Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Comments
Nope, that's not what risk in the game means. Time is free in the game in the risk vs. reward sense. It has no cost or value associated with it. Time is only valuable to you outside the game. You are conflating RL with ingame.
So while we play - the time IRL is stopped and dont move? (since it is "FREE")
its simple math... If 1 hour = 100 stones, then losing 100 stones = losing 1 hour. IDK who your math teacher was...
Same as In real life, if you buy new watch for 100$ and someone steal it from you (while the watch is still in the box not opened, and this is because the raw quality of the gathered materials wont change with time). This will mean you lost 100$.
There. I fixed it for you.
Specifically, the Risk in Ashes is not the same as IRL.
For Caravans, Risk is not about time lost.
From the Defender side - Risk is that you can't progress your Node with out supplies from Caravans and/or you can't raise defenses for your Castle without supplies from Caravans.
From the Attacker side - the Risk is if you lose a Caravan raid, some other Node might make your Node a Vassal or you might not be able to win a Castle.
Endgame content is merely content that will be run by players regularly after hitting max level... that would most definitely include caravans, nodes, sieges, open sea etc
Just like the Abilities you get at first level do not become Endgame abilities just because you still use those Abilities at Endgame.
For Ashes, the only "Endgame content" we're aware of right now are owning Freeholds and owning Castles.
Everything else is just content.
No no no. It doesn't matter how long it takes you to gather 100 stones. If you're slow about it, it might take a day. Or if fast, 30 minutes. Or someone gives it to you for free, which is 0 seconds. What you risk is the 100 stones. Not the time. The game cannot balance risk vs reward based on the amount of time you spent getting the stone. It can only base it on the amount of stone. With your logic, the lazier and slower you are about gathering stone, the bigger the ingame risk because you spent more time. That makes zero sense, and is not what the "risk vs. reward" is about in game terms. Your time spent doing things only has value to you personally, and is not relevant to this. Forget RL.
Time is money...
Why you removed the "or NPCs and losing your stuff"?
That is correct. IF you gather 100 stone for 2 days, losing those 100 stones will be felt a lot more than someone who gathers those same 100 stones for 2 hours. Thats how things work. Its not only about being lazy, but efficient also. And idk how you can say that losing 100 stones when you gather them for 2 days is same as losing 100 stones if you gather them for 2 hours.
And about the time i have just 1 thing to say- the spent time is the biggest investment you make in games that has no p2w. Doesnt matter if you stay in 1 spot watching your character dance, or if you fight or gather. You invest time. (and no i dont count the time you spent afk while cooking irl)
Yes, and that specifically tells you that 'risk' is not the same as opportunity cost.
Opportunity cost disparities are important, they're aspects of balance, but the 'balance' side of risk-vs-reward calculations is not the same as the incentives side. Even if they get close sometimes, one is technical, the other is perception and depends on the game's audience.
You can disagree that attackers need more risk, but it's harder to just 'disagree' and say that they have it.
Role-players can get attached to their stones
Imagine you have 1 hour to spend in the game between work and sleep and you want to make max profit for this 1 hour,
we exclude all other options and leave only those 2 for you to choose: gather or attack caravan to steal goods.
In both cases you spend the 1 hour. In the caravan case you may end up with nothing, if you dont find a caravan or if you lose the caravan (risk)
In the gather case - you can either choose sure reward, but smaller if you dont run caravan, or run a caravan and risk losing everything (risk)
Idk why you try to put the "risk" in the definition that you lose something material. There are risks even with non material stuff like time.
I really should just wait for A2 to start and hope for someone to actually converse with about this sort of thing...
But, alright, if your perception of Ashes is that gathering leads to a 'sure' reward, and that's the simple answer, I don't really have anything to say about that.
Beam me up, Skotty!
Save us, Jake Song!
dont reply to me if you didnt read my whole comment
Limited when more people go into the Dungeon is PvP.
Possibility of being attacked by another Guild is PvP.
That's what Steven talks about when he mentions Risk v Reward.
See, no.
In Arcehage, you simply wouldn't run packs to Freedich isle unless you were in one of the three biggest guilds, and had the whole guild with you.
Sure, you could run packs in PvP free zones with no risk. You could run packs to PvP zones within your own continent and only need an additional person with you to almost guarantee you'd be fine. You could transport packs to the opposing continent with a group or so of players - but if you wanted to go to Freedich, you needed your entire guild with you.
Even during off peak times, you still needed to have a solid group or two of players with you to have a reasonable shot at getting just one shipload of packs traded in.
You said that you see people running packs instead of fighting for them - in my experience if to groups of players running packs to the opposing continent come across each other in the ocean, only one of them will go any further - the fact that you are running packs means you have people with you, people wanting a fight - they will take that fight.
Again, your comments simply do not matck up with the reality of similar games - not unless you are in a guild large enough that others will keep away from you, or are playing during off peak times. Your comments are so incredibly far from the experience of all Archeage servers I have played on (4 servers over 3 regions, plus a private server or two) that I have to assume either you are talking about one of these two situations, or you are outright making it up.
There is zero possibility that what you are saying is true in the way you are suggesting it is. Zero possibility.
Is that enough Risk ? (>_>)
No, actually - i DO* cringe everytime. I do it a LOT. Because i know somewhere deep down that we DON'T. KNOW. how much apparent Risk or no Risk the Attackers take.
Is it really not enough Risk, to "risk one's Time" by being able to fail to ambush and loot the Caravan ?
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Currently no guild !! (o_o)
Unless it makes you not do pvp in the game its not enough risk ;o
I mean we've had several questions asked that have been deflected or not satisfactory. At that point, it's fine to talk about bandit risk from a theoretical standpoint. And then we will see how it works in game, which is important, but it's still important theoretically as well.
Again, if there was a gathering class that had zero risk, everyone would have a problem with it. The fact that attackers have no risk is a problem in and of itself beyond any in-game consequences.
As has already been explained to you.
"Nanananana! I'm not listening!" is not a convincing argument.
If you can't reiterate the argument of the person you're talking to, I would suggest to not comment until you've accomplished that feat.
Explain it to me - please.
First, it is key to understand that in a game with the kind of economy Intrepid wants Ashes to have, economic activity is character progression. Your over all character power is a factor of how much and how quickly you can earn gold.
With that in mind, defenders place roughly 100 inventories worth of materials in a caravan. While we don't know how much time and effort that is as yet, we can safely assume it is 100 non-mule harvesting sessions. If a non-mule harvesting session were to last 5 minutes, a caravan holds 500 hours worth of progression. If a non-mule harvesting session is 30 minutes, a caravan holds 3000 hours of progression.
If players stand to lose half of the materials if a caravan is destroyed, that is 1500 hours of progression lost - not including the cost of the caravan itself.
Where is there any risk even remotely in the same range as this for attackers?
There is an argument that they face the most minor of risk with their progression path, but that risk is in relation to lost opportunity cost, and nothing more. The thing is, the time they spend attacking that caravan is also adding that same amount of opportunity cost to the caravan defender, so opportunity cost can simply be cancelled on both sides.
If you want to say "but I said there is *a* cost, and that opportunity cost is *a* cost, then just be aware that you are arguing that someone buying a new car and putting up $50,000 is helped out by the kid that puts in his $2 towards the car as well. You can argue it on a technicality, but not that it is is any meaningful way significant.
is one person going o fill up the entire caravan?
also, how many empty, decoy caravans will there be?
if we are talking about the ultimate resource, time, attackers have it worse. if I put 100 iron ore into a caravan, when the caravan is destroyed, those 100 iron ores become 80 (just an example, remember part of the loot Is destroyed), then they drop on the ground and anybody can loot them, including the defenders. lets say the attackers loot them. one person isn't going to loot them all, those 80 will be split among 10, 20, 50 people. it would be faster to just go and gather the iron ore yourself. you will make more in the same amount of time.
if we are talking about the special goods that can be sold at another node for profit, the attackers will have to go back and launch their own caravan becoming the defenders, so they don't get an immediate reward for winning, whereas the defenders get an immediate reward for winning and getting their caravan safely to the destination node.
on top of that, since launching a caravan makes join a PVP event, you could use that to transport stuff yourself in your own inventory. if you die, you wont receive the death penalty because you are in a PVP event, meaning you remove all the risk of traveling and transporting stuff in your own inventory. hell, you can just launch empty caravans and transport the stuff in your inventory, probably your mule as well without any risk of dropping stuff on death xD
how come no one ever talks about that?
to sum it up, attacking gives every attacker very little to no rewards (they have to become defenders to get rewarded). add to that the loss of social reputation, and there is almost no reason to attack a caravan, unless you have beef or war vs the defenders, or you want to screw up a node for whatever reason.
defenders have a higher risk in term of time spent, but they also have a higher reward. attackers have very little rewards, with a high risk.
If there is 1500 hours worth of progression at risk, there is 1500 hours worth of progression at risk. I fail to see how decoys will be effective when you can see the cargo in the caravan itself.
That said, if I have a decoy caravan and you attack and destroy it because you didn't notice it was obviously empty, I am still at a loss. Both you and I have an opportunity cost that we lost, but I also lost the caravan that you just destroyed. So, even with this, the cost is still on the defender, not the attacker.
The defenders would need to be dead in oder for you to destroy the caravan.
That said, you still don't have it worse - if we assume a 20% destruction of items as you are suggesting here (probably close to accurate), that means the defender has already lost 600 hours of progression (remember, we are working on a caravan holding 3000 hours worth of harvesting).
Even if that 600 hours is spread across an entire guild, that guild is still losing that progression.
Even if they get literally everything else back, they still lost 600 hours.
What was the cost of attacking that caravan again? nd don't say "leveling, gearing and such", because that is a cost on both sides and so can be cancelled out.
The only cost associated that counts is any cost specifically dedicated to attacking that one caravan. Since leveling, gearing, opportunity cost and consumables are the same for both sides and so cancel each other out, I am still waiting to hear about the cost for attacking...
We have.
If a caravan is worth using, carrying 1% of what it can carry won't be worth doing.
Much as in EVE, Archeage, BDO and Albion, this will not exist in Ashes - unless you are attacking people you have made a direct agreement to not attack.
If two teams both gather resources and then, one starts the caravan and the other scouts the road, finds it and destroy it, then the attackers didn't spent much time.
But they will have to transport their own goods too and be on the defender side.
So time to find caravans can be considered only for players who do nothing else but search or wait at choke points.
1- hold on. 1500 hours of progression, but it wasn't done by one player. it has been done by many players, and it will be distributed by many players. lets one players contributes more, sure he will lose more, but he will win more if the defense succeeds. the attackers still have to distribute the spoils, plus they get less than the original amount. that's my whole point. are you going to attack when you can get 0% to not 100% of what you could get by yourself just gathering somewhere else? you will just to screw someone over, but you arent really getting rewarded. 1500 hours among 1500 players that's just 1 hour each. attackers will only loot 80% of this, and many people probably wont even be able to loot anything.
side note: I think you cant see the goods the caravan have, just if they have something or not, so you could load multiple caravans with just 1 herb or oren. i have to double check that though.
2- you don't have to kill all the defenders, you can focus the caravan as far as I know. it would still be a good idea to kill the defenders too, but they might be able to come back and loot something. remember you wont be attacking just one caravan.
sure the defenders incur the cost of summoning the caravan, but they also get the big reward. that was my other point. defenders = big cost and risk + big rewards. attackers = low cost and moderate risk + low rewards. plus attackers have to become defenders too if we talk about looting the special commodities thingies from the caravan.
3- when I said how come no one talks about it? i meant you carrying your regular droppable gatherables during a caravan event instead of putting them in the caravan. the death penalties are removed. remember when you die white you will drop mats, if you die purple you will drop half of the mats (or at half the rate?). fi you die during a PVP event, you wont drop any mats. you can use the caravan event to safely transport items in your inventory. so now those 1500 players with 1 hour of gathering each can safely transport their things form node to node with 0 risks. if ashes doesn't restrict the use of mules during caravans, this strategy will even be more OP since your mule can carry more than your bags.
you can argue that attackers can do the same. but if they do and don't try to stop the caravans, they will lose attackers progression...
so yeah defenders incur more costs but get higher rewards. its fair. id say attackers incur high risk in aspects that arent just material. the reputation will matter. you arent just playing a game, you are playing a series of games with the same people over long periods of time. you screw someone up, be sure they will try to screw you up eventually.