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Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III 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.
Escorting Caravans or Sea Lanes Should Not be Boring
skafftaruss
Member, Phoenix Initiative, Hero of the People, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Greetings. As an aficionado of merchant nodes and guilds, I am concerned that caravans may become a grinding facet of AOC. Therefore, I recommend player bots as bad as it sounds. Caravans and Sea Trade are time consuming. Of course we may build wagons, ships, and hire NPC guards. My question is, are we going to monitor them to keep NPCs and PVP attacks at bay. My opinion. Please fell free to provide ideas and input. Many thanks.
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Comments
I don't think bots are the solution here, trade caravans should be valuable for both parties’ pirates and traders to promote conflict but also make the effort worth it. You also might even want to have bots since usually they always have exploitable weaknesses and your caravan might become easier to raid then it would be with you in the game.
Excuse the wording but this is garbage. With increasing player skill, they will be able to adapt to npc and environmental threats even if it is to avoid trading in that current moment. Cutthroats and Pirates also can have jobs and family and will also not be able to play 24/7.
I don't remember ever playing a game 24/7 myself and I was able to play any game it without problem and climbing up the ladder. Yes, there are the very few people which will be playing most of their time and you might not be able to beat them but the chance of encountering on the regular them is low. It isn't like half the population is jobless singles playing all day.
Sorry if this sounded a bit rude but the "group X won't play" argument really grinds my gears.
An advantage in being the lone wagon on quiet back routes?
Become a tactician and work out how to get your goods past those campers with distraction and lies? 'Quick boys theres a massive gold caravan over towards x x x right now, one heck of a battle!'
Coming up with guild contacts to provide you with security?
Just become known as someone who never transports anything of value?
I understand your concern, for pvpers caravans etc are going to be great targets, however, I'd look towards reality for the answers
- If caravans struggle to get through the reward for those that do will be higher.
- Even with the best security in the world, smuggling will never be erased, if governments can't stop goods getting through in bulk, why should a few (mostly) unorganised gamers be able to?
If caravan movement becomes a bottleneck to the trade economy, that would place the WhOLE of their in game economy at risk of not working,
Given that they have paid real world money to an economist, I would assume that they would take it pretty seriously if I that were to happen.
If caravan / goods trades becomes too little fun for most, I would expect that an adjustment would take place.
We need to wait for the Alpha stages to really dive into the MMO. But it certainly doesn't hurt to speculate on our concerns at this point.
I think in regards of caravan content becoming a boring grind, it will depend on how rewarding looting is mixed with the differences in protection the wagons have. So some might be heavily guarded but worthless while others might be guard free but very valuable along with everything in between.
If you think the caravans will be similar to hourly-raid events following the same path with the same difficulty then that could be very boring.
Hopefully if you are willing to PvP caravans you will get your time in entertainment!
You would then run your mundane caravans by bots/NPCs and your expensive ones with actual players.
Come take a look at ashesofcreation.wiki!
Pvpers dont drop gear from caravan PvP, that's a potential outcome for corrupted players only. Caravans are PvP zones, so PvP is not only allowed, it's encouraged. It is one of the few outlets PvPers have to openly PvP since the corruption system, as it stands in theory, is quite the deterrent for open world 'meaningless' PvP. As for the hiring of highway men, if I remember correctly, I think you might be able to set rewards for people.that choose to escort your caravan safely. You could also reach out to players as an individual, I'm sure there will be guilds that specialize in this. The whole point of this is risk vs reward, so I'm not quite sure what the % reward will be for the PvPer or % loss for the transporter, I dont thinknwe have that info yet, but if you're the only guy who gets his caravan through, your reward will probably be pretty big. It could also serve as a good political tool, a force could essentially set up an embargo on a node, and destroy all trade coming in and out.
I'd suggest watching that.
Come take a look at ashesofcreation.wiki!
Furthermore, from my experience the number of players of players playing as highwaymen is lower than the number of traders/protectors.
So, in the end in my view it is a simple risk vs reward and it is not as unfair as you make it sound from the start. Even with the attackers only losing potions/bufffood.
I can’t answer your second question, but I would like mules/cart to be able to be killed. If the raiders kill it the traders should have a way to be able to revive them if the raiders do not kill it they should be able to reuse them.
Since the video doesn’t tell if it is related to a robbery in anyway, I would guess these are just one group fighting another group which doesn’t fit the example of trade caravans.
Everyone walking with a caravan is open to pvp so everyone is a legitimate target since they are all able to potentially fight back.
I don’t think people robbing caravans really care about your shame since your and their value system might be completely different. Some just want to play more villainous characters and don’t have a need for honor anyway. So, in that way one could also say shame on people trying to force their values on others.
Hiring people was already confirmed people can even just walk with you for free. I would like this to be more of a player interaction than a forced game mechanic I think it is very enjoyable when players make things happen between each other.
Certificates might not be loot-able in PvP.
As for traders, wagons may or may not retain some value after being defeated. I don't think that has been covered yet.
*edits