Is the Caravan Event system necessary??

I was just wondering what everyone thinks when it comes to the Caravan’s pop up “attack or defend” event system.

Personally, I wish it didn’t exist. I find the pop up annoying and I feel like it will just cause a lot of unnecessary issues as we’ve already seen with flagging to attack them.

For instance If you have a group of players running caravans together, so let’s say 10 caravans, an attacking group could just select to attack one of them and not the others effectively making it impossible for the other caravans to “help” their friend unless every other Caravan owner has also set themselves as defenders in the other 9 event pop ups? Just seens very confusing, convoluted and prone to bugs and exploits.

Instead, why can’t the same rules as pvp / corruption apply to caravans? You attack one, it flags you as an attacker. You destroy one where the owner or defenders don’t fight back, you gain corruption.

There could still be a system to “hire” defenders / escorts where the owner of the caravan can invite ppl to protect the caravan ect.

Another reason why I don’t see the necessity of the caravan PvP event system is that there will already be other ways to get sanctioned PvP and destroy caravans through guild wars and node wars.

Also, this would make it so there’s a progression to the risk levels of running goods. On land with caravans will be a bit safer, but on the high seas with merchant ships while being much more rewarding, will also be much higher risk due to being a lawless zone open to constant PvP.

Just my thoughts..

Thx for reading.

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Comments

IustinusShiva

The system is intended to allow passwerbys to join caravans. I don't think the devs expected players to run caravans in groups like we have gravitated to.

We need the ability to link the carts together as one caravan event. The buttons for each caravan should be on the caravan itself (ratehr than in a separate UI) so that it can be easily seen which caravan you are defending. Or put the name of the player on the event.
For example - Iustinus Shiva's Caravan <HypotheticalGuildName> Make the player name larger and the guild name smaller underneath and offset in an easily readable way.

Falkath

It is so annoying, I don't think it's necessary. Spotting a caravan and deciding on our own if we want to attack, defend or ignore it should be up to who's driving it, if we see the pop asking if we want to either attack or defend far before we see the owner of the caravan and sometimes before we even SEE the caravan, it's just bad design.

IustinusShiva

YES , this is the real issue. The caravan owner's name should appear for certain.

bloodprophet

How do you not see it before you see the popup?

It is intended to be a mobile PVP zone. Long term will be group content and not solo friendly(as it should be).

Hiring guards from the community is a community thing. I think we will see this kind of thing in node chat later on.

Imnotkio

The caravan event system is not good IMO. Previously, the radius was really big and it announced to everyone that there was a caravan in the area, preventing any chance of doing stealth or hidden route runs. Now, it's too short and you have to almost be in melee with the caravan to choose the attacking side, which is also an issue because it's not natural behavior and it creates an unnecessary barrier of entry into the event while preventing strategies like ambushes.

It also creates unnecessary bloat in the UI and it feels super gamey and not immersive at all.

I suggest an alternative caravan system: To become a defender, you must approach and interact with the caravan. To become an attacker, you must either hit a defender or the caravan. You can have a radius around that caravan in which if someone leaves this radius for a certain amount of time, they are no longer attackers or defenders. It's simple, it doesn't require a UI middleman, it allows for stealth runs, and it's a seamless way to implement it without feeling "gamey"

nanfoodle

My problem is the only real reward is attacking. Defending needs rewards as well. The lowest bar would be some exp.

truelyyy

you aren't meant to get corrupted whilst attacking caravans. It's meant to have a risk/reward running caravans otherwise it's a PvE game and free money. However there could be some drawbacks to constantly attacking caravans all the time, some kind of limitations.

truelyyy

nanfoodle wrote: »

My problem is the only real reward is attacking. Defending needs rewards as well. The lowest bar would be some exp.

the reward is the gold the caravan makes, it's a lot, plenty of reward already exists.

Darsh13

truelyyy wrote: »

you aren't meant to get corrupted whilst attacking caravans. It's meant to have a risk/reward running caravans otherwise it's a PvE game and free money. However there could be some drawbacks to constantly attacking caravans all the time, some kind of limitations.

I understand that this is how it’s currently intended, however this is also meant to be a living breathing world with consequences and as you said, risk vs reward. I would argue that it’s a bit immersion breaking to arbitrarily decide that anyone can just attack merchants / caravans with no consequences in a world where choices and actions matter.

I would also argue that going corrupt would likely be way more beneficial if attacking a caravan compared to attacking a player just out and about.. that’s where you can really consider that risk vs reward.. might be worth going corrupt to get all those goodies.

I believe ppl attacking caravans are basically bandits and they should potentially get corruption if successful in destroying / looting that caravan.

Now that being said, if you are at war against another guild or against an entire node, this is where corruption shouldn’t be gained as attacking those caravans would then be a part of war efforts.

Alternatively, there could even be a system in place where attacking a caravan marks you as combatant, but destroying it or stealing its content doesn’t generate corruption as long as no defenders are killed.

This would make it difficult but possible to destroy undefended caravans without gaining corruption but would also make it significantly harder if there’s an escort.

Anywho. Just some ideas I’m throwing around. I just really hate the whole even pop ups. Lol

Blood_Raven

Currently if you made it to where attacking a caravan makes you corrupt no one will do it. currently going corrupt is extremely punishing to the point you don't even kill people who have trained mobs onto you because you will drop your gear when you die.
If you made it this way then caravans would have no risk to them what so ever and it would break the economy completely a single piece of common ore would be going for 50gold or some shit.
I have attacked and defended Caravans several times. It is fun and a good experience to get in some PvP that does not cost you exp debt and you don't go corrupt. There are a few things I would fix about caravans
1) Naming the caravans would be a huge help and is desperately needed so you know what caravan your attacking or defending.
2) The radius was to large and now is to small. Needs to be somewhere in between maybe 1.5 bow shot distance to sign up for the defense or attack.
3) needs to be some sort of delay before you can launch another caravan like 24 hours so you can do this once a day. Currently people are doing off hour caravan runs to avoid the risk, and running multiple one after another again damaging the economy of the servers. if you put in a delay this helps reduce this issue.

Last note as far as consequences for attacking a caravan, there are consequences. This is a social game and if your guild is known for attacking caravans or you as a individual is, it is upon the other players on the server to hold you accountable in whatever way they want, or try to do so.

Darsh13

Yeah. I suppose they are great money.. but on that note, couldn’t they also just tweak the amount of money you get from caravans to make them less profitable?

Right now I can turn less than 4 silvers into 20 silvers by buying the lowest ranked commodity and bringing that over to the next adjacent node.

What if this only doubled your profit? So 4s into 8s.. and the next level commodity could see a 3x increase instead of 10x or whatever it currently is? See what I mean? Then at this point it wouldn’t be injecting ridiculous amounts of gold super quickly in the economy.

Because let’s face it here, and correct me if I’m wrong, but the fact that caravans are currently a sanctioned PvP events does not remove that gold from the economy as far as I know.. it just changes who gets to pocket the gold. So even if things remain as they are and ppl attack caravans free for all without corruption, this ridiculous amount of gold will still be injected in the economy and it will likely simply all be going to the biggest guilds who can attack all these smaller guild’s caravans without any real risk of retribution..

nanfoodle

truelyyy wrote: »

nanfoodle wrote: »

My problem is the only real reward is attacking. Defending needs rewards as well. The lowest bar would be some exp.

the reward is the gold the caravan makes, it's a lot, plenty of reward already exists.

Not for the defenders. The person running the caravan gets everything. This needs to reward even randoms that come to defend. If there is no balance. People will not have a reason to defend.

Veeshan

nanfoodle wrote: »

My problem is the only real reward is attacking. Defending needs rewards as well. The lowest bar would be some exp.

they get rewards u can sell you glint for 1s or reward up to 12s for the same glint if you succeed

caravans are 4-12 times the glint value thats your reward for the risk you take

i do like the 125g caravan trip that takes 1.2 hours to complete lol

Chicago

nanfoodle wrote: »

truelyyy wrote: »

nanfoodle wrote: »

My problem is the only real reward is attacking. Defending needs rewards as well. The lowest bar would be some exp.

the reward is the gold the caravan makes, it's a lot, plenty of reward already exists.

Not for the defenders. The person running the caravan gets everything. This needs to reward even randoms that come to defend. If there is no balance. People will not have a reason to defend.

this!, i would like to see a gold reward or a decent amount of glint, atm you can bank around 70g for a full caravan run from halcyon to the desert, the trip takes a solid hour or more, i think you should be rewarded on time you are defending the caravan and if you spend an hour - an hour and a half defending the caravan you should make at least 20% + of the total gold made by the caravan, as many have already said, there is not much point defending atm unless its your guild

Smaashley

nanfoodle wrote: »

truelyyy wrote: »

nanfoodle wrote: »

My problem is the only real reward is attacking. Defending needs rewards as well. The lowest bar would be some exp.

the reward is the gold the caravan makes, it's a lot, plenty of reward already exists.

Not for the defenders. The person running the caravan gets everything. This needs to reward even randoms that come to defend. If there is no balance. People will not have a reason to defend.

Exactly, I'm not gonna waste 1.5 hours of my precious time by standing on a caravan's horse and getting nothing out of it.

Darsh13

In regards to defenders getting rewards, I wonder if this couldn’t just be player generated reward.

Someone in my guild suggested an idea that I thought was really cool. He suggested something along the lines of having a contract item in our inventory which we can use to invite other players to defend our caravan. The players who accept the contract would then be defenders and be unable to attack the caravan or any other defenders.

When it comes to rewards, I think the owner of the caravan would have to pre-pay money to the caravan NPC to pay the defenders as part of the contract. The defenders would know when accepting the contract how much money they are getting.

So if you are doing this with guild members who don’t want any reward, that’s cool you can set the payment as 0. But if you want to attract ppl to come escort you, you could set things for the generated contract like the maximum number of defenders, and how much you are willing to pay each of them. So let’s say I want 5 defenders at 1g / person, I’d have to put a deposit of 5g to the caravan NPC.

I think some kind of contract system like this would be cool and it wouldn’t have to be complicated. It would give ppl the incentive to help protect caravans. There could also be a way to link multiple caravans into a convoy and hire defenders for the entire convoy instead of just 1 caravan.

To prevent abuse, or bad actors, the contract payment could also just be paid to defenders who are actually near the caravans when they are turned in.

On another note, I’m really not a fan of the current pop up event system for caravans. It’s annoying and doesn’t work very well when there are multiple caravans moving together.

Instead of the current pop up with attack / defend options, I think players should simply have to target the caravan and right click to get the option to click “attack” or maybe “inspect” to get an idea of how many crates and their sizes. If the player selects “attack” and the caravan is part of a convoy, every caravan / defenders would become combatants and enemies to this player.

wakkytabbaky

didnt read every reply here , but once commodities can be traded between players somehow without it being able to be abused then you will see guilds buying commodities and loading up 1-2 caravans with everyones goods.

just also make it so anyone in a group / raid when a caravan / group of caravans is launched is all one big event so its only 1 attack / defend instead of 20

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