Family travel/summoning should not be in the game

Flashfirez23

For those of you who don’t know family/summoning is a planned upcoming feature that will allow players to summon or travel to people who are a part of their in game family. On the surface it sounds like a good idea. However, this will break the game because Ashes is designed around having travel actually matter. People are going to be able to exploit the system by setting up alt accounts to have on demand fast travel where ever they want. This will give guilds a huge advantage over other guilds that don’t do this. Also, this removes any risk in trading. Why risk losing your materials when you can just fast travel to another node safely. This will remove any chance for emergent gameplay that Ashes is trying to foster. This just goes to show that fast travel does not work in a game like Ashes. It goes against the design philosophy and can give players huge advantages over others who don’t exploit the system. It would be best if this feature was not added. Because the cons will outweigh the pros in the long run.

Azherae

Flashfirez23 wrote: »

For those of you who don’t know family/summoning is a planned upcoming feature that will allow players to summon or travel to people who are a part of their in game family. On the surface it sounds like a good idea. However, this will break the game because Ashes is designed around having travel actually matter. People are going to be able to exploit the system by setting up alt accounts to have on demand fast travel where ever they want. This will give guilds a huge advantage over other guilds that don’t do this. Also, this removes any risk in trading. Why risk losing your materials when you can just fast travel to another node safely. This will remove any chance for emergent gameplay that Ashes is trying to foster. This just goes to show that fast travel does not work in a game like Ashes. It goes against the design philosophy and can give players huge advantages over others who don’t exploit the system. It would be best if this feature was not added. Because the cons will outweigh the pros in the long run.

For context from the wiki for those skimming but unfamiliar:

Long duration cast (30 seconds to a minute) with an approximate 30 minute cooldown that slowly summons each of your family members to your location (up to eight members).[2][3] Players cannot be summoned in the following cases:
While in combat, if they are corrupted, or if they are engaged in an event, such as node wars, guild wars, sieges, arenas or participation in the caravan system.[4]
If they have mats, gatherables or certs in their inventory.[5]

Basically, there's almost no chance of you being summoned without being in a Node at the time to drop off whatever you were carrying. If you were 'carrying nothing', then most of the bigger issues with this system relative to the Economy do disappear, or rather 'are only as bad as well-geared alts'.

There are many issues that come up in games like Ashes from unlimited daily Fast Travel options, but the economic ones are quite minor and probably favor smaller groups

If the Family Summon goes against the Design Philosophy, it will probably be scrapped, but the econ side of this is relatively small, and while I don't actually want Family Summons in the game at all, Economy stuff isn't the reason.