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You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Risk/Reward relation: Only certain items should be able to be transported with caravans
Artharion
Member, Alpha Two
The risk/reward ratio will be tested in Alpha-2 for sure, and there, they will see how their systems truly are and make changes based on how people interact with the loot mechanics and PvP. However, from my experience, I believe it's very likely they will end up stipulating that some items can only be transported by caravans if they want caravans to be used.
My experience playing games with full-loot or half-loot systems (like Ashes) is that people ultimately opt for the safest route to perform certain actions, specially those where you need to spend a lot of time like gathering. It sounds great to take your caravan on a journey to transport many resources, but when it gets destroyed and you see your hours of farming go to waste, many will choose the safe path. If a node spends hours farming resources, they might prefer to gather several players and transport the resources themselves, even if it means 2 trips or more, rather than risk using a caravan and becoming a "big piñata" where gankers will get no punishment since it is an Open-PvP Event. Moreover, mega-guilds will be able to have 50-100 players online to carry the items individually instead of using a caravan, so if they are attacked, they can disperse and save part of the loot.
I know it needs to be tested, and I might be wrong, but if they want caravans to be used in the meta, I believe they will have to make that some items can only be transported by caravans.
My experience playing games with full-loot or half-loot systems (like Ashes) is that people ultimately opt for the safest route to perform certain actions, specially those where you need to spend a lot of time like gathering. It sounds great to take your caravan on a journey to transport many resources, but when it gets destroyed and you see your hours of farming go to waste, many will choose the safe path. If a node spends hours farming resources, they might prefer to gather several players and transport the resources themselves, even if it means 2 trips or more, rather than risk using a caravan and becoming a "big piñata" where gankers will get no punishment since it is an Open-PvP Event. Moreover, mega-guilds will be able to have 50-100 players online to carry the items individually instead of using a caravan, so if they are attacked, they can disperse and save part of the loot.
I know it needs to be tested, and I might be wrong, but if they want caravans to be used in the meta, I believe they will have to make that some items can only be transported by caravans.
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And mats will supposedly be "too much for us to carry ourselves", but then there's a question of how often are we expected to to come to the node while farming resources. Cause if we can't carry 10 rocks on us, how are we supposed to farm rocks, just a few at a time?
So far it seems that the only real caravans will be the mayor/taxes ones, but that's about it. Maaaybe mission-based one, cause I think those are a thing, but then it'd depend on the reward for said missions, cause I'd assume a fair bit of people would consider those a waste of time and would rather just do smth else.
For instance, what if when you start a caravan you get extra items to deliver to nearby nodes? These would not go against the carrying capacity of your carriage, and you would get more of this item the more valuable your load is. This item would, upon delivery, grant you extra rep with both nodes. I probably wouldnt let bandits turn this in for reputation, and it would probably be an extra thing they could turn in at a black market for just a flat amount of coin per item or maybe it could tie into the bandit progression system.
edit: Actually let me try to pretty this up.
There is no "extra item" it would be that the more valuable the load of materials, the more reputation you gain with both the starting node and the targeted node. (value determined by quality of the item, rarity in conjunction with the node, and current saturation of the item being delivered to said node). I would add a difference in amount of rep gained something like 30/70 for the starting node and recieving node respectively.
On the bandit side of things, if you take down a caravan your members can loot "Bloodied Reins" an item that grants bandit progression upon turning it in at the appropriate npc. This will grant progression proportional to the value of the caravan destroyed.
These ideas could work, but I would always go for the simple solution. Just make some items some consumables only be able to move with caravans. Maybe those that you need to upgrade your node, so the only way to upgrade you node is getting items through caravans, or maybe those that you need for crafting high tier weapons/armors/items. I don't know, but make it mandatory instead an option, because if it is an option, people will go for the safest route. No one would risk hours of gathering just to not make some extra trips.
Processed materials pretty much have to be able to be transported by Backpack. And if they can be transported by Backpack, they can also be transported by Mule.
Maybe we need an example of what you consider to be a processed material.
Backpacks and mules won't have enough space to allow you to transport hours worth of gathering.
While I may be wrong, I am confident that many, probably most caravans will safely arrive at their destination. I believe this for several reasons:
- The size of the world. 1200 KM Sq + 100 KM SQ of underworld. Some of that is ocean, but caravans go by sea as well. In the rough terrain we saw recently, player vision is quite limited, half a KM at most. But, from Alpha 1, we know there are some areas where we can see further so instead of 1/2 KM vision, let's double that. So, a player hunting a caravan can see 1/1300 of the map. Maybe there are ten players in the group spread out looking for a caravan, that is still 1/130 of the map, less than 1% of the map is searched.
- Number of players. At any given time, most players will be crafting, raiding, trading, questing, hunting and doing plenty of things besides hunting for a caravan to attack. How many players will be online at a given time? 8,000 to 10,000 maximum concurrent players is the goal, but it is likely that number will only be reached for castle and major node sieges, and then players will be sieging, not hunting caravans. If there are 6,000 players online during the evening, for example, will 1 in 50 be hunting caravans? That's not covering much of the world.
- Number of caravan routes. It looked to me like there were quite a few road choices or different ways to go, considering that even if the caravan starting point is known, the destination isn't so there are 360 degrees of route from the starting node. But the caravan could take a river, or the ocean, or an underealm route. In open areas, the caravan may be able to just head overland and not be on a road. The caravan will be in a hurry, too.
- Amount of time. While some caravans may travel evenings and weekends when it is easier to get defenders, if I were a caravan master, I would head out at 6:30 AM on a Tuesday morning when server population was at a minimum in the expectation that the aggressive players are snoozing.
- Caravans will win sometimes. Even when attacked, some caravans will win the fight and get through.
You can probably come up with other reasons a caravan will likely be successful. Some will be caught and lose, but I suspect enough will get through to make some nodes thrive, allow some players to buy houses and successful a caravan master to be among the first to be able to buy freeholds.
If A2 results in too many caravans failing, the developers will probably make them faster and stronger.
I think so too, to be honest.
this might be an English issue for me, but to my understanding, when you say this "if they want caravans to be used in the meta, I believe they will have to make that some items can only be transported by caravans.", are you saying that the items that can be transported with caravans should be special items that cant be transported in any other way? if thats the case, we already have that. you dont have to transport your gathered mats. you can just buy the special cargo and transport it with the caravan system and sell it for a profit and you cant transport them without a caravan.
and when you say this "Only certain items should be able to be transported with caravans", do you mean that all the items that you can transport in your bags or mules, must not be able to be transported in the caravans as well? if thats the case, i disagree. players have the option to transport regular things on foot or by caravans, thats up to them if they want to take the risk or not. and im sure mega guilds will use the caravan system...i doubt most people will attack 1000-2000 players running around in the same area with 100 -200 caravans where half of them are decoys xD
you might wanna take your things out of your storage because you know your node will get attacked soon. there is also caravan progression. attackers and defenders. if you want to progress in the defenders, there is "real" reason to use the system.
another reason is, youve been gathering for a few hours back and forth near a node, then you need to transport those materials to another node for processing (because the node where you are gathering decided not to invest in those stations) or to yuor freehold, and then to another one for crafting. are you gonna spend 5 hours going back and forth between nodes or are you gonna get your friends and do a guild caravan run and be done in 5 mins?
I'm not really sure why people speculate that caravans won't be the best way to accomplish the intended result.
Not sure if this is in that experience of yours, but one of the full loots i've played, Ark, did have this tendency, people doing the absolute bare minimum. But it also had people using valuable methods of transport, even though there was great risk, when to progress, the sheer volume of needed material necessitated it. Could a City node commence the great walk of 50 people and their mules to transfer the needed materials for say, a major building construction? of course. But that city is in direct competition with some neighboring node, whos mayor could just pay some guild to defend one or two caravans. who do more in one trip than the opposing node could do in several. And i'd say time saving is your greatest resource, especially in that node race.
We saw that caravans are barely the same speed as people. Mounts will be drastically faster. So unless we either have those "you can only carry this in a caravan" things (while they're still as universally useful as mats, and not some commodity shit) or the volume amounts are so damn high that it is in fact not only relatively slower to use mounts in a group - I doubt people will be running their own caravans in the current design.
sounds about right.
A processed material is a material that has been created by the processing profession, like metal bars, chopped wood, etc. Since all crafting and processing happens in an area that has storage, I don't think they need to be able to go into a player's inventory.
As i said, we have not seen any examples of it in a live stream and I couldn't find the quote, I just remember it being said. It could have been changed or I might be insane. I mention it because I think it could help solve the issue the op is talking about.