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Ashes of Creation is all about risk vs reward, but the caravan systems is completely out of balance with that idea. Let’s take a look at what the system entails, how it’s out of balance, and what could be done to fix it.
Go check out ChibiBree and Virtek over at the Golden Feather:
https://www.twitch.tv/tgftavern
https://www.youtube.com/@UCyalO_kS2Cf8-buvB-tI7Iw
source
cringe AF opening voice………………
Look at you talking about balance of the systems. They’re not even close to balancing yet. You got sucked in.
Attackers are too vital to the gameplay loop to de-incentivize players from attacking. Without attackers, you’re playing Overwatch Payload without an enemy team. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound fun to me. Anything that arbitrarily creates less attackers is antithetical to the gameplay loop as a whole.
Every attacker eventually becomes a defender. Whether that’s after successfully wiping a caravan or having to launch a caravan of their own. The script of risk always flips. That’s ultimately how the system has been designed in a fair way.
Always happy to see a Xillin upload. Keep em coming mate!
I feel it needs to be taken into consideration that Personal Caravans are not a must. It is not a high risk with huge loss forced upon you. It is an opportunity for you to gamble your gold to increase it tenfold, basically. It is indeed a huge risk by design – thats why maybe it wont be a game system where all players will run the personal caravans, but a few resourceful people will be able to and with the rest joining in. And I think thats okay, potentially.
A2 will tell.
im SCREAMING LMAOOOOO LOLOLOLOL
Hahaha this was a great video Xillin! Certainly has nothing to do with that juicy Suspect plug lol. 😜
But yeah, Intrepid needs to find a fix for this. For sake of the economy alone, I'm hoping that we will see some kind of real risk for attackers. Because as you said it's hardly there. It's a heavy impact on the economy if people don't have a strong enough incentive to defend caravans.
Oh. My. BOB! That was an amazing intro! lololol 🤣
I loved "…because of how MATH works…"
TL;DR:
Yes. Attackers need to have more risk than has currently been described. The Caravan system will survive if not, but a large portion of audience will evaporate. Only the hardcore PVP folks will make the runs. BEST case: PVE lifeskillers will hand over all their products to a group of PVP try-hards and they pay back the material cost +50% of profit if the caravan run is successfully completed. Even then, PVP experts will live like kings among the PVE plebs.
Long-winded reply:
I think there may not be any adjustment at all to the system, tbh. Steven seems to be fixated on purposely creating as many possible points of player friction as possible. (I say that in a respectful manner. I understand the reasoning behind the approach, even if I have some gripes with it.)
Basically the same reason why 80% of dungeons and raids will be open world, and the remaining 20% will be story-mode and non-repeatable.
Steven seems to want PVE players to depend upon PVP players, so there will need to be reputable merc guilds that have a good track record of successfully escorting caravans. Otherwise…I'm curious what that will do to the PVE player population.
PVE lifeskills are supposed to be very involved. Gathering, Processing, Crafting, Hunting animals, animal husbandry, being successful enough to buy a Freehold to do processing, Stock market, working the auction house, etc. Many of the folks that keep an economy going in other games that include features truly PVE content do not focus their time in mastering all the intricacies of PVP combat. They may dabble, but not to nearly the degree that will be needed to maintain the combat effectiveness of someone that simply runs around doing PVX combat, building their power, and raiding caravans.
They will be destroyed, especially if attackers have no balancing risk.
Dam… but.. but.. I've already watched it 🙁
Anyways, yes I've been saying THIS for a while now… the ATTACKERS need to have more RISK.. Stollen goods should only be worth around 15% of their original value, that way the Defenders can afford to pay mercenaries 20% of the profits (Profit = Sale price – purchase price) and it's now not "Worth" backstabbing the Merchant when you get there. I'd also like to see a Temp PvP debuff for attackers that are killed, not only is the Risk pathetically low for Attackers but also they're coming back OVER and OVER until they win. What else is there to do with your XP then burn of xp debt once you reach max level ?.? Is xp Debt at max level REALLY a penalty ?.?
Completely random and disconnected thoughts on topic:
1. If noone sows, noone shall reap. You can't sit all day on the hill in camouflage waiting for caravan that is not coming because it is a certain death.
2. It may not be profitable to gather a hundred ironclad lads to deliver goods in the node over the hill but steamrolling the whole continent to make 200x profit is another thing. Caravan train is also fun. Same time, double the risk, double the profit (depends on the number of carts).
3. I see there are two types of caravans. For profits and to build stuff (progress node, crafting etc).
We dont know how much more profit defenders get vs pillagers. If wares cost depends on distance travelled from where caravan was formed, than pillagers get much less as they form caravan much closer to sell point. Besides, stealing goods turns them into "defenders" and they could be attacked by third side so goods could change owner multiple times on their way. Pillagers also should risk their caravan or they get just a fraction of possible reward.
Former "we do not sow" pillagers at some point would have to run their own caravan with construction wares to build guild hall or craft gear or whatever. With all the risk and possible reward. Which makes it kinda balanced as you play both roles in turns.
Economy has to run and in the end if caravans are so unprofitable, the price will go higher and make it profitable I guess. Only time (A2) will tell.
You said that the attackers risk the XP debt on death, but I'm pretty sure the caravan event doesn't apply the corruption system.
A portion of the loot from the caravan is also sunk, so that nobody gets it. But I agree, there should be some risk for the attacker's side.
This is where I’ll have to hard disagree with you my friend. While it is true that reputation will be this biggest sacrifice you make as an attacker this could have catastrophic consequences if you piss off the wrong guild. This will be a major way to make money in ashes and if the guild you hire to defend you backstabs you they’ll no longer get defense jobs. The time alone to offload all stolen goods is going to be multiple days and we aren’t actually sure of the limit of stolen goods you can hold in the material inventory it may have a hard limit and stealing would automatically be less appealing. Far to many variables left in the air for me to make a solid decision but for now I’m fine with the current idea of reputation being a currency and one that can’t be easily replaced.
Hey, Liniker here, I'll comment on that as someone that played multiple MMOs with this same system and I mainly Delivered tradepacks, this system is not new, it worked on Silkroad, it worked in Archeage, it works to this day in EVE Online, a new MMO just launched similar to oldschool Tibia, called Ravendawn and has the exact same system, carry tradepacks the further you deliver the higher the gold % theres the risk of getting attacked (with no risk for the attacker side) etc etc, and again, it works perfectly people love it…
you do not need risk for attackers or developers fingers balancing both attackers/defenders sides this is big missunderstanding the system, players are in charge this is community driven, you bring friends, you bring your guild, your alliance, you do caravans on a time schedule, or you just dont run caravans on your own! its a group based content the reward in the whole system is in bringing the items and getting paid thats the reward part and the risk is in getting attacked, joining in to defend a caravan is something your Guild, Firends, Allys and fellow Citizens will do, not random strangers (mostly not),
its a region based game, you defend caravans in your region because that's the smart thing to do, and you attack caravans in other regions, thats how it plays out and it always worked in similar games, the one that needs to defend your caravan is Yourself, you don't rely on random people to join in, they might, but they don't need to, the system is intended for your fellow citizens and allies to join in, thats how it Always worked in every single MMO with this system, hope this helps clarifying
Just my understanding here but for the raiders to to get the most profit out of a successful attack on a caravan they would have to risk their own caravan and its components just like the defenders. Not only do they have to defend it from the original owners of the cargo but any other raider groups hunting for caravans.
I think a lot of attackers will raid caravans just for the PVP and bragging rights. Also, in a conflict between towns and guilds, you may not even care if you reap rewards, so long as you destroy your foes economy.
Bro… the risk is in the pudding. Defenders could have sold their materials at the node they belonged too and in turn get base prices. They're risking the biscuit to double or even triple what they would have earned. Practically taking their check to the gambling casino instead of cashing it.
The Defenders have an added bonus of not being seen, period; unless a potential attacker is close enough to get the que to be ATTACKER or DEFENDER, way more of an incentive to be a defender. Attackers will ALWAYS (unless spying and being prepared) be underhanded to take down a guarded cart by themselves. I don't know if you know this, but no matter how hungry a potential PvPer is, they are not going to face off against a group that will just zerg them down. What is it called… OH YEAH… it's called having a unlife wish (youtube's protected speech).
The ATTACKERS are the risk the DEFENDERS have to take to make double/triple/quadruple what they would have made, so there has to be an incentive to even have attackers. Your market will crash if the materials that should have been difficult to send from node too node become over simplified and there is no risk the defenders take. You'll have New World all over again.
This is also the only form of WPvP in the game. WPvP in general is a joke, no one is going to kill anyone out in the world when the corruption debuff that goes along with it makes the act incredibly biased toward the "victim". You become a fish in the barrel so why would you do it; 'For some raw materials that may or may not be super rare, you're joking right?' Might as well make it PvE because I'm not going to engage in that. There is no legitimate incentive to be hunted down like a dog for the next 8 HOURS. As this is the one true form of PvP, the price of participation really should not be that high. Because otherwise this game will be dead on arrival. Selling point: PvP similar to Archeage and Lineage 2; The game: No PvP, not because there isn't any but because the "risk" debuff that goes along with it hits like an anvil.
There's also Highwaymen, and Defender Guild progression for both sides.
We do not know what the penalty is from these Guilds if you lose, or win.
attackers become defenders quickly…. i think it is meant to change hands more than once per trip.
For a caravan, it’s not much of a caravan. Hopefully, they’ll increase the total size and number of carts. As it stands, it’s just a long PvP(?) fetch quest. Should be more about actually moving real materials (which would be free resources for an enemy) between locations. Also, that PvP looked like straight Zerg crap. No presence of skill whatsoever in the actual PvP. Straight button mashing.
Edit: Well, you also can’t attack friendly nodes, so perhaps you can’t do the same for citizens of such. If this is the case, then you just wasted a whole lot of time running to enemy territory to camp for nothing.
This has the disclaimer in development for a reason.
Rewards will be added later.
Very simple fix is forced full loot flag upon attacking. Attackers die and drop gear including an item of value that must be carried to flag.
very well explained. Be sure to add to the forums. Attackers should have some type of "shady-ness" debuff making it harder for them to be involved in trade in towns or more difficult to become mayor or just be involved in diplomacy and gameplay that has to do with nodes in which they engaged in a caravan PvP.
One key point you missed: Attackers don't get much of anything, unless they become defenders. Successful defenders are going to be the ones making bank, whether they started out as attackers or as defenders.
This doesn’t seem quite right. If two equal armies square off and the odds of success are 50/50, but the defender has most of the risk, then yes there would be a huge disincentive to using caravans.
But if a good wagon has defensive perks that turn the odds in favor of the defender it should balance out. If the defender has most of the risk, but also the higher likelihood of success. The attacker is risking their time with a low chance of success. And if a lot of random attackers show up to overwhelm the defender, it will turn into a free for all after the wagon falls, further decreasing chance of success for each attacker.
On top of that, I’m inclined to defend wagons headed to a node where I’m a citizen or vassal nodes because those goods will help build up my node and quality of life. Because of that I imagine the only viable raid groups would be large teams of friends targeting trade into rival nodes, as opposed to random skirmishes of individuals.
In short, even if in the early game it is hard to move goods safely with caravans, as each player’s motivation starts to align with larger goals the trade may flow more freely. Super excited to see how this plays out in Alpha 2. Thanks for the vid!
Hmm, I feel like…. i wasnt asking your permission to watch the video, Ill do whatever I damn well please, thank you very much.
I'm inclined to agree, attackers having 0 penalties will just have people camping trails and caravans all day long. Why do any work when I can just steal other people's loot risk free
Nice ending lol.
I kinda agree but I'm not sure how much reward is really in it for the attackers without taking on more risk. I need to see more about how the money, time and distances balance out. Alot of politics to it too.
Well if the attacker wants to move all the materials they can, they' ll need a caravan which requires the same materials that the original defenders had to make. Increasing the attackers' risk. with some materials being lost when the caravan is destroyed, the attackers will never have an equitable reward to the original defenders. So while their risk is low, their reward is more often than not going to be lower than the defenders who put in more risk.
Hopefully that made sense
I think that the best way to solve this situation is for attackers to have a chance to drop their gear upon death (or other very valuable items). My opinion is around balancing organized militias of attackers; In the current state, they’d be able to get right back up and do it all over again which I think is bad. One other solution to my specific issue would be a very long respawn timer after failing an attack, or something in that nature.
In terms of the negatives you brought up that are caused by the low risk such as “people strolling up to caravans and attacking on sight”, I do believe this will very rarely/never happen as they would simply die trying. A solo attacker starts attacking a caravan, and the group defenders decimate them. If a solo attacker were to try and group up people from surrounding areas, they would still probably get decimated (if similar group sizes) just purely based off of the disparity of experience and communication between the two groups. Attackers being random people who’ve never met before communicating through in-game means, and Defenders being a group of people selected to defend who have probably had a decent amount of experience working together communicating either in-game or the possibility of apps like Discord. All of this leaving the only real successful Attackers to be the groups of people banded together with the purpose of attacking Caravans.
Now of course this assumes Caravans will always have groups of people defending, which isn’t gonna be the case. If it were the case, I’d just say fair game. The Defenders advantage in that situation would be the speed and stealth of that transit, not the efficacy of combat in a combat scenario. If you wanted to be able to defend your Caravan, you should’ve brought the guns with you.
I thought Steven understood the question! His answer made it sound like he doesn't want the attacker to have risk, and the defender should have all the risk, because they stand to make a fortune. I guess we'll see how it works out in A2?
Well you are wrong in saying that the attacker gets the same reward as the defender and risking nothing but his life and XP debt (and maybe intangibles like reputation in the area). How are you wrong? In order to get that same reward that the defender would get for successfully delivering the goods, the defender must: 1) Win the fight to destroy the caravan and defenders in order to get the loot, 2) must spawn their own caravan (that they are then risking just like the defender), 3) successfully defend that caravan with it being a 100% certainty that at least one other group knows where they are and where they are likely going (i.e., the former defenders know where that caravan was destroyed and the nearby locations the former attackers may try to go with the loot).
In order for the attacker to successfully attack against a caravan that has abilities that heal, repulse, etc., the attacker is fighting has to bring more people in order to make up for the disadvantage of not having the caravan abilities that the attacker doesn't have = greater risk in the initial fight.
They must spawn their caravan which means they must also risk the resources (time/money) that went into buying and upgrading it just like the original defender. And because caravans take longer to spawn the further from town you are, the attackers are now sitting ducks.
And of course, the defenders know where they lost the caravan, roughly how many people there are, and where they are likely to try to go so the former defenders can now go back – possibly with a bigger posse – and retake their goods.
I could've swore you had special guests on this video, spot on impressions! XD Anyway, after watching your video I'm gonna have to agree about some risk for the attackers beyond just the social dynamics and rivalries that can occur. Even though there was a similar system in EVE, the attacker still bore the risk of losing their ship and everything on it and have to go get another ship to attack me again. While in Ashes, they respawn with a bit of XP debt and keep coming. Perhaps value loss on destruction of the caravan, burned up or destroyed. Some of it sinks to the bottom of the river and is lost?
Ferry easy solved. Let the caravan owner of protectors add stuff to it. Like NPC guard. From OWN level to the best guard in the game. Those Shouf be max lol plus 10 of so. Also let then pick the guard. Healers, tanks, mage etc.
Last add trapas to the caravans. If taken by the enemy traps can to of and do massive aoe dammage.
Just Some easy ideas
with the reward you get from lugging your goods you can most likely pay a mercenaries to help defend . if attackers fail they will lose and just add to the defenders overall rewards. the caravan can have buffs and abilities that we have not seen yet. we dont have enough final information to make definitive answers on this yet.
when people do these big moves to take their stuff to other nodes they might do it on off times in middle of night or morning . unless the attackers know times and places its gonna be hard for them to attack players caravans.
Unless they openly sit at beaches/choke points all day long and do nothing ells. That or have spy's who report to large guilds and possibly wont have enough time to intercept with a large enough force anyway.
This all comes down to information and who is more prepared . In the video the attackers knew when and where the caravan was and when it was coming they knew they had more numbers and were stronger . They knew they could take the caravan and get away and they knew that no matter what they had numbers greater . Their was no danger to the attackers.
what if it was the other way around and the defenders had a second group of players hiding in the distance waiting for the attackers to attack only to pop out of the trees and no pinch them .
Seems like you'd accrue hella corruption attacking caravans all day and with that comes a bit of a negative eh?
If there is one thing gamers love, it's escort missions
Give caravans an option to pull a jail cart behind them. Defeated attackers can be placed in the cage, serve time in jail at local town. Or defeated attackers get shackled with somwthing that provides a teleport to a specific jail.
Ashes is going to be very reputation based game so if you go down this road of going back on your word and stealing people stuff instead, the server is going to remember you.
So i don't see it as a problem necessarily. In the end it will depend a lot on the server player base how these things will work themselves out.
Funny stuff.
a friend is forcing me to write a coment -bell
Here's a idea. Normal player attacks do no damage to a caravan. In order to destroy a caravan you need some type of seige equipment that's very expensive to make and if it gets destroyed by the defense it's lost forever and you have ti craft a new one to attempt another caravan seige
Good point. FYI the attackers only get a portion of the original transported goods.