. With forward or flanking scouts rotating to a rear position with the center scouts replacing them at their location when the course is shifted. 2 layers to artificially extend the effective view distance by double making my caravan effectively invisible if the course is altered whole allowing everyone to stay in formation through visibly seeing everyone. but the attacker not being able to see the caravan, all they see is a couple of people riding by and then moving slightly tot he left or right with them never making it to my second layer max view distance as the course has already been changed. I could also get people in my discord call to all stream to the call giving everyone in the call an effective 360 view of the entire caravan making moving fully as a single unit quit easy. If the caravan is map marked the way a delivery is in gta then it would make this obsolete. Personally I think map markers should only be used for non consensual pvp cereal killers but it is an option for this.

I don't think you know what a loophole is.

LordPax

NiKr wrote: »

Gandalfthegrape wrote: »

Maybe. I feel like that would only work if the enemy targeting my group had large amounts of scouts for their main force and already and knew the names or had a kill on sight tracker add-on for everyone in my group. If the caravan is under 60% mounted speed my idea would be completely irrelevant. But if it was like 90/80% it would still probably be fine. Do you happen to know if they have given out a chart for running, mounted, and caravan speeds yet by any chance? Or has it just been the estimated time to walk across the map?

Do you happen to know if the health pools are able to regenerate or you can repair them? I wonder if its possible just to ignore the people defending pop all your cds and nuke the caravan and then get wiped after. Oh god do caravans operate as re spawn points for the defenders? So many questions i'm sry XD.

We got no info on any of that, but here's a video from pre-alpha. People could outrun it on foot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq5ybMyF8nc

And I somehow doubt that caravans will be changed to being much faster than this. Mainly because the whole point of attackers and defenders is to be able to stay on pace with the caravan itself, while pvping each other.

I cannot wait to see the progress on this system. This and merchant ships are my biggest excitement for the game!

Gandalfthegrape

NiKr wrote: »

Gandalfthegrape wrote: »

Maybe. I feel like that would only work if the enemy targeting my group had large amounts of scouts for their main force and already and knew the names or had a kill on sight tracker add-on for everyone in my group. If the caravan is under 60% mounted speed my idea would be completely irrelevant. But if it was like 90/80% it would still probably be fine. Do you happen to know if they have given out a chart for running, mounted, and caravan speeds yet by any chance? Or has it just been the estimated time to walk across the map?

Do you happen to know if the health pools are able to regenerate or you can repair them? I wonder if its possible just to ignore the people defending pop all your cds and nuke the caravan and then get wiped after. Oh god do caravans operate as re spawn points for the defenders? So many questions i'm sry XD.

We got no info on any of that, but here's a video from pre-alpha. People could outrun it on foot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq5ybMyF8nc

And I somehow doubt that caravans will be changed to being much faster than this. Mainly because the whole point of attackers and defenders is to be able to stay on pace with the caravan itself, while pvping each other.

Ya that's really slow actually. I hope they add a visible circle around the cart to know if you are entering the pvp zone or not.

Gandalfthegrape

Talents wrote: »

Gandalfthegrape wrote: »

Strevi wrote: »

what is a loop hole?
somehow I get the feeling that nice mechanics some people want to prevent are being called loop holes

Like I can avoid pvp entirely if the caravan isn't marked on the map by being in discord and having people ride ahead in 2 layers of a circle formation around the caravan and just altering the course when they see anyone. The players after my caravan can't kill my scouts without being punished. So there is no loss whatsoever with me. All I do is communicate to everyone in the party the new heading and go around those players. With forward or flanking scouts rotating to a rear position with the center scouts replacing them at their location when the course is shifted. 2 layers to artificially extend the effective view distance by double making my caravan effectively invisible if the course is altered whole allowing everyone to stay in formation through visibly seeing everyone. but the attacker not being able to see the caravan, all they see is a couple of people riding by and then moving slightly tot he left or right with them never making it to my second layer max view distance as the course has already been changed. I could also get people in my discord call to all stream to the call giving everyone in the call an effective 360 view of the entire caravan making moving fully as a single unit quit easy. If the caravan is map marked the way a delivery is in gta then it would make this obsolete. Personally I think map markers should only be used for non consensual pvp cereal killers but it is an option for this.

I don't think you know what a loophole is.

The point of the system is for pvp. If you can avoid pvp it's a loophole.
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=loophole+definition

Electronn

So your concern is that players might use skillful strategy and planning to ensure a successful caravan run?

We must close this loophole immediately. Otherwise players will abuse the system by planning and strategizing just so they can protect their caravan. We should also look into the loophole of players coordinating and strategizing to down world bosses. I mean seriously, they could all just be in discord together talking about how to avoid the boss mechanics.

Strevi

mcnasty wrote: »

So your concern is that players might use skillful strategy and planning to ensure a successful caravan run?

We must close this loophole immediately. Otherwise players will abuse the system by planning and strategizing just so they can protect their caravan. We should also look into the loophole of players coordinating and strategizing to down world bosses. I mean seriously, they could all just be in discord together talking about how to avoid the boss mechanics.

MMOs cannot be made great again unless Discord is destroyed in the process

Gandalfthegrape

mcnasty wrote: »

So your concern is that players might use skillful strategy and planning to ensure a successful caravan run?

We must close this loophole immediately. Otherwise players will abuse the system by planning and strategizing just so they can protect their caravan. We should also look into the loophole of players coordinating and strategizing to down world bosses. I mean seriously, they could all just be in discord together talking about how to avoid the boss mechanics.

If players can fully avoid boss mechanics that's generally called exploiting and people have either gotten banned for it or they completely overhauled the mechanic to fix it in many games. There was an exploit in wow where you could stand on top of a lamp post and you wouldn't take boss damage. Following the same reasoning "they could all just be in discord together talking about how to avoid the boss mechanics" It's clearly outside the intended use of the system. The fact you don't think they should fix problems like this before there is even a beta is absolutely astounding to me. So yes it's bad and a loophole.

You could also load up a caravan with the cheapest possible resources never go to the objective, drive it around, and use it to actively target players for non consensual pvp combat without getting the bad boi debuff. So yes this entire system is heavily exploitable past it's intended use without having other mechanics like map icons, time limits, etc.

In my opinion there should only be a set cost to buy a caravan and then if you make it to the destination you get a bonus reward like taking that materials you have in the caravan and adding 20% of that specific material type making taking high value materials in them actually work doing. If anyone kills it they get the reward and you lose the cost materials and the gold to buy/craft it. It would emulate the same cost vs reward mentality without completely ruining the experience for most of the people involved. Or limit the resources you are able to put into it like under 10 hours of farming. Rust does this well with tcs you can only make your base so big relative to what you can actually farm in a set time frame. So losing it doesn't result in you losing a completely disproportional amount of resources.

I see absolutely no benefit to using the caravans when I can safely transport resources on my own that actively discourages players form attacking me, and on top of that I can be mounted which will make it SIGNIFICANTLY easier to avoid almost any enemy. And on top of that I can be in a party anyway while we are all transporting materials and while mounted. There is no benefit to using this beside bag space which doesn't matter if you can make more trips while you are mounted anyway.

These are all significant problems and fall under the category of loopholes.

Edit: What's to stop me from taking a caravan to a location in the world where there is an important quest npc and also a choke point, hiding the caravan within that choke point and having 8 -14 people just aoe the choke preventing literally the entire server from accessing that location while at the same time receiving no penalty as we are all inside the pvp area.

Ludullu

@Gandalfthegrape you haven't read the wiki properly. Caravan's zone is an opt-in system. When you come across a caravan or it just happens to ride up to you, you'll be asked "do you want to attack or defend or ignore the caravan". And unless you choose either of the first two options, you won't participate in the pvp for the caravan.

Dygz

Gandalfthegrape wrote: »

Edit: What's to stop me from taking a caravan to a location in the world where there is an important quest npc and also a choke point, hiding the caravan within that choke point and having 8 -14 people just aoe the choke preventing literally the entire server from accessing that location while at the same time receiving no penalty as we are all inside the pvp area.

You won't last long against an entire server, and...
When you die, you will respawn relatively far away from the Caravan.
Most likely, the Caravan will be located and destroyed before the entire server can be rallied, anyway.
It's an absurd scenario you've concocted that does not comport well with any reality.

Electronn

Gandalfthegrape wrote: »

If players can fully avoid boss mechanics that's generally called exploiting

Good point. Stand in the fire or get banned for exploiting. lol

Gandalfthegrape

Dygz wrote: »

Gandalfthegrape wrote: »

Edit: What's to stop me from taking a caravan to a location in the world where there is an important quest npc and also a choke point, hiding the caravan within that choke point and having 8 -14 people just aoe the choke preventing literally the entire server from accessing that location while at the same time receiving no penalty as we are all inside the pvp area.

You won't last long against an entire server, and...
When you die, you will respawn relatively far away from the Caravan.
Most likely, the Caravan will be located and destroyed before the entire server can be rallied, anyway.
It's an absurd scenario you've concocted that does not comport well with any reality.

You can do this very easily in wow, Half the player base quit wow classic because they kept getting killed trying to access brd and mc. If this game has literally any kind of spamable aoe you can do it here too. Yes you can hold off 200 people with 20 at a choke point because 20 people spamming aoe in 1 location is enough to create an instant vaporization barrier that nothing can cross. It just becomes an impassable meatgrinder you could throw 1000 people into that will accomplish absolutely nothing. You need to enter the defenders aoe in order to be in range to cast your spells to attack them. When you enter the aoe you get insta deleted. You probably wouldn't even need close to 20 given how many different classes there are in this game. Iv personally witnessed this and there are tens of thousands of hours of recordings across youtube that show this. You should probably play another game besides solitaire before hopping into a game like ashes my friend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8XYwndVBiU

Gandalfthegrape

mcnasty wrote: »

Gandalfthegrape wrote: »

If players can fully avoid boss mechanics that's generally called exploiting

Good point. Stand in the fire or get banned for exploiting. lol

There is clearly a difference between avoiding a boss mechanic like fire by moving slightly to the left, and casing dots on the boss, leaving the raid and coming back when it dies because the raid wasn't thought out properly. You're clearly being intentionally ignorant.

Gandalfthegrape

NiKr wrote: »

@Gandalfthegrape you haven't read the wiki properly. Caravan's zone is an opt-in system. When you come across a caravan or it just happens to ride up to you, you'll be asked "do you want to attack or defend or ignore the caravan". And unless you choose either of the first two options, you won't participate in the pvp for the caravan.

No sorry thats my mistake. I was watching the video where the carvan gets stuck on a rock and the one linked above and I guess I must have missed it when I initially scrolled through. I went to look at he the article and you're completely right. After reading it again I'm honestly even more confused about the purpose of the system. It says its not really to encourage pvp but to encourage trade relationships between nodes. I can't think of a single reason I would ever use this for trade. The lowest cost method of doing something is the way most people will go. It costs me absolutely nothing to just walk or mount over to a different town all the while I have at the very least a false sense of security. It costs me an incredible amount of time and energy and I have the risk of losing tonnes of stuff all at once using the caravans. How many resources am I going to need to craft anything if my inventory and bank isn't enough already? How will I even hold all these items if my inventory and bank isn't enough to get them to the caravan. I would rather just walk every time. I would rather do 10 trips and risk dying 1 out of 10 trips losing a single inventory, than transporting everything at once and risk losing it all. Loss aversion is HUGE. I can't see this being something people are going to use if there isn't a massive incentive to do so. Like the guildbank/node bank or whatever of both nodes getting a big bonus when the caravan gets there. Or individual players that join it receive a part of the contents that are created in addition to what is being traded. Why would I pay for insurance when I could just walk? The only thing that would prevent me from walking would be to not allow me to transport materials in the open world, but like how would I even farm then? You could get a free caravan if yours makes it without taking any damage but you pay a 5-20% repair for being slightly to heavily damaged. If you make it to the destination and you're transporting copper bars each person in the group gets some copper bars when they make it to the end. If they are transporting highly valuable mithril each person get some mithril bars making it significantly more worth it to help defend than if it were copper. Idk without a large amount of positive incentives I can't see people wanting to use this. It's going to be interesting to see what they do with banks and if they are cross city. New world made it so they weren't and you needed to pay huge amounts to access your bank from a different city. That combined with no fast travel or very limited fast travel made a lot of people leave pretty quickly. It was also super frustrating being able to see you're stuff right there in the menu and some arbitrary barrier was put there to intentionally limit me. The risk of bringing say a red key card out in rust is dwarfed by the amount of loot you can get by getting a full launch site run. If the risk of transporting dwarfs what you will receive as a reason for you to do it, you won't do it. You're just going to camp launch permanently and wait for some sucker to come by and you take everything after or before they looted. It cost you basically nothing, a pistol and a rad suit. If you need to have some insane amount of resources and cost and you risk losing a bunch of it without at least getting 20-30% of what you are transporting on top of it people are going to be like lol no and just walk. Especially when you lose the protection from people getting the bad boi debuff for attacking you. It's a lose lose lose situation to use the caravans and way more incentivized to just walk around the world hitting loot pinatas. As you can walk all the way up to the group and be standing on top of the carvan, picked out your healer targets and just nuke the group after you all simultaneously hit attack.

Depraved

^ you can farm stuff in one region, then use the caravans to transport them to another region and make 4x-5x the profit. so 1 hour of farm yields 4-5 hours of profit

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