Alternatively, they could bring along a few hand-carts that can hold up to a few crates each, but move a little bit slower for each crate they're holding, or some beasts of burden that can carry crates over their backs like panniers.
As for this specific point, mounts are one of those things that are just so iconic and necessary in a large MMO, that to have them be anything more than a specific little whistle in your bag is fairly unrealistic. That sounds like an inconvenience that doesn’t inspire any creative problem solving. It’s just frustrating. It would drastically impact player count if bringing a mount with you made you manage your inventory differently. And forget about losing a mount because it wandered off or got captured by another player. That’s some “drop everything on death” hardcore survival game stuff.
One thing that I think should be different from other MMOs is that if your mount is killed, rather than simply de-summoned, it should take a few minutes for it to be summonable again. That’s enough risk v reward for riding into battle mounted, I think. You risk not being able to make a quick getaway for five minutes or so.
If you summon your mount it would leave your bags and be in the game world freeing space and potentially adding a second inventory for you.
If it is killed while holding crates or other goods in it's saddle bags does the loot drop on the ground? if so you would just have to wait a few minutes and pick it back up. Your mount if killed it should at least be respawned in the node that it was created in.
This also opens up a play style for those that enjoy travelling to go around hauling goods for people that choose to use their services, and appeals to the risk vs reward.
The current system feels like it fits the overall theme of AoC: The greater the risk? The greater the reward; Either throw a smaller amount on your backs and run for the hills before the Caravan's defenders and can regroup and avenge their shipment, *or* try to get the stolen shipment to town for a much greater reward, while allowing the original Caravan defenders a chance to steal it back.
It fits with everything else espoused by the dev team, in-regards to an emphasis throughout the game for RvR.
3
Options
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
If you summon your mount it would leave your bags and be in the game world freeing space and potentially adding a second inventory for you.
If it is killed while holding crates or other goods in it's saddle bags does the loot drop on the ground? if so you would just have to wait a few minutes and pick it back up. Your mount if killed it should at least be respawned in the node that it was created in.
This also opens up a play style for those that enjoy travelling to go around hauling goods for people that choose to use their services, and appeals to the risk vs reward.
While traveling around in the open world, do you carry your horse in your backpack? I didn't think so. With the mount argument you're making, it sounds like your shooting for immersion in the form of inconvenience while also making things even less immersive than they already are. Neither is fully realistic, but what's more immersive? Having trained a few of your favorite mounts to each respond to a specific whistle and have them fade into the game world while running up from several meters away, or carrying an entire horse in your backpack? Concessions for playability have to be made somewhere.
As for your reply to my suggestion for alternate stolen-crate-pickup methods, yes, if you are a marauder and you sling a couple crates over your donkey's back instead of having your buddy ride a caravan over or bringing one with you, and the original defenders hunt you back down, killing your donkey, then the crates just hit the ground again. I'm assuming if that happened, you would be dead as well. However, if you did survive the fight and they killed your donkey, then yeah, you'd be unable to call for it again for five minutes or so until it respawned and was able to be called again, leaving you more vulnerable to the second attempt at reclaiming the goods. If you had a handcart and they busted that, you'd be totally out out luck until you returned to a place with the tools to make a new one. Hence, why it's better to do this stuff in teams.
Your mount would respawn in whatever node it's stored in... then you'd blow the whistle to call it back just like you did the first time. I don't think the mount calling method should need to be recharged at home after your mount dies, that sounds horribly tedious. Again, obstacles that provoke creative problem solving and teamwork are good. Obstacles just for the sake of realism that do nothing but make life difficult are annoying.
Having trained a few of your favorite mounts to each respond to a specific whistle and have them fade into the game world while running up from several meters away, or carrying an entire horse in your backpack? Concessions for playability have to be made somewhere.
What would be the immersion of animal husbandry if your mount is indestructible and stackable? This skill is supposed to be economical. What if everyone in the world has 10 indestructible mounts? At the very least your mount should be put on a longer timer if killed.
If you don't want to take up space in your backpack carrying your mount try riding it or putting it on follow.
As for your reply to my suggestion for alternate stolen-crate-pickup methods, yes, if you are a marauder and you sling a couple crates over your donkey's back instead of having your buddy ride a caravan over or bringing one with you, and the original defenders hunt you back down, killing your donkey, then the crates just hit the ground again. I'm assuming if that happened, you would be dead as well. However, if you did survive the fight and they killed your donkey, then yeah, you'd be unable to call for it again for five minutes or so until it respawned and was able to be called again, leaving you more vulnerable to the second attempt at reclaiming the goods. If you had a handcart and they busted that, you'd be totally out out luck until you returned to a place with the tools to make a new one. Hence, why it's better to do this stuff in teams.
Your buddies wouldn't have to bring a caravan over with my suggested play-style, they would just have to have a mount (which would be considered a small storage caravan) with the appropriate storage capacity.
What would be the immersion of animal husbandry if your mount is indestructible and stackable? This skill is supposed to be economical. What if everyone in the world has 10 indestructible mounts? At the very least your mount should be put on a longer timer if killed.
If you don't want to take up space in your backpack carrying your mount try riding it or putting it on follow.
I agree that animal husbandry loses a bit of immersion and does potentially pose some problems in its current state when considering long-term economic viability. If everyone's mounts last forever, then there may come a time when server growth slows down and everyone has most of the mounts they want, leaving anyone below mastery level without as much work. Hard to predict in detail, but it does concern me a bit. As I said though, the permanent nature of MMO mounts are just one of those QOL elements that players have come to take for granted and most won't go without. Mounts are a big grind. Not a lot of people want to lose everything they own one piece at a time on a series of 1-6 month cycles and grind for all their stuff over and over again until the end of time.
I haven't heard much talk about this recently, but a few years ago, Steven mentioned in a podcast that there will be a material sink for mounts that have previously died a certain number of times and therefore suffer longer CDs before summoning back to life as a result. So perhaps players trained in animal husbandry will be responsible for providing those items for long-term income, and buying a new version of a mount will be like hitting the reset button on that respawn timer or something like that.
If you don't want to take up space in your backpack carrying your mount try riding it or putting it on follow.
Sometimes I don't want my mount out next to me. Sometimes I want to ride to a dungeon, but there are also 50+ other people in the dungeon. Am I going to see a gargantuan, sprawling menagerie of tied up beasts chilling outside of every dungeon entrance when I leave mine there to wait? Seems a little strange. This is a game. It's a video game. Not everything needs to be realistic, it just has to be immersive enough to continue your suspension of disbelief.
Your buddies wouldn't have to bring a caravan over with my suggested play-style, they would just have to have a mount (which would be considered a small storage caravan) with the appropriate storage capacity.
For someone really honed in on making things realistic, I'm surprised by the unrealistic nature of your solution. Wagons like the ones you see in-game right now are capable of holding upwards of 10k pounds. An elephant, arguably one of the strongest beasts of burden on Earth (or likely in Verra, if we see one) can only carry about 2.5-3.5K pounds on its back. I'd like to see any creature small enough to fit on a road carry that much weight for an extended duration.
Yes the caravan magically flew through the air in a particle form and appeared on the designated spot. Similar to a summon, which is fast travel. I'm arguing that caravans should be created not summoned.
To me, the attacker should bring their wagon beforehand.
Building a simple flat bad wagon on the spot wouldn't be bad either
PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
1
Options
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Sometimes I don't want my mount out next to me. Sometimes I want to ride to a dungeon, but there are also 50+ other people in the dungeon. Am I going to see a gargantuan, sprawling menagerie of tied up beasts chilling outside of every dungeon entrance when I leave mine there to wait? Seems a little strange. This is a game. It's a video game. Not everything needs to be realistic, it just has to be immersive enough to continue your suspension of disbelief.
A flat decked raid wagon would be appropriate, and the potential hauler that's moving this raid could make some coin for their time and choices of skills. If everyone rode their mounts to the dungeon and they all got killed that would have a massive economic effect potentially increasing the price of mounts for a time. If the raid doesn't have a hauler, rather just a designated driver, they could park it outside at risk. The raid wagon does not need to have storage for crates because crates won't be made inside a dungeon but could potentially have storage on them if so chosen. The wagon could also be deconstructed and held by players along with the mounts pulling it. I'm not necessarily trying to be fully realistic but rather trying to give economic value to risk vs reward and time/skills chosen.
Perhaps mounts should also have a "go home" option, though that would have risk. People with animal husbandry could also have the ability to tame mounts out in the wild and trade to people. These mounts perhaps aren't fully trained depending on time/skills and could go wild at any time.
Sometimes I don't want my mount out next to me. Sometimes I want to ride to a dungeon, but there are also 50+ other people in the dungeon. Am I going to see a gargantuan, sprawling menagerie of tied up beasts chilling outside of every dungeon entrance when I leave mine there to wait? Seems a little strange. This is a game. It's a video game. Not everything needs to be realistic, it just has to be immersive enough to continue your suspension of disbelief.
A flat decked raid wagon would be appropriate, and the potential hauler that's moving this raid could make some coin for their time and choices of skills. If everyone rode their mounts to the dungeon and they all got killed that would have a massive economic effect potentially increasing the price of mounts for a time. If the raid doesn't have a hauler, rather just a designated driver, they could park it outside at risk. The raid wagon does not need to have storage for crates because crates won't be made inside a dungeon but could potentially have storage on them if so chosen. The wagon could also be deconstructed and held by players along with the mounts pulling it. I'm not necessarily trying to be fully realistic but rather trying to give economic value to risk vs reward and time/skills chosen.
Perhaps mounts should also have a "go home" option, though that would have risk. People with animal husbandry could also have the ability to tame mounts out in the wild and trade to people. These mounts perhaps aren't fully trained depending on time/skills and could go wild at any time.
im just so confused at this point. you are rabbit-holing hard here.
I'm not necessarily trying to be fully realistic but rather trying to give economic value to risk vs reward and time/skills chosen.
I understand that, but I think you're getting a little too nitty gritty here. We agree that having a caravan show up out of nowhere after standing around doing nothing for 5 minutes is boring and immersion-breaking. I think it needs to be at least a little bit more difficult for players to put themselves in a good position to assault a caravan, and to finish the payload successfully. I also think it would encourage more teamwork, having someone trailing behind the group with an empty caravan waiting to tumble down past the wreckage and get loaded up by the marauders crate by crate following the battle, rather than having a single person drop a flag and stand around twiddling their thumbs before auto looting all the crates in two clicks by themselves.
That's about as far as I'm willing to agree with you (here at least) and I'll leave it at that.
Might not be fast travel, but it sure is boring (especially considering the timing of when it happens, right after you're all full of adrenaline and ready to make your escape) and immersion breaking.
I don't feel I need to explain the boring part - it just is. I think you should either have someone on your team with a caravan waiting around where your raiding party was hiding, or waiting somewhere nearby to head your way as soon as the tide of the battle turns in your favor. It encourages more teamwork, gives you the option of having it ready to go, somewhat nearby, or to wait until the battle is over to have someone bring it over. It increases suspense, because the empty caravan will be flagged as an enemy vehicle even before it's loaded up, rather than having it magically appear in the middle of nowhere perfectly safe with no risk or difficulty getting it to your location. Lastly, it opens up options for smaller vehicles to be used or for marauders to split up with multiple small loads in handcarts or beasts of burden rather than being forced to use a caravan for everything.
Imo, it would make the system more engaging rather than turning caravans into little more than moving high-value PvP targets.
Sometimes I don't want my mount out next to me. Sometimes I want to ride to a dungeon, but there are also 50+ other people in the dungeon. Am I going to see a gargantuan, sprawling menagerie of tied up beasts chilling outside of every dungeon entrance when I leave mine there to wait? Seems a little strange. This is a game. It's a video game. Not everything needs to be realistic, it just has to be immersive enough to continue your suspension of disbelief.
A flat decked raid wagon would be appropriate, and the potential hauler that's moving this raid could make some coin for their time and choices of skills. If everyone rode their mounts to the dungeon and they all got killed that would have a massive economic effect potentially increasing the price of mounts for a time. If the raid doesn't have a hauler, rather just a designated driver, they could park it outside at risk. The raid wagon does not need to have storage for crates because crates won't be made inside a dungeon but could potentially have storage on them if so chosen. The wagon could also be deconstructed and held by players along with the mounts pulling it. I'm not necessarily trying to be fully realistic but rather trying to give economic value to risk vs reward and time/skills chosen.
Perhaps mounts should also have a "go home" option, though that would have risk. People with animal husbandry could also have the ability to tame mounts out in the wild and trade to people. These mounts perhaps aren't fully trained depending on time/skills and could go wild at any time.
im just so confused at this point. you are rabbit-holing hard here.
A ship is essentially the raid wagon I'm talking about, just for use over land.
I think that when you summon a caravan, an NPC should be dispatched from the nearest node that then drives the empty caravan to you. If pathfinding is an issue, then it could be limited to only driving on roads. The only part I'm uncertain about with this idea is whether players should be allowed to attack the caravan as it travels to you. Perhaps, you allow players to attack the caravan, but because it is being driven by a node NPC, attacking it would cost you rep with that node or make you an outlaw?
I think that when you summon a caravan, an NPC should be dispatched from the nearest node that then drives the empty caravan to you. If pathfinding is an issue, then it could be limited to only driving on roads. The only part I'm uncertain about with this idea is whether players should be allowed to attack the caravan as it travels to you. Perhaps, you allow players to attack the caravan, but because it is being driven by a node NPC, attacking it would cost you rep with that node or make you an outlaw?
What part of this makes the game more fun to engage with?
its just so strange that we want to take a system that does what it needs to do to make sure there is a smooth transition from attacker to defender, and break it down into an extremely tedious or annoying set of mechanics.
I think that when you summon a caravan, an NPC should be dispatched from the nearest node that then drives the empty caravan to you. If pathfinding is an issue, then it could be limited to only driving on roads. The only part I'm uncertain about with this idea is whether players should be allowed to attack the caravan as it travels to you. Perhaps, you allow players to attack the caravan, but because it is being driven by a node NPC, attacking it would cost you rep with that node or make you an outlaw?
This was the first thought I had when I saw the system, but honestly, what’s the difference here? It would make no sense for the caravan to actually be on the road and not be attackable. And if it should be attackable, then I think most people would rather be in control of it themselves. So I feel like requiring players to coordinate and have one nearby or sent out as soon as the battle is looking good and driven by an ally to the pickup site is just better overall.
This system can be used by single players, but should, imo, in virtually every case, be more easily handled by a group of at least a few, if not a dozen or more. Having one person on your team be the pickup driver isn’t asking much for the sake of a more dynamic, player-driven (literally) transition between take-downs and pick-ups.
A ship is essentially the raid wagon I'm talking about, just for use over land.
The whole point of your thread is moot, in that summoning a pre-made item doesn't constitute quick-travel; you're still in the same place.
Pre-done effort went into summoning the item. If you have a problem with the timer on the item, that's fine - but it doesn't feel as though you'd have a lot of support for having to start at a Carvaneer for a looters' Caravan.
This was the first thought I had when I saw the system, but honestly, what’s the difference here? It would make no sense for the caravan to actually be on the road and not be attackable. And if it should be attackable, then I think most people would rather be in control of it themselves. So I feel like requiring players to coordinate and have one nearby or sent out as soon as the battle is looking good and driven by an ally to the pickup site is just better overall.
With the current system, only the attackers and defenders know the exact location of a destroyed caravan. But, if a new caravan had to actually drive to the attacker's location, then this would allow other players in the area to follow it as it led them to the destroyed caravan and all of its goods. Even if the transiting caravan was invulnerable, I think this would be an improvement upon the current implementation. However, I don't think invulnerability is needed to ensure that the caravan reaches its destination with a reasonable level of reliability. I think that there would be little incentive for most players to attack the caravan while its empty, particularly if there was some negative consequence such as becoming corrupted.
This was the first thought I had when I saw the system, but honestly, what’s the difference here? It would make no sense for the caravan to actually be on the road and not be attackable. And if it should be attackable, then I think most people would rather be in control of it themselves. So I feel like requiring players to coordinate and have one nearby or sent out as soon as the battle is looking good and driven by an ally to the pickup site is just better overall.
With the current system, only the attackers and defenders know the exact location of a destroyed caravan. But, if a new caravan had to actually drive to the attacker's location, then this would allow other players in the area to follow it as it led them to the destroyed caravan and all of its goods. Even if the transiting caravan was invulnerable, I think this would be an improvement upon the current implementation. However, I don't think invulnerability is needed to ensure that the caravan reaches its destination with a reasonable level of reliability. I think that there would be little incentive for most players to attack the caravan while its empty, particularly if there was some negative consequence such as becoming corrupted.
Bandits will 99% of the time say screw the work and just take the stolen commodities with your suggestions, removing any chance for defenders to run back and try to get their stuff back. you are essentially taking the current chance of people fighting again for their caravan and reducing the chance to almost never. Because think about it, now the defenders need to make another caravan and waddle it out in hopes that the bandits didnt just open the boxes and run away on mounts. The rare exceptions will be when specific extremely valuable loot is on the line. But even then I would fully expect most players to just take what is easily taken instead of risking losing it all by getting caught on the road.
A ship is essentially the raid wagon I'm talking about, just for use over land.
The whole point of your thread is moot, in that summoning a pre-made item doesn't constitute quick-travel; you're still in the same place.
Pre-done effort went into summoning the item. If you have a problem with the timer on the item, that's fine - but it doesn't feel as though you'd have a lot of support for having to start at a Carvaneer for a looters' Caravan.
I'm just putting ideas out that may be extreme (such as a massive raid wagon that wouldn't exactly save any time but could have other purposes) and hoping for feedback to help hone this particular system because from what I saw in the showcase it could use some reworking. The whole point of this forum is to debate ideas.
This was the first thought I had when I saw the system, but honestly, what’s the difference here? It would make no sense for the caravan to actually be on the road and not be attackable. And if it should be attackable, then I think most people would rather be in control of it themselves. So I feel like requiring players to coordinate and have one nearby or sent out as soon as the battle is looking good and driven by an ally to the pickup site is just better overall.
This system can be used by single players, but should, imo, in virtually every case, be more easily handled by a group of at least a few, if not a dozen or more. Having one person on your team be the pickup driver isn’t asking much for the sake of a more dynamic, player-driven (literally) transition between take-downs and pick-ups.
This was the first thought I had when I saw the system, but honestly, what’s the difference here? It would make no sense for the caravan to actually be on the road and not be attackable. And if it should be attackable, then I think most people would rather be in control of it themselves. So I feel like requiring players to coordinate and have one nearby or sent out as soon as the battle is looking good and driven by an ally to the pickup site is just better overall.
With the current system, only the attackers and defenders know the exact location of a destroyed caravan. But, if a new caravan had to actually drive to the attacker's location, then this would allow other players in the area to follow it as it led them to the destroyed caravan and all of its goods. Even if the transiting caravan was invulnerable, I think this would be an improvement upon the current implementation. However, I don't think invulnerability is needed to ensure that the caravan reaches its destination with a reasonable level of reliability. I think that there would be little incentive for most players to attack the caravan while its empty, particularly if there was some negative consequence such as becoming corrupted.
Bandits will 99% of the time say screw the work and just take the stolen commodities with your suggestions, removing any chance for defenders to run back and try to get their stuff back. you are essentially taking the current chance of people fighting again for their caravan and reducing the chance to almost never. Because think about it, now the defenders need to make another caravan and waddle it out in hopes that the bandits didnt just open the boxes and run away on mounts. The rare exceptions will be when specific extremely valuable loot is on the line. But even then I would fully expect most players to just take what is easily taken instead of risking losing it all by getting caught on the road.
Do you really not think that's going to be a problem already? When the local area is just spamming invites to randoms to join a raid, and some of them are telling their friends to come over, pretty soon you have a full group. All it takes is 15-ish minutes for this group of randoms to come crashing down on the caravan, destroy it in about a third of that total time, crack the crates, and be on their way. In fact, all it takes is two or three people out of the entire raid to prefer cracking the crates over doing the delivery run, because there's nothing stopping anyone from doing it however they want. And as soon as one person starts doing it, I think you'll be hard pressed to find many players that won't freak out and join in before it's all gone and the rest of the goods are forfeited.
Personally, I think the crate-cracking thing either needs to go, or player-driven caravans need to not have public invites to destroy it spammed out to the entire local area. I think players should need to be in organized groups if they want to destroy a caravan, and multiple groups should be able to attack the defenders (and each other) at the same time. Random people aren't going to be coordinating recovery trade runs. I can't even fathom the average MMO player putting that together without voice communication and a pre-built foundation of trust before crates start getting busted open. Groups that want to finish the run should be able to trust that they're all on the same page with a plan in place, and should be able to kill randoms who're trying to crack crates for scraps.
This was the first thought I had when I saw the system, but honestly, what’s the difference here? It would make no sense for the caravan to actually be on the road and not be attackable. And if it should be attackable, then I think most people would rather be in control of it themselves. So I feel like requiring players to coordinate and have one nearby or sent out as soon as the battle is looking good and driven by an ally to the pickup site is just better overall.
With the current system, only the attackers and defenders know the exact location of a destroyed caravan. But, if a new caravan had to actually drive to the attacker's location, then this would allow other players in the area to follow it as it led them to the destroyed caravan and all of its goods. Even if the transiting caravan was invulnerable, I think this would be an improvement upon the current implementation. However, I don't think invulnerability is needed to ensure that the caravan reaches its destination with a reasonable level of reliability. I think that there would be little incentive for most players to attack the caravan while its empty, particularly if there was some negative consequence such as becoming corrupted.
Bandits will 99% of the time say screw the work and just take the stolen commodities with your suggestions, removing any chance for defenders to run back and try to get their stuff back. you are essentially taking the current chance of people fighting again for their caravan and reducing the chance to almost never. Because think about it, now the defenders need to make another caravan and waddle it out in hopes that the bandits didnt just open the boxes and run away on mounts. The rare exceptions will be when specific extremely valuable loot is on the line. But even then I would fully expect most players to just take what is easily taken instead of risking losing it all by getting caught on the road.
Do you really not think that's going to be a problem already? When the local area is just spamming invites to randoms to join a raid, and some of them are telling their friends to come over, pretty soon you have a full group. All it takes is 15-ish minutes for this group of randoms to come crashing down on the caravan, destroy it in about a third of that total time, crack the crates, and be on their way. In fact, all it takes is two or three people out of the entire raid to prefer cracking the crates over doing the delivery run, because there's nothing stopping anyone from doing it however they want. And as soon as one person starts doing it, I think you'll be hard pressed to find many players that won't freak out and join in before it's all gone and the rest of the goods are forfeited.
Personally, I think the crate-cracking thing either needs to go, or player-driven caravans need to not have public invites to destroy it spammed out to the entire local area. I think players should need to be in organized groups if they want to destroy a caravan, and multiple groups should be able to attack the defenders (and each other) at the same time. Random people aren't going to be coordinating recovery trade runs. I can't even fathom the average MMO player putting that together without voice communication and a pre-built foundation of trust before crates start getting busted open. Groups that want to finish the run should be able to trust that they're all on the same page with a plan in place, and should be able to kill randoms who're trying to crack crates for scraps.
I agree that this is a huge problem. Keep in mind that even if you do manage to organize a caravan and return the goods to town, players will still have to deal with the timer to open the crates. There is no way that pugs will be willing to wait for that timer to expire. Even if they did, there wouldn't be any way to know what was in the crates so the driver could potentially screw everyone over. If the driver claims that the crates contained copper when they really had adamantium, nobody could dispute it.
I actually think that would be a problem even for organized guilds. Everyone would have to completely trust the driver to be honest about the crate's contents. There needs to be a way for everyone who took part in the attack to see what's in the crates. I'm fine will allowing the caravan driver to turn in the crates and screw everyone over by keeping something for himself. People will learn not to team up with that person. But, I'm not okay will allowing the driver to keep something for himself without anyone being able to tell that they were screwed over.
1
Options
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Might not be fast travel, but it sure is boring (especially considering the timing of when it happens, right after you're all full of adrenaline and ready to make your escape) and immersion breaking.
Boring is subjective and not particularly constructive criticism.
It's not immersion-breaking in a High Magic Fantasy setting.
It would be immersion-breaking if Ashes were a Low Magic Fantasy setting.
I think you should either have someone on your team with a caravan waiting around where your raiding party was hiding, or waiting somewhere nearby to head your way as soon as the tide of the battle turns in your favor.
This is the part you don't have to explain.
Just because you think that way does not mean everyone will agree.
In this case, the devs don't agree with you.
Might not be fast travel, but it sure is boring (especially considering the timing of when it happens, right after you're all full of adrenaline and ready to make your escape) and immersion breaking.
Boring is subjective and not particularly constructive criticism.
It's not immersion-breaking in a High Magic Fantasy setting.
It would be immersion-breaking if Ashes were a Low Magic Fantasy setting.
I think you should either have someone on your team with a caravan waiting around where your raiding party was hiding, or waiting somewhere nearby to head your way as soon as the tide of the battle turns in your favor.
This is the part you don't have to explain.
Just because you think that way does not mean everyone will agree.
In this case, the devs don't agree with you.
Imo, it would make the system more engaging rather than turning caravans into little more than moving high-value PvP targets.
Yep. I think we understood that's your opinion when you said Summoning a Caravan is boring.
Every opinion on this forum is subjective, that’s what opinions are. What’s your point exactly? Where did I ever say I expected everyone to agree with me? The devs have one idea of how to do things right now, and they showed it off for feedback. I gave my feedback.
No, the one little clip you snagged from my post isn’t constructive, that would be the rest of what I posted on this thread and on the main feedback thread, when I provided an alternate concept that may interest some people. How you would know with absolute certainty what anyone other than yourself would think about my ideas is absolutely beyond me.
Are you suggesting that the caravans are magically being teleported to the flag location? Because that’s the only possible “fantasy” explanation for how it works the way it does right now. And if caravan teleport is possible, why are we driving them at all? “It’s a high fantasy setting” isn’t an excuse for inconsistency, especially if you’re of the opinion that the inconsistency doesn’t benefit the gameplay - which you may not be, but others are.
This was the first thought I had when I saw the system, but honestly, what’s the difference here? It would make no sense for the caravan to actually be on the road and not be attackable. And if it should be attackable, then I think most people would rather be in control of it themselves. So I feel like requiring players to coordinate and have one nearby or sent out as soon as the battle is looking good and driven by an ally to the pickup site is just better overall.
With the current system, only the attackers and defenders know the exact location of a destroyed caravan. But, if a new caravan had to actually drive to the attacker's location, then this would allow other players in the area to follow it as it led them to the destroyed caravan and all of its goods. Even if the transiting caravan was invulnerable, I think this would be an improvement upon the current implementation. However, I don't think invulnerability is needed to ensure that the caravan reaches its destination with a reasonable level of reliability. I think that there would be little incentive for most players to attack the caravan while its empty, particularly if there was some negative consequence such as becoming corrupted.
Bandits will 99% of the time say screw the work and just take the stolen commodities with your suggestions, removing any chance for defenders to run back and try to get their stuff back. you are essentially taking the current chance of people fighting again for their caravan and reducing the chance to almost never. Because think about it, now the defenders need to make another caravan and waddle it out in hopes that the bandits didnt just open the boxes and run away on mounts. The rare exceptions will be when specific extremely valuable loot is on the line. But even then I would fully expect most players to just take what is easily taken instead of risking losing it all by getting caught on the road.
Do you really not think that's going to be a problem already? When the local area is just spamming invites to randoms to join a raid, and some of them are telling their friends to come over, pretty soon you have a full group. All it takes is 15-ish minutes for this group of randoms to come crashing down on the caravan, destroy it in about a third of that total time, crack the crates, and be on their way. In fact, all it takes is two or three people out of the entire raid to prefer cracking the crates over doing the delivery run, because there's nothing stopping anyone from doing it however they want. And as soon as one person starts doing it, I think you'll be hard pressed to find many players that won't freak out and join in before it's all gone and the rest of the goods are forfeited.
Personally, I think the crate-cracking thing either needs to go, or player-driven caravans need to not have public invites to destroy it spammed out to the entire local area. I think players should need to be in organized groups if they want to destroy a caravan, and multiple groups should be able to attack the defenders (and each other) at the same time. Random people aren't going to be coordinating recovery trade runs. I can't even fathom the average MMO player putting that together without voice communication and a pre-built foundation of trust before crates start getting busted open. Groups that want to finish the run should be able to trust that they're all on the same page with a plan in place, and should be able to kill randoms who're trying to crack crates for scraps.
Player communication is going to be required. Just because the caravan system acts like a lobby you can freely join, doesn't mean you can ignore the consequences of not engaging with those on your current team. Ill tell you right now, I fully expect there to be an agreement quickly talked out when a group fills up. There will me a standard "etiquette" that most will learn and use to reduce the amount of repeat conversations for each caravan. A good example of what I mean comes from Everquest which i learned when I recently tried the Quarm server out.
In Everquest when you join a party there is a method most people use called "Alpha", Basically the loot on the ground is FFA, but valuable items are "alphaed" which means a round robin system based on the alphebetical lineup of the party members. This is the most common method, but my group of 3 decided on a different method. We used a different approach, and would have a primary looter, preferably someone in melee and with high str, to loot everything, and distribute loot until everyones bags were full.
Now our method was much less popular but because we were a majority of the party members in each group we could run it that way.
I say this all to explain that Just because everyone can pop those crates open doesn't mean it will be the standard method of pug groups. We don't even know if they plan on adding loot rules and such to the caravans so that we can control it better.
At the end of the day though, this does not change the problem of what you guys are advocating for. To force players to have to physically bring a caravan to attack another caravan, or even worse, wait until after to then go get it from a node, would be a massive investment of time and fundamentally make it harder for pug groups to function.
There is only one suggestion here that bridges the gap for me. Having the attackers need to help "build" the caravan instead of it being "summoned" is fine. but I put "build" in quotations for a very good reason. The only difference would be that people have to sit there animating at a box of crap on the ground after someone placed the caravan marker in their inventory on the ground. The time it takes to "summon" the caravan is based on how many are "building" it. but there are no extra resources required, you have your caravan just like the video showed, in your inventory.
Even this mechanic causes some issues, but they would be much more preferable over all of your suggestions.
Every opinion on this forum is subjective, that’s what opinions are. What’s your point exactly? Where did I ever say I expected everyone to agree with me? The devs have one idea of how to do things right now, and they showed it off for feedback. I gave my feedback.
No. Some opinions on these forums are objective.
I stated my point quite clearly. Boring is subjective and is not particularly constructive (or useful) criticism.
Are you suggesting that the caravans are magically being teleported to the flag location? Because that’s the only possible “fantasy” explanation for how it works the way it does right now. And if caravan teleport is possible, why are we driving them at all? “It’s a high fantasy setting” isn’t an excuse for inconsistency, especially if you’re of the opinion that the inconsistency doesn’t benefit the gameplay - which you may not be, but others are.
Obviously, the Caravans are being magically trasnported to the flag location. Yes.
It may be that the magic used is not sound enough to safely transport goods.
We are only recently rediscovering how magic works.
But... you should probably ask Ombwah for those details.
Your lack of understanding of the specifics or limitations of the magic is not inherently the same thing as "inconsistency". Also... magic on Verra is not a science - it is at the whim and mercy of the gods allow.
Good question. In my opinion with the right tools, skills, and resources/components a group of naval raiders should be able to "creation cast" or "build cast" one to collect their loot. Or call upon their mates/allies to bring one from port.
Comments
If you summon your mount it would leave your bags and be in the game world freeing space and potentially adding a second inventory for you.
If it is killed while holding crates or other goods in it's saddle bags does the loot drop on the ground? if so you would just have to wait a few minutes and pick it back up. Your mount if killed it should at least be respawned in the node that it was created in.
This also opens up a play style for those that enjoy travelling to go around hauling goods for people that choose to use their services, and appeals to the risk vs reward.
It fits with everything else espoused by the dev team, in-regards to an emphasis throughout the game for RvR.
iow "If you don't agree with me, keep your trap shut about it."
You might prefer that, but it's not the way these Forums work.
While traveling around in the open world, do you carry your horse in your backpack? I didn't think so. With the mount argument you're making, it sounds like your shooting for immersion in the form of inconvenience while also making things even less immersive than they already are. Neither is fully realistic, but what's more immersive? Having trained a few of your favorite mounts to each respond to a specific whistle and have them fade into the game world while running up from several meters away, or carrying an entire horse in your backpack? Concessions for playability have to be made somewhere.
As for your reply to my suggestion for alternate stolen-crate-pickup methods, yes, if you are a marauder and you sling a couple crates over your donkey's back instead of having your buddy ride a caravan over or bringing one with you, and the original defenders hunt you back down, killing your donkey, then the crates just hit the ground again. I'm assuming if that happened, you would be dead as well. However, if you did survive the fight and they killed your donkey, then yeah, you'd be unable to call for it again for five minutes or so until it respawned and was able to be called again, leaving you more vulnerable to the second attempt at reclaiming the goods. If you had a handcart and they busted that, you'd be totally out out luck until you returned to a place with the tools to make a new one. Hence, why it's better to do this stuff in teams.
Your mount would respawn in whatever node it's stored in... then you'd blow the whistle to call it back just like you did the first time. I don't think the mount calling method should need to be recharged at home after your mount dies, that sounds horribly tedious. Again, obstacles that provoke creative problem solving and teamwork are good. Obstacles just for the sake of realism that do nothing but make life difficult are annoying.
What would be the immersion of animal husbandry if your mount is indestructible and stackable? This skill is supposed to be economical. What if everyone in the world has 10 indestructible mounts? At the very least your mount should be put on a longer timer if killed.
If you don't want to take up space in your backpack carrying your mount try riding it or putting it on follow.
Your buddies wouldn't have to bring a caravan over with my suggested play-style, they would just have to have a mount (which would be considered a small storage caravan) with the appropriate storage capacity.
I agree that animal husbandry loses a bit of immersion and does potentially pose some problems in its current state when considering long-term economic viability. If everyone's mounts last forever, then there may come a time when server growth slows down and everyone has most of the mounts they want, leaving anyone below mastery level without as much work. Hard to predict in detail, but it does concern me a bit. As I said though, the permanent nature of MMO mounts are just one of those QOL elements that players have come to take for granted and most won't go without. Mounts are a big grind. Not a lot of people want to lose everything they own one piece at a time on a series of 1-6 month cycles and grind for all their stuff over and over again until the end of time.
I haven't heard much talk about this recently, but a few years ago, Steven mentioned in a podcast that there will be a material sink for mounts that have previously died a certain number of times and therefore suffer longer CDs before summoning back to life as a result. So perhaps players trained in animal husbandry will be responsible for providing those items for long-term income, and buying a new version of a mount will be like hitting the reset button on that respawn timer or something like that.
Sometimes I don't want my mount out next to me. Sometimes I want to ride to a dungeon, but there are also 50+ other people in the dungeon. Am I going to see a gargantuan, sprawling menagerie of tied up beasts chilling outside of every dungeon entrance when I leave mine there to wait? Seems a little strange. This is a game. It's a video game. Not everything needs to be realistic, it just has to be immersive enough to continue your suspension of disbelief.
For someone really honed in on making things realistic, I'm surprised by the unrealistic nature of your solution. Wagons like the ones you see in-game right now are capable of holding upwards of 10k pounds. An elephant, arguably one of the strongest beasts of burden on Earth (or likely in Verra, if we see one) can only carry about 2.5-3.5K pounds on its back. I'd like to see any creature small enough to fit on a road carry that much weight for an extended duration.
To me, the attacker should bring their wagon beforehand.
Building a simple flat bad wagon on the spot wouldn't be bad either
Perhaps mounts should also have a "go home" option, though that would have risk. People with animal husbandry could also have the ability to tame mounts out in the wild and trade to people. These mounts perhaps aren't fully trained depending on time/skills and could go wild at any time.
im just so confused at this point. you are rabbit-holing hard here.
I understand that, but I think you're getting a little too nitty gritty here. We agree that having a caravan show up out of nowhere after standing around doing nothing for 5 minutes is boring and immersion-breaking. I think it needs to be at least a little bit more difficult for players to put themselves in a good position to assault a caravan, and to finish the payload successfully. I also think it would encourage more teamwork, having someone trailing behind the group with an empty caravan waiting to tumble down past the wreckage and get loaded up by the marauders crate by crate following the battle, rather than having a single person drop a flag and stand around twiddling their thumbs before auto looting all the crates in two clicks by themselves.
That's about as far as I'm willing to agree with you (here at least) and I'll leave it at that.
Might not be fast travel, but it sure is boring (especially considering the timing of when it happens, right after you're all full of adrenaline and ready to make your escape) and immersion breaking.
I don't feel I need to explain the boring part - it just is. I think you should either have someone on your team with a caravan waiting around where your raiding party was hiding, or waiting somewhere nearby to head your way as soon as the tide of the battle turns in your favor. It encourages more teamwork, gives you the option of having it ready to go, somewhat nearby, or to wait until the battle is over to have someone bring it over. It increases suspense, because the empty caravan will be flagged as an enemy vehicle even before it's loaded up, rather than having it magically appear in the middle of nowhere perfectly safe with no risk or difficulty getting it to your location. Lastly, it opens up options for smaller vehicles to be used or for marauders to split up with multiple small loads in handcarts or beasts of burden rather than being forced to use a caravan for everything.
Imo, it would make the system more engaging rather than turning caravans into little more than moving high-value PvP targets.
A ship is essentially the raid wagon I'm talking about, just for use over land.
What part of this makes the game more fun to engage with?
its just so strange that we want to take a system that does what it needs to do to make sure there is a smooth transition from attacker to defender, and break it down into an extremely tedious or annoying set of mechanics.
This was the first thought I had when I saw the system, but honestly, what’s the difference here? It would make no sense for the caravan to actually be on the road and not be attackable. And if it should be attackable, then I think most people would rather be in control of it themselves. So I feel like requiring players to coordinate and have one nearby or sent out as soon as the battle is looking good and driven by an ally to the pickup site is just better overall.
This system can be used by single players, but should, imo, in virtually every case, be more easily handled by a group of at least a few, if not a dozen or more. Having one person on your team be the pickup driver isn’t asking much for the sake of a more dynamic, player-driven (literally) transition between take-downs and pick-ups.
The whole point of your thread is moot, in that summoning a pre-made item doesn't constitute quick-travel; you're still in the same place.
Pre-done effort went into summoning the item. If you have a problem with the timer on the item, that's fine - but it doesn't feel as though you'd have a lot of support for having to start at a Carvaneer for a looters' Caravan.
With the current system, only the attackers and defenders know the exact location of a destroyed caravan. But, if a new caravan had to actually drive to the attacker's location, then this would allow other players in the area to follow it as it led them to the destroyed caravan and all of its goods. Even if the transiting caravan was invulnerable, I think this would be an improvement upon the current implementation. However, I don't think invulnerability is needed to ensure that the caravan reaches its destination with a reasonable level of reliability. I think that there would be little incentive for most players to attack the caravan while its empty, particularly if there was some negative consequence such as becoming corrupted.
Bandits will 99% of the time say screw the work and just take the stolen commodities with your suggestions, removing any chance for defenders to run back and try to get their stuff back. you are essentially taking the current chance of people fighting again for their caravan and reducing the chance to almost never. Because think about it, now the defenders need to make another caravan and waddle it out in hopes that the bandits didnt just open the boxes and run away on mounts. The rare exceptions will be when specific extremely valuable loot is on the line. But even then I would fully expect most players to just take what is easily taken instead of risking losing it all by getting caught on the road.
I'm just putting ideas out that may be extreme (such as a massive raid wagon that wouldn't exactly save any time but could have other purposes) and hoping for feedback to help hone this particular system because from what I saw in the showcase it could use some reworking. The whole point of this forum is to debate ideas.
Do you really not think that's going to be a problem already? When the local area is just spamming invites to randoms to join a raid, and some of them are telling their friends to come over, pretty soon you have a full group. All it takes is 15-ish minutes for this group of randoms to come crashing down on the caravan, destroy it in about a third of that total time, crack the crates, and be on their way. In fact, all it takes is two or three people out of the entire raid to prefer cracking the crates over doing the delivery run, because there's nothing stopping anyone from doing it however they want. And as soon as one person starts doing it, I think you'll be hard pressed to find many players that won't freak out and join in before it's all gone and the rest of the goods are forfeited.
Personally, I think the crate-cracking thing either needs to go, or player-driven caravans need to not have public invites to destroy it spammed out to the entire local area. I think players should need to be in organized groups if they want to destroy a caravan, and multiple groups should be able to attack the defenders (and each other) at the same time. Random people aren't going to be coordinating recovery trade runs. I can't even fathom the average MMO player putting that together without voice communication and a pre-built foundation of trust before crates start getting busted open. Groups that want to finish the run should be able to trust that they're all on the same page with a plan in place, and should be able to kill randoms who're trying to crack crates for scraps.
I agree that this is a huge problem. Keep in mind that even if you do manage to organize a caravan and return the goods to town, players will still have to deal with the timer to open the crates. There is no way that pugs will be willing to wait for that timer to expire. Even if they did, there wouldn't be any way to know what was in the crates so the driver could potentially screw everyone over. If the driver claims that the crates contained copper when they really had adamantium, nobody could dispute it.
I actually think that would be a problem even for organized guilds. Everyone would have to completely trust the driver to be honest about the crate's contents. There needs to be a way for everyone who took part in the attack to see what's in the crates. I'm fine will allowing the caravan driver to turn in the crates and screw everyone over by keeping something for himself. People will learn not to team up with that person. But, I'm not okay will allowing the driver to keep something for himself without anyone being able to tell that they were screwed over.
It's not immersion-breaking in a High Magic Fantasy setting.
It would be immersion-breaking if Ashes were a Low Magic Fantasy setting.
This is the part you don't have to explain.
Just because you think that way does not mean everyone will agree.
In this case, the devs don't agree with you.
Yep. I think we understood that's your opinion when you said Summoning a Caravan is boring.
Every opinion on this forum is subjective, that’s what opinions are. What’s your point exactly? Where did I ever say I expected everyone to agree with me? The devs have one idea of how to do things right now, and they showed it off for feedback. I gave my feedback.
No, the one little clip you snagged from my post isn’t constructive, that would be the rest of what I posted on this thread and on the main feedback thread, when I provided an alternate concept that may interest some people. How you would know with absolute certainty what anyone other than yourself would think about my ideas is absolutely beyond me.
Are you suggesting that the caravans are magically being teleported to the flag location? Because that’s the only possible “fantasy” explanation for how it works the way it does right now. And if caravan teleport is possible, why are we driving them at all? “It’s a high fantasy setting” isn’t an excuse for inconsistency, especially if you’re of the opinion that the inconsistency doesn’t benefit the gameplay - which you may not be, but others are.
Player communication is going to be required. Just because the caravan system acts like a lobby you can freely join, doesn't mean you can ignore the consequences of not engaging with those on your current team. Ill tell you right now, I fully expect there to be an agreement quickly talked out when a group fills up. There will me a standard "etiquette" that most will learn and use to reduce the amount of repeat conversations for each caravan. A good example of what I mean comes from Everquest which i learned when I recently tried the Quarm server out.
In Everquest when you join a party there is a method most people use called "Alpha", Basically the loot on the ground is FFA, but valuable items are "alphaed" which means a round robin system based on the alphebetical lineup of the party members. This is the most common method, but my group of 3 decided on a different method. We used a different approach, and would have a primary looter, preferably someone in melee and with high str, to loot everything, and distribute loot until everyones bags were full.
Now our method was much less popular but because we were a majority of the party members in each group we could run it that way.
I say this all to explain that Just because everyone can pop those crates open doesn't mean it will be the standard method of pug groups. We don't even know if they plan on adding loot rules and such to the caravans so that we can control it better.
At the end of the day though, this does not change the problem of what you guys are advocating for. To force players to have to physically bring a caravan to attack another caravan, or even worse, wait until after to then go get it from a node, would be a massive investment of time and fundamentally make it harder for pug groups to function.
There is only one suggestion here that bridges the gap for me. Having the attackers need to help "build" the caravan instead of it being "summoned" is fine. but I put "build" in quotations for a very good reason. The only difference would be that people have to sit there animating at a box of crap on the ground after someone placed the caravan marker in their inventory on the ground. The time it takes to "summon" the caravan is based on how many are "building" it. but there are no extra resources required, you have your caravan just like the video showed, in your inventory.
Even this mechanic causes some issues, but they would be much more preferable over all of your suggestions.
I stated my point quite clearly. Boring is subjective and is not particularly constructive (or useful) criticism.
Obviously, the Caravans are being magically trasnported to the flag location. Yes.
It may be that the magic used is not sound enough to safely transport goods.
We are only recently rediscovering how magic works.
But... you should probably ask Ombwah for those details.
Your lack of understanding of the specifics or limitations of the magic is not inherently the same thing as "inconsistency". Also... magic on Verra is not a science - it is at the whim and mercy of the gods allow.
Can I use a fast agile combat ship to defeat a Naval Caravan, then summon my own 'Naval Caravan Ship' that I left at the port?