Caravans are pretty good as they are but can be improved a lot.

Deathwynd

Here are my ideas on how to improve caravans and why.

First the issues.
1) Caravans are very hard to kill with less than a raid and can ignore most environmental issues
2) Caravans are simply generating gold from player time investment and will lend themselves to abuse by large guilds while shutting out solo/small groups.
3) Its far too easy for anyone with a guild to summon help to defend a caravan long before anything less than a raid can kill it.
4) The rewards both for defense and attack of caravans is very uninspiring.

Here are my thoughts to address the above issues.

1) Caravan health and regeneration seem to be in a good place but I think adding a speed penalty every time they are harmed would address this issue.
If every time something damages the caravan it slows by 50% for ten seconds it would give a small group time to take down the caravan. It would also incentivize the driver to deal with environmental dangers like attacks from wildlife.
Side note: I do think that when the driver leaves the seat there should be small delay before he can re-enter but at the same time only a member of the drivers party should be able to drive the caravan at all.

2) Caravans should only carry crates of gathered/crafted materials and should multiply the value of the packed goods instead of the current commodity system. This could also be parleyed into a wider supply/demand system between distant settlements.

3) The slowing debuff would help with making it harder to simply summon help while running away.
Additionally I would say that after the first 10k damage has been done to the caravan the horse is killed and requires a 5 minute cooldown to resummon. During this time the Caravan could turtle up and be much harder to damage while the defenders are forced to defend a sitting duck.

4) There should be tangible rewards for attack and defense of caravans. I suggest a multi layered approach.
First, give the caravan 4 assignable outrider positions which would earn exp at the end of the trip based on the distance traveled. These party members would also be the only players able to drive the caravan other than the owner.
Second, anyone choosing defend would be automatically added to the caravanner's party/raid.
Third, if there is an attack both sides should earn some exp every time they kill a member of the other side, with a corresponding exp penalty from their earnings should they die.
Fourth, attackers would be benefited by these changes as the materials being transported would be actual gatherables and thus fully lootable from a destroyed caravan.

I think this sort of system would make caravans much more interesting both for the escorts and attackers, while addressing the clearly abusable nature of commodities.

Darsh13

I agree with a lot of your points when it comes to caravans but I really don’t agree with your #2 point where you mention caravans should only carry crates of gathered/crafted materials and should multiply the value of the packed goods instead of the current commodity system.

This just would just be weird in the sense that now you have the exact same oak log that’s worth more to NPCs because it was packed and transported from one node to the other. Why would that node buy my oak logs at higher price when it’s in the same biome and they can just walk 15 feet outside of town and get oak?

I personally like the commodity system. You have the option to sell your glint for quick profit but if you have time and want to take the risk you can buy local goods (commodities) and transport them to nearby nodes for an even better profit.

Deathwynd

Partly the idea of making the goods to be transported composed of gather/crafted materials was to deepen the pool of resource for the economy. Instead of just load after load of the same 6 nonsense commodities being hauled it would me materials that could be gathered or crafted or purchased from local players. On the other end of the trip they could even reengineer the node materials system so the local mayor could purchase transported goods etc. Its far from a perfect concept but it introduces the idea of a more player driven economy without magical mcguffins to haul around. Also we dont know that all biomes are just going to go on spawning every sort of resource that may well change this is very early alpha after all.

Darsh13

Yeah I think where you’ll see this kind of trade happen is going to be from one biome to another. So ppl will likely transport wood from the Riverlands to the desert biome and sell the wood to other players on the local auction house there. Every biome with have resources that they have an abundance of and other resources that are scarce. That’s where these materials / resource caravans will become a thing… just not really a thing right now with just the 1 biome available..

ShivaFang

basic caravans are pretty easy to kill with a single ranger using a legendary bow (this can be countered by better armor)

The solution to how much gold they get is already in the game - just needs some rebalancing. The diminishing returns for selling comodities needs to be much stronger. You should have to do some research on which comodities need to be sold where to make maxium profit. The current trend of 'only buy green comodities and do the same run over and over again' would die off very quickly. There should be an opportunity to make more profit running commons if the others are sold too often.