Family summoning system suggestion

I was chatting with guildies about the family system yesterday, especially in regards to the concern about a potential way to make multiboxing more effective than it should be.

So as it stands now, you will be able to summon one of 7 family members through the family system. There has been mention of around a 30 min cooldown on this ability, with the cast itself taking up to 1 min.

I have a few suggestions as to how this could potentially be improved upon, some which have already been mentioned by others but I figured I would combine them here.

- Remove all buffs upon being summoned. This way people would have to bring food or visit a nearby tavern in order to be buffed up again, potentially resulting in a bigger need for player interaction.
- The player should receive a debuff upon summon which makes it impossible for them to be summoned for another x amount of time. I think somewhere between 12 to 24 hours should provide enough gravity to the summon itself.
- The people summoning would have to remain out of combat for the duration of the summon. In this case, I think entering a dungeon, raid or designated bg should automatically flag you as being in combat.

And that's pretty much it. Feel free to give some feedback on these 3 points and tell me what you would like the family summoning system to look like!

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Comments

Noaani

While I agree with all three of these, they won't have an impact on the biggest avenues of abuse the summoning system can cause.

Amist

noaani wrote: »

While I agree with all three of these, they won't have an impact on the biggest avenues of abuse the summoning system can cause.

What do you think are some of the biggest ways in which it can be abused?

Noaani

Amist wrote: »

noaani wrote: »

While I agree with all three of these, they won't have an impact on the biggest avenues of abuse the summoning system can cause.

What do you think are some of the biggest ways in which it can be abused?

With the ability to port family members, it will be very easy to have an alt in each metropolis, completely negating the design decision of seperated markets for finished products.

It will become commonplace to sell ports to desired locations, with the only limit to this being the time between leaving one family and joining another.

There are other potential exploits, but these two are essentially guaranteed.

The idea of summoning people for combat purposes seems to me to be on the minor side of things.

Amist

noaani wrote: »

Amist wrote: »

noaani wrote: »

While I agree with all three of these, they won't have an impact on the biggest avenues of abuse the summoning system can cause.

What do you think are some of the biggest ways in which it can be abused?

With the ability to port family members, it will be very easy to have an alt in each metropolis, completely negating the design decision of seperated markets for finished products.

It will become commonplace to sell ports to desired locations, with the only limit to this being the time between leaving one family and joining another.

There are other potential exploits, but these two are essentially guaranteed.

The idea of summoning people for combat purposes seems to me to be on the minor side of things.

I do think lengthening the cooldown of how often you can summon/be summoned does combat this to an extent though. If it's faster to just travel there on a mount anyways, then I don't think people will be as inclined to do it.

Noaani

Amist wrote: »

noaani wrote: »

Amist wrote: »

noaani wrote: »

While I agree with all three of these, they won't have an impact on the biggest avenues of abuse the summoning system can cause.

What do you think are some of the biggest ways in which it can be abused?

With the ability to port family members, it will be very easy to have an alt in each metropolis, completely negating the design decision of seperated markets for finished products.

It will become commonplace to sell ports to desired locations, with the only limit to this being the time between leaving one family and joining another.

There are other potential exploits, but these two are essentially guaranteed.

The idea of summoning people for combat purposes seems to me to be on the minor side of things.

I do think lengthening the cooldown of how often you can summon/be summoned does combat this to an extent though. If it's faster to just travel there on a mount anyways, then I don't think people will be as inclined to do it.

I'm not sure it does. All it does is make the summoning only work in one direction, or require that the return trip happen the next day - which is not an issue if you make the trip at the end of your play session.

Moowell

The biggest problem I see with the family ports isn't with guilds or selling finished products. It's selling gathered certificates. Let's say you're gathering in the mountain node and fill your inventory with ores. Maybe fill your mule as well, depending on how they work. With your inventory filled with ores, your family then summons you to the forest node and you sell those ores at mark-up value. No caravans needed, no risky travel time. Then you fill your inventory with wood, get summoned to the coastal node, and sell the wood for mark-up value. Then you fill your inventory with fish or coral or whatever is there, get summoned back to the mountain node, and sell for mark-up value. With multi-boxing allowed, you don't even need to find assistants. You just make alts on a second account in each of the major locations and add them to your family.

mcstackerson

Moowell wrote: »

The biggest problem I see with the family ports isn't with guilds or selling finished products. It's selling gathered certificates. Let's say you're gathering in the mountain node and fill your inventory with ores. Maybe fill your mule as well, depending on how they work. With your inventory filled with ores, your family then summons you to the forest node and you sell those ores at mark-up value. No caravans needed, no risky travel time. Then you fill your inventory with wood, get summoned to the coastal node, and sell the wood for mark-up value. Then you fill your inventory with fish or coral or whatever is there, get summoned back to the mountain node, and sell for mark-up value. With multi-boxing allowed, you don't even need to find assistants. You just make alts on a second account in each of the major locations and add them to your family.

I was worried about this too but Steven jumped into our stream last Sunday and mentioned that you can't take resources with you when you are summoned.

Aeri

noaani wrote: »

With the ability to port family members, it will be very easy to have an alt in each metropolis, completely negating the design decision of seperated markets for finished products.

It will become commonplace to sell ports to desired locations, with the only limit to this being the time between leaving one family and joining another.

There are other potential exploits, but these two are essentially guaranteed.

The idea of summoning people for combat purposes seems to me to be on the minor side of things.

Not sure I would agree with the second point. According to the wiki, leaving and joining another Family will have a cooldown of days. Unless the world is so huge that traveling to another node manually would take days, or so hostile that it is almost impossible to get anywhere effectively, I wouldn't see much reason for this.

There would also be a pretty easy and decently effective counter to this. If you have a mule mount, it doesn't get summoned around with you unless it is not carrying anything, but is "saved" at whatever node it is despawned at, forcing you to manually move it to other areas. If it is more efficient to wait days for a Family change/teleport while only carrying what is available on your character inventory, the game will have much, much greater problems than what teleports would provide.

Moowell wrote: »

The biggest problem I see with the family ports isn't with guilds or selling finished products. It's selling gathered certificates. Let's say you're gathering in the mountain node and fill your inventory with ores. Maybe fill your mule as well, depending on how they work. With your inventory filled with ores, your family then summons you to the forest node and you sell those ores at mark-up value. No caravans needed, no risky travel time. Then you fill your inventory with wood, get summoned to the coastal node, and sell the wood for mark-up value. Then you fill your inventory with fish or coral or whatever is there, get summoned back to the mountain node, and sell for mark-up value. With multi-boxing allowed, you don't even need to find assistants. You just make alts on a second account in each of the major locations and add them to your family.

Relatively easy fix for this, instead of the certificates being an item that is directly "carried" on your character, they could be just a currency that has a link to both your character and the node they are received in. The only way to "move" these directly would be mules or caravans.

Material selling could be limited via by idea above, with any mule mounts not being summoned along with you if it's carrying any items. While this could still be exploited in the example you give, it would limit it more. Materials could also technically be subject to a similar system as the mules, though. If you get summoned and have materials on your character, they get auto-stored in the node you are currently in. If the node is too low level to have warehousing active, the materials are still stored, and you would potentially have no way to access them, so this could prevent people trying to use Family summons to escape from PvP and losing materials as drops, for example - you would choose between losing the materials for a while (or potentially quite a long time) or losing a portion if they can drop when you die.

Songcaller

Aeri wrote: »

Relatively easy fix for this, instead of the certificates being an item that is directly "carried" on your character, they could be just a currency that has a link to both your character and the node they are received in. The only way to "move" these directly would be mules or caravans.

This does not need fixing.you can not use teleport with either resources or certificates, the teleport will fail.

I do not want to be forced to use Mules and caravans when they are expensive and it takes a while to afford them. If the only source of gold requires Mules and caravans to be sold, how the fuck will we afford mules and caravans?

Aeri

Neurath wrote: »

This does not need fixing.you can not use teleport with either resources or certificates, the teleport will fail.

I do not want to be forced to use Mules and caravans when they are expensive and it takes a while to afford them. If the only source of gold requires Mules and caravans to be sold, how the fuck will we afford mules and caravans?

I did not know the first part, don't think I ever saw that anywhere listed on the wiki. But that effectively nullifies any issues with exploiting the summoning to sell in different nodes.

About the certificates, looks like I was confused by the term "certificate"; went and read the wiki, and it seems like "certificates" are going to be more of what I would normally call "vendor trash" items. So, while the idea you quoted would not really work, the one following it still would. If you get summoned, any certificate items get auto-stored in the node.

To offset the second part of that idea (nodes being too low to have warehouses), it shouldn't be hard to make it so that vendors that you could normally sell the certificate items to would be able to access this auto-storage just as they would if they were in your inventory. Adding items to mules/caravans from this auto-storage could have access to this same interface.

I could be missing something, but a system like this would make it so that you could always sell things you get in a node, within that node. You would always be able to move them to other nodes. And they wouldn't be affected at all by the Family summons.

Songcaller

I dont like the automated idea though because you earn more the further you travel.

Also I do not want to be tied to a node unless I choose a node. I do not want to pay taxes to a node until I am willing to.

Aeri

Neurath wrote: »

I dont like the automated idea though because you earn more the further you travel.

Also I do not want to be tied to a node unless I choose a node. I do not want to pay taxes to a node until I am willing to.

My revised idea wouldn't have anything to do with taxes, though, and it wouldn't affect you getting more money the further away from the node you were, except by stopping exploiting summoning.

If you wanted to manually run your character to another node to sell, you could fully do that to sell any certificate items on your character. If you wanted to move more at once, using a mule or caravan, you could do that as you normally would, even if they had been previously auto-stored in a level 1/2 node that didn't have warehousing.

Unless I'm misunderstanding the wiki, taxes should only come into affect when you sell the certificates. The only reason you wouldn't have a "choice" to pay taxes, would be if you accepted a summon in a level 1/2 node, and the items got auto-stored without a way to retrieve them directly to your character (due to there being no warehouse access in nodes of that level). Even if you chose to accept the summon, you could come back later when the node was upgraded to retrieve the items, and move them somewhere else.

Am I missing something?

Dummo

I don't understand why there even is a family summoning system. Only seems to bring in problems.

Songcaller

I can see it wouldn't really affect me to be honest. If it's not automatic I dont plan on being summoned anyway lol. I dont find being stuck to the same 7 people appealing. My guild has more than 8 people.

I'd rather have no summons at all to be honest but I understand some people want the option.

Aeri

Neurath wrote: »

I'd rather have no summons at all to be honest but I understand some people want the option.

I could honestly take it or leave it. If it's there, it's kind of nice. But I would also 100% support the removal of the system.

I don't see much harm in trying to provide some ideas for mitigating problems with different game systems, though.

Xenotor

Dummo wrote: »

I don't understand why there even is a family summoning system. Only seems to bring in problems.

Quit simple. The world is very very large. The Family system is there so that if you log in, you can jump right to your buddys who might have allready went to a new area while you were still at work.
This way Frinds with different Real life shuedles can still play together.

Would be kinda sad if you only had 4 hours of play time each day but need 2 hours to meet up with your frinds.

Also:
We dont know how long the cooldown will be. Could be 30 min could be 20 hours.
Since its desinged to meet up with friends once a day i would not mind the 20 hours cooldown.

Using it to transport ressources is not a problem. Even if you can bring your entire inventory full of Ressources using the fast travel, thats still a drop in the ocian compared to the mule and the caravan.

https://www.ashes101.com/caravans
There Jahlon explained this way better then me including why mules are double edged swords.
Also i don't think you will be able to fast travel as long as the mule is out.
Or if you still can then your mule will probably sit where you left it for anyone to take.

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