Caravans are one of the primary methods of ensuring that nodes have the supplies they need to build the buildings they need to build so that they can specialize. They're also the primary method by which players can multiply their wealth, because wealth in our game is acquired through glint, which gets traded in for commodities that can then be either sold directly to the vendor at the node you're at, or can be transported through the caravan system to other nodes for a multiple return; and that I think is going to separate the mice from men in the game with regards to the economic gameplay. Those who can successfully trade those caravans across long distances are going to see obviously a significant amount of wealth more so than their counterparts and be able to control certain markets. –
Steven Sharif
As Steven puts it, caravans are supposed to be where players stand to gain a lot of profit from their glint. At the moment this is technically true, I still have a huge issue with the current method. When it comes to commodities bought with glint, it is almost a purely individual system.
What I mean by this is that you spend the day grinding with your party, let's say a full party of 8 players, and throughout the day you've picked up a lot of glint. The party as a whole could have gotten maybe thousands of glint in a single run, but because of how glint is dropped, and because it is bound and untradable, and because even the commodities that you can buy with this glint are also bound and untradbale, you can only put your own glint onto your own caravan to make this profit.
This means that instead of a party pooling together their glint and maybe running a caravan together for a shared profit isn't going to happen. Which means at the end of the day, each of those 8 players in that party would have to each launch their own individual caravan, or even more disappointingly they'd have to make multiple trips defending each other's caravans.
I don't feel like this system lends itself to being the mobile small scale pvp event we all hoped it would be. If that party of 8 could all pitch in for the commodities loaded onto a single caravan, that entire party would have an inherit incentive to help and defend that caravan on its journey.
This could either be some party looting option so that 1 player could get the glint that is dropped, or maybe just making the commodities themselves tradable, or maybe some other way I can't think of. Either way, I'd prefer a system where this profitable caravan system lends itself to being group content rather than just an individual player running their own caravan and hoping others would defend it from possible attackers.
