Caravan system and players inventory

Guys, don't you think many nolifers are just going to circumvent the whole Caravan system by making many trips carrying stuff in their inventory to distant markets where the goods are needed?

Wouldnt this screw with all the fun and possibilities of the Caravan gameplay? I can very easily see some players who play 16 hrs a day totally skipping the use of caravans, possibly adquiring fastest mounts and whatever skills/items improve movement speed of mounts.

I think this would totally kill the fun of the caravans. Imagine you just have a group of five friends with no life who gang to transport enormous quantities of materials making ten trips a day each. They will gain equal or more money than the guy who risked his materials with a Caravan because he can only play four hours a day, and even had to pay several mercenaries for protection.

As result, all the fun would die with the regionalized resources system and Caravan gameplay.

In my opinion the materials should occupy a ton of space in a player inventory in order to prevent this. For example have all materials be stored in inventory in stacks of, let's say, 12 units, rather than big stacks of 50 units, 100 units, etc.
Other possibility would be to just reduce everyone 's maximum inventory size.
A third option would be introduction of weight of items mechanic, with which players carrying very heavy loads would be slowed down in their movement.

What do you guys think?

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Comments

Frostywombat

Caravan is listed as 100 times the inventory so would be 5 people doing 20 trips. With five people you could also do something like 2 caravans with 3 guards covering both.

tautau

An individual is easier to waylay than a caravan, right?

Halae

tautau wrote: »

An individual is easier to waylay than a caravan, right?

Yeah, though corruption becomes an issue for the people waylaying that lone traveler. On the other hand, you're putting yourself out there dozens of times rather than the single time of a caravan trip, giving you way more chances to be spotted and hunted down by unscrupulous players.

Manueljf

tautau wrote: »

An individual is easier to waylay than a caravan, right?

But much less likely to be attacked as people probably will tend to gank gatherers rather than a guy crossing the fields in his mount at full speed. That and the corruption the gankers would get.

Probably a mounted individual will be much faster and sneaker than a caravan, with all minmaxed stuff to increase his movement speed. This is going to break the caravan usefulness

Nova_terra

In this scenario lets consider a few factors. With 5 players making X trips and for sake of ease lets say 30 minutes one way (distant market and Steven's reference to the fact that 45 minute trip from tip to tip of the continent) that's hours of time transporting goods and ONLY transporting goods for the entire group. Sure they probably won't be messed with but napkin math on that is 1 hour per player per trip carrying 1/100th of what a caravan can. I will take the caravan trip with 5 PC guards + NPC guards and then the other 5+ hours obtaining mats, killing bosses, crafting, etc. Based on what we know (which isn't a ton) this seems like a very time inefficient exercise to protect goods. So staying within the Risk v Reward structure well.. At least in my opinion.

Halae

You're correct, Nova. It's obscenely inefficient time-wise. But hey, it's safe! Kind of. Until someone recognizes what you're doing and decides going red is acceptable.

Arya_Yeshe

Well... if you bring 2 caravans then it saves you 200 travels

I will help the carebears in this, since they never played any real MMO in their lives, here is the play of the game:

gather intel
know your neighbours
befriend people
work together

Shocking, right?
Shocking!!!!!!!

Here carebears, listen, in MMOs people play together for achieving goals, this is a thing.

I know you guys always thought that were playing single player games with online lobbys, but in MMOs you can actually work together and do stuff. Then the evil man hidding woods won't be able to steal your lumber and a bit of leather from you

Sengarden

If you’re willing to waste that much of your time to avoid caravan conflict, you can go for it for all I care. This is risk vs reward after all. You’ve presented a theoretical reward (relative safety transporting goods vs caravan transport) so what’s the risk, you ask? The risk of wasting all your time running 30lb sacks of ore around the continent for several hours every day and missing out on the content in the game that’s actually fun. I can’t see enough people committing themselves to this strategy in order for it to actually be a long term problem.

Halae

Now, there is a thing we've left out of the discussion here; Mules. Mules have ten times the inventory of a player character, though still only a tenth the inventory of a caravan.

That said, if it's an hour long venture for a caravan, it's still ten hours to make the same amount of transport with a mule, so...

Nova_terra

Halae wrote: »

Now, there is a thing we've left out of the discussion here; Mules. Mules have ten times the inventory of a player character, though still only a tenth the inventory of a caravan.

That said, if it's an hour long venture for a caravan, it's still ten hours to make the same amount of transport with a mule, so...

It seems like Caravans are the pound for pound easiest option to move goods and all other options (mules/people) is a risk profile assessment for most people. Where you are spending a ton of time to not visibly show yourself moving goods. I am curious about caravan's visibility as it seems to me with the type of players playing this game that most caravans will be attacked.

Manueljf

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

Well... if you bring 2 caravans then it saves you 200 travels

I will help the carebears in this, since they never played any real MMO in their lives, here is the play of the game:
gather intel

know your neighbours

befriend people

work together

Shocking, right?
Shocking!!!!!!!

Here carebears, listen, in MMOs people play together for achieving goals, this is a thing.

I know you guys always thought that were playing single player games with online lobbys, but in MMOs you can actually work together and do stuff. Then the evil man hidding woods won't be able to steal your lumber and a bit of leather from you

No need to be disrespectful though

Arya_Yeshe

@Manueljf I'm not saying about you, but to all people who see problems where there is no problem

Carebears are a threat to any game desgin, they just whine and they are not very interesting to being around them because they play like bots

Only player driven content can cure the carebears

Noaani

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

Manueljf I'm not saying about you, but to all people who see problems where there is no problem

Carebears are a threat to any game desgin, they just whine and they are not very interesting to being around them because they play like bots

Only player driven content can cure the carebears

Coming from a poster that openly admits to being the exact player that causes others to leave games, this is amusing.

Carebears aren't a threat to game design. They are a threat to the kind of game design you want, but the kind of game design you want isnt commercially viable.

As such, it is you that is the threat, and the people you have labeled as carebears are the target audience.

Frostywombat

@Arya_Yeshe attacking people like that doesn’t help. I usually like reading your posts but they've been getting increasingly toxic.

Sengarden

@Arya_Yeshe Not to turn this into a hunting party, but I agree with the others.

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

I will help the carebears in this, since they never played any real MMO in their lives ...

Here carebears, listen, in MMOs people play together for achieving goals, this is a thing.

This reads as someone with zero tolerance for anyone with differing opinions than their own. I know it can be easy to project your own desires onto this unfinished video game, and pick an insulting name to label everyone in the ambiguous group of people you think are against you or want to destroy everything you love and hold dear, but that's not how the world works. People are all different. Take 100 people who "like PvE more than PvP" and you'll get 100 different takes on how those two systems should be handled in a video game as complex as AoC.

Besides all of that, where did this self-righteous rant even come from? OP's argument didn't strike me as trying to simplify PvP content whatsoever. In fact, no one in this threat has suggested anything of the sort. I think you need to go vent about this somewhere else and not taint perfectly sound threads on the official forum with accusative / unrelated remarks.

Arya_Yeshe

Sengarden wrote: »

@Arya_Yeshe Not to turn this into a hunting party, but I agree with the others.

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

I will help the carebears in this, since they never played any real MMO in their lives ...

Here carebears, listen, in MMOs people play together for achieving goals, this is a thing.

This reads as someone with zero tolerance for anyone with differing opinions than their own. I know it can be easy to project your own desires onto this unfinished video game, and pick an insulting name to label everyone in the ambiguous group of people you think are against you or want to destroy everything you love and hold dear, but that's not how the world works. People are all different. Take 100 people who "like PvE more than PvP" and you'll get 100 different takes on how those two systems should be handled in a video game as complex as AoC.

Besides all of that, where did this self-righteous rant even come from? OP's argument didn't strike me as trying to simplify PvP content whatsoever. In fact, no one in this threat has suggested anything of the sort. I think you need to go vent about this somewhere else and not taint perfectly sound threads on the official forum with accusative / unrelated remarks.

That's very targeted agression comming from you, for no reason. I can see who is the intolerant around here and it's not me.

It's just that I played many games and I learned the hard way that doing stuff together is the way of doing stuff. For getting things done the best by far is making ingame friends.

It's easier, it's faster, it's funnier.

The truth is I want to help the solo players, carebears, casuals and all the laid back players is here:
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/54492/caravans-the-new-options-which-not-even-steven-knew-he-wants-them

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