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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
It all still represents the same amount of player time.
The number of players on each side simply don't matter. The time investment specific to the caravan in question is all that matters.
You could, but you wouldn't.
While talking about what players "can" do is valid - it is only ever valid if there is a reason to do so.
Does this alter the above calculation of the total time put in to the caravan vs the total time put in to the specific attack on that caravan?
If not, then it isn't pertinent to the discussion on what risk each side has.
This isn't about risk vs reward, it is about two sides in a competition where one side has to place some real risk, while the other side has to place no real risk.
The point remains, if the defenders are putting up 3000 minutes (I mistakenly said hours in the previous post - it is 3000 minutes, or 50 hours of harvesting) and the attackers are putting in only the time it takes to attack, that is an imbalance. Even if the attackers aren't getting everything from the defenders, it is still imbalanced.
Lets imagine that 8 players spend 10 minutes attacking a caravan, destroy it which deletes that 20% that we were talking about above, and manage to take off with 50% of what is left. This is an actual realistic scenario.
This means the defender spends 50 hours harvesting, plus what the caravan cost, plus the time they spend organizing the caravan, plus the time they spent running the caravan (multiplied by how ever many defenders there are), plus the 10 minutes time for the fight, and as a result they get 20 hours worth of harvesting, minus the cost of those defenders (if hired), and minus the cost of the caravan.
Meanwhile, the attackers spend 80 minutes (10 minutes for 8 people), and in return they get 20 hours of harvesting.
If you don't see the issue here, it is because you are going out of your way to not see it.
Any argument that the defender stands to make more if they successfully get their caravan to it's destination is equally as invalid as the cost of leveling, opportunity cost or gear cost. If the attackers take a portion of the materials in the caravan, they then stand to gain that additional reward that the person running the caravan was trying to get.
I see what you mean, but I still disagree.
1 dude harvesting for 10 hours is not the same as 10 dudes harvesting for one hour each. you are only looking at one side.
ill try a different way. if you spend 60 minutes getting money to buy goods and I attack you, but I only get 2 minutes of what you bought, and spent 10 mins trying to get that, its not worth it for me as an attacker. i could have just spent 10 minutes farming instead to get 10 mins of rewards instead of 2 mins. I'm trading 10 mins of time for maybe 2 mins of reward. and after that, I have to launch my own caravan to be able to sell the goods at the destination node. so I'm not even getting an immediate reward. then I could get attacked and lose everything + more time.
on the other hand, if I fail, your 60 mins become 240 or 300 mins (remember when steven said transported goods can be sold 4-5 times the price?).
the defender for sure loses more time, as the attacker doesn't need to spend hours attacking and the defender might have to spend hours gathering. if I can agree to that, I hope you can agree that attacking isn't worth it right now, unless you just want to trade time to screw someone else up.
defending incurs higher costs and time, but also higher rewards. attacking incurs lower costs and time and receives lower rewards.
if we talk about gatherables, you can launch the caravan and keep the herbs, ores, etc in your inventory and completely remove the death penalty since you will be in a PVP event, so you wont drop anything. that's 0 risk for the defender. zero. nada. it is pertinent to the discussion since you still get the rewards of transporting your herbs and ores without zero risks and just minimal cost (launch the cheapest caravan). which means, the 60 mins I spent gathering (or 6000 if you wanna add more players) can not be taken away no matter what.
That's the point.
For those that played ArcheAge what relative value did the caravans carry have in terms of time invested to fully laden and what kind of return was returned?
If there is to much Risk to ambush and attack a Caravan,
why should People do it ?
Pretty sure Sir Steven and his fellow Developers intend for Caravans to be attractive Targets for Ambushes.
Players " THEMSELVES " are adding the Risk.
Players can create "Decoy"-Caravans, effectively wasting the Time of everyone who might want to lurk in the Wilderness to get the Jump on them.
The Game doesn't need to make ambushing and attacking a Caravan 100% Pain and only 10% Pleasure and Joy. This would be Anti-PvP. And Verra will not be supposed to be Anti-PvP, as far as i understood that.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
You're literally taking time out of your day, reading through, and then commenting on my post. You very obviously care.
That would not be good because if players will want to attack only the caravans of the other nodes considered as enemy (even if there is no war currently declared) then the attackers would become flagged to their own BH too.
If players want to hunt down bandits who attack caravans frequently on their territory, they can trigger guild wars and node wars. If they do, Steven will be happy that things work as intended.
Transporting goods between nodes is supposed to be a more dangerous activity compared to the resource gathering.
Refusing to attack the caravans of other nations is like helping them to get better gear which they'll use against you later, in dungeons and sieges.
Imagine another node sends gatherers to your ZoI, you cannot directly kill them because corruption but then you want to not be able to destroy their caravans either because the game puts more risk onto you?
Ok its early morning so perhaps I am missing something as my brain wakes up but 5 minutes * 100 = 500 minutes or 8.33 hours and 30 * 100 = 3000 minutes or 50 hours?
Choosing to risk 50 hours to change your profit from 1x (the price of the good if you were to gather then sell it) to maybe 5x (rough estimate of extra profit a caravan might yield) seems completely reasonable?
In my mind 1 player gathering a full caravans mats in 50 hours sounds reasonable as well, so now put 8 players on it and suddenly you have a proper scenario in my mind. 5.25 hour investment in gathering that is then risked on purpose for a potential 5x gain in coin. Players do not deserve that 5x, it is not normal to get 5x, it is earned.
The current system implemented by IS indicates they believe that the attackers risk is roughly 20% that of the defender. (Caravan drops 20% of mats if the player puts them into their inventories) if they run the caravan after then they believe the risk scenario is 50%.
Caravans are not a given, they are not an expectation or something that you should expect to always complete, they are a assessed risk, taken based on personal calculations. That assessed risk for attackers by IS currently sits at 20% that of the defenders and that seems perfectly reasonable for an action that the defenders never have to take. (running the caravan in the first place)
All Dygz cares about is sharing an opinion regardless of its relevance.
Dude spent months saying he will never play this game and made sure every other comment he posted said that. Now he will be playing the game by staying away from the sea. Soon he will be our PVP overlord.
Highly recommend to completely ignore his takes as they aren't based on a desire to provide value but a desire to keep him "important"
Depending how many years you have been around, you will know Dygz to talk a whole bunch, is never wrong, and never actually say anything except for things like
Dygz - "Nobody cares about your suggestions. That's the point."
so it has nothing to do with his take on caravan risk and everything to do with statements like the one above. Don't worry next he will say he doesn't care about the system anyway since he won't be using it and follow that up with more advice on how the system should be implemented.
I know his stance about the deep ocean addition and that's why I find the situation remarkable that he said there is enough risk on attacker side.
There are different perspectives on this and his one is valid too even though I didn't expected it.
Additionally, based on this quote:
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.[87] – John Collins
I think attackers should carry the tools to open crates and those tools should drop in PvP.
And thieves should be able to pickpocket them away.
The Risk is - > Players can spawn "Decoy"-Caravans to fool you with.
The Risk is - > You and your Friends might go after the wrong Caravan, while the One with all that juicy, tasty Loot inside is taking another Way or to another Node entirely. x'D
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
Ashes is a team-based game, so the risks and rewards need to be thought of in that context.
Voxtrium -
All told the risk for attackers are as follows
- Failure to take the caravan means it was a complete waste of time... time you yourself could have used to transport a caravan or something equivalent
- Assuming caravans are common then guilds who routinely take caravans will become well known.
- Failure to prevent resource transport will mean development of nodes that are likely not yours and thus provide power to those you are likely already at ends with
end of 1st page, totally agree with you though!
Thx, @Voxtrium. At a swim meet, and only caught up on the last 2 pages. 🤣
damn, I REALLY wanna see dygz becoming a PVP overlord ;3
I will not be staying away from the Open Seas.
I will explore the Open Seas, too.
I will just be ignoring all the other gameplay except for exploration and socializing with friends.
When I want to do other stuff, like progression and combat and Crafting and Building... I will play some game other than Ashes.
Objectively, the Risk for Caravans revolves around Node progression and Castle defense. Factually, there is more than 0 Risk for the attackers of Caravans.
I dunno what my stance on non-consensual PvP has to do with whether Ashes has sufficient Risk.
The total cost of the scenario we are talking about is 50 hours. If 10 people spend 5 hours each, that is still 50 hours. If 100 people spend 30 minutes each, that is still 50 hours. In this scenario, yeah, it doesn't make sense.
However, lets scale it up.
Instead of me spending an hour, lets multiply that by 50 to get the time investment we are talking about.
Then lets multiply the other times by that same amount. Rather than getting 2 minutes of progression, you would be getting 100 minutes. Rather than it taking you 10 minutes, it would take you 500 minutes.
The question I have with this is why exactly you think the attacker of a caravan would only be getting 3.3% of the resources in the caravan. This is the part of your scenario that makes no real sense.
Assuming you are somewhat competent, you will attack the caravan in an area where there won't be too many others coming through, you will kill the caravan defenders, then the caravan, and your whole group will then take as much of the spoils as you are able. Why would you think that would only be 3.3%?
If you want to argue that maybe the attackers aren't competent, then the same argument can be made for the defenders. Sure, maybe the attackers are shit and only get a small fraction - but if we factor this in to our discussion we also have to assume that the defenders may be shit and it actually took them twice as long to get the materials.
Rather than assuming various player competencies, we should just be assuming a base level of competency - and with this as a base, I see no reason to assume 3.3% of the caravan contents of a destroyed caravan going to the attacker.
Using your claculation of gaining 3.3%, sure.
However, run that same cost/benefit calculation assuming the attacker is likely to end up with the 80% of the materials that are not destroyed in your scenario from a few posts above.
With that as the baseline, your 10 minute attack on a caravan containing 60 minutes of harvesting progression would net you 46 minutes worth of that harvesting progression.
That is worth it to literally anyone.
because you cant control who joins the event, and you cant control who takes which loot. one melee might be able to loot 3 boxes, while one ranged might loot 0.
but that's my point, they don't get rewarded immediately. they have to become the defenders now and could still lose. nothing guarantees they win as the new defenders.
If you are attacking in a highly trafficed area, I would deem that a lack of competency.
See, you ARE starting to get it.
We aren't talking about the defender losing the eventual potential realized profit from the caravan, we are talking about them losing the progression up until the point of loss.
Likewise, the attacker isn't gaining the eventual realized profit from the caravan, they are essentially taking over a portion of it.
Going forward, we can either agree that we are talking about the potential realized profit from transporting the goods, or we can agree that we are talking about the progression up until that point.
The key thing is - we need to be talking about the same for both attacker and defender. We can't talk about the potential realized profit for the defender, but the unrealized potential for the attacker - unless there is a game system that prevents the attacker from realizing that profit.
Basically, anything that can be the same on both sides cancels both sides out. The attacker can realize that same profit from what they take, so either we talk about fully realized profit on both sides, or on neither side.
Typically people tell their opinion, suggest ideas and changes which would make the game in their perspective better. To feel if something is better or not you have to imagine playing that part of the game.
How can you tell if something is good or not good, in this case the risk associated with caravan runs, if you don't imagine being on both sides?
Hmm, maybe you was thinking from the perspective of a mayor (
Still, the activity to be fun from attacker perspective (if they like risk), there have to be a little bit more than just the node progression (which may already be fully developed).
Edit:
So I see 3 perspectives:
- nodes want to get ahead of other nodes and activate/maintain specific content
- defensive players who make money want to use risk to deter attackers (they see risk as punishment)
- attackers need a little bit more risk to add fun (I see risk as fun up to a certain limit)
I said that Risk exists and it is not 0 Risk - in response to the claim that there is 0 Risk.
The primary purpose of Caravans is to move Resources to a Node in order to progress a Node to the next Stage and build Service Buildings and to build up defenses for Castle Sieges.
"Just the Node progression" is not 0 Risk.
Attackers also gain negative penalties on the Bandit Tracker if the lose a Caravan Raid
Negative penalties on the Bandit Tracker also does not = "no Risk".
There's probably more than 3 subjective perspectives with regard to whether it's enough Risk.
Objectively, it's not 0 Risk; neither is it "no Risk".
Plenty suggests abundance, surplus...
Is the progression as a bandit a reward? Or regression bad?
Eventually players will settle at a specific level which corresponds to their skill and will oscillate around that level.
Players also loose gear durability when they die. How much that is remains to be seen.
Well your example is bit flawed, since just because you are gathering some materials now, doesnt mean that you will run your caravan right after, This means the other team that expecting you to run caravan right after can waste few hours scouting for your caravan, and not find anything, simply because you dont run the caravan now, or you choose different node in different direction to transport your goods.
And yes, i am talking about players who do nothing else but scout to find a caravan.
As i wrote in above comments - "there can be players who gather or do quests nearby and accidently run across your caravan, and wont have the time spent risk. ". But since the map is huge, and you can check the commission board before running your caravan to avoid places with quests, and also even if you run across such players, they may be few and not be threat to your caravan. So the big risk for caravan runs will be dedicated attackers, that use their time to scout
1: an adequate or more than adequate number or amount of something : a number or amount of something that is enough for a particular purpose
2: an abundance especially of material things that permit a satisfactory life : a condition or time of abundance
https://www.englishaula.com/en/english-language-training-and-support-documents/common-confusions/general/adequate-sufficient-and-enough/11-9-6359843623403520/#:~:text=If something is adequate, there,a qualitative response to something.
If something is adequate, there is enough of it, but only just enough.
If there is sufficient quantity of something, this suggests that there is as much of it as you need.
Sure. You could ask which definition of plenty I mean.
My answer would be "adequate" - enough for its particular purpose - which is primarily focused on PvP encounters that will significantly impact the progression of Nodes and the defenses of Castles.
The Risk is not 0.
I did not make the argument that it's sufficient and therefore people should not advocate for more Risk.
I don't think placement on the Bandit success tracker is going to be as simple as a matter of player skill.
Gear degradation is a penalty if the Attackers die. That's different than Risk for not winning the Caravan attack.