Greetings, glorious adventurers! If you're joining in our Alpha One spot testing, please follow the steps here to see all the latest test info on our forums and Discord!
Options
Highwayman System - let's talk about it
Nerror
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
From the Wiki - https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Highwayman_system
While the Highwayman system may technically only refer to the system for the attackers, I am going to lump the defenders into the same system here for this discussion. It's also not a discussion about the monetary rewards from caravans, only the planned highwayman system.
I think Intrepid should differentiate between personal and mayoral caravans for the highwayman reward system.
1. Personal caravans
For personal caravans I would like to see players rewarded in the highwayman system based on two things and two things only:
That's it. There should be no reward at all for simply destroying a personal caravan and destroying or leaving the goods behind. Likewise, no reward at all for successfully running an empty caravan.
The caravan PvP in and of itself should be the fun part, and fun is its own reward. If the defenders win the fight, wooo congrats, now they can haul the goods to town and get rewarded by the highwayman-equivalent system for them. If the attackers win and destroy the caravan, woooo congrats! Now they need to assume all the risk by loading the goods onto a caravan and hauling them to town in order for them to get anything from the highwayman system.
Breaking open crates gives a monetary reward if they sell to a black market, but they should get either zero points in the highwayman system from it, or at most something like 5% of what they each could have gotten had they loaded up the goods on their own caravan and taken them to the node. I prefer 0% though. Essentially it's to make sure it's not really worth it to just do roaming gank-n-destroy groups to progress in the highwayman system, without also assuming the risk involved with getting a reward.
People will argue about the social and political risk the attackers get, and while that may or may not be there depending on the server and the people involved, I don't think it should affect the points awarded in the highwayman system. It's too fluid and ephemeral to base a point system on. No crates hauled to town = no points in the highwayman system IMO.
2. Mayoral caravans
Mayoral caravans should be vital enough for the health and prosperity of both nodes involved that citizens from both nodes would want to sign up as defenders. Citizens from all the rival nodes should want to destroy the caravan.
Aside from the geopolitical rewards you get from defending or destroying those mayoral caravans, I think it's ok if the attackers get some points in the highwayman system simply by destroying the caravan and staying in the area long enough for the crates to despawn or be actively destroyed. They are after all successfully hurting other nodes by doing so. But as with the personal caravans above, the attackers should have to haul all the goods to a node in order to get the vast majority of the points in the highwayman system, instead of only some by destroying the goods.
The defenders should have a window of opportunity long enough for them to get a new caravan up and running to pick up the loot, before the crates automatically despawn or are destroyed.
Scenario:
The attackers successfully destroy a mayoral caravan. A timer of 20 minutes starts before the crates are all automatically despawned. The attackers now have a choice:
The defenders now also have a choice, and depending on what the attackers do they either have to keep the pressure on them to stop the crates from being destroyed, or they need to stop the attackers from summoning their own caravan and running off with the goods until the defenders have enough reinforcements to launch their own caravan again. All within that time window.
Either way, the PvP should be constant until either side wins by destroying the goods or getting them hauled away in a new caravan.
A highwayman system tracks a player's performance in caravan PvP.
This records successful or failed defenses and attacks and provides rewards that scale up over time based on the player's history.
The caravan defender role is going to have its own progression questing and rewards associated with it that are going to attract a certain subset of players and then vice-versa wise we're going to have incentives that appeal to the more highway brigand type players; and you might not always be on one side or the other: that might change depending on what your interests are in the at the time. But obviously those types of systems need to have robust consequential type rewards and benefits associated with them in order to compel the player; and that's something obviously we're going to test in alphas and betas and see how performant it is in actually attracting players to participate and make sure it's not just one-sided so-to-speak. – Steven Sharif
Q: Talk to me a little bit about the intended interaction of hunting caravans. What does mean? Can you progress in that? Can you identify these caravans from a distance? Is it intended to be diegetic or is it aided with mini-map?
A: Hunting a caravan is tending to be a lot more diegetic: You plant spies in other guilds, you build your information network in the world of Verra through whatever means you can. Now, there is progression paths involved with attacking and defending a caravan that can aid you in doing so, either with better equipment for it, faster ways to open crates, more yield from crates, and if you're a defender better components for your caravans, stuff like that.– John Collins
This records successful or failed defenses and attacks and provides rewards that scale up over time based on the player's history.
- Increased proximity radius for notification of nearby caravan events.
- Better equipment.
- Faster ways to open crates.
- Higher yield from crates.
- Better caravan components for defenders.
The caravan defender role is going to have its own progression questing and rewards associated with it that are going to attract a certain subset of players and then vice-versa wise we're going to have incentives that appeal to the more highway brigand type players; and you might not always be on one side or the other: that might change depending on what your interests are in the at the time. But obviously those types of systems need to have robust consequential type rewards and benefits associated with them in order to compel the player; and that's something obviously we're going to test in alphas and betas and see how performant it is in actually attracting players to participate and make sure it's not just one-sided so-to-speak. – Steven Sharif
Q: Talk to me a little bit about the intended interaction of hunting caravans. What does mean? Can you progress in that? Can you identify these caravans from a distance? Is it intended to be diegetic or is it aided with mini-map?
A: Hunting a caravan is tending to be a lot more diegetic: You plant spies in other guilds, you build your information network in the world of Verra through whatever means you can. Now, there is progression paths involved with attacking and defending a caravan that can aid you in doing so, either with better equipment for it, faster ways to open crates, more yield from crates, and if you're a defender better components for your caravans, stuff like that.– John Collins
While the Highwayman system may technically only refer to the system for the attackers, I am going to lump the defenders into the same system here for this discussion. It's also not a discussion about the monetary rewards from caravans, only the planned highwayman system.
I think Intrepid should differentiate between personal and mayoral caravans for the highwayman reward system.
1. Personal caravans
For personal caravans I would like to see players rewarded in the highwayman system based on two things and two things only:
- The value of the crates that players successfully bring to a node, be it the attackers or defenders.
- The distance travelled from the point of origin.
That's it. There should be no reward at all for simply destroying a personal caravan and destroying or leaving the goods behind. Likewise, no reward at all for successfully running an empty caravan.
The caravan PvP in and of itself should be the fun part, and fun is its own reward. If the defenders win the fight, wooo congrats, now they can haul the goods to town and get rewarded by the highwayman-equivalent system for them. If the attackers win and destroy the caravan, woooo congrats! Now they need to assume all the risk by loading the goods onto a caravan and hauling them to town in order for them to get anything from the highwayman system.
Breaking open crates gives a monetary reward if they sell to a black market, but they should get either zero points in the highwayman system from it, or at most something like 5% of what they each could have gotten had they loaded up the goods on their own caravan and taken them to the node. I prefer 0% though. Essentially it's to make sure it's not really worth it to just do roaming gank-n-destroy groups to progress in the highwayman system, without also assuming the risk involved with getting a reward.
People will argue about the social and political risk the attackers get, and while that may or may not be there depending on the server and the people involved, I don't think it should affect the points awarded in the highwayman system. It's too fluid and ephemeral to base a point system on. No crates hauled to town = no points in the highwayman system IMO.
2. Mayoral caravans
Mayoral caravans should be vital enough for the health and prosperity of both nodes involved that citizens from both nodes would want to sign up as defenders. Citizens from all the rival nodes should want to destroy the caravan.
Aside from the geopolitical rewards you get from defending or destroying those mayoral caravans, I think it's ok if the attackers get some points in the highwayman system simply by destroying the caravan and staying in the area long enough for the crates to despawn or be actively destroyed. They are after all successfully hurting other nodes by doing so. But as with the personal caravans above, the attackers should have to haul all the goods to a node in order to get the vast majority of the points in the highwayman system, instead of only some by destroying the goods.
The defenders should have a window of opportunity long enough for them to get a new caravan up and running to pick up the loot, before the crates automatically despawn or are destroyed.
Scenario:
The attackers successfully destroy a mayoral caravan. A timer of 20 minutes starts before the crates are all automatically despawned. The attackers now have a choice:
- They can start actively destroying the crates to reduce that 20 minute timer. They get way fewer points in the highwayman system this way, but they also assume little to no immediate risk.
- Or they can start summoning a caravan to haul the goods to town for maximum points.
The defenders now also have a choice, and depending on what the attackers do they either have to keep the pressure on them to stop the crates from being destroyed, or they need to stop the attackers from summoning their own caravan and running off with the goods until the defenders have enough reinforcements to launch their own caravan again. All within that time window.
Either way, the PvP should be constant until either side wins by destroying the goods or getting them hauled away in a new caravan.
4
Comments
I would also like to add my main concern/solution. I dislike how during both caravan streams Steven just ran passed enemies. There needs to be a mechanic that allows bandits to force the fight because I don't think mobile combat is that fun (this could change but I'm going off the current design and direction). So, my solution is give the horses a health bar, knock them down when they reach zero hp, and have them get back up once healed to a certain threshold, say 30%. Add a way for them to naturally heal as well for low healer groups and I think that covers all the bases and resolves my issue.
I wonder what the system for the defenders is called. Caravaneering system? Or just caravan defender.
https://www.youtube.com/@TheHiddenDaggerInn/featured
It's an incentive system pinned onto a concept that should have its own baseline incentives, to pad out something, and I deeply sympathize with whoever is going to get stuck balancing and holding responsibility for this.
That thought did cross my mind too actually. Scrapping it altogether might be an idea. On the other hand, I really, really, really like many progression systems in my MMORPGs, so I lean towards them keeping it, but making the incentives good and fair.