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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
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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.
For the love of casuals PLEASE
Gyn
Member, Alpha Two
We NEED semi-safe caravans for casuals. Without this, casual players will be left out of a major part of the game. Please consider removing the attack/defend from caravans and just make it follow zone rules. If people want to steal a caravan in normal zones, they need to go red. Lawless zones are still open PvP. To balance, lower safe zone trade rewards but increase lawless zone caravan rewards. I am 100% for risk/reward. But right now, the only low risk option is straight selling your glint to a vendor. It just feels like doodoo to go grind monsters, to just sell your gains to a vendor like grey trash in WoW. Especially when you know the gameplay loop is to caravan that glint to another node. Give casual players the time sink that is moving a caravan. Let them have a small endorphin hit when they make it to the end safely. It doesn't take away from the hardcore players sweating it out running caravans to lawless zones at all. I really do not see any negative to this change, as long as the reward differences are significant.
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But you only go red when you have murdered someone who didn't fight back at all ... ...
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Maybe i look after a Guild sometime soon
its called using your mount instead. Thats the casual caravan. the whole point of caravans is that you understand you are risking your profit via pvp in a consensual manner. (even though just playing the game means you consent to pvp I digress)
Now I believe currently you cannot use your mount for commodities but it should be possible in the future. Sorry if you like the idea of caravans, but this is not something they are going to change as its one of their main pvp types for the entire game.
The gameplay loop is to group up and defend the caravan while you take it to another node. It was never meant to be a free ride. If you go by yourself or in small numbers, expect to lose every single one of them.
I agree. but I think personally, corruption needs actaul level loss. if a max level char, takes on a 1st time low level caravan. if the max guy can kill the caravan without killing the low level char. good, he gets the loot. if not, and max level kills the low level player, than that max level is now at that level of chars with corruption applied.
if max levels want to fight low levels. then they can be equalized.
you do see what that will do to player driven markets don't you?
you like to sell legendary items for silver? or better yet, the npc vendors. money needs to flow around verra, or deflation will be a game ending. no body wants login bonuses, to keep the markets a float.
Absolutely yes!
There's a reason why goverments measure velocity of money. With separated markets like there are in verra. there better be huge amounts of gold going back and forth to be worth it. which there isn't as it is concentrated in the hands of the few. so deflation is the next inevitable outcome. or login bonuses lol nobody wants them. lol I don't make the shit up, it is how it works.
can't wait to buy mounts for less than it takes to make them!! boo yeah!!! that's a W. ya can see why it is bound to change. right?
https://ashesofcreation.com
"Risk vs Reward" is right there on the main page.
If you can't handle the risk of running a caravan you don't deserve the reward.
Don't like PvX? Don't play a PvX game.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
- Pay for protection
- Ask friends/family to help
- Ask randoms to help
- Do it at less peak times
If none of those easy solutions work
Run it with just ya mount
Join a guild or make friends to help you do them
If you want safe profit, sell the glint to the vendor.
Or, if you want to run caravans:
* Pay a fee to have people not attack (bandit guilds usually just take a bit of the profit, not all of it - at least on EU.)
* Reach out to other PvP guilds asking for defense in exchange for some of the profit.
* Call for friends.
* Use odd hours and off-road routes to avoid being ambushed.
Caravans would be such a boring and *mandatory* time sink if it was risk free. I absolutely do not want that.
what's the risk of a max level ganking a low level? xp debt? that doesn't matter? that interaction shouldn't happen.
no one saidnthey should get a free pass.
high level players should leave low level caravans alone ... that interaction is game ruining.
Okay... So first and foremost:
This would be abused to hell and back. People would make glint farms with one lower level character in higher level parties (that then loots all of the glint) just to avoid PvP during caravans.. which would result in PvPers just making "twinks" (characters with very good gear with 0 intentions of being leveled) to rob caravans.
In addition, I doubt level restrictions would make low level caravans safer, if anything it'd just highlight the bandit guilds at the same time as you'd lose potential high level defenders as I have a hard time believing there are enough spiteful people that would make their own twink *just* to combat the bandit twinks for little to no real profit other than *potential* PvP satisfaction.
To me, a level restriction system seems like something that would just make low level caravans more exposed. Fewer potential capable defenders, and the nature of using twinks instead of their main characters would just enable bandit guilds to have these PvP characters parked close to good caravan hunting spot; instead of having to actually move their mains to the caravan location from where-ever they were beforehand.
OP is trying to frame this for casuals, it’s not. It’s trying to create a PvE only version of Ashes.
WoW is that way ——>
I agree with Crow3 your trying to frame this as a causal issue, but it's really a PvP issue.
making them solo? it just needs to be closer matched. as it stand now, if you're just starting out, and at level 10 you get told to do a caravan by the game. but the players say no... then that is restrictive on the economy. as the ganker who's killing low levels doesn't get punished for it. likely is well over the 1-2 gold that they'd get, so that's not needed.
so if there's no risk, and no reward for the ganking player, why is that even happening?
what's the risk for a level 25 to kill a level 10?
now that level 10 might be buying something on the market, but not any more, because the guy now has 101 gold as opposed to 100 gold. so the whole interaction should have never happened.
but clowns are like "this is good, this is PVP"
which it isn't, that's like saying someone robbed a baby, and is now a kingpin at being a theif . .... no one wins when ya punch down.
The issue you see is deeper than the Caravan system. It's a play test disguised as an alpha test. We're play testing a game without all the systems and mechanics in and being forced to grind to test the existing mechanics.
Lets dissect caravans, but keeping in mind not all mechanics/systems are in.
You make a caravan, (part of a quest or just on your own, doesn't matter). You're level 10. You are a citizen of Winstead. You make this caravan in Winstead to go to New Aela. You reach out to your guild for help and get 2 people online to help you defend. You leave Winstead bound for New Aela with two defenders in tow.
So what can happen. You could be ambushed by citizens of Hylceon who are in guild "F*&kTheWorld". Okay this might make sense because they're basically bandits from a different Node. But they suffer none of the consequences of bandits sure if they go Red guards will attack them, but dropping corruption is easy. They'll never become an outlaw with your home node Winsted. If they kill you as you're unflagged they go Red. Or you flag and fight back, and they don't go Red. So as soon as you flag you remove all their risk for attacking you. So your guild can blacklist them or go to "war" with their guild. This is the game passing the responsibility of punishing bad actors on to the player. And if your guild is small, they won't care, they may even have an alt in your guild. It could work, but will always favor the larger of the two sides. If FTW is a large guild you'll just have to take the loss. So actually you have more of an incentive to NOT flag. Eventually they'll gate keep you out of content and the area and eventually probably the game.
What can be even dumber is that you can end up being attacked by citizens of your own Node. But shouldn't they be defending you? Well either their just greedy griefers or dumb. But I digress...
At the current state of the game your protection comes from your guild tag. Nothing else matters. And the large groups of players will ALWAYS have the advantage in Over World PvP (This is NOT a PvX game). Your actual level means nothing compared to 100 attackers to your 20 level 25 guildies. This is has been ignored by Steven in interviews, I can only assume he wants this. So likely will not change. The Node you're part of doesn't mean crap, even when religion gets in it won't mean crap. Two systems that don't change a players desire to attack someone one bit... a wasted opportunity by Steven.
You will have options to run caravans are different times. You'll need to keep 'spies' out of your guild so your times are not leaked. This can be fun, but quickly becomes tedious. You could avoid running caravans. You could start raiding caravans and become one of the bad guys. You could join a MEGA church, I mean guild and do stuff with them.
But is this even the way it should work? Or is the PvP system a placeholder too? Hell I don't know, half the game is a placeholder because it's Alpha. But the pandering to the streamers and focus on conflict leads me to believe this overall climate will not change. You'll have to decide if it's for you or not.
There might be too many mechanics in that breed conflict, in general gamers don't really need incentive to be combative. Adding fuel to the fire will just make the game even more cut throat and the more cut throat it becomes the more toxic it becomes.
Become the bad guy because the system favors them; if you want to win. Cheese it to win (yawn). If you go red just logout and login later to drop your corruption. Very easy to do just go kill mobs or die. If you're part of a larger guild just craft new gear. It's all tradable, no soul bound item. An organized group of players will be able to make trash gear for raiding at a moments notice. As far as I know only equipped items drop, not inventory so keep trash gear on you (not sure if that was changed). Trash gear and numbers will be enough to win.
Solo players, small groups, small guilds are not actually players of the game, YOU ARE THE CONTENT for the larger "guilds". Not even guild, it's really a group of players their actual guild doesn't matter. You'll just end up with FTW-XXXXIV.
FTW-I takes hycleon, FTW-2 takes winstead, and so on. One large group of players could own the whole server. Looking at you pirates. Not joking I think they should do that. Just to see if they can. I think they can they have the people... I mean resources...
They're advertised as this group play event, but the only side that ever has numbers is the attackers, because it's not practical to spam in general or city or anywhere public that I'm about to launch a caravan. It's too risky. Getting a defender group is hard, unless you join a caravan of caravans through a guild. One box of the lowest commodity (3s6c?) from Halcyon to New Aela was about 36s on arrival. If I had a full group of defenders, I'd be making 1.5s in profit for a 3+ hour trip if we split evenly. And any defenders would be making 4-ish silver for a 3+ hour trip. That's not including that you often don't even know what you will make upon arrival. Really doesn't feel worth it for any defenders. Ever. It's scrap change at best.
On the other side, attackers can get groups together without risk. They can attack and overtake the caravan with lowered risk, because of lack of defenders (because of lack of defender incentives.) At worst, they risk armor repair, but so do the defenders, and they don't really risk it if they always outnumber the defenders, and you only attack caravans that you can see that you can out number or overpower (out-level) and will leave well-defended caravans alone. So there's not really any risk when the only attacks happen when there is no risk for the attacker. Then when they win, because they will because they only picked a fight they knew they would win, they can take the caravan to the nearest town with less travel time and less time sink and no gold sink, and make a greater profit than the caravan owner would make. Provided the defense was splitting evenly.
(And if you aren't splitting evenly, how do you expect to win any defenders to your side? When they could just attack you for an even split of the share?)
So say you take the lowered profit as the caravan launcher, you get a full defender group together somehow. You will not encounter an attack the entire trip, because attackers don't attack defended caravans. So I've just paid a bunch of people to be bored with me and RP walk for 3+ hours. A boring trip, a walking simulator, with lowered profits for everyone. It feels like a huge time waste for all involved.
I'd would like the caravan event; if it were a team vs. team PvP event. But it's not that. It greatly falls short of that goal. Burden to get a defender group is too high for the launcher. It comes down to will you risk a loss for full profit and the possibility of an interesting trip, or make chump change for a long, boring trip with no events?
I do like the aesthetic of watching other people pull them along the roads, though. However the caravan defenders need more. Anything to make defending a caravan seem like a decent option would be nice. Commissions so other people would just join of their own volition or you get a 'badge' or something you can turn in at the destination saying you defended an incoming caravan, that the city will reimburse you for with some silver or gold. Maybe you get more reimbursement the longer you were with the caravan. Something that would help the caravan-launcher keep some of their profit and make putting a team together seem reasonable in the first place
Or the attackers need more risk. Something the defender can profit off of them from. Maybe defeated attackers get pulled along with the caravan, and I turn them in as criminals for bounty-profit at my destination xD
It's just not working as a PvP event right now.
Steven has a dream.
And he hopes many players will play his game.
But you don't have to play it if you don't like it.
very constructive. there are ways to make this look super fun and exciting. now, all I see is level 25s looking for level 10 Caravans. talk about punching down.
Fair points. I don't think caravans are either fun or effective (for me). That said, my sense of caravans is that once corruption has been calibrated better (i.e. not perfect), ow pvp will be MUCH more common, and moving mats as individual players will become more dangerous - in terms of risk of loss. This will naturally push players toward caravans to 1) consolidate security and 2) carry more materials faster with less risk.
Both of these outcomes are closer to the end state vision of caravans than what we're currently playing in A2.
I cannot see caravans becoming faster and less risky than mules and light caravans.
The large heavy caravans will move slower and being PvP events, will make them preferable targets, both because no corruption protection and better loot if you capture it.
I wait to see the mayoral caravans and weekly castle caravans. And vassal networks binding nodes together to prevent sieges. Players are supposed to go and attack caravans from other nations, to weaken them. All that is missing.
Also Steven has to make people really care for their nodes, more than for the guilds living in them.
I cannot watch it. I am allergic to something and I close it fast each time I try.