Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Caravan?

    • 5 posts
    March 20, 2019 4:15 PM PDT

    The latest Newsletter mentioned this system and I have never heard anything like it in any MMOs I have played in the past. After a forum search on the topic, I only found a few threads that supplied very little information and, instead, devolved into arguments about the validity of such a system. While I welcome open discourse on the pros and cons of any system, I would like to make up my own mind on the subject and want to avoid any can of worms about what (apparently) is a hot-button topic. So I am asking the following pointed questions:

    1. What is the Caravan system and what (in its base ideology) does it allow players to do?

    2. What are the pros of such a system in terms of players with limited time to engage in the game?

    3. What are the cons of such a system in terms of exploits (excluding purposefully-intentioned work-arounds to issues)?

    Thank you--we are all #PantheonPassionate!

     

    <3 Tess

    • 3852 posts
    March 20, 2019 4:34 PM PDT

    Caravan is a system used  in Vanguard. As I understand it, the system allowed (or at least was intended to allow) players to associate themselves with other players for travel purposes so that if they logged off in location X and a player that they were associated with moved to location Y, when they logged on they would log-on in location Y. Making it easier to group together - which was the purpose of the system.

    In all my time in Vanguard I never actually used the system so this answer may be too oversimplified or even outright wrong.

     

    • 90 posts
    March 20, 2019 4:35 PM PDT
    I feel like the only person here that didn't play Vanguard.....
    • 3237 posts
    March 20, 2019 4:53 PM PDT

    I was dabbling with some theory crafting a little while back and this is what I came up with:

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ywACNWUnOw8CdlYwqP2Y59hyFQL2ieu_1WbNBh0xj40/edit

    • 438 posts
    March 20, 2019 5:03 PM PDT

    Nah Ghool i didn't play it either. I like the idea of the caravan system to an extent... quicker travel when not on the game is nice. Especially if its late you need to go to bed, but want to get to a distant location. My only concern is how i could see being abused. If there is no timer on how long it would take to go into effect, then I could jump on a caravan, log off, log back in and BAM! I am where i want to be. Which makes me think of just having PoK books. Now like i said above, i do like the idea of it IF theres a timer on using a caravan for long distance traveling while logged out of the game. an hour, two, etc. etc. Then i think (just me of course) that it;d be a fantastic tool at a players arsenal to travel without actually being on the game.

    • 1785 posts
    March 20, 2019 5:43 PM PDT

    I never used the caravan system in vanguard either :)  But dorotea is right as far as the intent goes.

    I think the challenge with this sort of system is that it depends on how everything else in the world is laid out in order to be useful to players or not.  For example, I remember in Vanguard, we all thought the idea was good on paper - but in reality, there was just not much reason to use it.  A lot of this was due to the ability to teleport between the major cities instead of having to hop on a ship and go through the sea gates (although crazy people like me still sailed between the continents just because we could).  Part of it was also due to there only being a few viable content areas at higher levels.  And then, flying mounts that enabled us to cross continents relatively quickly without having to worry about terrain or enemies along the way.  But, if the world of Telon had been finished out as originally intended, caravans probably would have been far more useful in that game.

    As far as caravans in Pantheon, I'm reserving judgement until we can get into alpha/beta and see what travel on foot really feels like.  To be honest, if it ends up being like EQ, in terms of travel time and the availability of group ports, I don't see caravans being very useful to players.  It will simply be easier to join the taxi channel, get a port and a run speed buff, and then run the rest of the way.

    • 5 posts
    March 20, 2019 9:44 PM PDT

    I suppose I don't understand the necessity of this. Are travel times so bloated that this is needed? Or is the surrounding zones so dangerous that you can't run to a group? Again, please expound....

    • 41 posts
    March 20, 2019 11:10 PM PDT

    Tesserae said:

    I suppose I don't understand the necessity of this. Are travel times so bloated that this is needed? Or is the surrounding zones so dangerous that you can't run to a group? Again, please expound....

    Sounds to me like it would only be useful in a unique situation where you and a friend want to group later in a different area but you need to log off before your friend.  You caravan with him before you log off, he makes the journey and when you log on again you are there already.  I guess that would be handy if you are 2 boxing in that you caravan one toon for a long journey so you don't have to worry about auto follow dropping.

     

    • 1785 posts
    March 21, 2019 12:53 AM PDT

    Tesserae said:

    I suppose I don't understand the necessity of this. Are travel times so bloated that this is needed? Or is the surrounding zones so dangerous that you can't run to a group? Again, please expound....

    That's the question, really.  None of us knows what travel time and/or difficulty is really going to look like in Pantheon.  We can all guess, and we all have our opinions on what they *should* be - but until the game's in a state where we can actually get in and run from one side of a continent to another, it's all just guesswork.

    The caravan idea is one option (of potentially many) to help people stay close to their friends if the world is as big and spread out as many of us hope (both in terms of time and distance).  Will it truly be useful?  We'll just have to wait and see.

    • 1860 posts
    March 21, 2019 1:39 AM PDT

    It was mentioned at one point in connection of if a player goes LD.  The way I understood it the party can continue to move through the dungeon and not have to wait for the player who was disconnected.  They would be with the group when they logged back in.


    This post was edited by philo at March 21, 2019 2:02 AM PDT
    • 206 posts
    March 21, 2019 6:09 AM PDT

    I never played Vangaurd either, and thank you for asking this question Tesserae. 

    • 1247 posts
    March 21, 2019 6:21 AM PDT

    Yep, that’s why I think it makes sense with ‘LD’ but not to be used just ‘at will.’ 

    #communitymatters #makenightmatteragain #riskvsreward


    This post was edited by Syrif at March 21, 2019 7:13 AM PDT
    • 413 posts
    March 21, 2019 6:57 AM PDT

    When I think of a caravan, I think of NPCs moving from one city to another.

    For travel - I see it moving you from one city to another while you logged out.

    I also like the idea of Role-playing a caravan because it easy for character to jump in and jump out, in a story-telling capacity.

    • 193 posts
    March 21, 2019 7:24 AM PDT

    Tesserae said:

    I suppose I don't understand the necessity of this. Are travel times so bloated that this is needed? Or is the surrounding zones so dangerous that you can't run to a group? Again, please expound....

    To give you a little perspective, in EQ there were ocean going boats that you could take to travel between continents. In this game, it would be like going between, let's say, the Dark Myr area to Wild's End. You would get on the ship, run around, sit, whatever and it literally took 20-30 (?) minutes for that boat to arrive at its destination. It wouldn't be a stretch to imagine that there would be high and higher level areas between the starting areas, so if you rolled an elf, let's say, and you wanted to group with your friend who rolled a halfling the caravan might be a good way for one of you to get to the other's area, or somewhere in between, but it would take lots of real time - maybe 6 or 8 hours. So the caravan would safely get you to where you wanted to go, just not terribly quickly. Although, I suppose that would be faster and better than dozens of deaths & corpse retrievals! :)

    • 3852 posts
    March 21, 2019 8:15 AM PDT

    Don't feel bad about lacking the Vanguard background and having to guess what some of us are referring to. I and others here never played Everquest (other than some brief dabbling at very low level in my case) and that puts us in what seems to be a *small* minority.

    One thing the March newsletter mentioned is that efforts will be made to accomodate those with relatively short play sessions. Of course we don't know whether relatively short to VR means only having an hour to log on, find a group, get to the group and actually do something useful or whether the game will be planned so that two or three hours is considered "short" and an hour will be useless other than to craft or solo. In a game with no content designed for solo play.

    But whatever "short" means, Caravan almost surely is designed mostly for people that won't have huge amounts of time so that they can automatically travel with their more fortunate friends that are not burdened by having "a life" and can spend their limited time adventuring not traveling.

    • 46 posts
    March 21, 2019 8:25 AM PDT

    I seem to have missed where they said the Caravan's would be NPC's sending you off to various places. I thought it was other PC's dragging you along (with your blessing) while you were offline.

    I would like best the latter, PC's helping PC's.

    A middle ground I would be OK-ish with (but would need to be limited in where it can go, like capitals only maybe?) would be NPC caravans that can transport you, online or off, but would still travel in real time.

    The worst, to me, would be NPC caravans that acted as Skyrim style FastTravel. You hire them, then boom you're somewhere else without any time investment.

    • 2419 posts
    March 21, 2019 8:32 AM PDT

    philo said:

    It was mentioned at one point in connection of if a player goes LD.  The way I understood it the party can continue to move through the dungeon and not have to wait for the player who was disconnected.  They would be with the group when they logged back in.

    Oh I could see exploits if that were the case.  Your group has a Rogue.  You go into a dungeon and everyon but the Rogue force-quits their game client thus going linkdead. Rogue uses Sneak to get down to a safe spot where the rest of the group conveniently logs back in having bypassed all the hazards along the way.  So long as the Rogue didn't come across any NPCs with the 'Cunning' disposition a group could move through any zone with impunity.

    EDIT:

    Very early on the Caravan system was promoted as a way to travel when logged off, between specific points.  Thus you could log off in Wilds End, attached to a Caravan that would move you to Thronefast overnight.  When you log back in X hours later, you would be in Thronefast.  There was a minimum time required (several hours if memory serves) for you to be offline though so you couldn't 'cheat' the system to use it for fast travel.


    This post was edited by Vandraad at March 21, 2019 8:38 AM PDT
    • 1033 posts
    March 21, 2019 8:50 AM PDT

    I don't see the point in game play with this feature. It appears to be more of a "convenience" that allows players to circumvent travel, exploration and planning. I don't think using "real life" as an argument to ask for easier game mechanics is a legitimate argument. Such I think, is why we have so many problems with modern MMOs. 

    In EQ, we dealt with lack of time to play all the time and what we did was to schedule our play sessions to provide adequate chunks of play time where we could accomplish things(it made those sessions all the more exciting and special).

    I think many forget that "solo play" in EQ was not going and killing mobs like you are in a group, often "solo play" was a character running from one side of the world on their own to get to another area to meet up to group or play with others. Sometimes you did this as a group, other times you might slowly and carefully move through the zones on to your destination by yourself, exploring as you went. 

    The point is, a lot of play was done solo as you were moving through the world, specifically because the world was large, and your ability to move through it was very slow. This also amplified the important of certain class abilities and the dependence on others. Maybe you need to get to a destination so you can play with a friend the next night. So, you seek a druid/wizard, get a port, ask for a speed buff to help you move along your journey. Those run out, but along the way you run into more people, talk with them, they help you out with another speed buff and you are on your way. 

    The caravan system I think defeats this interaction, this requirement in play and works against the entire goal of what this game is trying to achieve. 

     

    • 1247 posts
    March 21, 2019 9:05 AM PDT

    Beautiful points you raise Tanix. The requirement of ‘solo play’ in a group-focused game is one of the things that actually makes a player appreciate time spent in the game. 

    #communitymatters #makenightmatteragain #riskvsreward 

    • 230 posts
    March 21, 2019 9:31 AM PDT

    Syrif said:

    Beautiful points you raise Tanix. The requirement of ‘solo play’ in a group-focused game is one of the things that actually makes a player appreciate time spent in the game. 

    #communitymatters #makenightmatteragain #riskvsreward 

     

    No he really doesn't. He enforces his opinions as if they were facts. It's nice his schedule is so regimented that he can actually predict when he'll be able to play. For me it depends when I got off work, what traffic is like, what work I have to do at home before I can play. On weeknights I could be on from 6-9:30 or 8-9:30 and if work the next day looks light I could even hang till midnight. But I can't reliably predict when I can get in game as it is not my highest priority.

     So a mechanic that can let me hang with my guildee's until I can take control of my toon is a godsend. It does NOT grant solo play and I'm willing to bet while I'm using the caravan functionality I will  not get any XP or gold. So it really is only a convenience.

    • 1033 posts
    March 21, 2019 9:43 AM PDT

    DracoKalen said:

    Syrif said:

    Beautiful points you raise Tanix. The requirement of ‘solo play’ in a group-focused game is one of the things that actually makes a player appreciate time spent in the game. 

    #communitymatters #makenightmatteragain #riskvsreward 

     

    No he really doesn't. He enforces his opinions as if they were facts. It's nice his schedule is so regimented that he can actually predict when he'll be able to play. For me it depends when I got off work, what traffic is like, what work I have to do at home before I can play. On weeknights I could be on from 6-9:30 or 8-9:30 and if work the next day looks light I could even hang till midnight. But I can't reliably predict when I can get in game as it is not my highest priority.

     So a mechanic that can let me hang with my guildee's until I can take control of my toon is a godsend. It does NOT grant solo play and I'm willing to bet while I'm using the caravan functionality I will  not get any XP or gold. So it really is only a convenience.

     

    All these same problems existed when EQ was released. You make the assumption that these RL problems did not exist during EQ and people did not make means to work around them. Even so, at the end of the day is it reasonable to demand a game provide play circumvention due to an individuals lack of personal time? You do realize this is the exact argument that was made to justify RMT?

    There were times when I was on call that I had little time to play games of this nature. I accepted this and sought avenues where activites or games fit within the needs of my schedule. You can't make games for "everyone". This is the very thing that brought us to MMOs of today. 

    The fact of my discussion is that caravans do circumvent game play requirements of travel and I think I was pretty clear in describing what those were.

     


    This post was edited by Tanix at March 21, 2019 9:44 AM PDT
    • 206 posts
    March 21, 2019 9:44 AM PDT

    If im understanding Caravans correctly, I think they seem redundant. Why not just stick to vessals (or air ships) between each continent? I want to play with friends at an early stage, but I also want to have the knowledge of how to get there by being forced to traverse quite the distance. It would make me appriciate the games run speed buffs giving them more relevance. Also, have you seen the enviornmental detail in this world? Make me run through it all!


    This post was edited by Valorous1 at March 21, 2019 9:46 AM PDT
    • 793 posts
    March 21, 2019 9:45 AM PDT

    I seem to recall Brad explaining what his idea was which IIRC, was something like at the end of the night you decide you want to go to Wildsd End, so you catch a Caravan going there, and then you can log off, then over the course of the night you get taken to that location.

    He didn't discuss what happens if you log in 10 minutes later.

    Are you on a caravan, can you jump off the cravan?

    Do we actually see wagon trains roaming the landscape?

    Can you ride the caravan and stay logged in for the entire journey?

    How long does the journey take?

    Do you have to visit a location first to be able to caravan there?

     

    I believe it was just an idea and concept which had not fully been fleshed out, but that was some time ago.

    In my mind, it was alot like the EQ boat, but you didn't have to wait for it to arrive, you could essentially like buy a ticket and then whenever the next one got there you were loaded up whether you were online or not.

     


    This post was edited by Fulton at March 21, 2019 9:47 AM PDT
    • 230 posts
    March 21, 2019 9:46 AM PDT

    Valorous1 said:

    If im understanding Caravans correctly, I think they seem redundant. Why not just stick to vessals and air ships between each continent? I want to play with friends at an early stage, but I also want to have the knowledge of how to get there by being forced to traverse quite the distance. It would make me appriciate the games run speed buffs giving them more relevance. Also, have you seen the enviornmental detail in this world? Make me run through it all!

     

     Because caravans allow you to travel in country. Not just to the continent.

    • 1033 posts
    March 21, 2019 9:48 AM PDT

    Valorous1 said:

    If im understanding Caravans correctly, I think they seem redundant. Why not just stick to vessals and air ships between each continent? I want to play with friends at an early stage, but I also want to have the knowledge of how to get theer by being forced to traverse quit the distance. It would make me appriciate the games run speed buffs giving them more relevance. Also, have you seen the enviornmental detail in this world? Make me run through it all!

    I think they argument as was made above is that "some" people do not have time due to their RL schedules or committments and so having a system where they can just log in and play with friends at an instant is needed. 

    My only point is RL circumstances of this level of need should not dictate entire game systems to circumvent game play to accomodate. If a person does not have time to play a type of game, they should accept their limitations and try to make due, or find other forms of activity that do allow for it. After all, there are tons of MMOs out there that allow for the log in and in 5 mins you are up and running and entire adventures can be finished in 15-20 mins.