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Family Summons Sucks (And How to Fix The System)
GrappLr
Member, Alpha One
Argument Against Family Summons in Ashes of Creation
Undermining Travel Significance:
The introduction of the family summons system poses a risk of undermining the significance of travel within the game.
Fast travel systems, if too efficient, have the potential to make other means of travel less appealing. This could diminish the sense of adventure, exploration, and danger that is integral to a vibrant open-world gaming experience.
Uniformity in Travel Choices:
The dominance of family summons as the go-to method for fast travel may lead to uniformity in players' travel choices. If family summons becomes the most efficient and widely adopted means of travel, it could homogenize the player experience, limiting the diversity of travel options and strategies players might employ.
Impact on PvP Dynamics:
Family summons may have a negative impact on player-versus-player (PvP) dynamics. PvP scenarios often rely on strategic movement and positioning. If family summons provides a quick and easy repositioning tool, it could reduce the importance of strategic planning and alter the dynamics of PvP encounters.
Contradiction to Meaningful Travel Commitment:
The concept of family summons contradicts the initial commitment to meaningful travel experiences as described during the Kickstarter campaign. If the developers emphasized the importance of travel in creating a rich and immersive game world during the Kickstarter, the inclusion of an easily accessible fast travel system might be seen as deviating from that commitment.
Overall, there is very little good to be gotten from "Family Summons". Sure, it could be balanced in a way that it's not very abusable. Sure, it could be made weaker if people disliked it. But at the end of the day, it's a bad concept. It should be thrown into the dumpster.
Undermining Travel Significance:
The introduction of the family summons system poses a risk of undermining the significance of travel within the game.
Fast travel systems, if too efficient, have the potential to make other means of travel less appealing. This could diminish the sense of adventure, exploration, and danger that is integral to a vibrant open-world gaming experience.
Uniformity in Travel Choices:
The dominance of family summons as the go-to method for fast travel may lead to uniformity in players' travel choices. If family summons becomes the most efficient and widely adopted means of travel, it could homogenize the player experience, limiting the diversity of travel options and strategies players might employ.
Impact on PvP Dynamics:
Family summons may have a negative impact on player-versus-player (PvP) dynamics. PvP scenarios often rely on strategic movement and positioning. If family summons provides a quick and easy repositioning tool, it could reduce the importance of strategic planning and alter the dynamics of PvP encounters.
Contradiction to Meaningful Travel Commitment:
The concept of family summons contradicts the initial commitment to meaningful travel experiences as described during the Kickstarter campaign. If the developers emphasized the importance of travel in creating a rich and immersive game world during the Kickstarter, the inclusion of an easily accessible fast travel system might be seen as deviating from that commitment.
Overall, there is very little good to be gotten from "Family Summons". Sure, it could be balanced in a way that it's not very abusable. Sure, it could be made weaker if people disliked it. But at the end of the day, it's a bad concept. It should be thrown into the dumpster.
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Comments
A greater commitment is to the end-product itself rather than a feature previously thought to be good.
At first glance it immediately strikes you as abusable and just a way to keep people from traveling more rationally, socially, et cetera.
Instead, aim for robust half-fast in-wordly travel systems. Make the airships more common between big nodes. Harbors with boat travel across the oceans more a standard. Just a thought.
Even speaking of P2W, I could have 9 alt accounts, all in same family. I just bought myself 9 personal summoning portals, with 30min cooldowns. I can literally teleport to anywhere in the game, on a low cooldown.
This is in a game that has ALMOST NO FAST TRAVEL.
This is literally the definition of easy access fast travel.
You know how many people will do this? Enough that you'll feel inferior with your little 15 dollars a month.
Families will be small groups. Will they be able to also be part of a guild?
I think the purpose of the family summon is to help players who normally like to play together, to be able to reach each-other fast when they login. But they will not teleport goods. The reason of not having teleportation is to ensure goods are transported by caravans.
From PvP point of view, if one side uses teleportation, the other side can use it too. So both attackers or defenders will be able to take advantage equally. There might also be significant cool-downs to this feature.
This being said, I feel neutral toward the issue and I don't care if they eventually remove the families completely or keep them teleporting around. I'll prefer being in a guild.
The game is designed with travel being important. Easy access fast travel goes against the entire design.
Just because friends can't agree to meet at node cavern at 9pm on Saturday is not my problem. It's their problem. We should not add negative mechanics that belittle important systems such as travel to appeal to small problems like this.
As for abusing the system? It will be abused. I can come up with tons of examples off the top of my head.
Want to sell a sword and armor set on the other continent? Equip it, then family travel there, unequip, sell, family travel back.
Want to look for a world boss with my guild? Make it a guild rule that people in the guild must be in family within the guild. Then, whenever scouting for world bosses, go in groups of 8 (all non family members). If any group of 8 finds the boss, they each singularly summon up their respective families. 8 people turns to 64 very quickly.
You're soloing on the map, and see someone or a caravan you want to take down? If your friends are online, you can tell them to teleport to you. If you're ahead of the path of the caravan, or it's converting got a water caravan, plenty of time to summon them.
Want to have instant access to multiple parts of the game world at a whim? Buy alt accounts, pay 15 bucks a month for them each, and have your very own pay to win portals to teleport to any time you wish.
I can keep going... This is just off the top of my head.
You cannot prevent selling the gear even if that player will walk instead of teleport.
The family teleportation helps players who do not have many alts. But those who want to see if a boss spawned or check prices on the other side of the map can do that using alts easier than family teleportation which might have a cool down and needs a family member on the other side.
But if guild members can be part of a family too at the same time, that feels indeed wrong.
I think the family system is intended or should be used for small group of players who do not want to join guilds.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Family_summon
1- you know, people in your family still has to walk towards the location where they will use the summoning skills, so everything you mentioned isnt diminished or anything...people still have to walk to get there. also, certain locations might not be accessible by one player who can just bypass all the mobs and summon everyone deep inside a cave. maybe you can summon outside the cave but you still have to go inside your party so no one dies.
2- pretty sure there is going to be a cooldown and you wont be able to spam it. this is mostly going to be used if you have been farming for hours with your party, then someone needs to go back to town to resupply then farm again for a few more hours.
3- cant even use it in combat, so what you said here wont be applicable, plus it will have a long cast time as stated and it will most likely be interruptible if you find someone trying to summon their family. if anything, at most, you will be able to hide and summon, but then it goes on cd and you still have to win the pvp anyways. the enemies can do the same so its a cd x cd trade. also, you most likely wont be able to summon everyone at once, and can only summon them one by one. it says on the wiki "you can slowly start to spawn your family members."
4- read 1. still have to walk to where you want to summon and do a normal travel. if this is an issue, why u dont complain about scientific nodes teleporting ability? thats probably more op.
a minority of players will have multiple accounts. consider you will need multiple computers as well...anyways you wont be able to teleport anywhere on the map..just a few spots
"My concern is that the divide that's present in having a largely non-fast travel-based traversal for the world might be a very significant encumbrance for more casual oriented players. We can still maintain the game philosophy in my opinion of mitigating that large group traversal capability as long as we contain the fast travel method to a family type system, where you can't have people quickly dip out of the family and then add new ones and summon them, and the cool down period is quick enough where you can summon large amounts of people.[3] – Steven Sharif" https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Family_summon
I am not trying to defend it, I don't want fast travel. BUT in order for the devs to be ok with removing it, they would need an alternative, better, solution to the problem Steven describes above.
Instead of us just complaining, can anyone think of a better solution?
Don't listen to streamers who say things and support things like summoning people. They just want a quick way to 0-100 through the game for their streams. Ignore them for the most part they will always want it to be easier.
No teleporting, no fast traveling all over STOP IT. Stop making the game EASIER we dont want EASIER if we wanted quick and easy we would not be playing MMORPG's. These types of games are suppose to test your patience, your resolve and your wits. Stop dumbing it down to mobile game level IQ friendly.
I will not have much time to play, a few hours most days at best. Guess what? I don't mind traveling the long way around, I don't mind having to go through lengths to meetup with friends. It makes the world feel bigger, it makes it more alive. If i spend an hour of my playtime on traveling through the elements to get to a specific destination, that was an hour well spent. Not "Oh yeah summon pls"
I wouldn't mind summoning being something that like a mage whos partially specced into it and it takes valuable resources for the spell. Summoning someone who is on the other side of the world I'd assume is more difficult than shooting a few bolts of lightning. Summoning should not be a casual thing in any game.
When WoW had mass summon/ressurections for guilds it decimated pvp.
We also forgot to make a class that can enchant people's equipment!! CRAP WE NAMED A CLASS ENCHANTER AND DIDN"T GIVE IT THE POWER TO ENCHANT GEAR WE EFFED UP!!
I wouldn't mind summoners having to have ingredients to make a summoning circle summon people at least that could make sense but it shouldn't be a quick and easy process.
Something like family summons is.... not good....
the point of them giving us a list of the systems and mechanics isnt just so that a group of yes men can wait until the game is almost finished before they start critiquing it. The op's point is valid imo. You dont need to test this to know its going to cause the above problems.
There’s not enough data worth formulating an opinion on.
So why are you even reading the forums? Theres not enough here for you to have any sort of opinion since the game doesnt exist yet.
To bump his thread because he went on about it for three hours in discord. Part of being a civil and active member of the community.
lore wise where? is it ashes lore or general fantasy lore?
what if your a technology freak and you create a device that can build wormholes and teleport people.
what if the summoner archetype could summon people then with a fairly short cooldown?
also wow is a different game with different skills and different rules in pvp.
enchanter doesnt mean you can enchant gear. maybe you just enchant people with buffs...or they are like sirens and just charm people or something.
thats very easy to do in private servers wen you can make free accounts. also you dont even need the summoner to be max level, just level 56. you summon then log off. most people wont pay for a 2nd account
OPs opinion?
100% YES
Yours also yes in an already established world with factions and race-specific areas,
but in Verra with that kind of historical background and lore?
NO!
To reason with Stevens's vision about the whole world as a sandbox for every race and class we need to give them equal rights to go wherever they want. Free choice for each portal.
We could alter the lore and say that the spirit conduits teleportation only works on their respective racial gateway but that would predict a similar outcome of many months on each server.
And what kind of other player-driven stories do we miss if we restrict them in this way?...
If you want to settle in the lands of your forefathers you can totally do it but to make a race and its racial features predominant you have to organize similar-thinking players, families, and guilds to do that.
I agree with the rest of your points tho.
Streamers don't need summons, they get flooded by their patriotic sect followers anyway...
We need meaningful traveling without any personal individual teleportation. Only the science node metro gates seem plausible enough if people want it they at least have to fight for it. ^^
as long as the CD is a week or more before joining a new family, then abusing the travel aspect will be limited since it would really only apply to the 9 players that want to be together
Could not have said it better myself.
I think the summoning system, while it may have good intentions, is either a huge miss on their part, or them being afraid to be "too hardcore", and trying to appeal to casuals.
Sad thing is, appealing to casuals might not even make the game better for casuals.
A good reason to siege them
If I know my friend is logging in sometime after 6:00, I can freely adventure when I log in at 4:30.
I don't need to hobble myself to an area so we're close by when he does get on.
while this is nice for this specific use, family summoning creates an extremely toxic meta for guilds/alliances. Id rather not have it be a standard that guilds require you to join their chosen family to be in the guild.