Caravans

Khizan

Caravans have been out for about two months now and AM will be finishing up te Beacons research tree tonight; I think the system's been out long enough at this point for people to have informed opinions about it, rather than just the "I think this will be problematic" speculation we had on release day. So here are my thoughts on caravans:

• Prismatic Barrier: Without any kind of real aggro/threat mechanics, prismatic barrier is the only reasonable way to handle the guards(one person goes in alone and aggros all the guards and barriers, everybody else goes in6 afterwards and kills them while they're focused on the barrier). This is a problem because barrier is restricted to one class per circle(two of which are barely played) and the artifact lyres. Without barrier you either have to one person per guard or you have to corpserush the guards down, neither of which is really feasible. We've had situations where we've had 4-5 people interested in going after a caravan but no lyres or wardancers, so we couldn't take them. Barrier is also problematic for boss tanking, particularly Legion, since you have to have so many people channeling that you've basically got to barrier tank him or trade aggro between artifact tanks. The ideal solution here is to implement some kind of real PvE mechanics. We don't necessarily need the tank/heal/dps triad, but it would be nice to have a way to mitigate clots and high damage bosses. Failing that, possible band-aids include:
  
  Make the trader a boss, reduce his entourage: This would keep the same time-to-plunder, but it would reduce the sources of damage; this allows for a primitive version of aggro trading that reduces the need for a barrier tank. Boss mechanics could be adjusted to require X amount of people in on the kill to prevent caravans from being soloable.
  
  Implement a PvE-only Barrier: Give more classes the ability to barrier tank, but only let it block mobile attacks. Giving this to Knights would be good; it's thematic and there's a lot of knights around, so there would usually be access to it.
  
  
  
• The rich get richer: Getting early caravans let us get a huge lead on researching Beacons; beacons let us get even more caravans. We get better warnings, we get NPC guards to help us clear caravans, and when demonic gets beacons we'll be able to just go conquer them because we've got the skills and the quartz to do it. It's too hard to play catch up. Shardfalls have single shards that people can collect to get an edge, and it's also possible to solo-harvest a late night shardfall. This means that every side could get a fairly steady trickle of shards in, which helped them learn more shard abilties which helped them win shardfalls. Caravans, on the other hand, have no singles and they're not really soloable; it's very possible to get a 2am caravan and have nobody around to take it with you, so you just have to let it roll on. This means that the underdog side pretty much has no way to really gain quartz and the lack of quartz means that they can't get the things that would help them get more quartz. My ideas for this are:
  
  Singles: Make some type of 'single quartz' thing, something that people can run on their own. Don't give any warnings about these,  so that you have to be actively looking for them. Horde peddlers carrying 1-2 plunders worth of stuff on their backs, etc. 
  
  NPC Guards: It takes at least 650 quartz(3 researches + at least one beacon) to get access to guards, and guards help you get more quartz. The more quartz you get the more beacons you can build, and the more beacons you can build the more guards you have, and the more guards you have the more quartz you can get, and the more quartz you can get...
  
  This gets pretty rough when you're on the bottom side of things. I'd like to say that NPC guards should be standard and that beacons should increase their performance or reduce their cooldown or something along those lines. Maybe add the tank/healer guard types from the Godwar armies, something like that, so that beacons make your guards more effective, but everybody has access to the basics.
  
  
• PvP: I love caravan PvP. It's my favorite conflict mechanic you've introduced, because one ballsy fighter can skirmish with a caravan party, and the nature of caravans means that a tactical loss can still be a strategic victory; the small group doesn't have to win the fight, they just have to disrupt things enough to deny the opposing side the caravan. My only thing here is that ranged barrier breaking is so effective and so risk-free, I'd prefer it if caravan mechanics didn't make soulspear/gtoss so powerful at disrupting. Other than that, I have no real complaints here.

Cassius

Make PvE prismatic a shard skill.

Linslet

The problem with making caravan guards or a PvE barrier standard this late in the game is, it's over, you already won.  The fact that you're throwing this topic up now and not a month ago when it was very clear that the system was flawed and steamrollish, while letting everyone also know that you're finishing up the tree tonight is more than a little patronizing.  Even if those things DO become the standard, you're still so far advantaged that there's little to no point to buy in with the quartz needed to make a beacon anymore.  Either we throw the one beacon needed to actually research things in who gives a damn corner of the world that no one goes to or you take it over while beying beyond reproach because you can effectively deny any meaningful caravan counterplay at this point.

Wysrias

I don't think it's intentionally patronizing, but I kind of agree that it's already done with. It could be the holiday lull, it just doesn't feel worthwhile to participate, short of trying to offset commodity penalties that, largely, the PK community doesn't really care about. This mechanic is just a rehash of existing mechanics, with new flaws and nothing being offered other than a commodity sink and the already mentioned problems. I know sometimes it takes time to identify problems and smooth them out, but I think some fault lies in the inherent design here.

Bathan

It's definitely cool to get more conflict systems, but going forward it might be worth factoring into design the idea that at least one circle will suffer from a far smaller population at any given time. Shards worked because once AM started to go inactive the other circles were able to swell their own numbers and eventually catch up. That should be a core concept in the future.

Khizan

The problem is only academic right now because demonic can't win a fight in general, and the reasons why they can't win a general purpose fight aren't germane to this thread at all because they're entirely independent from caravan mechanics. Suffice it to say that it is demonic.txt yet again.

When the cycle turns and/or demonic picks up a power combo like Juran/Septus and starts winning fights with any regularity, they'll take all the caravans they want, especially if NPC guards become baseline or otherwise changed to be less of an advantage.

Wysrias

They aren't entirely independent though. Demonic did not have regular access to prismatic and had to give up a lot of caravans they'd otherwise have gotten because nobody could pick them up. I know this for a fact because that was basically my work mornings for a good month or so. This system is built upon an early advantage that has already been established, and it's a bit late to try to play catch up. It's important because a conflict mechanic relies on having players to compete with - it's very hard to garner interest when the slope is intended to get steeper over time.

Another question is, why take caravans? Right now the reason seems to be "so that other cities can't take them". Same goes for sabotaging other cities. You gain quartz so that you can gain more caravans to gain more quartz. You also get a lot of dead rats and commodities with it. So what? It isn't particularly fun and can be ignored, so it will be and is. The question is really, how do you make it rewarding without punishing non-participation, and I don't think that balance has been struck yet.

Khizan

Could always pick up a temp lyre from that one boss, that's how Ultrix gets her barrier; that's the only way we had barrier, actually, since Tahm wasn't around until the last few weeks.

That aside, I go to caravans because I hope other people will come try and take them away from me, I don't really need any more reason than that. If they told me that I could kill people over left-handed widgets, I'd go collect those, too.  What they probably should have done is released a lot of the quality of life style changes along with Beacons; things like the shard crit/tattoo/etc skills, so that people who aren't willing to fight to the death over widget production would have some investment in the whole thing.

Ultrix

Wysrias said:

Another question is, why take caravans? Right now the reason seems to be "so that other cities can't take them". Same goes for sabotaging other cities. You gain quartz so that you can gain more caravans to gain more quartz. You also get a lot of dead rats and commodities with it. So what? It isn't particularly fun and can be ignored, so it will be and is. The question is really, how do you make it rewarding without punishing non-participation, and I don't think that balance has been struck yet.

I agree that a fundamental problem with caravans is that the benefits to participating in the system (PK reasons aside) aren't that great, at least not compared to what I've seen with the unlocking of shard skills mechanisms from earlier. Like, you get caravans for...quartz for research/building beacons, and raw materials for comms. But who is buying comms from cities? (No one, because Mantlus undercuts everyone). In theory, the research system is supposed to burn up the reserve stockpiles, but if there's no incentive to research, then there's no using up the reserves, which means no one has any incentive to go out and get raw materials (or what you get from towne transport is more than sufficient).

Ahkan

I think the caravan system could use a little tweaking to make it more fun.

-Caravan guards are bad and if you insist on keeping them they should not hit players.

-Your cooldown for guards is less than the caravan timer.

-You have TWO cool downs per super org

-The 'beacon' system is not strategic. There are 2-3 areas almost every caravan goes through. Establish dominance there and likely never miss a caravan. Ever. The trade routes are regional as is and need to be more global. (Add in npcs and derp a derp)

-The rats aren't funny anymore

-Prowling. Come on. Really?

-The tree is bad. As has already been addressed, success at caravans begets more success. It's a geometric progression and is bad.

Beacons \o/. More detection of caravans!

Guards that do most of the fighting for me, even against players! More quartz for me!

Beacon destruction. I hate competition. I want to deny the quartz and the information about quartz. They can't counter this if I have these 3 skills.

With regards to the discussion:
I don't like the idea of making the trader a 'boss'. The solution to a hard boss mob is going to be corpse rushing. That's how we beat Legion. That's how we beat Silanthor. That's how we beat everything. If you have more bodies, you're going to win. Let's not even get into population dynamics.

Periodic bosses would be cool, like "Grugugh is tired of losing caravans so he dispatches his sergeant Steveugh and he leads a fake caravan of orc spec ops that kick the piss out of people because they can. (This sounds like a story. An awesome story. Like an orc James Bond.)

If there were more variation (it's bland) to the repetitiveness, it would be cool. What it boils down to is that it's just a shard fall that runs away from you that has NPC's at it. The research system is actually less rewarding than shards and it's easier to play 'deny'. It's a good system that really just needs a good once over to polish it up a bit and make it more interesting and set it apart from shards.

Iniar

Also stop this prismatic nonsense. Build in some team coordination (nevermind whatever I said before):- 1 person to stall the caravan, 1 person to fend off reinforcements, 2 persons to kill off the vanguard. More roles, less mindless bashing.

(( Since not having numbers to compete nor enough credits to shackle an active Raksha already predetermines a loss, might as well make it more challenging for the side that will win anyway ))

Ahkan said:

-The 'beacon' system is not strategic. There are 2-3 areas almost every caravan goes through. Establish dominance there and likely never miss a caravan. Ever. The trade routes are regional as is and need to be more global. (Add in npcs and derp a derp)

Cannot upvote this enough.

Kabaal

Population differences have had huge impact since forever. The solution is group combat limiters. Having played in a game with one of those in place, it's a glorious feeling to know you still have a chance even if it's 2v6. It's still rough, because it's able to be played around. Something like a +X% or +flat time per person from your circle who attacked the target in the last Y seconds added to bal/eq costs would be the equivalent here, since afflictions are binary. It would still allow for godlike alpha strikes from larger teams, but they would be harder to do repeatedly and would open people up for a counterattack. In smaller team fights, it makes it a strategic choice between higher D/APS on a target and maximizing total D/APS.

Other tweaks and considerations can be made, but something along these lines is absolutely needed. Just aye em oh.

Khizan

The problem with that is that it will result in things like "No, lowbie, you can't come fight, because you will be a detriment to our team" and "GODDAMNIT LOWBIE GET OUT YOU ARE MESSING EVERYTHING UP".

Those are bad things.

Kabaal

Khizan said:

The problem with that is that it will result in things like "No, lowbie, you can't come fight, because you will be a detriment to our team" and "GODDAMNIT LOWBIE GET OUT YOU ARE MESSING EVERYTHING UP".

Those are bad things.

They are! But they are far better than combat being simply unfun when it gets beyond very small groups. And if you can't teach a newbie enough to follow directions you should all be getting anyway, then that's on you.

Septus

I'm not sure this would really have the desired affect (at least in an implementation like proposed). I think it'd actually make the people who are already really hard to kill even harder to kill, while leaving the average person able to be zerged down just fine. A lot of the time you're counting on being able to burst down big targets in a small window before they can get away (because they will get away). Maybe not though.

Garryn

Alright, let me see.

The sentries are there mainly for mob-vs-mob and for beacon attacks. Their ability to attack players is not crucial to their role, and I'm not opposed to making changes there if they are still proving too effective after the recent adjustments.

We're adding more routes gradually, which should spread out the caravans some. Our continent layout does have a few central areas, so this will not be 100%. We'll see.

Snowballing effect of quartz - we do have some mitigating factors there (for one, the sentry-calling cooldown applies to beacon attackers as well, which can be taken advantage of), but yes, we will need to do more here it seems.

Prismatic - like most mobs, the horde mobs should be spreading their attacks between players in room, is this not enough?

More tactical options - we've been working on adding some more depth to PvE, it's a very slow process though. The second new shard tree (guard updates) doesn't seem to be generating much interest so far, so we may end up repurposing some of that to this role (that, or add a third research tree). No promises here for now, as I want to get the classlead/knight changes out for betatesting first.

Kabaal

Septus said:

I'm not sure this would really have the desired affect (at least in an implementation like proposed). I think it'd actually make the people who are already really hard to kill even harder to kill, while leaving the average person able to be zerged down just fine. A lot of the time you're counting on being able to burst down big targets in a small window before they can get away (because they will get away). Maybe not though.

Somebody will always win. I'd rather it be who had the strongest fighter than who had the bigger numbers, but it should fall somewhere in between the two in reality. And yeah, someone like Kabaal would still go down to two claymore knights hitting him at the same time. Having them sacrifice a little bit of overall D/APS for it doesn't seem unreasonable, though. The main reason I don't suggest it more often is that it gets weird when you start to consider how passives, AoEs, and other nonstandard attacks should work with it.

My point is: Until there's a bit more tactical decision making at the group level of combat, it's always going to be a numbers game no matter how many mobs or moving focus points or island outposts or shiny jewel powers you stick around it.

Jules

Kabaal said:

Khizan said:

The problem with that is that it will result in things like "No, lowbie, you can't come fight, because you will be a detriment to our team" and "GODDAMNIT LOWBIE GET OUT YOU ARE MESSING EVERYTHING UP".

Those are bad things.

They are! But they are far better than combat being simply unfun when it gets beyond very small groups. And if you can't teach a newbie enough to follow directions you should all be getting anyway, then that's on you.

There seem to be sooooo many caravans.  Are there enough to be split into two kinds?  One kind for small (bring your best) groups, one for everyone, all with plunder (arrrrrrghhhhhhhh).  Khizan, you had actually mentioned something with a similar intent, in reference to Underworld I believe.  The gist of it was that there should be plenty of things where all of us "player mobiles" can come along (Iniar is so mean  ), but there should also be things for small groups.  Also, it was all part of that romantic getaway I heard you're planning for Ultrix.  

Ultrix

Garryn said:

The sentries are there mainly for mob-vs-mob and for beacon attacks. Their ability to attack players is not crucial to their role, and I'm not opposed to making changes there if they are still proving too effective after the recent adjustments.

With respect to the mob-v-mob aspect only, the sentries already have a tendency to die to the horde when there is only one or two bashers with you (regardless of whether there is any PvP) -- and then they spam CT with their death messages ( ).

Garryn said:

Prismatic - like most mobs, the horde mobs should be spreading their attacks between players in room, is this not enough?

The reason you need prismatic is because there's something like 12 (?) aggressive mobs, and no single person can tank that many hits. So the first person rolls in, hits prismatic so all of the aggros are on him/her, then the rest of the bashers come in and work together to pick off the mobs one by one. While the single mob being attacked by your team may spread its attacks out against those who are hitting it, the remaining 11 mobs are still aggro on the prismatic holder. So prismatic is a -must- in order to beat the horde, even if you have sentries, because sentries don't pick up all the aggros.

Ultrix

Jules said:

Khizan, you had actually mentioned something with a similar intent, in reference to Underworld I believe. The gist of it was that there should be plenty of things where all of us "player mobiles" can come along (Iniar is so mean ), but there should also be things for small groups. Also, it was all part of that romantic getaway I heard you're planning for Ultrix.

We all know this is totally untrue; Khizan is the worst fiance ever.

Septus

The thing is, an advantage that helps level the playingfield when you're outnumbered in this context means you'll utterly curbstomp opposition when numbers are equal or you outnumber the other team. I've not really been doing the caravan thing for the last month or so so don't know how its going down in practice, but I'd personally be really, really inclined not to want to fight a group plus guards. Its just not going to happen. I'm all for guards being there to kill the mobs (because that's the linear part that gets same old after a few iterations), but I don't think they should ever attack players (unless some player decides to start bashing them, in which case they have only themselves to blame).

Iniar

@Garryn, just a tiny bit of coordination with 2-3 different roles would make a huge difference to the flavour; right now it is simply a bash fest behind one prismatic barrier. Imagine, if there were dedicated lock out timers for damage to differing mobs, or differing 'weapons' to be used, or mechanically, even just one person to stop the driver 'steering' during a window of opportunity. Different roles means less of this 'bring-everyone-hit-same-thing' thing that amazingly Seria still fouls up.

Iniar

Alternatively, design a reward for assisting the Horde.

Sarrius

The guard tree isn't really generating interest because the beacon tree is a far more important investment, and guard upgrades are probably perceived as not that useful. Also, to most people, guards in cities are already very strong, and nobody really uses townes for much anyways, so the upgrades would be a strain on city coffers and resources for what basically amounts to nothing.

If townes had a larger purpose than 'that place we plunder/get comma from' and 'money pit for people to waste gold on blatantly less secure hpuses', maybe guard upgrades would mean something in that department?

Ahkan

@Garryn @eoghan

Syntax: PROWLING ON|OFF

This ability will allow you to walk without being attacked by any aggressive creatures of the wilds. City guards and entities loyal to players will not be fooled, however. Any aggressive action will stop this.

You must be camouflaged in order to use it successfully
You must be windwalking in order to use it successfully.

While a neat mechanic, this is still a rough skill that has no counter. This is being used in caravans to disrupt walls (aggressive action: shard disrupt) enact walls (aggressive action: shard wall). You can't engage on the person who has prowling up, despite the fact they're blowing up walls, flooding rooms, laying thread traps, etc.qw

Can we have prowling:

-Not work on horde caravans

-Break on the use of ANY equilibrium or balance (to prevent shield spam while you have prowling up)

-Have it actual respect aggressive actions.

Eoghan

Ahkan said:

Can we have prowling:

-Not work on horde caravans

Caravans will continue moving if the only player(s) present are prowling.

Ahkan said:

-Break on the use of ANY equilibrium or balance (to prevent shield spam while you have prowling up)

This isn't a change we're planning to make right now, but Garryn might have a different opinion.

Ahkan said:

-Have it actual respect aggressive actions.

All aggressive actions cause prowling to be stripped. There is no third party message.

Ahkan

So basically,

prowling

do stupid aggressive actions

put prowling back up

No penalty?

Ultrix

Ahkan said:

So basically,

prowling

do stupid aggressive actions

put prowling back up

No penalty?

There is a bal/eq cost to putting up the prowling defense.

Linslet

Technically true, but Ahkan is arguing against different aspects of the skill. The balance cost is irrelevant.

Shou

Ahkan said:

So basically,

prowling

do stupid aggressive actions

put prowling back up

No penalty?

Sounds almost like dopple actions, except with dopplegangers you're out of danger.

Mathiaus

@Shou I think in this instance he's referring to the caravan aspect of it, not the general purpose I think you were trying to relay, because a doppleganger cannot put walls and such up in a caravan's room.