Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Caravans are not fun and are full of griefing
Jumbolaya
Member, Alpha Two
The current Caravan system is superbly frustrating. Really the only way to make enough gold to afford crafting professions/freeholds is to either run caravans or be very good at playing the market. To make Caravans worth it, you have to spend 4+ gold or farm non-existent willow trees to make a decent caravan (2x6 willow), stock with glint that you've farmed for an hour+ and take it on a journey across the entire map at RP walk speed, which ultimately takes 50+ minutes. With upgraded wheels and beast, that may trim down to 35-40 minutes. That long walk/ride is not engaging at all for anyone involved.
So say you make it 40 / 50 minutes into your journey and you see the long awaited city in sight. Only to have a party of level 20-25s in full Carphin/DF gear (who somehow got all that during a holiday week) demolish your level 15-18 group who are much weaker due to the gear tier system. Or perhaps you are being targeted by one of the streamer guilds who are camping the best routes, who always outnumber you 5 to 1 and have scouts everywhere calling out the location of those caravans not part of their guild. They kill you and often give you a nice "get rekt".
There is also no benefit for anyone to become a defender of your caravan if they are not part of your guild/economic circle. And the driver can be shot right off the caravan. And the caravans constantly bug out, sending people halfway across the map or just disappearing (we've done /bug).
There is all the benefits to attackers who sit at the most popular roads/rivers or at the most popular turn-in cities to destroy you, summon their own caravan, collect your stuff, and turn it in essentially right past where they killed you. The cost of them not killing you? A little XP debt (which doesn't impact level 25 at all) and a repair bill.
Much of my guild and I have decided to disengage from this system as we are pretty disheartened. We've lost 4 fully packed willow caravans to streamer guilds and 3 to caravan bugs (caravans disappearing/people teleporting away). Huge amounts of hours and gold wasted.
Just feels bad that single guilds (< 50 players) that are not blasting through to level 25 are not able to experience this content or any of the content locked behind a lot of coin.
I think that if you are going to have tiered gear scaling, then you should make caravan combat tiered (10-19, 20-29, etc) and give anyone attacking a caravan outside of their tier severe corruption penalties. Also award decent XP to both the caravan owner AND defenders. And give defenders a portion of the proceeds (the driver chooses % per defender to attract people and has the option to deny defenders).
I know it's an Alpha and a lot of systems are not on line, but hopefully developers factor in testing experiences like ours when they starting turning these systems on. I love the PvX paradigm and love risk vs reward, but the current implementation in phase 2 and the gaming culture has me concerned.
So say you make it 40 / 50 minutes into your journey and you see the long awaited city in sight. Only to have a party of level 20-25s in full Carphin/DF gear (who somehow got all that during a holiday week) demolish your level 15-18 group who are much weaker due to the gear tier system. Or perhaps you are being targeted by one of the streamer guilds who are camping the best routes, who always outnumber you 5 to 1 and have scouts everywhere calling out the location of those caravans not part of their guild. They kill you and often give you a nice "get rekt".
There is also no benefit for anyone to become a defender of your caravan if they are not part of your guild/economic circle. And the driver can be shot right off the caravan. And the caravans constantly bug out, sending people halfway across the map or just disappearing (we've done /bug).
There is all the benefits to attackers who sit at the most popular roads/rivers or at the most popular turn-in cities to destroy you, summon their own caravan, collect your stuff, and turn it in essentially right past where they killed you. The cost of them not killing you? A little XP debt (which doesn't impact level 25 at all) and a repair bill.
Much of my guild and I have decided to disengage from this system as we are pretty disheartened. We've lost 4 fully packed willow caravans to streamer guilds and 3 to caravan bugs (caravans disappearing/people teleporting away). Huge amounts of hours and gold wasted.
Just feels bad that single guilds (< 50 players) that are not blasting through to level 25 are not able to experience this content or any of the content locked behind a lot of coin.
I think that if you are going to have tiered gear scaling, then you should make caravan combat tiered (10-19, 20-29, etc) and give anyone attacking a caravan outside of their tier severe corruption penalties. Also award decent XP to both the caravan owner AND defenders. And give defenders a portion of the proceeds (the driver chooses % per defender to attract people and has the option to deny defenders).
I know it's an Alpha and a lot of systems are not on line, but hopefully developers factor in testing experiences like ours when they starting turning these systems on. I love the PvX paradigm and love risk vs reward, but the current implementation in phase 2 and the gaming culture has me concerned.
2
Comments
Crafting has no value unless you craft "the best shit" as anything else is easily replaced by farming mobs.
The risk vs reward of caravans, seems all risk. I make more money just selling glint than trying to run caravans.
The only system worth testing is combat, which in fairness when the SW is functioning is pretty solid.
I don't mind the fact that I lost my crates. However, losing the caravan is just.. silly. Mine wasn't even an expensive willow caravan.. I can't even imagine how bad it will feel like to lose one made with high rarity materials and beasts of burdens.
Right now as it currently stands.. this system is only Risky for whoever runs the caravans.. the attackers have zero risk and all the rewards. This pretty much goes against one the core pillars of the game.