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My Issue with the Caravan System - Risk vs. Reward in PvP
Vlhadus
Member
Hello everyone, Vlhadus here. I've been talking in podcasts, to friends and anyone that loves Ashes of Creation about the recent Caravan system that was showcased this past month. I know PvP wasn't shown however, there is clearly an imbalance in risk from people attacking caravans all day. I think I have came up with a solution that makes it pretty much equal between attackers and the people who made the caravan in the first place.
Okay, so let's talk about a realistic scenario that will happen in the Alpha 2 regarding Caravan PvP. I'm a GM of a guild that attacks all potential caravans in sight. Doesn't matter who it is, we attack. I bring my team of 40 people to attack a nearby caravan. We engage in battle and overpower the defending team pretty easily. We kill all their players and successfully destroy the caravan. The caravan loot is on the ground and each of us gets a small caravan piece and places it in our player inventory. After that, we ride off into the sun set to destroy more player constructed caravans. Do you see how little is risked by the attacking side? This is my proposal to fixing the risk vs. reward regarding attackers.
Let's use the same scenario listed above. My team of 40 players riding off to find a caravan to destroy and loot. We find a caravan, attack their team, kill off their team and destroy their caravan as well. The first thing that would happen is everyone on the attacking team would become a "bandit". Similar to corrupted players, bandits are now visible to anyone in the bounty hunter system. Bandits are weaker towards Bounty Hunters and Bounty Hunters can kill bandits for extra rewards. Also, bandits are still purple combatants but with a debuff labelling them as Bandit. It's like a lesser than version of corrupted players. This also expands the Bounty Hunter system which needs some work anyway. Also, just wanted to make this clear about the bandit system, they would ONLY become bandits once the attack on the caravan was successful meaning they destroyed the caravan. Before that, they are just combatants. The second thing that would happen as soon as the caravan is destroyed and the loots goes everywhere, NO ONE CAN LOOT THE CARAVAN CRATES! No attacking players, no defending players or anyone can place any crates into their player inventory. This is where it becomes equal. One of the people on the attacking side would have to place a caravan from their inventory on or near the caravan wreckage. The two minute timer starts and once completed, the new caravan AoE loots all the caravan crates into its storage and now the tables have turned. The bandits are now defending their caravan with stolen goods heading to whatever node they want to drop off.
The main problem with the caravan system to me was one side made a caravan and the other side wasn't. Now, EVERYONE has to make and have caravans in their inventory in order to pick up the cargo on the floor. I don't like the idea of people picking up items and riding off with them even if they are small. I know this forces people to use the caravan system on both sides but I think it is good overall for everyone. It makes it more fun and exciting, imagine you are close to a node and are like 20 yards to the yellow line at the node and the attackers destroyed your caravan! Now, they can place their caravan (if they have one in their inventory) to get all the loot and safely pass in to the node! Or now it creates this battle royal right outside a node for treasure! I know as it stands that you can only place caravans right outside the node but I think Intrepid should also allow us to place caravans on wreckages as well.
If you are hauling multiple caravans and one of your caravans is empty, and you see a wreckage of spoils on the floor. There should be a caravan ability that AoE loots the wreckage onto your caravan storage. The ability can be channeled and take like 20 seconds. I want the caravan system to be like a game of cat and mouse and by making the looting ONLY by spawning a caravan at the wreckage, it makes us both make a caravan, buying/using components however the attackers have a disadvantage by becoming Bandits and also carrying stolen goods. Just want to mention that if the original caravan owners destroy the attackers caravan, they can take their stuff back and its not labelled stolen. As long as the original caravan owners have another caravan in their inventory or they brought one from a node.
I'm not saying this is a perfect fix or the right fix but hopefully a step in the right direction. I also just wanted to mention Mules and what their function would be in all of this. Me, personally, I wouldn't allow Mules to loot ANY Caravan crates from wreckages. Mules are player mounts and I wouldn't want Mules to deter the caravan system. I would make mules have extra storage space for gatherers to place their mats in. It would be too powerful if they could loot even a single piece of caravan materials. It would just be a numbers game at that point for attackers. Okay well, thank you for reading my feedback and I would love to see your thoughts regarding my fix towards the caravan system!
Okay, so let's talk about a realistic scenario that will happen in the Alpha 2 regarding Caravan PvP. I'm a GM of a guild that attacks all potential caravans in sight. Doesn't matter who it is, we attack. I bring my team of 40 people to attack a nearby caravan. We engage in battle and overpower the defending team pretty easily. We kill all their players and successfully destroy the caravan. The caravan loot is on the ground and each of us gets a small caravan piece and places it in our player inventory. After that, we ride off into the sun set to destroy more player constructed caravans. Do you see how little is risked by the attacking side? This is my proposal to fixing the risk vs. reward regarding attackers.
Let's use the same scenario listed above. My team of 40 players riding off to find a caravan to destroy and loot. We find a caravan, attack their team, kill off their team and destroy their caravan as well. The first thing that would happen is everyone on the attacking team would become a "bandit". Similar to corrupted players, bandits are now visible to anyone in the bounty hunter system. Bandits are weaker towards Bounty Hunters and Bounty Hunters can kill bandits for extra rewards. Also, bandits are still purple combatants but with a debuff labelling them as Bandit. It's like a lesser than version of corrupted players. This also expands the Bounty Hunter system which needs some work anyway. Also, just wanted to make this clear about the bandit system, they would ONLY become bandits once the attack on the caravan was successful meaning they destroyed the caravan. Before that, they are just combatants. The second thing that would happen as soon as the caravan is destroyed and the loots goes everywhere, NO ONE CAN LOOT THE CARAVAN CRATES! No attacking players, no defending players or anyone can place any crates into their player inventory. This is where it becomes equal. One of the people on the attacking side would have to place a caravan from their inventory on or near the caravan wreckage. The two minute timer starts and once completed, the new caravan AoE loots all the caravan crates into its storage and now the tables have turned. The bandits are now defending their caravan with stolen goods heading to whatever node they want to drop off.
The main problem with the caravan system to me was one side made a caravan and the other side wasn't. Now, EVERYONE has to make and have caravans in their inventory in order to pick up the cargo on the floor. I don't like the idea of people picking up items and riding off with them even if they are small. I know this forces people to use the caravan system on both sides but I think it is good overall for everyone. It makes it more fun and exciting, imagine you are close to a node and are like 20 yards to the yellow line at the node and the attackers destroyed your caravan! Now, they can place their caravan (if they have one in their inventory) to get all the loot and safely pass in to the node! Or now it creates this battle royal right outside a node for treasure! I know as it stands that you can only place caravans right outside the node but I think Intrepid should also allow us to place caravans on wreckages as well.
If you are hauling multiple caravans and one of your caravans is empty, and you see a wreckage of spoils on the floor. There should be a caravan ability that AoE loots the wreckage onto your caravan storage. The ability can be channeled and take like 20 seconds. I want the caravan system to be like a game of cat and mouse and by making the looting ONLY by spawning a caravan at the wreckage, it makes us both make a caravan, buying/using components however the attackers have a disadvantage by becoming Bandits and also carrying stolen goods. Just want to mention that if the original caravan owners destroy the attackers caravan, they can take their stuff back and its not labelled stolen. As long as the original caravan owners have another caravan in their inventory or they brought one from a node.
I'm not saying this is a perfect fix or the right fix but hopefully a step in the right direction. I also just wanted to mention Mules and what their function would be in all of this. Me, personally, I wouldn't allow Mules to loot ANY Caravan crates from wreckages. Mules are player mounts and I wouldn't want Mules to deter the caravan system. I would make mules have extra storage space for gatherers to place their mats in. It would be too powerful if they could loot even a single piece of caravan materials. It would just be a numbers game at that point for attackers. Okay well, thank you for reading my feedback and I would love to see your thoughts regarding my fix towards the caravan system!
www.youtube.com/vlhadusgaming
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Comments
There are a couple of important things that you left out, by completelly focusing only on the caravan system without looking it as a piece of the big picture:
1) Reputation damage and retaliation forever.
2) Attacker time invested, success, and amount of payoff. Will 40 people want to waste that time instead of progressing? Will it be worth their time?
Think of these two and reconsider your suggestions.
Your suggestion makes the whole caravan gameplay detached from the world. You are eliminating player freedoms by making the pvp involved too structured.
Caravan for caravan. There will be a stalemate of 40 ppl v 40 ppl moving the cargo 10 meters south 10 meters north until somebody gets bored defending and transporting it.
You are making it too hard for anyone to care attacking. It will end up being just the norm to successfully transport goods for profit and people MIGHT attack for fun once in a while, as opposed to it being a way to profit.
It's a legitimate gameplay as is to attack and steal. If people want to defend a caravan they should bring 40 ppl, not 8.
I believe we are making too many concessions to animal husbandry at the expense of the world of Vera:
Bypassing caravans with mules
Gliding to bypass downhill mobs (making the world smaller)
Mounts. How ez will it be to skip content by using them like most mmos, as speedbuffs.
Sea mounts. Years ago I spoke about how they weaken ships and boats. Naval content can be amazing, a thing of group effort and exploration, but sea mounts ruin it.
So I dont want to see mules for mats/cargo. But I also dont want to see the comodities that was introduced. Let players carry a few mats and be affected by weight, thus forcing EVERYBODY to use caravans when time comes to profit by travelling to other nodes. That way there will be less attackers, since they too will be bussy looking for the mats they actually NEED for their gear and other crafts, instead of waisting time with mystery boxes that they in turn will have to transport in the future.
Do away with comodities IS. Introduce material weight/stacking difficulties.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Caravans#Caravan_destruction
And we'll have to see in testing how effective (or most likely not at all) the current system is.
I do agree that attackers should have way more risk in this system, cause right now there's fuck all of it. I'm not sure if BHs would be able to deal with a group of 40 (or hell, even 8) players, so I do think there's gotta be something bigger.
I think tying mayoral stuff to successful caravan runs would be nice. Have caravan loss/wins impact nodes on both sides (though this would require a preestablished route rather than a "go wherever you want" approach) and tie them to node currencies and node commodities.
So rather than punishing attackers too much, make other people interested in successfully defending someone else's caravan. And give mayors the ability to put out "buy orders" on caravan defenses, so that people are not only interested but also rewarded for defending it.
I would assume that the planned season system related to caravans has smth like this already, but we've got no news on it in a while, so who knows.
Npc gameplay rewards and 0 pvp.
Do away with mules, do away with tetris, do away with commodities.
Introduce weight to mats:
When people farm mats they should return to their storage before they become too heavy. Every 3h?
Once a week, I guess, people should gather all the weeks mats and transport them together with their guild, to another node for profit.
Whose to say that all mats must reach 1 specific node
Let pvp occure based on the economic factor. There are risks and rewards on both sides.
The risk that attackers incur is the wasted time and little profit, and the animosity of other players.
Also, how much can bandits walk away with?
The caravan system needs to be simplified again. The idea was great. Materials can be rare in some regions in the world of Vera, so there is a need for merchants.
Merchants are threatened by bandits.
All the rest are unnecessary if they focus on nailing the essentials.
But let's go with your example, you find 39 people to just run around randomly in hope to find caravans to loot.
Let's look at the direct risks for your raid: (1) Death penalties - it might be that not all of you die but those who do will be punished nontheless. (2) Repetitive and inconsistent gameplay loop - you have to find caravans to do what you suggested and the loop of search, destroy, bring back to node (and sell either to an NPC or in the auction house?) seems like it could get old fairly quickly given that you are not guaranteed to always encounter a caravan.
Possible consequences of your bandit raid:
Basically it comes down to this: Risk VS Reward is not always immediate and direct, in fact since the game should also appeal to a grown up audience, I'd say having indirect and delayed consequences are a very appropriate balancing system as well.
Space and weight are equivalent as a limiting factor.
Mules are needed to transport things between freeholds too and decouple them from caravans, by giving corruption if killed.
Commodities can be balanced to worth less but are one intermediate link between farming activities and obtaining the gold as a final currency.
I think the system is OK.
Players should buy the gatherables. Not nodes.
Hopefully players will buy resources too. I am more concerned that players will have alts and process everything to final products rather than trading intermediate outputs.
How crafting will work was not yet shown, isn't it?
One thing we learned is that nodes will create the crafting workshops but they'll have to specialize. Could be that intermediate outputs on the production chain will also be restricted to caravans.
Something like that, then you keep the Length*Width caravan-size thing, but it's a little less frustrating. I mean, once you've got all your caravan components together and you're ready to go, who wants to have to mini-game a Tetris every time before they set off?!
You will not have that because you will know from experience what to do, what fits together and what not.
Those who attack and loot will be frustrated.
however the context is missing, a guild that goes around in their own region attacking every caravan in sight from their fellow citizens is not something worth considering , that would be a very dumb decision especially for large guilds, maybe for a small group of PKers, but thats really not how these types of games work,
people like Metas, and living in a region where you are on 10 different guilds KoS list and you can't even farm or walk around chilling because of your guild/group is not the "most effective tactic available",
people will attack caravans from 'foreigners' in nearby regions instead, and for those regions when you see outsiders known for attacking caravans with a 40 man raid coming down you can bet you gonna have a 40vs60 real quick, reputation will matter a lot more than what most of us are used to from other mmos
I disagree with that. How in the world is that clear? The OP THINKS there is an imbalance, but there is no evidence to support his idea.
We will see in Alpha 2 if this is the case or not. If needed, the game will be adjusted to produce the result that the developers want. I think (and I may end up wrong) that most caravans will not be attacked...caravans which are done right. I hope to run four or five caravans a week (at least) and don't expect to be attacked more than a couple of times a month.
"What if a large number of players do X" is a common premise in AoC questions, especially with people who are not familiar with this type of game.
Instead of asking about trying to make a specific scenario fair, I would ask yourself, why would a group of 40 players consistently just be bandits? Is one caravan's inventory worth it? Even after it's been wrecked and then reduced by smashing up the cargo boxes into items that can be carried? Divide that amount by 40 players?
It will happen occasionally. It might even happen for a week straight in a region if there is some greater reason (like a war). But it won't be the normal state of the system. Those players have better ways to earn resources then to smash up a few caravans and divide the remaining loot by 40.
While there is ocean and desert where you can see quite a ways, much of the map is forest, jungle, and hills with restricted vision and all of the underworld is caves and caverns where you cannot see much at all. At nighttime and in storms vision is further restricted, right? So, what will be the average distance you can see? Perhaps optimistically a half kilometer, of a total of 1/580th of the land map.
The OP's 40-man group cannot spread out too much or they won't be able to gather in time to catch that moving caravan, which is likely to be choosing a route through the thickest terrain they can. Even if they ignore all the ocean-based caravans, they are going to be lucky to observe 2% of the map, leaving 98% unobserved at any given time. How long will they be hunting caravans, a couple of hours a day or so?
Therefore, for about 10% of the time they can search 2% of the land map. Even if you double that, it will be RARE that they observe a caravan, much less gather enough to attack it, and they won't win all the time.
I suspect that the great majority of caravans will arrive just fine.
The "risk" is if the attackers win, they can either loot the cargo by breaking the crafters seal and reduce its volume/quantity, fill their pockets and scatter to go and cash in or build a caravan to carry the stolen cargo for its actual volume/quantity. Further away from the node, the longer it takes to construct a caravan apparently.
@George_Black I suggested having weight in the game for loot a long time ago on the forums... Seemed like people at the time threw temper tantrums about it back then but look where we are now
If Caravan events end up being lame as fuck... I imagine most people wont even want to waste their time with them more than they have to. People need to quit over hyping the PvP Opt-in Events like they're a hardcore feature for game design. A majority of players will be playing the game from a PvE perspective with how the flagging works with the low "risk" chance of PvP occurring intermittently in the open world. There's a high chance this game is going to attract many PvE players whom will just stay grouped up as it encourages safety in numbers from being dicked with for the most part. Those PvE players will just see the events as an open world battle ground (which they technically are) just not hard instanced.
PvPers always give examples where it's easy for them to defeat their opponents. I dunno why that is.
But there will be choke points too. Steven will be careful to add risk to whatever activity brings money.
Caravans will be safer if player density is low, on low populated servers.
exactly this. For reference, check out the loot trains in New world where everyone just runs around the maps zerging through high level zones to mass loot the daily chests.
This would be horrible for a game like ashes.
One might say, "skill issue," however it is worth noting that last stream one of the developers said:
"We are trying to create these ways for people who maybe are used to solo MMO gameplay experience to have easy ways to take the first step towards collaborating with each other."
If your caravan gets blasted because you didn't arrange enough protection, then maybe that does make the decision easy to group up next time
On the other hand, I do agree that it would an enormous problem if caravans ended up being too safe. Maybe Intrepid is treading lightly on attacker drawbacks for this reason?
With that being said I remember Chicago making a post that basically goes down the other direction how caravans were too strong to be taken down (especially for smaller groups).
Which I see as support of my thesis that for now we will get introduction to systems, we will test them as they were presented during Alpha 2 and they will only go back to the drawing board when they turn out to be completely dysfunctional.
As a base concept, attackers have the advantage of all of the upside with no downside apart from some subjective reputation risk. This has to be addressed by altering either the risk or the reward sides of the equation in the core system.
Thinking outside the box, what if the design of the Caravan system was balanced such that it took the average total dps of a team of [20] max level players to destroy an ordinary Caravan with no defenders over an average length journey.
Add to that a very broad passive "Circle the Wagons" AOE shield bubble effect rendering Defenders immune to attack until the Caravan itself was destroyed, but Defenders could still attack the Attackers within the AOE bubble. This of course dramatically shifts the odds of success towards the defenders such that a small group of defenders could resist a much larger group of attackers.
If the Caravan does get destroyed enroute, it would become a free-for-all fight to bring a new Caravan to loot the wreckage where both sides would have to deal with their own Caravan spawn timers and a loot timer before a new AOE bubble is erected. Another timer would preclude players looting the wreckage individually. The idea would be that looting crates would NOT become stolen commodities (surely, what merchant in need would question a sealed crate that just arrived in town?). This would ensure that they retain their value for either party.
I think this mechanism would raise the risk of attacking considerably and lowers the probability of attacker success. The balance could also be easily adjusted as needed or even dynamically based on regional population density under the premise that bigger cities have better trained Caravan guards. (note that limitations would need to be put in place to prevent the usage of the AOE shield for other non-Caravan purposes).
Balancing risk aside, I'd still like to see rewards favor either outcome with participants rewarded individually as opposed to just going to the Caravan driver from a successful sale. Both attackers and defenders should feel equally motivated to fight for some reason or another.
In balancing, one needs to consider that the original Caravan driver, if successful, should always get an outsized reward directly from the profit from the sale of the goods such that Reward(caravan driver)= Profit Margin = Sale Revenue - Purchase Cost = (1+x%)*Purchase Cost - Purchase Cost = (x%) * Purchase Cost.
(This system assumes that Purchase Cost is a system recorded variable like an adjusted cost base of a stock)
Since attackers have no cost, Average Reward(attacker) = Sale Revenue /# of attackers = (1+x%)*Purchase Cost / # of attackers. (Of course the full payout likely goes to one attacker - the one who delivers the goods, thereby skewing the payout distribution unless the attackers negotiate for a split or the sale happens automatically upon arrival of the caravan and loot is distributed evenly) .
The average defenders of a successful caravan should get remuneration in the form of danger pay of roughly equivalent value to the average attacker (to reflect that a defender could have chose to be an attacker) adjusted downwards by a multiplier reflecting the higher probability of success for defenders given the shield bubble. The multiplier would take into account the ratio of actual defenders to a base grid defender value commensurate with the number of attackers to effectively calibrate for the risk. The curve could be calibrated based on actual testing experience. The "danger pay" would need to be a pot funded by the originating node and distributed fairly to all defenders at conclusion.
Ra= 1/n*(1+x%)*PC where n= # of attackers x%=margin PC= Purchase Cost
Rd = 1/n*(1+x%)*PC*m/d where d= # of defenders and m= vlookup grid value of base defenders to # of attackers
The grid could look something like:
n m
20 1
25 2
30 3
40 4
So if 30 attackers won on a PC of 500 glint and a 10% price margin at the destination node, they would receive an average reward of Ra= 18.33 glint.
If 3 defenders won against the 30 attackers they too would receive an average reward of Rd=18.33 glint. If 2 defenders beat 30, they'd get slightly more. If 4 defenders beat 30, they would receive less since the base grid only called for 3 defenders so danger pay was lower.
Note that this system would result in diminishing rewards based on larger group sizes as their splits become smaller but if you wanted to encourage larger scale battles, this could be modified.
I can't however, justify the logic as to why the originating node would pony up such a large danger pay reward for defense, so I think defenders will need to be rewarded, in large part, through some other means - renown points or node credits etc. in order to maintain a semblance of logic.
Like what?
Could work if is a gold sink too, if Steven gets 50%.
Also bounties should not be public and bounty hunters should get them randomly.
Commodities purchased from NPCs do not become stollen. Just the glint and resources / materials originating from player.
You cannot motivate 20 attackers to fight against 3 defenders.
The fight must happen over something the 3 defenders earned. I cannot see how 3 players can have enough valuables to make 20 attackers happy.
you are missing important information.
first, 40 people isnt a lot, but lets leave that aside. i get your point.
the attackers are actually risking a lot more than you think, but the risks arent obvious
first, we have caravan progression. defenders and attackers have different progression paths. if you attack and fail, there are consequences (but there are also consequences for failing defense). still, its a risk.
the attackers dont really get an immediate reward. when a caravan is destroyed, a potion of the loot is destroyed (iirc) and the other portion can be picked up by anyone, including the defenders. if you decide to focus and destroy the caravan using range attacks, the defenders that are near the caravan can pick up the loot and you dont really get anything, other than preventing your enmies to progress (which is still a win).
to loot the caravan, you will probably have to kill everyone nearby, which you might even be able to do, so you can lose attackers quest progression here.
even if you manage to loot, you still have to go back to town and run a caravan of your own. you dont get instant rewards, and now you become the defender.
social reputation. people will remember what youve done and destroy your caravans (plus attack you during bosses, lock you out of an area, etc), trust me. if you attack every caravan on sight, and probably not even every caravan, at some point you wont be able to run anything and you will feel the weight of your actions,so you better have the numbers to back it up, and 40 isnt that many people tbh.
you are also forgetting that people can send decoy caravans, and caravans take a bit to be destroyed. chances are you will not be able to attack every caravan nearby, and you are just wasting your time and resources with decoys.
id say that the attackers have it worse than the defenders. at least, the defenders get immediately rewarded if they succeed, unlike the attackers who have to go back to town with the loot and launch their own caravan.