Stevens reply on family summoning at Ashes Pathfinders #84

Sounds great how he explained its "anti-cheat" mechanic. 30sec-1min cast time for the summon and a 30min CD on the ability. But, anyone else concerned how easy its to chain it? For 10 people it still means 5 people needs to travel, but if everyone has chained their summon to 1 more player, its still only 5 needing traveling. Boosting your raid/gank/war party from 5 to 10 in 1min, they can then summon 5 more people and so on. Adding a 30min CD on the ability for the person being summoned aswell, would solve this no? Or add a reagent cost to the summon. Or some kind of PvP debuff on whoever is summoned. Just abit worried about shock PvP partys with this mechanic.

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Noaani

bloodmeridian wrote: »

I am under the impression that it already takes days to complete a swap and if people want to use a process that slow for some kind of exploit it's whatever to me. The controversy is how people are going to exploit the teleport systems and I don't see how a multi-day lockout isn't enough to just make foot travel more efficient. If you can give me ideas maybe you will change my mind.

I have posted them in this thread already.

With the system the way it is right now, what is going to happen is people will put alts in various places that others will want ports to. This will include all metropolis nodes, and potentially other out of the way areas as per the game worlds design.

From there, people will offer to port people to these places for a price.

People wanting these ports are not going to have to wait days, if they want a port to a common location, someone will be able to sell it to them.

When the buyer finds a seller, the buyer invites the sellers alt to their family, the seller ports the buyer, leaves the family and then that cooldown that used to be only about how long it takes to be able to join another family is not a cooldown on how soon that alt can sell a port.

When I'm going to play the, it is going to be with only one other person I know so the rest are going to have to be people I meet, and this may mean I desire to switch families more at first. In my opinion adding 3-4 days is an inconvenience that doesn't in anyway fix an exploit.

If you want to share something with that other player you are going to play with, then the only way to do that is to set access to those things (housing, storage etc) to "family".

As such, anyone else that you are in a family with will need to be someone you trust with access to all of that.

You are probably not just going to join a family with every random player you meet in game - chances are, they won't want to join a family with you.

The most likely thing for you is that your family will only ever consist of you, that other person, and your alts.

Ralizek

I'm not going back and reading everything.

I was wondering about this workaround to help balance the issue.

1) Only allowing the head of the family to summon (whoever starts the family would be the head of the family)
2) Use a blanket summon (summon the entire family at the same time, NOT one player at a time)
3) Use a Four-hour cooldown

I know a lot of people don't agree with the system but Steven is doing it for the right reasons. I feel that having a family leader with a blanket summon on a 4hr CD would drastically cut down on exploiting while still allowing it to be used how Steven wants it to be used.

I believe "Perfect World" has a family teleport system along these lines. Don't quote me on that.

Xenotor

I rather like the Family summoning as it is.
However i would increase the cooldown to 12 hour and add a max range.
Lets say 10 level 0 nodes worth of distance max.
That should be about 2 hour travel time.
No one would be able to jump from one end of the map to the other using alts.

Tyrantor

I hope Steven has padded walls for the amount of times he has to read this nonsense and then consider slamming his head against the wall in frustration.

Here we go with people throwing out the word exploit again. Then suggesting people "make better plans". What MMO worlds have you played that during a leveling process you could just know a day or two in advance "yo dawg i'm going to be at xyz coordinates make sure you log out near by so we can play together tomorrow, oh and on friday i'm going to be in xyz zone turning in some quests peep that yo".

It might work more like that at max level OR when you know there is an event on the horizon like a siege, caravan or other planned activity such as a dungeon. However when you're level 15 trying to figure out the game and you log on and see your friends 45 minutes away on foot, I guess that's just bad planning because who doesn't already know all the quest lines and the zone requirements.

Now back to the exploit. A guild should be able to summon each other to the desired location of their choice IF they want to AND they are disciplined enough to group in a family summon structure capable of doing this (which means anyone's friends not in the guild, or random people they meet and like in game couldn't be in anyone's family) - think about it how many large guilds are going to be able to enforce this amongst their members? Do you not know anyone who you've played with in the past that one of you were not int he same guild? Now they've all got one or multiple alts in the same family, this also shrinks their summon party in addition that person has to be logged in playing for the strategy to work. So unless someone can play 24/7 having alts in a family doesn't do much for that escape plan. If it's a shared account then that will be a terms of service item.

Lastly, why don't you all just wait and see how testing goes before the making all of us suffer through the water works about every 36 hours on these forums with the same complaints and nonsense.

Hurf Derfman

My thoughts on the family system.

When join a family, your account joins the family. So this includes alts. It has its own chat tab.

The summon has no cool down, but taking the summon dose. Your account gets a debuff and your whole account can't take another summon for 6-8 hours.

So anybody in the family can summon, but once summoned can't be summoned again for multiple hours.

Obviously you can only belong to one family per account.

They could also make it so the summon simply dose not work in certain areas. (I.e. the flag room of a castle during siege)

Transportation if siege weapons should have the same/simaler rules as a caravan. Except it would be called a convoy. So no backpack Trebuchets.

Boats should only be able to deploy from docks.

Bigger ships should require a harbors. (Tier 3/4 coastal node) and go into that nodes storage. So no teleporting ships around.

Conditions that prevent being summoned:
Having a donkey/mule deployed
Actively participating in a convoy/caravan
Having a ship/boat deployed
Being mounted
Being in water
Being corrupted over a certain threshold

NelsonRebel

If the system is truly exploitable in an easy way for chain zerging I'm completely fine with removing it

Geronimo

For me this system is great as currently designed.

There is going to be massive travel time in this game. The legitimate scenario when I would use this is getting home from work 2 hours after my friend who just spent that time travelling somewhere. He would either wait for that long for me to get there or we would just be anti-social and do something different. That would suck.

It would not work for just one of us to be able to summon with the "head of household" concept someone wrote above because when I wake up early on a Sunday and my friend sleeps until noon, then I would have to summon his lazy arse.

One solution to prevent "summon as a service" is to require family membership for a couple days or a hefty quest before you are tight enough to do summoning. That would work for my scenario.

The dual cooldown thing mentioned above would prevent the chain summoning problem but it definitely should stay at 30 minutes. A huge 8 hour cooldown would mean friend number 3 is screwed when he gets off work an hour after me.

daveywavey

So, the idea is that someone can summon me across the map? Presumably I'm able to reject that summon if I want to?

"Oh, daveywavey, you're here. I meant to summon the next name down in the list. Got to wait hours now for the cooldown..... crap."

Is it not easier for us to summon ourselves to somebody else, rather than to have them summon us?

Talents

My idea for family summonings is to have the casting time scale with the amount of family members channelling the summon. So if you have only 1 family member trying to summon, then it would take a fuck-ton of time to cast, like an hour or some shit. Then, each member decreases summon time.
1 person casting summon = 1 hour cast
2 people = 30 mins
3 people = 15 mins
etc.

Xenotor

Talents wrote: »

My idea for family summonings is to have the casting time scale with the amount of family members channelling the summon. So if you have only 1 family member trying to summon, then it would take a fuck-ton of time to cast, like an hour or some shit. Then, each member decreases summon time.
1 person casting summon = 1 hour cast
2 people = 30 mins
3 people = 15 mins
etc.

the entire feature is for people who have little time.
giving it a cast time over 1 min is contraproductive to that goal.

Just leave it as it is and test it during Alpha 1 and 2.
If there are exploids, then people will find and report them and then we can have discussions regarding possible fixes.
Trying to fix a system that nobody fully knows is just silly.

Blair

While the devs have done an amazing job at balancing the family fast travel and all the ways it can be used, I still feel like there might be some loop holes they haven't thought of. For example we know you can't bring someone over with goods in there inventory, which helps with the need for a caravan system. But what is stopping me from transporting goods that I have equipped, as there is no bind on equip in AOC "AS FAR AS I'M AWARE". Any other holes you have found would be appreciated.

George_Black

I think such mechanics are bad.
I get that people want sonething tangible to show for when their characters get married but maybe that's not the way to ago about it.

A costly elaborate ceremony at a city church/cathedral based on how much the couple is willing to spend and how many people they want to invite, could be all that marriege should offer, just like inrl...

Warth

Blair wrote: »

While the devs have done an amazing job at balancing the family fast travel and all the ways it can be used, I still feel like there might be some loop holes they haven't thought of. For example we know you can't bring someone over with goods in there inventory, which helps with the need for a caravan system. But what is stopping me from transporting goods that I have equipped, as there is no bind on equip in AOC "AS FAR AS I'M AWARE". Any other holes you have found would be appreciated.

gear isn't location bound. You can't drop gear either unless you are corrupted. So it diesn't really matter

AntVictus

everything with it is going to get tested heavily, just like with the corruption system. It will get ironed out. I can assure you that any loophole you have thought of, a tester has also thought of. Do not worry.

daveywavey

I dunno, I'm not too keen on the "teleport to a family member" thing. In a game with limited Fast Travel, it just seems like a cop-out to say "Errrrr, except your Family Members". Either allow teleporting or don't, in my humble opinion. But, if you're allowing it, it opens up that whole can of worms: Why not allow other methods of it, if you're allowing teleporting? And suddenly, the map seems much smaller again.

Sathrago

daveywavey wrote: »

I dunno, I'm not too keen on the "teleport to a family member" thing. In a game with limited Fast Travel, it just seems like a cop-out to say "Errrrr, except your Family Members". Either allow teleporting or don't, in my humble opinion. But, if you're allowing it, it opens up that whole can of worms: Why not allow other methods of it, if you're allowing teleporting? And suddenly, the map seems much smaller again.

Gonna have to agree with you there. If you think about it, the design has well meaning but could cause damage to the social aspect of the game.

Why find more friends to play with when you can just teleport your core group to you anytime you want?

Tyrantor

Sathrago wrote: »

daveywavey wrote: »

I dunno, I'm not too keen on the "teleport to a family member" thing. In a game with limited Fast Travel, it just seems like a cop-out to say "Errrrr, except your Family Members". Either allow teleporting or don't, in my humble opinion. But, if you're allowing it, it opens up that whole can of worms: Why not allow other methods of it, if you're allowing teleporting? And suddenly, the map seems much smaller again.

Gonna have to agree with you there. If you think about it, the design has well meaning but could cause damage to the social aspect of the game.

Why find more friends to play with when you can just teleport your core group to you anytime you want?

If your core group is always online to teleport a full group why would you find more friends anyway? The teleport is there to help promote play with friends/family/guild on a relatively limited basis. There will likely be some loopholes with the system but that in itself doesn't mean it shouldn't exist. Also putting things in perspective how much does anyone here really care if a crafter gets summoned with his item(equiped) to trade/sell/give to another player? This doesn't take any skill or level requirements into consideration for the item(s). It's possible the blacksmith (or other crafter) would be unable to equip a lot of what they make. Also if you're willing and able to sacrifice one of your family summon slots for a random crafter and the crafter can do the same (since he would have to leave his family) and of course go out of his way to get back through what ever kind of family add/delays may be present or hoof it.

To me it seems more likely that crafters are going to give people the big FU in this scenario, why should they go so far out of their way as a delivery service? I know if it was me i'm not getting summoned and possibly stranded across the map to give someone their item(s). It's more likely the buyer/giftee would have to travel/summon to the crafter IMO.

insomnia

AntVictus wrote: »

everything with it is going to get tested heavily, just like with the corruption system. It will get ironed out. I can assure you that any loophole you have thought of, a tester has also thought of. Do not worry.

are you sure about that. There must be so many examples of things having to be changed in a game, because a gamer thought of it, that a creator and tester didn't

Kneczhevo

I brought this topic up before:

Kneczhevo wrote: »

As it stands. We have been told that family members are going to be able to summon each other and marriages will share storage and possibly homes.

As much as I support the non hardcore players and their time invested, this feature is going against some of intrepids core beliefs (Travel time and economy atrophy.).

So, guildies... Who wants to marry me and my alts?

https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/45939/marry-me-and-my-family

Ehrgeiz

Remember it is still a game. If you want absolute no teleportation and risks by just going from a to b then go and play real live.

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