Escorting Caravans or Sea Lanes Should Not be Boring

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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Dygz

Mob attacks, NPC attacks, PvP attacks and environmental hazards are all confirmed, yes.

unknown

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Dygz

Grind is repeating whatever content you don't enjoy.

unknown

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amuria

I'm guessing with bots you mean that players would escort a caravan without being present in the game basically afk guarding. Should pirates then also afk raid caravans since they might also not be able to play 24/7?

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.

skafftaruss wrote: »

For those of us with a job and family (not 24/7) - probably not going to play that.

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.

sunfrog

Hire mercenaries to protect your caravan while you're at work.

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[Deleted User]

Strength in caravan numbers? Tag along with others?
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.

Varkun

It is valid to have concerns about the in-game systems and to discuss them and how they might be made better. As yet we have had no opportunity to test any of the caravan systems and how they will work and that is what Alpha 1 and 2 will be for the testing and refining of many of the MMO's systems. It is up to those of us who are able to help test to try and find how things might be broken/exploited, to discuss and provide constructive feedback on how we feel things can be improved on.

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.

Azathoth

I am under the impression that routes won't always be static and that caravans can be sent at any tine of day. Does anyone know if this is still true?

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!

Damokles

Yes

Karthos

What a brave and controversial statement

syl

Yes, I wouldn't be against the option to have it run by bots. But. It would be cool that if there would be added risk if run by bots, like NPCs are not as strong as players.
You would then run your mundane caravans by bots/NPCs and your expensive ones with actual players.

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burnthefern

skafftaruss wrote: »

Hello again. Seen some feedback on discord about what I call - a disconnect between the PVE and PVP spheres in other games. Simply said, PVPers have little to loose (like dropping a cuirass as example). While the merchant looses a lot more. First question is - how is this equitable? Second question is, doesn't the PVP raiding party need to transport that drop - or do they just take the wagons and 'mules?' If I am going to process lumber, I'll stop doing that IF it's a 50% sum gain repetitiously (I accept loosing half my goods to freebooters). Ashes of Creation should not mean destroying things to refresh or reboot the system. The video is what PVP should look like. Not guaging a situation where you clearly win. Shame on PVPers with no 'skin' in the game. Again, please think of the Node hiring Highwayman (as one clan) to guard or hunt down their PVP competitors (the other clan). Then there is reputation - do you support the node, are you against it, or are you a switch hitter? Cheers! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60jUIO0a54I

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.

syl

@jahlon 's video describes corruption very well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBH_NsWmlrI
I'd suggest watching that.

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amuria

If you look at it just from net worth lost, you could say it is not equitable, but I think you should consider more than just value traded. The trader can influence many factors he can choose amount which he wagers, time, start, goal, defense, route.
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.

Karthos

What?

Azathoth

If you successfully raid a caravan, last I read, you get to split a percentage of the 'loot' between all the raiders. The raiders get certificates that need to be traded in the town the caravan originated from. Initially there seems to be all risk & reward for the Caravan, but the PvPers that* lose when raiding caravans suffer usual PvP death penalties. They also have to go to the town where the cart originated from, so it's likely re-spawned players that were defeated could potentially try to get back yet another percentage of the originally dropped certificates.

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

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