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A case of Kaelar wooden toy Soldiers and the magical yellow Fighter hammer.
George_Black
Member, Intrepid Pack
My conceen is that the Devs have encountered a problem with caravans being used to transport mats from region to region and deter players from just loading their bags and avoiding the caravan pvp risk.
The cargo we saw today is part of the transported caravan goods.
The original idea was that players must transport goods from one region to the next to make a profit.
To which players said "why risk using caravans? Might as well carry bags".
Steven said there will be other reasons to do so.
Today we saw those reasons.
To sell toy soldiers to NPCs. Aren't we sending heroes back to Vera?
There are no kids here so we dont need to sell toys to NPCs.
I mean since people are strict with the lore and insist that due to the lore a Fighter must summon giant yellow magic hammers because fighters in vera (that has no kids but has toy soldiers) because Fighters are a bit magical.
I say let's go back to the origonal plan of having to carry materials with caravans and players can loot useful materials (not npc gameplay toy soldiers) to craft or sell. Social gameplay, that holds together pvp pve crafting gathering exploration etc etc.
Not npc vendor gameplay and bound currencies.
Also, to combat rmt we need account activity tracking with red flags, not making content NPC centered.
Work out the logistics Devs. Find a way to force material transport via caravans.
Only RPers will be interested in running caravans for the NPCs gold payments.
The cargo we saw today is part of the transported caravan goods.
The original idea was that players must transport goods from one region to the next to make a profit.
To which players said "why risk using caravans? Might as well carry bags".
Steven said there will be other reasons to do so.
Today we saw those reasons.
To sell toy soldiers to NPCs. Aren't we sending heroes back to Vera?
There are no kids here so we dont need to sell toys to NPCs.
I mean since people are strict with the lore and insist that due to the lore a Fighter must summon giant yellow magic hammers because fighters in vera (that has no kids but has toy soldiers) because Fighters are a bit magical.
I say let's go back to the origonal plan of having to carry materials with caravans and players can loot useful materials (not npc gameplay toy soldiers) to craft or sell. Social gameplay, that holds together pvp pve crafting gathering exploration etc etc.
Not npc vendor gameplay and bound currencies.
Also, to combat rmt we need account activity tracking with red flags, not making content NPC centered.
Work out the logistics Devs. Find a way to force material transport via caravans.
Only RPers will be interested in running caravans for the NPCs gold payments.
2
Comments
Steven mentioned you can transport both commodities and resources, the focus today was commodities, thats why it was shown, but you still can spawn caravans for all sorts of goods, you can farm fish, wood, metal, load your caravan and take them away for profit to sell to players, if you get attacked, those can be lost/looted, it didn't change we just got extra info and a more in depth system.
Hope they keep the magic hammer for fighters, looks great.
My concern is that we can still carry mats from region to region without the caravans and that commodities are used to intice players, which they wont.
As for transporting goods, I think that'll already be happening way more than transporting glint, because the only way to make people transport glint is to make the payout multiplier at other nodes way higher than what you would get at the node you were farming in.
And I sure as hell hope Intrepid's economy designers are not as silly as the people who'd implement that kind of multiplier.
I'd prefer to transport more than 4 pieces of commodities though. I don't see why the commodities can't stack.
You can't make that statement without having tested the system, we have seen how limited player inventory will be, we dont know about the mules, so saying it is viable to carry mats (replacing caravan capacity) from region to region is not valid speculation.
Also, commodities are a way to generate gold, introduce gold to the economy, and that being made through character bound tokens such as Glint is 100% brilliant
now, thats not to say you can not "make" gold by trading with players, selling items and resources using caravans and professions, those can be as or even more profitable, that didn't change, so I don't really see what is the issue here
The risk is so smallllllllllll though...
It's worth discussing in full transparency.
And with the speed of caravans, even if you have the decoys they would just get destroyed and the attackers would move onto the real deal.
Depending on how stolen goods interact with other players (if at all), those black markets could potentially be good places for BH ambushes
I fucking dearly hope BHs can interact with stolen goods, just as I had suggested a looong time ago.
Too many hoops to jump.
Competitive players will focus on traditional paths of progress and ignore all the good things AoC CAN offer.
If we pretend there isnt an issue we wont fix the issue.
Go find Stevens answer when somebody asked "What stops people from carrying mats in there bags".
Steven said "there will be other rewards with caravans".
We saw those rewards today and they arent enough.
Yeah but different commodities cost different kinds of glint. I just want to kill stuff, get the range of glint and buy everything I can with whatever glint I've gained. I didn't like Steven buying 4 meats and only transporting 2 for example...I think the example could've been better thought out, really triggered me lol.
I will carry mats in my bag...I'll use a Mule too (Which gives corruption when killed). I will only use caravans to assist my guild or move resources. We have to pay taxes with Glint so it makes sense to stock pile Glint. I asked for glint to be stackable in banks and personal storage.
Cause if they have, then ooooooh boi I gotta add a thing to my feedback. If all those glints (which are fucking bound) are all completely separate items then it's just inventory clutter and I definitely don't want that shit.
I rewatched that part of the stream and it looks sus as fuck tbh. I think Steven had a GM cheat on where he'd get endless replenishment of glint. And the prices on commodities didn't match any glint consumption (or whatever was popping up in the bottom right corner of the screen).
But considering the supposed tax on commodities, I'd imagine that there's some form of currency scaling (or however you call the "1 gold is comprised of 100 silver, which is comprised of 10000 bronze" stuff).
Cause if we need to farm exact amounts of precise glints to buy commodities - that's even fucking stupider than this system might seem at first glance
@Azherae I know you've either fully parsed those details or at least noticed them and thought about them. What do they represent/mean, if anything?
if you carry them without the caravans, you get less rewards
lower the risk, lower the reward. increase the risk, increase the reward.
also why is that a oncern?
also, caravan runs are highly social activities and there is large scale pvp associated with them. they will create wars, even if we use commodities.
But with glints we have 6 damn slots taken up by it. And those slots will be taken up no matter how many mobs you fight (well, given the luck of dropping all 6 kinds that is, if they are separate).
Yes, you'd get more kinds of certs if you went on a thinly-but-widely spread genocide, but how often does that happen in practice though?
I've asked for the glints to be turned into tokens like WoW rather than be in the inventory. I'm not sure how many types of glints will happen but I've considered Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum or Basic, Mid, Epic and Legendary.
In other words, you can get lucky and drop a legendary glint from your very first mob, or you gotta grind super hard mobs but only keep getting commons, cause your luck is shit.
Cause forcing people to do the thing you mentioned would be a yet another stupid decision. Mobs will be mostly farmed for mats, so if glint is completely separate and can't be exchanged into each other - that means that you have to do what you mentioned you don't want to do.
And I see no good gameplay reason to have this kind of design.
edit: and if it can be exchanged, then mobs just drop appropriate rarity of glint and you auto-exchange it during purchases.
Either we sit on the side that trusts Intrepid will keep all their promises and make everything work no matter how much instinct/gut tells us otherwise...
Or, at this point, we assume this entire thing is a mess for the usual reasons.
I guess there's the middle ground of 'refuse to care until we have more data'. I support this thread in the interest of more data, because I can't muster the faith to be on the 'trust Intrepid' side for this one. I'm making an effort to not end up on the 'entire thing is a mess' side.
I hate every part of this design, but it technically still fits within the broad net of 'things the original statements about the game could mean', so I'll leave it to George to tank through this time.
Anyway that was all preamble to buffer my answer, NiKr.
It means someone thought we needed to move closer to BDO, for their systems to work. This does not surprise me because, on paper, their systems never worked, they're all over the place. They are making an effort to create cohesion through this system. All we can do is decide if we like it or not.
Cause to me this kinda feels like a sure way to force master looting (or however you call "only one person gets the loot") into guilds/parties. Cause it's way easier to control caravan movement when you have all the caravan currency on one person (or several designated people).
or any mob can drop any type of glint based on a % chance and rarity.