- I liked this update overall, missed the start and def gonna watch the Youtube video when its uploaded.
What excites you about playing and interacting with other players and the Caravan System?
- Definetely the PvP aspect of it. Also interacting with other players making friends/forming alliances to achieve common goals and challenge other people to control/contest resources. Im looking forward to test the caravan system myself in alpha 2 !
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Caravan PvP Preview?
-Yes, im mostly concerned about the size of the caravan inventory. From what's been shown so far it looks to me that the inventory seems to be much smaller than i anticipated/expected; What would be the incentive then for a player to interact with the caravan system and not to use their own inventory space to move goods around? Am i missing something? Looking at previous live streams we got to see the player's inventory and i dont see a sizeable difference between the two ! Im obviusly basing this feedback from whats been shown on stream, you guys may already have planned caravan upgrades that will double or even triple inventory space, that i dont know. It would be nice to hear from you on this.
Are there similar systems you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
No, i havent seen anything similar to this system in the games i've played.
There was a lot to like, but I wonder/worry about a couple of things others also touched on:
Unless the materials/goods are super-duper valuable, there is very little incentive for the attackers to spend all the effort to place a new caravan and haul the goods to a nearby node. Because that puts them at risk, and people are risk-averse in general. Without that being forced on the attackers, I foresee 99% of all caravan kills to just be a roaming gank-n-loot and moving on to the next caravan to progress in that skill tree, without them ever bothering to transport the stolen goods via caravan. This would quickly kill most of the caravan system and the game economy. There is zero chance I am ever launching a caravan with the current risk/reward balance.
There is no risk for the attackers since we don't get XP debt in themed PvP like Caravan PvP. Sure, the reward in material goods/gold isn't great either, but the risk to the attackers have to at least come somewhat close to the risk the owner takes by deploying the caravan in the first place.
In Eve Online, at least the attackers risk their ships and clones. There is a real potential cost to a failed attack, meaning it's taken more seriously by everyone involved. Without this in Ashes, we'll end up with players simply not using caravans, but instead hiring the group of players they would have hired anyway for protection to carry the goods manually anyway.
Assuming this is all fixed, and the attackers or defenders make a successful run, we need some sort of easy UI to reward everyone involved. Forming a line and trading one by one is not a real solution.
I am not sure how to best make attacking a caravan actually involve any kind of risk. Perhaps the first thing that needs to be changed is to give the attackers (only) normal death penalties including XP debt and all that entails. Not corruption obviously. It's a start at least. Give them a potential cost so they only go after the caravan if they actually want the goods. No penalties for the defenders at all.
On top of that, force the attackers to spawn their own caravan to move any of the goods in any meaningful capacity, and only reward them for the kill in that caravan pvp skilltree once the stolen goods are safely moved to a node. They should essentially get nothing without taking on an equal risk themselves. Don't make it optional.
Note: I understand this is a game and some things can't be done and could be not fun if they were made to be too realistic, but these are my observations as a player who love cohesion and immersion:
- The caravan was very tanky, and seeing people hit it mindlessly with swords wasn't very immersive
- Maybe only magic and tools (like maces) should be needed to be able to hit it, like sword and arrows wouldn't do any real damage
- For people who don't have the weapons/tools required to damage the caravan, maybe an option to damage hit with hands, like tear out planks or something
- I think the caravan horses walking through every AoE undamaged and unbothered was unsettling haha
- In my opinion they should be killable (poor horses ;-;) and the caravan would hence be stuck there, but that would cause concerns with the current system
- I'd like to have to carry crates to the caravan instead of crates being teleported to it
- The caravan was also teleported and it doesn't feel immersive
- Stealth didn't seem very stealthy
- The raft animation falling in the water was incredible, but its piloting wasn't very realistic, it could turn and move way too fast and abruptly
- We should have to paddle to turn that quickly
- The wind should help move fast and potentially be shown on the UI (or not, maybe just the voiles)
- I think the caravan spells should be explained by a device in the caravan, right now they come from nowhere
- The caravan itself having mana is weird
- About TTK:
- I love the healthbar obfuscation. In my ideal world, there wouldn't even be a healthbar, because IRL you don't have one, but I do like the state you showed
- I think TTK was a bit long overall imo, I hope there will be squeeshy characters that can be bursted too
i like some of those comments about having it a little longer time launching the raft and being able to shorten the time by having a limited number of people helping to build the raft. i would have it that the people "actively" building get moved onto the raft when it is finished. you could even give the people building a little bit of a buff while building and make it so when they get damaged, they have a chance to disrupt or stun the building so the progress slows.
like the buy and sell orders in EVE online, will the towns be able to create orders to buy and sell those commodities to encourage specific materials that their town might need to progress buildings?
will there ever be NPC caravans that get sent out?
can you hire NPC guards for your caravan?
is there going to be a cooldown before you can join another raid, as in, there is a group of people guarding the caravan and halfway through they all leave the defending group and join the attacking one or will there be like a 5-minute wait?
what is, if any, rewards of helping someone else's caravan get through? is there a defend/guard reward that automatically gets paid if successful? to also help counter the have people and disband at the end so no one gets the reward have it paid to anyone in your group/raid from the creation of the caravan to the end of the caravan based on total time in the caravan.
The raft building station looks a little... extreme. Surely it could be made to look a little lower profile? Right now, for the purpose it serves, it looks way too big, and it only pops in and out in a minute or so which makes it a little weird, for me anyway.
In PvP, it takes very little time to kill an enemy now, whereas before the fights were meant to be more prolonged and challenging. In the latest live stream, it was evident that some skills could finish off an enemy in 3 or 4 hits.
Another stream another post, lets goo:
These thoughts aren't in any order, just as they come to me:
1) Raft looked really good, but the movement needs work. Turning, stopping and starting feel too abrupt, as if its independent on the water. I would say Sea of Thieves does this really well, giving ships feel heavy as they start moving. Also, the caravan feels way more natural when it moves on land.
2) Regarding the hidden health bar for non-allied players: This is exactly how I run my DnD game:))) My players get to know that an enemy is Bruised-Bloody-Beaten when an enemy is below 75%-50%-25% max health, so i am all in favor of this.
3) The networking seemed fine on first watch, HOWEVER! The spells effects are still a bit too much. Considering this wasent even 50 players, sieges with 500 players are gonna be unplayable i imagine. I would say tone the effects down by quite a bit.
4) The idea that stolen loot needs to be picked up in another caravan is very good, no notes
5)The summon time for the caravan seems too fast, I get that standing there waiting isn't "compelling gameplay" but a caravan should not get there that much faster compared to dead defenders. I would increase by 2-3x tbh. Make it worth it for attackers to pre-summon the caravan before the fight, risk v reward.
6) The transition to raft is also too fast, but i really like that it needs an open beach for it.
7) Currents should have a bigger impact on the speed of the raft.
8) Using rivers to move around seems to be way stronger than on land. We haven't seen water combat yet or water mount combat, but just seeing how iffy it was for players to jump on the raft, if a caravan only uses rivers they are way safer. While I agree big ships shouldn't be able to move up stream, there should be some player ships that can traverse rivers beside the raft.
9) The black market was very nice, making each city unique is essential and you lot are doing a fantastic job
10) About losing caravan parts when a caravan is destroyed.... i don't know how to feel about it tbh. On one hand, it's going to suck quite a lot losing a top tier caravan. On the other, its a fantastic gold sink. To make it feel a bit better i would say allow for people to salvage their caravan to get some of their parts back (maybe like 20% of the parts)
Overall, i really liked it, there are so many systems and interactions, i actually can't wait to play it
I think instead of just waiting for the caravan to finish converting, people should be building it themselves. It takes some people out of the fight, and if your squad starts getting outnumbered they might have to stop production and help out. I think it would add a great dynamic. Maybe holding a button down, or a little mini game.
AND / OR - having the requirement of materials to build a dock / caravan. This can be a NPC vendor accepting mats from the raiding party and/or using directly from the stolen goods if they contained said mats and are not refunded.
I like the concept but it is IMMERSION BREAKING seeing a raft being built in 2 minutes with all the amount of wood shown. I definately agree - takes a team and X amount of mats to make the raft if choosing to escape in that method.
Risk / Rewards should be on both sides.
It is also immersion breaking seeing the Raft work platform and caravan work platform just DISAPPEAR. They should remain in world until the caravan arrived to it's location.
It allows the defenders to find clues where their stolen cargo went and allows random players to know there is a caravan in progress and they may wanna JOIN the defender or be an attacker.
Building Caravan/Raft timer can now scale with the amount of players building. There should also be a timer for them to "DISENGAGE" from building and going back to defending. So if you choose to build, you're locked out from entering combat like 1 minute. This allows the bandits needs to decide how many ppl will be locked out to build faster. 1 minute MINIMUM is essential since we will have scout and they can quickly say in discord to disengage building and prepare to defend. 1 minute should be enough time for the returning group to have a slight advantage in the fight.
{UPK} United Player Killer - All your loot belongs to us.
How do you feel about the Caravan PvP Preview?
Overall fantastic! I can see an incentive to engage with this system even if player goods are not involved, which is great. It's great that there is a system in place requiring the goods to be brought back instead of just hit and run. It's awesome that multiple game systems will be used, like naval combat. It plays out similar to an Eve raid on a transport, but in this case the defenders are not simply helpless.
What excites you about playing and interacting with other players and the Caravan System?
It seems like real coordination will be required, again it reminds me of Eve. It doesn't seem like it will just devolve into a gank fest.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Caravan PvP Preview?
While the system, and ideas behind the mechanic are fantastic, I'm worried about incentives. I think there would have to be a substantial benefit to the attacker to haul all the items back. If there is no real cost/benefit to bringing everything back instead of just looting what you can and leaving then the attackers will never do it. In that case it'll just turn into a gank fest.
Are there similar systems you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain! Eve is a good reference for this type of system. The fact that you have to coordinate large groups and assign roles like scouting, tackling etc is very similar. The issue with Eve is the incentives to fight and the lack of balance. In Eve it is skewed largely toward the attacker, to the point where you either speck your ship strictly for escape and run at the first sign of trouble or you just don't transport goods unless your faction controls every part of the system you are in.
Overall this is an amazing direction to take with this system and it is a unique angle on cargo transport that I think a lot of people will enjoy.
With the "not showing the enemy exact HP value". I fell like ppl will just run bots/addons that show this value for them and it will create unfair advantage. It's what happened in a different game that had similar system.
Maybe rethink this cuz I don't really see it as a necessary feature.
Solution - BAN. No 3rd party usage.
{UPK} United Player Killer - All your loot belongs to us.
At the very end - Steven said everyone to line up to get paid. Should there be a mechanic that allows "Raid Trade / Distribution" that allows Steven to - instead of going 1 by 1 to trade and give people their gold - it opens a Raid trade and can put the total amount of Gold (IE 1200) and automatically trades it the 12 raiders (1200/12=120g).
So particular specialized guilds or group of players decided to unite / join a caravan event - to get paid for their services. Its gonna happen and this would be a QoL for those individuals grouping up.
{UPK} United Player Killer - All your loot belongs to us.
It was a very good stream, I like it a lot. Here some feedback or room for improvement:
- Naval Caravan: Needs to be implemented water physics. The ship started to sail and stopped too fast. Also, it needs to have the inertia of an object on the water.
- The node looked good but a bit too empty. One thing I loved in the node streaming was that it was full of NPCs doing their day-to-day and even with no player it felt like a living place. I know this is an alpha and probably this node is not finished, but just to point out that please keep the NPCs in the nodes, not only for gameplay, but also for environment and feeling of a living place. Just like other games such as Throne and Liberty or Black Desert Online.
It was a very good stream, I like it a lot, but yes, for Naval Caravans they need to implement water physics. The ship started to sail and stopped too fast. Also, it needs to have the inertia of an object on the water. I know it is not easy to get there, but Sea of Thieves is where the devs should aim.
The livestream of this month was amazing, and being able to finally witness PvP in action left me in a frenzy. The disappearance of nameplates when there's an obstacle in the line of sight is phenomenal, and not displaying the health of enemies is even better.
I would also like to emphasize that reducing TTK is not something I consider to be healthy for the game's design. Too short of a TTK is excessively frustrating, and I personally dislike it. If possible, please maintain the original idea.
I would like to touch on the TTK portion of the discussion. TLDR: TTK needs to be high (~1 min) for a healthy open world emergent pvp system.
In an open world setting, where you can be flagged at any time and you actually have punishments for death (material loss, exp debt, gear degradation etc...), you need to have enough time so that even in a reasonably unbalanced scenario (1v4s, 2v5s, etc) you don't get deleted and have no opportunity to at least try and react. You might not have a chance to win the encounter, but at least you might be able to escape if you're clever enough. If all it takes in a 3v1 for you to die without a reaction is one guy with stuns and one of the dps skill rotation, than that feels incredibly bad when you're being punished for death. And all of this is when we are talking about even leveled players.
The situation is worse when we have level gaps. This game doesn't plan to be a fast leveling process, so we are going to see for maybe months players around lvl 30-40 fighting each other. And when TTK is low and you have a wide gap (around 10 lvls give or take) the feeling is even worse because you have players being one tapped. I'm not advocating for equalized power or anything, but when TTK is higher, even with a bigger level disparity you give the lower-level players more time and opportunity to outplay the higher-level opponents.
Low TTK is also a problem on group pvp. When ttk is low, all it takes is a few dps to focus on the same person and they get demolished. Depending on the scenario the healer doesn't even have time to react and their friend is already dead. Low TTK on group pvp destroys the tactics of party synergy and composition. Higher TTK on the other end, requires the groups to organize in order to win, employing smart crowd control, anti healing spells and target focus with the big damage skills in order to beat the opponent. With a high TTK, the chance for lower-leveled and/or smaller but better skilled/organized groups to beat higher-leveled/bigger groups is way higher.
Low TTK also is also really detrimental to class build composition. With a lower TTK all you need to kill someone is one stun and a high dps rotation. With a higher TTK you need to think about sustain, anti healing skills, a wide array of crowd control and gap closers/disengage. With a higher TTK damage over time builds become viable instead of burst being the only possible way to play the game.
I could go on and on about TTK in mmorpgs, but I think this covers the most important parts of it. Please, keep TTK high.
One of the things that made me most excited and anxious for Ashes was precisely the proposal of a high TTK, because I really miss prolonged fights where strategy, skill and knowledge of one's class make a difference. I played Lineage 2 for many years, I saw the transition from low rate servers to PvP servers and I can say that even though many players embraced the idea of the practicality of PvP servers, for many others the essence of Lineage 2 was lost in the process. I'm well aware that Ashes is also inspired by Lineage 2, I can see the similar characteristics clearly and when I heard about the mere possibility of the TTK being lowered, it was inevitable to get worried and even find it a bit sad. Because it sounded like something that could lead Ashes, which hasn't even been released yet, down the same path that Lineage 2 took. Of course, I understand that lowering the TTK is not the same as saying that players can be instantly murdered. However, in my opinion, for a game that is being designed in a more "old school" format and for a more "old school" audience, nothing beats "old school combat" and old school combat needs more time to apply strategies, both to have time to counterattack and to retreat.
I've heard many reports from both Lineage 2 and ArchAge players that they couldn't stand the fact that they were simply "wiped out" within 3 seconds in the game, without even a chance to defend themselves. As I said before, I know that even a lower TTK in Ashes wouldn't make something like this happen. But the point I want to make is that many people (especially MMORPG veterans) are already tired of this unnecessarily short combat style. Even more so in a game like Ashes where there will be so much complexity in forming a build, involving so many decisions for each player to make about equipment, skills, mounts, battle pet, node, religion, etc. There's a lot of work involved in creating your build, formulating your own strategy for your class and style of play, putting so much effort into acquiring your equipment, just to have ways of attacking, defending yourself or running away when necessary. Taking all this into account, a short TTK can even devalue all this effort on the part of the player. Because the "reward", after all the effort needed to "build" your character in the ideal way for your personal objective in the game, would be to be able to "be ready" for any situation, putting all your combat strategy into practice, reacting, repositioning yourself, analyzing what can be done or fleeing when necessary.
I'm aware that even if I give feedback, the company will decide as it sees fit, but I hope you'll take these words into consideration.
The first thing I need to mention is that it was an excellent livestream and a solid showcase on your part.
The only thing that bothered me was the comments about TTK; it's definitely not ideal. It may change as classes more focused on support are introduced, but it seemed to me that everything dies too quickly, and there isn't much room to maneuver. For instance, a simple stun combo from two archers can quickly lead to your demise. As I mentioned earlier, perhaps this support can be provided by a bard, and I would love to learn more. However, it currently appears to me that the TTK needs to be increased.
Normally I try to look at these streams from multiple perspectives and give some positive and negative feedback. But I don't know how to do that with this one. It just looked boring and frustrating, aside from the few minutes of actual combat. Starting from the beginning:
It still remains to be seen how caravans are actually detected/found by bandits. The talk about spies sounds interesting, but that's obviously going to be a rare occurrence. Supposedly caravans will be "visible" in a large radius, but we don't know how feasible it is to physically search for caravans (or on the other side, how feasible it is to sneak though.)
The initial fight looked cool, but it was over almost immediately. 75 seconds to be exact. TTK was way too short, considering that there's no fast way to get back to combat.
Speaking of which, I noticed the testers chatting about TPs, which confirms to me that simply travelling around the world is a huge hassle (one which couldn't be tolerated for the show).
And I also don't agree with the obfuscated health bars. Makes it much harder to tell if your attacks are actually landing or if they're being dodged/mitigated somehow.
Moving on from the brief combat... The process of collecting crates and putting them on another caravan looks completely unrealistic for anything but large, coordinated guilds. Any uncoordinated rag-tag groups (there's supposed to be emergent PvP gameplay, right?) will instantly devolve into a rush to ninja loot as many crates as possible. Even with large guilds, it might be considered too tedious (or risky) to recover the crates in a new caravan.
Speaking of tedious, compared to the roughly 4 minutes of total PvP in the stream, it took 2 minutes each just to summon the caravan, turn it into a raft, and turn it back. Plus 14 minutes of driving. I'll let those numbers speak for themselves.
The differences between materials, commodities, crates, cargo, packing/unpacking, personal storage, caravan storage, node storage, and however many vendors interact with them, are confusing and needlessly obtuse. (And I say that as someone who read every page on the wiki regarding those concepts.) Maybe it's just a UI issue, but as it exists right now, I foresee a lot of people "losing" their stuff by selling it to the wrong person or forgetting to pack/unpack or whatever.
I'm not gonna say the system as a whole is screwed, because I do think it has a lot of promise and it's close to being good. But this was a pretty poor showing. The PvP we saw was short, scripted, and boring -- Just a big zerg massacring a small zerg, no tactics or clutch moments involved. And then waiting on the caravan to move for 20 minutes.
Then again, it's always good to see new things being added to the game. The raft, raid UI, and looting system were all proof that the game is moving closer and closer towards Alpha 2, so that's appreciated at least. I just hope that the final version of caravans aren't always a one-sided massacre, followed by a 20-minute drive.
A lot of folks have already made some fantastic points, but I think balancing the risk vs. reward will be really important. I think Steven mentioned you can transport goods, let's say for crafting, by other means but it wouldn't be nearly as efficient. I think the benefit will have to be significant otherwise folks will just take the safer route vs. risking losing their items in a caravan. Or maybe there's only certain items that can be transported via caravans.
I'm also curious if there will be any mechanics to allow for smaller guilds and groups to engage in caravans. In games like ATLAS, it really just boiled down to a few massive guilds/alliances controlling all the trading routes. Will there be any ways to prevent or mitigate this? Can we truly "off-road" with our caravans and will there be enough room to avoid big guilds waiting in ambush?
Overall, I'm super excited for this type of mechanic that can lead to a lot of emergent gameplay. Again, it would be awesome to be a bandit, caravan runner, or a sell sword who goes on caravan runs to protect them. I'm super excited for this!
Hey,
So far so good. Everything mentioned was pretty solid.
as a Former AA player, i was wondering, so im sure it's been thought of. what stops someone from just picking up all the loot in inventories, and taking it to an outpost, and then summoning a cart. loading it up...then handing in for more profit.
The other concern was, roadblocks into towns. is it bannable? because we had that in AA, people would set up haulers in gates of cities and than players would gank those that got stuck. I'm sure it's easily enforced with rules.
What about camping? what stops my 300 man guild from camping outposts and quickly traveling between them and holding them down? is that just part of gameplay? because mechanics like these seem a little too prone to "zerg" issues. in AA you would just overwhelm with numbers. no real "outplayed" thing.
the time it takes to put down a caravan is great. it should take time. love it. HOWEVER. here's what we'd do in AA, INSTANTLY call out where it's at. And all call would show up, we'd instantly lock down that area. I get it. Risk vs reward. But how BIG is the reward actually. cause the caravan thing is a massive risk, considering the entire server will get notified. people will grief, people will just grab the materials out of the boxes and go hide them, or take off with scraps, so no one get's anything.
is there a caravan defender buff maybe?
one of my favorite thing was i could pirate 10 people that didn't have owners mark on a merchant ship or something by myself. was so much fun (in aa)...but the issue i see with this caravan thing is zergs.
I'd have a guy in my guild, sneaky little fucker... i'd tell him grab what you can and get out. He'd legit go in, grab a pack and stealth out, and drop it at the edge of the map and repeat.
IN SUMMARY: what will you do about end destination campers, zergs, caravan defenders being at a serious disadvantage. (because an all call will mean the server will show up for maybe 20-50 people doing a caravan). Caravan buffs? Picking up loot, and griefing loot/supplies.
Can smaller groups even compete or take part in caravan activities? this is obviously for big guilds only. what can solo players, or small groups do?
at the end of video after you sold the goods, you said for them to line up to get paid is there not yet or will there be an auto split option for the rewards across the group or raid. and also, a way for the group or raid to see how much was acquired upon final selling of goods.
I started to doubt, when I heard we probably weren't getting Weapon Focus anymore. I doubted more when I saw the changes to specific aspects of Cleric, and Ranger.
You know my opinion on Glint, and the current way commodities and even materials are being handled. I have a poor opinion of Caravans.
I did my best to trust that somehow, this was going to be the stream that pulled everything together for me, dispelled all those doubts and showed me something amazing, where the experience was far more than the sum of its suspicious looking parts.
It's far worse than the sum of its suspicious looking parts.
I know this isn't really useful or detailed feedback, and honestly, it's kind of hard to give feedback on, other than to say I didn't like anything about this. And not because I don't like the ideas behind the things shown. I just dislike the execution of those ideas at every step, right now.
It's also tinged with a further loss of faith. I 'wanted to believe that this wasn't what we were going to get, despite what we've been shown in the past'. That's a domino effect for me now, though. There's a lot of other stuff where I'm hoping 'ok well they probably know what they're doing', and I now will end up questioning if you really do or not. I was trying not to 'extrapolate without knowledge' before, but today, at least 6 of my extrapolations were not only proved to be right, but 2 of them were considerably worse than I expected them to be.
Overall disappointing. I hope you can do better during and after Alpha-2, Intrepid.
That's a great solution I knew someone would say that but I yet to see a game that is able to ban 100% of 3rd party users. We live in a time when event monitors have built-in wall hacks now (check last CES). It's better to desing a game that discourages the use of 3rd party than to hope you can ban them later.
I just don't see the value in implementing that quarterly hp bar feature. When you pvp with someone and they barely live with 1 or 2hp so their hp bar gets so low that it turns not even red but black from how low they got, that creates well more memorable experience then if you fight them and it shows me only the approximate hp quarter.
I don't see the added complexity either cuz when you see someone's lvl and class you'll also know if you're able to fight them unless you also hide the enemy lvl and name. The only thing this adds imo. is possible unfair advatage to ppl who use 3rd party addons and then hope game can detect it and ban the users.
Love everything I saw but one thing. Everyone defending and taking part needs a reward not just the guy that owns the caravan. People will only play content for so long if they are not getting rewarded on some level. Exp, cut of the cash, tickets they can trade for some type of reward. Maybe discounts on launching your own caravan.
Would be cool if you could make the horses appear on the raft with you, when you transition from land to water caravan. Right now horses disappear when you build the raft and appear after you go back on land, which imo. is kida immersion breaking.
Also could be nice if the part when you biuld that big dock for transition cost some wood.
I get there is an aspect of showmanship in creating a live stream, you need to hit a time window and in order to do that you can't let things run long or outside of "script" which makes the demonstration feel flat. Don't get me wrong I loved the flash and polish stuff had but it didn't show anything when the "players" get wiped by a few GM's. Other people have pointed out the risk to reward aspect of caravans and the other aspects which are very valid concerns and while the water/boat physics need polishing it was fun to watch.
Overall the caravan PVP preview left me wanting, I wished the players could slug it out longer and we spent less time seeing an un-aggressed caravan driving along leisurely.
I wished we saw more path finding from the attackers to find the caravan, and I wished the original defenders didn't wilt like cheap flowers.
I am excited to see these concepts fleshed out further, finding the right balance for combat as well as the necessary risk v reward draw that will keep players active in the system.
I know you draw influence from Eve and it's been echoed in the forum above but if the player driven economy finds the caravan system to be pointless it will die, you gotta make the reward and challenges worth playing for and currently it doesn't seem to be there.
Also I hope there can be small 3-5 person vessels for brigand/pirate activity on the riverways.
Also also water simulation that allows for proper simulation of fluid dynamics, I know it's a big ask but just putting in a physic that follows a path for a "current" is lame. If the river flows faster it's because of a narrowing of channel width or change in volume of water in flow, storm events or canyons, and rivers have unseen features beneath that change dynamics too (boulders, trees, washouts, rises, hallows, etc). Sorry
Okay, so it can't possibly actually be this bad right? I'm left feeling confused and uncertain. The first thing I felt was "I can't even track this" and "this is a zerg rush...", and nothing really improved from there. I got to see caravan mechanics, and how to pick up loot, but the actual combat was... just flat seeming? I didn't even get the impression it was hard to track because of depth. I'm used to depth. This was just chaos.
I think the first thing I saw that really made me 'comment' on the mechanics itself was when those 3-4 thunderballs were all just floating down the plain creating a sort of 'blockade' for the incoming forces. Like... It's not a bad tactic, but the fact that it seemed like it was such flat gameplay isn't great. I didn't see anything else like it though. That was the only real 'positional tactic' in the whole thing. The TTK and gameplay didn't allow much else. The rest of the combat was just various forms of 'waves crashing' and commingling 'duels'.
It... just didn't seem like there was much more to it than 'slightly interesting zerging'. I mean, come on. I know I have high standards. I play fighting games, Predecessor, FFXI. But honestly, even my time in FFXI's 2002 PVE-only-game's PVP arena was far more interesting than this. I don't think the TTK serves strategy or tactics when combined with the style of mechanics and abilities that we've seen. I can see how this could work with some tweaks in a PvE context, but-- ugh, no. I'm just imagining a higher TTK environment (a big PvE boss battle). *sigh*
This is just hard for me. Particularly as an Aspiring bard, your TTK and 'tactics' shown leave me no reason to be excited, particularly if I'm not just 'buffing people and then hiding'. I understand that this is WIP, but then, why show it? It just demoralizes me and doesn't inform me of anything good. I can't imagine a form of bard songs that both feel like bard songs, and actually have any real function in this environment and don't just get me focus killed immediately.
I gotta ask Azherae to break this down for me. I hope she can dispel some of this, and it's not as bad as it looks. I'll edit if she changes my mind.
Excellent stream and as always overall progress is heading in the right direction.
Positive things I noticed from the stream:
1. Very smart that you considered the gameplay around rafting to limit launching/raft points and not allow just anywhere.
2. Overall caravan system looks good
3. The ideas behind behind being able to progress town and other means to the caravan or pvp system is very exciting.
4. Raft and sailing looks very good especially for the first showing.
Thoughts about the caravan system:
The idea that I could potentially work on various progression paths to improve my ability or my guilds ability to pvp caravans is very appeasing.
Just like in archeage I am curious if the mechanic that would make trade packs still reward the initial crafter unless it was turned into a specific black market trader might be worth considering to lessen the blow to regular players who like trading but dont like pvp. You could make it so that only the top upgraded black market trader and guild with stolen goods perks can turn in stolen goods and get 100% the stolen value.
The raft got me thinking about larger ships and what you plan to do with trade goods in terms of caravans vs ships. My initial thought is small ships can't hold a trade caravan and you instead need a regular caravan turned into a raft. Medium sized ships can naturally hold 1 trade caravan, large ships can hold 2 trade caravans. Any "trade ship" gets a plus 1 caravan per size of medium or above (first trade ship is medium sized). This would mean a trade ship could hold 2 caravans as a medium sized ship and a large trade ship can hold 4 caravans.
Additionally with ships I would consider a rowing or "sail power" mechanic that would have interaction points on every ship that locks a player to the ship to provide speed to the ship. Mechanic would work to create a game play of do you need speed or people to defend/attack.
My biggest concern with any trade system is that there is too much of an advantage to camp spots right next to a town or turn in meaning if the attacker wins the fight they can grab the loot and get to safe zone faster than a respawn. I would think that maybe a recently destroyed caravans loot has a timer before it can be picked up by an enemy caravan. Additionally towns should have an upgrade to pay a town guard to do a quick path outside of town. If attackers are camping near a town and the guards catch them or discover the destroyed caravan those attackers get a penalty/wanted by that town guard which will stop them from being able to turn in any caravan at that town for 1 hour. This then forces them to do a trade caravan to another town which would hopefully make camping turn ins a bad idea because you will likely get a wanted status and have to then do a full caravan trip for less rewards since stolen.
Comments
- I liked this update overall, missed the start and def gonna watch the Youtube video when its uploaded.
What excites you about playing and interacting with other players and the Caravan System?
- Definetely the PvP aspect of it. Also interacting with other players making friends/forming alliances to achieve common goals and challenge other people to control/contest resources. Im looking forward to test the caravan system myself in alpha 2 !
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Caravan PvP Preview?
-Yes, im mostly concerned about the size of the caravan inventory. From what's been shown so far it looks to me that the inventory seems to be much smaller than i anticipated/expected; What would be the incentive then for a player to interact with the caravan system and not to use their own inventory space to move goods around? Am i missing something? Looking at previous live streams we got to see the player's inventory and i dont see a sizeable difference between the two ! Im obviusly basing this feedback from whats been shown on stream, you guys may already have planned caravan upgrades that will double or even triple inventory space, that i dont know. It would be nice to hear from you on this.
Are there similar systems you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
No, i havent seen anything similar to this system in the games i've played.
Kind regards.
Unless the materials/goods are super-duper valuable, there is very little incentive for the attackers to spend all the effort to place a new caravan and haul the goods to a nearby node. Because that puts them at risk, and people are risk-averse in general. Without that being forced on the attackers, I foresee 99% of all caravan kills to just be a roaming gank-n-loot and moving on to the next caravan to progress in that skill tree, without them ever bothering to transport the stolen goods via caravan. This would quickly kill most of the caravan system and the game economy. There is zero chance I am ever launching a caravan with the current risk/reward balance.
There is no risk for the attackers since we don't get XP debt in themed PvP like Caravan PvP. Sure, the reward in material goods/gold isn't great either, but the risk to the attackers have to at least come somewhat close to the risk the owner takes by deploying the caravan in the first place.
In Eve Online, at least the attackers risk their ships and clones. There is a real potential cost to a failed attack, meaning it's taken more seriously by everyone involved. Without this in Ashes, we'll end up with players simply not using caravans, but instead hiring the group of players they would have hired anyway for protection to carry the goods manually anyway.
Assuming this is all fixed, and the attackers or defenders make a successful run, we need some sort of easy UI to reward everyone involved. Forming a line and trading one by one is not a real solution.
I am not sure how to best make attacking a caravan actually involve any kind of risk. Perhaps the first thing that needs to be changed is to give the attackers (only) normal death penalties including XP debt and all that entails. Not corruption obviously. It's a start at least. Give them a potential cost so they only go after the caravan if they actually want the goods. No penalties for the defenders at all.
On top of that, force the attackers to spawn their own caravan to move any of the goods in any meaningful capacity, and only reward them for the kill in that caravan pvp skilltree once the stolen goods are safely moved to a node. They should essentially get nothing without taking on an equal risk themselves. Don't make it optional.
Note: I understand this is a game and some things can't be done and could be not fun if they were made to be too realistic, but these are my observations as a player who love cohesion and immersion:
- The caravan was very tanky, and seeing people hit it mindlessly with swords wasn't very immersive
- Maybe only magic and tools (like maces) should be needed to be able to hit it, like sword and arrows wouldn't do any real damage
- For people who don't have the weapons/tools required to damage the caravan, maybe an option to damage hit with hands, like tear out planks or something
- I think the caravan horses walking through every AoE undamaged and unbothered was unsettling haha
- In my opinion they should be killable (poor horses ;-;) and the caravan would hence be stuck there, but that would cause concerns with the current system
- I'd like to have to carry crates to the caravan instead of crates being teleported to it
- The caravan was also teleported and it doesn't feel immersive
- Stealth didn't seem very stealthy
- The raft animation falling in the water was incredible, but its piloting wasn't very realistic, it could turn and move way too fast and abruptly
- We should have to paddle to turn that quickly
- The wind should help move fast and potentially be shown on the UI (or not, maybe just the voiles)
- I think the caravan spells should be explained by a device in the caravan, right now they come from nowhere
- The caravan itself having mana is weird
- About TTK:
- I love the healthbar obfuscation. In my ideal world, there wouldn't even be a healthbar, because IRL you don't have one, but I do like the state you showed
- I think TTK was a bit long overall imo, I hope there will be squeeshy characters that can be bursted too
i like some of those comments about having it a little longer time launching the raft and being able to shorten the time by having a limited number of people helping to build the raft. i would have it that the people "actively" building get moved onto the raft when it is finished. you could even give the people building a little bit of a buff while building and make it so when they get damaged, they have a chance to disrupt or stun the building so the progress slows.
like the buy and sell orders in EVE online, will the towns be able to create orders to buy and sell those commodities to encourage specific materials that their town might need to progress buildings?
will there ever be NPC caravans that get sent out?
can you hire NPC guards for your caravan?
is there going to be a cooldown before you can join another raid, as in, there is a group of people guarding the caravan and halfway through they all leave the defending group and join the attacking one or will there be like a 5-minute wait?
what is, if any, rewards of helping someone else's caravan get through? is there a defend/guard reward that automatically gets paid if successful? to also help counter the have people and disband at the end so no one gets the reward have it paid to anyone in your group/raid from the creation of the caravan to the end of the caravan based on total time in the caravan.
Caravan as a whole looks really fun to participate. Terrain/Water transition is just gorgeous, W for the team.
One concern is with TTK, it looks way faster than what I expect, I think between 30-45s would be the ideal. Thanks for the stream, keep going
These thoughts aren't in any order, just as they come to me:
1) Raft looked really good, but the movement needs work. Turning, stopping and starting feel too abrupt, as if its independent on the water. I would say Sea of Thieves does this really well, giving ships feel heavy as they start moving. Also, the caravan feels way more natural when it moves on land.
2) Regarding the hidden health bar for non-allied players: This is exactly how I run my DnD game:))) My players get to know that an enemy is Bruised-Bloody-Beaten when an enemy is below 75%-50%-25% max health, so i am all in favor of this.
3) The networking seemed fine on first watch, HOWEVER! The spells effects are still a bit too much. Considering this wasent even 50 players, sieges with 500 players are gonna be unplayable i imagine. I would say tone the effects down by quite a bit.
4) The idea that stolen loot needs to be picked up in another caravan is very good, no notes
5)The summon time for the caravan seems too fast, I get that standing there waiting isn't "compelling gameplay" but a caravan should not get there that much faster compared to dead defenders. I would increase by 2-3x tbh. Make it worth it for attackers to pre-summon the caravan before the fight, risk v reward.
6) The transition to raft is also too fast, but i really like that it needs an open beach for it.
7) Currents should have a bigger impact on the speed of the raft.
8) Using rivers to move around seems to be way stronger than on land. We haven't seen water combat yet or water mount combat, but just seeing how iffy it was for players to jump on the raft, if a caravan only uses rivers they are way safer. While I agree big ships shouldn't be able to move up stream, there should be some player ships that can traverse rivers beside the raft.
9) The black market was very nice, making each city unique is essential and you lot are doing a fantastic job
10) About losing caravan parts when a caravan is destroyed.... i don't know how to feel about it tbh. On one hand, it's going to suck quite a lot losing a top tier caravan. On the other, its a fantastic gold sink. To make it feel a bit better i would say allow for people to salvage their caravan to get some of their parts back (maybe like 20% of the parts)
Overall, i really liked it, there are so many systems and interactions, i actually can't wait to play it
AND / OR - having the requirement of materials to build a dock / caravan. This can be a NPC vendor accepting mats from the raiding party and/or using directly from the stolen goods if they contained said mats and are not refunded.
I like the concept but it is IMMERSION BREAKING seeing a raft being built in 2 minutes with all the amount of wood shown. I definately agree - takes a team and X amount of mats to make the raft if choosing to escape in that method.
Risk / Rewards should be on both sides.
It is also immersion breaking seeing the Raft work platform and caravan work platform just DISAPPEAR. They should remain in world until the caravan arrived to it's location.
It allows the defenders to find clues where their stolen cargo went and allows random players to know there is a caravan in progress and they may wanna JOIN the defender or be an attacker.
Building Caravan/Raft timer can now scale with the amount of players building. There should also be a timer for them to "DISENGAGE" from building and going back to defending. So if you choose to build, you're locked out from entering combat like 1 minute. This allows the bandits needs to decide how many ppl will be locked out to build faster. 1 minute MINIMUM is essential since we will have scout and they can quickly say in discord to disengage building and prepare to defend. 1 minute should be enough time for the returning group to have a slight advantage in the fight.
Overall fantastic! I can see an incentive to engage with this system even if player goods are not involved, which is great. It's great that there is a system in place requiring the goods to be brought back instead of just hit and run. It's awesome that multiple game systems will be used, like naval combat. It plays out similar to an Eve raid on a transport, but in this case the defenders are not simply helpless.
What excites you about playing and interacting with other players and the Caravan System?
It seems like real coordination will be required, again it reminds me of Eve. It doesn't seem like it will just devolve into a gank fest.
Is there anything in particular you’re excited or concerned about regarding what was shown with the Caravan PvP Preview?
While the system, and ideas behind the mechanic are fantastic, I'm worried about incentives. I think there would have to be a substantial benefit to the attacker to haul all the items back. If there is no real cost/benefit to bringing everything back instead of just looting what you can and leaving then the attackers will never do it. In that case it'll just turn into a gank fest.
Are there similar systems you’ve seen in other games that you like or dislike? If so, please explain!
Eve is a good reference for this type of system. The fact that you have to coordinate large groups and assign roles like scouting, tackling etc is very similar. The issue with Eve is the incentives to fight and the lack of balance. In Eve it is skewed largely toward the attacker, to the point where you either speck your ship strictly for escape and run at the first sign of trouble or you just don't transport goods unless your faction controls every part of the system you are in.
Overall this is an amazing direction to take with this system and it is a unique angle on cargo transport that I think a lot of people will enjoy.
Solution - BAN. No 3rd party usage.
So particular specialized guilds or group of players decided to unite / join a caravan event - to get paid for their services. Its gonna happen and this would be a QoL for those individuals grouping up.
- Naval Caravan: Needs to be implemented water physics. The ship started to sail and stopped too fast. Also, it needs to have the inertia of an object on the water.
- The node looked good but a bit too empty. One thing I loved in the node streaming was that it was full of NPCs doing their day-to-day and even with no player it felt like a living place. I know this is an alpha and probably this node is not finished, but just to point out that please keep the NPCs in the nodes, not only for gameplay, but also for environment and feeling of a living place. Just like other games such as Throne and Liberty or Black Desert Online.
I would also like to emphasize that reducing TTK is not something I consider to be healthy for the game's design. Too short of a TTK is excessively frustrating, and I personally dislike it. If possible, please maintain the original idea.
In an open world setting, where you can be flagged at any time and you actually have punishments for death (material loss, exp debt, gear degradation etc...), you need to have enough time so that even in a reasonably unbalanced scenario (1v4s, 2v5s, etc) you don't get deleted and have no opportunity to at least try and react. You might not have a chance to win the encounter, but at least you might be able to escape if you're clever enough. If all it takes in a 3v1 for you to die without a reaction is one guy with stuns and one of the dps skill rotation, than that feels incredibly bad when you're being punished for death. And all of this is when we are talking about even leveled players.
The situation is worse when we have level gaps. This game doesn't plan to be a fast leveling process, so we are going to see for maybe months players around lvl 30-40 fighting each other. And when TTK is low and you have a wide gap (around 10 lvls give or take) the feeling is even worse because you have players being one tapped. I'm not advocating for equalized power or anything, but when TTK is higher, even with a bigger level disparity you give the lower-level players more time and opportunity to outplay the higher-level opponents.
Low TTK is also a problem on group pvp. When ttk is low, all it takes is a few dps to focus on the same person and they get demolished. Depending on the scenario the healer doesn't even have time to react and their friend is already dead. Low TTK on group pvp destroys the tactics of party synergy and composition. Higher TTK on the other end, requires the groups to organize in order to win, employing smart crowd control, anti healing spells and target focus with the big damage skills in order to beat the opponent. With a high TTK, the chance for lower-leveled and/or smaller but better skilled/organized groups to beat higher-leveled/bigger groups is way higher.
Low TTK also is also really detrimental to class build composition. With a lower TTK all you need to kill someone is one stun and a high dps rotation. With a higher TTK you need to think about sustain, anti healing skills, a wide array of crowd control and gap closers/disengage. With a higher TTK damage over time builds become viable instead of burst being the only possible way to play the game.
I could go on and on about TTK in mmorpgs, but I think this covers the most important parts of it. Please, keep TTK high.
One of the things that made me most excited and anxious for Ashes was precisely the proposal of a high TTK, because I really miss prolonged fights where strategy, skill and knowledge of one's class make a difference. I played Lineage 2 for many years, I saw the transition from low rate servers to PvP servers and I can say that even though many players embraced the idea of the practicality of PvP servers, for many others the essence of Lineage 2 was lost in the process. I'm well aware that Ashes is also inspired by Lineage 2, I can see the similar characteristics clearly and when I heard about the mere possibility of the TTK being lowered, it was inevitable to get worried and even find it a bit sad. Because it sounded like something that could lead Ashes, which hasn't even been released yet, down the same path that Lineage 2 took. Of course, I understand that lowering the TTK is not the same as saying that players can be instantly murdered. However, in my opinion, for a game that is being designed in a more "old school" format and for a more "old school" audience, nothing beats "old school combat" and old school combat needs more time to apply strategies, both to have time to counterattack and to retreat.
I've heard many reports from both Lineage 2 and ArchAge players that they couldn't stand the fact that they were simply "wiped out" within 3 seconds in the game, without even a chance to defend themselves. As I said before, I know that even a lower TTK in Ashes wouldn't make something like this happen. But the point I want to make is that many people (especially MMORPG veterans) are already tired of this unnecessarily short combat style. Even more so in a game like Ashes where there will be so much complexity in forming a build, involving so many decisions for each player to make about equipment, skills, mounts, battle pet, node, religion, etc. There's a lot of work involved in creating your build, formulating your own strategy for your class and style of play, putting so much effort into acquiring your equipment, just to have ways of attacking, defending yourself or running away when necessary. Taking all this into account, a short TTK can even devalue all this effort on the part of the player. Because the "reward", after all the effort needed to "build" your character in the ideal way for your personal objective in the game, would be to be able to "be ready" for any situation, putting all your combat strategy into practice, reacting, repositioning yourself, analyzing what can be done or fleeing when necessary.
I'm aware that even if I give feedback, the company will decide as it sees fit, but I hope you'll take these words into consideration.
The only thing that bothered me was the comments about TTK; it's definitely not ideal. It may change as classes more focused on support are introduced, but it seemed to me that everything dies too quickly, and there isn't much room to maneuver. For instance, a simple stun combo from two archers can quickly lead to your demise. As I mentioned earlier, perhaps this support can be provided by a bard, and I would love to learn more. However, it currently appears to me that the TTK needs to be increased.
I'm not gonna say the system as a whole is screwed, because I do think it has a lot of promise and it's close to being good. But this was a pretty poor showing. The PvP we saw was short, scripted, and boring -- Just a big zerg massacring a small zerg, no tactics or clutch moments involved. And then waiting on the caravan to move for 20 minutes.
Then again, it's always good to see new things being added to the game. The raft, raid UI, and looting system were all proof that the game is moving closer and closer towards Alpha 2, so that's appreciated at least. I just hope that the final version of caravans aren't always a one-sided massacre, followed by a 20-minute drive.
I'm also curious if there will be any mechanics to allow for smaller guilds and groups to engage in caravans. In games like ATLAS, it really just boiled down to a few massive guilds/alliances controlling all the trading routes. Will there be any ways to prevent or mitigate this? Can we truly "off-road" with our caravans and will there be enough room to avoid big guilds waiting in ambush?
Overall, I'm super excited for this type of mechanic that can lead to a lot of emergent gameplay. Again, it would be awesome to be a bandit, caravan runner, or a sell sword who goes on caravan runs to protect them. I'm super excited for this!
So far so good. Everything mentioned was pretty solid.
as a Former AA player, i was wondering, so im sure it's been thought of. what stops someone from just picking up all the loot in inventories, and taking it to an outpost, and then summoning a cart. loading it up...then handing in for more profit.
The other concern was, roadblocks into towns. is it bannable? because we had that in AA, people would set up haulers in gates of cities and than players would gank those that got stuck. I'm sure it's easily enforced with rules.
What about camping? what stops my 300 man guild from camping outposts and quickly traveling between them and holding them down? is that just part of gameplay? because mechanics like these seem a little too prone to "zerg" issues. in AA you would just overwhelm with numbers. no real "outplayed" thing.
the time it takes to put down a caravan is great. it should take time. love it. HOWEVER. here's what we'd do in AA, INSTANTLY call out where it's at. And all call would show up, we'd instantly lock down that area. I get it. Risk vs reward. But how BIG is the reward actually. cause the caravan thing is a massive risk, considering the entire server will get notified. people will grief, people will just grab the materials out of the boxes and go hide them, or take off with scraps, so no one get's anything.
is there a caravan defender buff maybe?
one of my favorite thing was i could pirate 10 people that didn't have owners mark on a merchant ship or something by myself. was so much fun (in aa)...but the issue i see with this caravan thing is zergs.
I'd have a guy in my guild, sneaky little fucker... i'd tell him grab what you can and get out. He'd legit go in, grab a pack and stealth out, and drop it at the edge of the map and repeat.
IN SUMMARY: what will you do about end destination campers, zergs, caravan defenders being at a serious disadvantage. (because an all call will mean the server will show up for maybe 20-50 people doing a caravan). Caravan buffs? Picking up loot, and griefing loot/supplies.
Can smaller groups even compete or take part in caravan activities? this is obviously for big guilds only. what can solo players, or small groups do?
Thanks for hearing me out.
-Friss
I started to doubt, when I heard we probably weren't getting Weapon Focus anymore. I doubted more when I saw the changes to specific aspects of Cleric, and Ranger.
You know my opinion on Glint, and the current way commodities and even materials are being handled. I have a poor opinion of Caravans.
I did my best to trust that somehow, this was going to be the stream that pulled everything together for me, dispelled all those doubts and showed me something amazing, where the experience was far more than the sum of its suspicious looking parts.
It's far worse than the sum of its suspicious looking parts.
I know this isn't really useful or detailed feedback, and honestly, it's kind of hard to give feedback on, other than to say I didn't like anything about this. And not because I don't like the ideas behind the things shown. I just dislike the execution of those ideas at every step, right now.
It's also tinged with a further loss of faith. I 'wanted to believe that this wasn't what we were going to get, despite what we've been shown in the past'. That's a domino effect for me now, though. There's a lot of other stuff where I'm hoping 'ok well they probably know what they're doing', and I now will end up questioning if you really do or not. I was trying not to 'extrapolate without knowledge' before, but today, at least 6 of my extrapolations were not only proved to be right, but 2 of them were considerably worse than I expected them to be.
Overall disappointing. I hope you can do better during and after Alpha-2, Intrepid.
I just don't see the value in implementing that quarterly hp bar feature. When you pvp with someone and they barely live with 1 or 2hp so their hp bar gets so low that it turns not even red but black from how low they got, that creates well more memorable experience then if you fight them and it shows me only the approximate hp quarter.
I don't see the added complexity either cuz when you see someone's lvl and class you'll also know if you're able to fight them unless you also hide the enemy lvl and name. The only thing this adds imo. is possible unfair advatage to ppl who use 3rd party addons and then hope game can detect it and ban the users.
Also could be nice if the part when you biuld that big dock for transition cost some wood.
Overall the caravan PVP preview left me wanting, I wished the players could slug it out longer and we spent less time seeing an un-aggressed caravan driving along leisurely.
I wished we saw more path finding from the attackers to find the caravan, and I wished the original defenders didn't wilt like cheap flowers.
I am excited to see these concepts fleshed out further, finding the right balance for combat as well as the necessary risk v reward draw that will keep players active in the system.
I know you draw influence from Eve and it's been echoed in the forum above but if the player driven economy finds the caravan system to be pointless it will die, you gotta make the reward and challenges worth playing for and currently it doesn't seem to be there.
Also I hope there can be small 3-5 person vessels for brigand/pirate activity on the riverways.
Also also water simulation that allows for proper simulation of fluid dynamics, I know it's a big ask but just putting in a physic that follows a path for a "current" is lame. If the river flows faster it's because of a narrowing of channel width or change in volume of water in flow, storm events or canyons, and rivers have unseen features beneath that change dynamics too (boulders, trees, washouts, rises, hallows, etc). Sorry
I think the first thing I saw that really made me 'comment' on the mechanics itself was when those 3-4 thunderballs were all just floating down the plain creating a sort of 'blockade' for the incoming forces. Like... It's not a bad tactic, but the fact that it seemed like it was such flat gameplay isn't great. I didn't see anything else like it though. That was the only real 'positional tactic' in the whole thing. The TTK and gameplay didn't allow much else. The rest of the combat was just various forms of 'waves crashing' and commingling 'duels'.
It... just didn't seem like there was much more to it than 'slightly interesting zerging'. I mean, come on. I know I have high standards. I play fighting games, Predecessor, FFXI. But honestly, even my time in FFXI's 2002 PVE-only-game's PVP arena was far more interesting than this. I don't think the TTK serves strategy or tactics when combined with the style of mechanics and abilities that we've seen. I can see how this could work with some tweaks in a PvE context, but-- ugh, no. I'm just imagining a higher TTK environment (a big PvE boss battle). *sigh*
This is just hard for me. Particularly as an Aspiring bard, your TTK and 'tactics' shown leave me no reason to be excited, particularly if I'm not just 'buffing people and then hiding'. I understand that this is WIP, but then, why show it? It just demoralizes me and doesn't inform me of anything good. I can't imagine a form of bard songs that both feel like bard songs, and actually have any real function in this environment and don't just get me focus killed immediately.
I gotta ask Azherae to break this down for me. I hope she can dispel some of this, and it's not as bad as it looks. I'll edit if she changes my mind.
Positive things I noticed from the stream:
1. Very smart that you considered the gameplay around rafting to limit launching/raft points and not allow just anywhere.
2. Overall caravan system looks good
3. The ideas behind behind being able to progress town and other means to the caravan or pvp system is very exciting.
4. Raft and sailing looks very good especially for the first showing.
Thoughts about the caravan system:
The idea that I could potentially work on various progression paths to improve my ability or my guilds ability to pvp caravans is very appeasing.
Just like in archeage I am curious if the mechanic that would make trade packs still reward the initial crafter unless it was turned into a specific black market trader might be worth considering to lessen the blow to regular players who like trading but dont like pvp. You could make it so that only the top upgraded black market trader and guild with stolen goods perks can turn in stolen goods and get 100% the stolen value.
The raft got me thinking about larger ships and what you plan to do with trade goods in terms of caravans vs ships. My initial thought is small ships can't hold a trade caravan and you instead need a regular caravan turned into a raft. Medium sized ships can naturally hold 1 trade caravan, large ships can hold 2 trade caravans. Any "trade ship" gets a plus 1 caravan per size of medium or above (first trade ship is medium sized). This would mean a trade ship could hold 2 caravans as a medium sized ship and a large trade ship can hold 4 caravans.
Additionally with ships I would consider a rowing or "sail power" mechanic that would have interaction points on every ship that locks a player to the ship to provide speed to the ship. Mechanic would work to create a game play of do you need speed or people to defend/attack.
My biggest concern with any trade system is that there is too much of an advantage to camp spots right next to a town or turn in meaning if the attacker wins the fight they can grab the loot and get to safe zone faster than a respawn. I would think that maybe a recently destroyed caravans loot has a timer before it can be picked up by an enemy caravan. Additionally towns should have an upgrade to pay a town guard to do a quick path outside of town. If attackers are camping near a town and the guards catch them or discover the destroyed caravan those attackers get a penalty/wanted by that town guard which will stop them from being able to turn in any caravan at that town for 1 hour. This then forces them to do a trade caravan to another town which would hopefully make camping turn ins a bad idea because you will likely get a wanted status and have to then do a full caravan trip for less rewards since stolen.
Combat looked boring and mid to be honest but at least it's flashy...