Caravan, bandit/criminal and justice systems

Hello.

I have been working a lot with different design ideas in different fields and little bit as a feature/gameplay and art design dev in indie games etc. And I've spotted couple problems with the current caravan system. So here are some suggestions that I would personally think as a better alternative for the caravan system:

- Instead of bandit unrealistically destroying the carriage, it would be much better if there were prompts for attacking players to pick up stuff from the caravan and bring the stuff outside of the set radius around caravan to claim the goods for themselfs and defending team can stop them by killing the carrier. That way some of the bandits can focus on fight and some stealing the loot making it harder for bandits to win. And even cause situations where bandits get some loot before running away and same time not totally destroying the hard work escort and the owner of the carriage put into it. To make it even more balanced there could be a mechanic that once all bandits have left the radius of caravan or died inside it then extra NPC guards will arrive to defend the caravan for set amount of time so the caravan actually have chance to be able to bring some of the goods to the destination and not be picked clean by multiple different bandit groups.
Currently it's gonna be 90% easy win for the bandits so caravans will be very rare sight to see or cause massive unbalance between cheaters (gold buyers) and casual players who want to be merchants. And that is because those with infinite money can just buy multiple raids of escorts while casuals have to rely on couple guild members or friends for support.

- Being bandit also needs to be very punishing via different systems when getting caught.
As a extra feature maybe give players "bandit" skill that hides their name and appearance from others and gives them "bandit name" that will be shown for everyone else so that people who like to play as bandits can hide their identity until getting caught. Archeage prison and justice system was great but punishments were too weak and the fact that everyone knew you were bandit if you ever attacked others to steal from them etc. Those who want to become the well known menace of the server can ofc just not use the bandit "skill" and show themself to everyone. Ofc that means hard life for them.

I think that Ashes of Creation should look more into the immersion of the caravan/bandit/criminal and justice systems. And ditch the all or nothing mentality of the caravans. We all saw in the video how fast team that can hide and use team tactics to just burst someone down without anyone being able to do anything. So what if the situation was not just a play at the stage? Well the bandits would ofc just kill everyone in few seconds from the high ground by focusing fire to 1 target at the time instead of running down. I feel that caravans will be at disadvantage in every situation even tho it should be other way around. Bandits should be the one who take the risk of getting caught and punished severely but have high risk rewards that are worth the risk. Caravans should be somewhat safe thing to do and encouraged. I am 100% sure that the current systems favor attacking team so much that caravans won't be a thing and cause a lot discomfort among players.

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Comments

Arya_Yeshe

I strongly disagree, I believe the caravan should be completely destroyed to be looted and the consequences for the attackers should not be harsh.

I want people fighting to the very end and engaged in this content

Yaway

But the current system literally means that there won't be fight. Just attacking team killing defending in seconds and taking the loot. No risk nor pvp, just another WoW STV.

Veeshan

The risk for attackers/bandits come in the form of social/deplomacy. If it a single guild who constantly pillage caravans in your area team up and war them and push them out of the area, find out what node they base out of and destroy it and so on, if they live in your node and attacking ur caravans well thenm there idiots cause u dont shit where you eat.
the fact that taking good from 1 node to the next closest node pretty much triples the worth it keeps the value there for players to run cause if they loose half there caravans there still coming out net positive and thats if they go to the next closest node, it more the further they go

Yaway

In 20+ years of MMO games I can say that the social aspect of being seen as a "idiot" because of being annoying is just fuel for the fire. If there is no punishment or risks for the "being bad guy" then people will use that advantage. Specially since the whole gameplay loop is made to favor the "bad guys". Lineage 2 and Archeage both had huge problem because of PKing and pirates/bandits getting out way too easily. I was part of both sides in both games.

When you make something too easy for a multiplayer game, then people will take the advantage of it. If that thing includes taking something from others, it will be even more enjoyable for the people. They don't care about being socially seen as "idiots" they are the wise ones who play the game with the rules and take advantage of those who don't want to take the easy route.
But if the easier route is to be a good guy then these "bad guys" have to actually want to feel the risk and adrenaline that comes from risking their time for something that is seen as a bad thing. Then we will have more interaction between players and more changing situations.

The current system will favor "gold buyers" and eventually break whole attack/def by either attacking being too hard because of the "gold buyers" buying too high defense or defenders not even bothering with the caravan system because attacking is too easy.
To balance that, attackers have to risk more whenever they attack so that only those who want to play as bandits etc will do that and those who wanna focus on caravans and trading, will also have chance to do it without losing everything in seconds.

Little example from Lineage 2 on pirate server: I used the game mechanics and made so high attack speed for my character that if I decided to hit something, server would crash because there was too many hits in second happening. So when I toned it down I was unbeatable because the attacks speed also increased my movement speed (dex dagger build). So I took the advantage and killed everyone I wanted and looted their corpses. Took down every guard in every city whenever I wanted, stole raid boss kills from others just for fun and pretty much made the game unplayable for others just to prove the point that there has to be limits and risk/punishment for those who want to be twats. I repeated that multiple times in different servers with different mechanics and classes like 1 shot bow or glitzhing out the golems etc.

People will ruin others fun if they can and making it too easy to do just ruins the game. I can say that caravan system is ruined already if it ships out like it is currently. And I am not saying that the risks and punishment is supposed to be super bad thing. It should be either "jailtime" or losing "karma" that is needed for certain actions or rewards but having "bad karma" also should give other rewards that are fit for the "bandit" playstyle.

Taleof2Cities

Yaway wrote: »

People will ruin others fun if they can and making it too easy to do just ruins the game. I can say that caravan system is ruined already if it ships out like it is currently.

I hope you saw that the caravan demo intentionally had a larger group of attackers (26) than defenders (12), Yaway. That was for demonstration purposes only.

Those types of group numbers won’t always be what you see when the game launches. The attackers will not always have a numbers advantage.

Regardless, the caravan system is certainly a work-in-progress. We will be testing it during Alpha 2.

However, if you’ve already made your final judgment on the caravan system (and declared the game “ruined” despite a few years of development left), then thankfully we’ve come to the end of the discussion in this thread.

NateDogg187

I don't remember L2 having much of a problem with Pkers on my server at least, except at around level 15-25. Whenever someone pk'd someone it would be called out in chat or guild chat and people would respond. L2 had a good system for removing pk's - soul eater. It was random on how many pk's it would take away, and it wasn't a lot. If you hit the pk limit where you'd drop gear (5 or 6 pks) it could take 2 times doing the quest or 3. The quest wasn't short. It took several hours if i recall and a lot of teleporting. You paid for your pks one way or another - risking high pk count and dropping invaluable gears or boss jewels if you were that lucky, or by spending hours to work your pk count down.
Edit: Dagger broke the server? Hate to see a buffed Tyrant/GK then... Way faster attack.
Edit 2: I was watching the caravan pvp and many people went red/pk when it was over. If you get PKs for caravan kills that would be a big help to defenders. Clan wars of course would be the exception to that rule.

Pyrolol

We want to destroy caravans, don’t take this fun away from us

Arya_Yeshe

Yaway wrote: »

But the current system literally means that there won't be fight. Just attacking team killing defending in seconds and taking the loot. No risk nor pvp, just another WoW STV.

Yes, I agree that the current system sucks, but the reason I say this it's because this tokens thing. This is horrid

The caravan should drop the loot crates with exactly the loot the wagon was carrying and attackers should carry those things somehow, on foot or on mules or in another wagon.

AND THEN:

attackers become defenders
new attackers will come in and attack them and previous defenders will become attackers
roads become a ball of violence

For now, what I like is: the wagon, setting up the caravan, wagon upgrades, wagon abilities
However, the final destination the caravan system is going is an absolute disaster, almost like a sabotage... the looting itself

Endowed

Veeshan wrote: »

The risk for attackers/bandits come in the form of social/deplomacy.

Then there is zero.

You dont have to poop where you eat.

Mag7spy

Yaway wrote: »

But the current system literally means that there won't be fight. Just attacking team killing defending in seconds and taking the loot. No risk nor pvp, just another WoW STV.

Unsure where you are getting this, that is incorrect. In cause you were unsure the dev stream was set for defenders to lose. You should not take a team meant to lose and indicative of general gameplay.

Aszkalon

Yaway wrote: »

But the current system literally means that there won't be fight. Just attacking team killing defending in seconds and taking the loot. No risk nor pvp, just another WoW STV.

Welp,

we know when the Game is out sometime finally in the Future - that the Groups who defend and attack the Caravans will vary in Size and Strength, right ?

Right ?

Or is there any Reason this shouldn't be the Case ?

What if there are like Plus Twenty to Plus Thirty strong Defenders ? Like a whole Guild -> and "ONLY" like Ten or Fifteen somewhat capable People are attacking the Caravan ?

The Attackers might be good, but outnumbered against People who might be EVEN MORE of a bunch of Sweatlord Try-hards than them ?

How am i possibly supposed to imagine that they can win ?

I think for the Sake of the last Presentation, Sir Steven and his Team was clearly the stronger Team by somewhat calculated Odds. You can safely assume they also had it spoken with the Defender Team how to fight in Order to make it cool and flashy, but not give it actually to much Effort to try and kill Sir Steven's Friends.

It was supposed to look how it looked.

wouldn't anyone agree ?

Mag7spy

Aszkalon wrote: »

Yaway wrote: »

But the current system literally means that there won't be fight. Just attacking team killing defending in seconds and taking the loot. No risk nor pvp, just another WoW STV.

Welp,

we know when the Game is out sometime finally in the Future - that the Groups who defend and attack the Caravans will vary in Size and Strength, right ?

Right ?

Or is there any Reason this shouldn't be the Case ?

What if there are like Plus Twenty to Plus Thirty strong Defenders ? Like a whole Guild -> and "ONLY" like Ten or Fifteen somewhat capable People are attacking the Caravan ?

The Attackers might be good, but outnumbered against People who might be EVEN MORE of a bunch of Sweatlord Try-hards than them ?

How am i possibly supposed to imagine that they can win ?

I think for the Sake of the last Presentation, Sir Steven and his Team was clearly the stronger Team by somewhat calculated Odds. You can safely assume they also had it spoken with the Defender Team how to fight in Order to make it cool and flashy, but not give it actually to much Effort to try and kill Sir Steven's Friends.

It was supposed to look how it looked. wouldn't anyone agree ?

Agreed though people don't' watch the whole video they watch like 20 secs and look at comments.

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