Ashes of Creation Is Getting Bigger 

One thing that I think Caravan's should have is the ability to hide people inside a caravan wagon. It can take like 1x3 or something, but you can have false caravans or take multiple that are hiding people inside. So maybe you know this one route is being watched by bandits. So you set up an ambush caravan. You set up the normal amount of people outside, but once combat starts everyone can hop out and now you vastly outnumber the bandits. Or if you are doing a large one, do the same thing but they are mixed in throughout to protect more.

6 dudes should be able to click something that makes them build the raft while it's happening. Makes scenarios where you attack during this phase more interesting.

Cant wait to watch my grand kids play the beta

19:00 - I do agree with this, as in Archeage you had trade-packs that would be dropped on the ground. You'd have to manually put them inside the freighter/merchant ship.

I can't stop thinking about the fact that this game is still far from being finished.

I agree with the caravan stuff. What should happen is that the bandits should have to bring their own cart and just hide it somewhere till its ready to grab the loot. That way preparation is more important for caravan raiding, and if a group doesn't prepare a caravan to haul the loot then they either need to wait for someone to bring one (which means more time they are vulnerable), or they just need to carry what look they can on them. And I do agree they should have the player carry the boxes and put them into the cart rather than just teleporting them. This would be more engaging and make having a lot of people important for speedy loading of cargo.

Yeah I think they should lean in on some of the inconvenience of the caravan system. Like having players lift and carry the boxes, and can't attack unless they drop it. Bringing crafters and gatherers to caravan raids that can increase the speed of construction by bringing more material or channeling the caravan or raft itself.

The healthbars improved

The one thing I noticed during the video was how many people were standing around waiting for timers. Either the caravan showing up, the raft being built, or the raft being broken down. There should be a mandatory amount of participants to occupy members of the raid during these times that would decrease the number of active defenders to create moments of danger and tension. Like does the wagon turn into a raft on its own? Or maybe the horses are building it? Or you could make the timer dependent on the number of active participants up to a threshold. Asmond mentioned it but the objective should not be 15 people standing waiting for a timer with no participation.

Its so interesting to see Asmon advocate for all the "Old school,Hardcore MMO" style of play that he normally rails against constantly.

The biggest problem I have with AoC is that I likely won't have the time needed to play it

I agree with asmon on the magic cart appearing. That’s something I loved about sea of thieves. You beat a raid or loot another ship, you had to drag every piece of loot to your ship, transport them it to a shop, and sell it piece by piece. Made for very tense experiences with a rewarding sigh of relief at the end.

Ashes looks really promising. MMORPGs will never get me excited before release again but I'm open to this one maybe not being total ass.

I think a better system would be to either be able to repair the broken caravan and use it or just hijack it without destroying it.

This reminds me of the Trader/Hunter/Thief jobs from Silkroad Online, a Korean MMO I used to play around 2005-2006 , as a trader you had to transport goods from a major city to another, you could pay Hunters to act as bodyguards during the travel , and thief's could intercept your trade, steal your loot and sell it on the black market

Dev's that play their game? 0= AINTNOWAY

i feel that if the game have magic elements in it you should be able to do stuff like wind magic on boat / put a barrier on the caravan / provoke landslides/rockslides on certain paths (this last one would fit really well with the narrative where you want to catch them off guard ). Also would be really nice if you had to do team management when the caravan is being converted in a boat , it should also create some sort of room in the boat to transport the horses or give the option to just leave them behind (because of the weight while on water) and once we reach the new lad path some1 from the guild could be there with new horses and a new caravan , than the people would only need to focus on moving the boxes from the boat to the caravan (also creating a better interaction bettween every1 since would create the need of having an actual Role)

the idea of fixing the wagon you broke and use that to take the goods sounds better then teleporting a whole new cart to you, it would make more sense

I really hope they re-capture the open world economy that ArcheAge had back before version 2.9.

From experience I think the following. Raft can be constructed by itself, but you can go through inconvenience of having wood, etc to build it faster. The game should let you take an empty caravan from the city from the beginning and hide it in order to ambush and grab the spoils faster but takes resources and time. That's an inconvenience that can "enhance" your results. Think of it as in more simple terms in Palworld. Your pals can make an item for you, but its done faster if you are doing/helping as well. In a game where going through some inconveniences or "being prepared" to make thinks faster/steal and grab the spoils faster gives you opportunities. You could make clutch escapes or narrowly save your things if you went through more preparation or inconveniences than the players on the other side fighting you. For me this could add a lot to immersion and fulfillment.

the transport goods to sell is literally what silkroad game was based upon, traders transporting to different cities, hunters guarding them while thieves trying to steal them. Its a great fking idea that most people who quit silkroad's endless log in might be nostalgic for.

The caravan should probably give off loot as you damage it but also leave you the chance of saving it at 15% HP and retaining a portion of the initial cargo if you manage to fend off the attackers. Would probably be fun for both the defenders and the attackers.

This reminds me of selling dirt in Wurm and transporting it on a cart with two hitched bulls across the continent. Sometimes just the journey itself would take half a day.

That whole building-the-raft section gave me some Star Citizen vibes (in a good way). Actually having to take the time for the raft to be built…and then sliding into the water like that. That was nice. It looked like it was actually a part of the game world - not just some prop. It looked “grounded”

the odds of this coming up the second I open my browser though

Everybody talking about how the combat looks, but I guarantee that they aren't going to put any real effort into the combat animations and looks until their technical decisions about how combat is actually going to work on the back end and how it integrates with other game systems is much closer to finalized.

Gotta love the comments. „Can’t wait for my grandkids to play it“. „It looks terrible“. „Why isn’t it out yet“. „Scam“. All of them contradicting themselves. What do you want? A crappy game to come out early? Or a good game that takes twice as long as you’d like? Or a scam that does come out early just so you can get your pathetic internet macho rocks off to make yourself feel better? I’ll definitely wait and see, but I’d urge everyone to actually do a deep dive on what this game is planning to achieve. Not based off of videos from people who only know the surface.

I do agree the combat needs continued work but the direction that it has started to take in the ranger update has me interested and optimistic for what it will become. Besides the combat, most aspects of this game are genuinely very intriguing and I'm very much looking forward to watching it play tested in Alpha 2 in quarter 3 of this year.

For me there has to be close to equal risk and reward for both the defenders and the attackers. The idea of having to build or have the attackers caravan travel to the ambush location is a good equal risk. Being able to summon a caravan then just click and take everything doesn't have much risk to it. I think after they take the loot they have to summon and load the loot into their own while the defenders have time to catch up and retake their caravan back. This would add the question for attackers "Is it worth my time and are we sure we can actually steal this in the end" hopefully that will prevent just random attacks because there is no risk for attackers.

They should take notes from Archeage. Some of the best time i ever had was fighting over loot. Having a loot pack on your back you couldn't glide, couldn't run very fast etc. Loading them onto ships or carts was honestly so solid.

Open combat like this feels like planetside 2, which is awesome

6:28 that guy who got killed just in second: "All around me are familiar faces, worn out places..."

the horses just casually plodding along while they're in a god damn warzone xD

Imo I think the caravan should come from the nearest city, and since it is empty should move like 5x speed compared to when its loaded. Speed prevents instakill during travel, fixes the funky spawn breaking immersion, and would just look cool seeing it trot up from down the road.

you know what could be good scenario? call a caravan when the caravan youre attacking is almost done so when it arrives youre already on the move back to base.

solution to "summon caravan" should instead be to use the resources to "repair caravan". Repairing the caravan you just ambushed seems a lot more immersive than summoning a new one.

It would be more fun to "repair" destroyed caravan and use that, and repair time depending how messed up cart was. Caravans should have different tiers as well so there would be also progressing while playing further in game. As to reloading cart with boxes, there should imo be 2 players carrying 1 box, that way there will be need for some organised stuff and it makes ppl do something than just standing and waiting for some timer etc. Actually .. depending how much damage you do to cart more items will be destroyed. Defenders could also think about that, when should we attack our own caravan cart to give opponent minimum loot.

Hmm you should have to have a caravan drive from the nearest town. If you can just spawn one at no real cost, the only commitment required to be a bandit is to find the caravan. The commitment to do it the right way as a high value van would be setting up a scouting party, guards etc, and then traveling from point a to point b.

It would be cool if you could cause the enemy caravan to stop with rock slides or trenches

Dark Age of Camelot 15 minute teleport pad timer meant if you died in pvp (rvr) and could not be rezzed it would be anywhere from 5 to 20 mins to get back in game and your team would often have to come back to the teleport keep to pick you up or you had to try solo back to your team past the mile gates that are invariably camped by stealthers. A major fucking inconvenience but one that created really interesting gameplay.

19:03 this is the same guy that would bitch and moan about having to pick up and load each item. I can see it now. "you should be just be able to press a button and it picks up all the loot around it"

tbh many of the suggestions for how this system should work have already been done in archeage which heavily inspired ashes so its very likely some of it will happen. 1. Archeage ships also had bonus or nerfed move speed based on direction and stopped/maneuvered slower the larger the ship was making vehicle movement punishing to mess up. When he crashed into the rock, if that happens in archeage the front of the ship would go onto land slightly and they would have to back up like a car out of a parking space before readjusting course. It might be inconvenient but it made it punishing and was a good thing for pvp. 2. Cargo in ArcheAge wasnt an inventory system and were trade packs that each player could only carry one of at a time and had to manually load onto vehicles. If you pirated a vehicle, you now have to either wait for captains protection buff to take the steering wheel or crash/destroy it and then summon and manually load the packs onto your own vehicle. So IMO the inventory system is a downgrade from the inspiration but this is an easy thing to change/add imo. 3. In Archeage multiple players could interact with different parts of the ship such as sails (you could lower or raise based on wind), crows nest, cannons, radar. However having too many people on one ship would cause it to lose speed due to weight and even start to sink until some people get off. Theres more but this is a basic overview of some of the mechancis that existed in the system that ashes is taking inspiration from and many of them are worth trying to incorporate here as well.

the rest of the raid should have something to do while summoning the caravan or converting it to raft. mayb gathering resourses to make it progress etc

My biggest red flag is this: why, after 8-9 years in development, do they NOT have the CORE gameplay mechanics in place for all the classes? All this extra other sh*t means zip if they don't even have core class elements in place. It's absurd, I keep waiting for real updates and real progress, but all they show off are side features that mean nothing without core gameplay in place.

they had me at "plant spies in other guilds"

They should just have it to where players can reassemble the broken down caravan. More players repairing it equals faster reassembly. That would be way less immersion, breaking then instantly spawning a cart, and would still accomplish the concept of defending that area control before you can start hauling back the loot.

I dont think this will ever be released past alpha or beta

It's interesting to see how tipping culture varies around the world, and how different countries approach it. It seems like there are valid arguments for both sides. However, it's important to remember that ultimately, tipping should be a personal choice based on the quality of service received.

One of the coolest ideas about PVP caravans will be the fact of guilds solely based on Caravan attacks, and others based on Caravan protection and it will be an all out battle at times.

I fucking love how every livestream starts with the epic music and followed up with Stephen yelling in his scuffed mic “HELLOO EVERYONE!” I really hope this game will be a succes, this team deserves it.

The loot needs to be the resources that were being transported, minus x %. That way you don't have massive gold generation and also you're deleting resources from the world, a sink outside of just crafting. Turning these in for gold, printed from nothing, is a bad idea, IMO.

For the boxes, with this amount of people and the size of the boxes, you should need 2 people per box to carry it into the caravan. Spawning the caravan like this is also not something I like, you should bring the caravan from the city, on that note, you should be able to see if a caravan is empty or not. For the raft conversion, maybe not so much gather wood etc to convert it, but have X amount of people that need to "build" it, and the base amount of time that it required now, will be required once all X people build it, if its less then X builders, it will take longer

This was seriously impressive, I seriously don’t understand how Ashes of Creation gets so much hate. Especially when the game is still actively being openly developed and including the community feedback.

the caravan thing reminds me of running trade packs in Archeage, a system that was really cool on paper but in execution just made people stop playing and ruined the economy in game. the people running the trade goods carried all the risk and would lose everything if they were attacked since carrying trade packs left you unable to fight effectively so you would always lose against a competent bandit. The bandits had zero risk on their end, if they failed (which rarely happened) they lost nothing, if they won they gain a hefty chunk of money for their robbery. It always sounds really fun but unless they find a way to balance the risk/reward I wont see it doing well. Funny thing is Archeage did it a lot more like how Asmon is saying. The packs were actual backpacks that you had to carry one per person, carts and wagons had slots that you loaded them on to and you had to pick them up to load them on one at a time. Loading ships for oversea trade runs usually required a group of people running packs up and down the beach to be loaded onto a rowboat to be moved to the trading ship.

This game is getting out of control… there is zero chance it delivers on its 1.5 billion ideas

Honestly looks great. I like the direction and just have a few things I would personally like, at least from watching this. 1. Everything being timed makes it feel slow. Maybe it can be faster with small things like profession levels or unique class utility skills? 2. I agree with Asmon that it would feel more immersive carrying luggage, not summoning caravans on the road, etc. This could go with making it faster paced as compensation. 3. It's kind of a preference, but I like very little interfaces if possible. It seems like there's quite a bit and that, to me, can get annoying. I'd have to try it though.

Imagin destroying perfectly fine caravan to then wait for your own to get the goods instead of just using taken caravan as your own xDD 10 IQ move

A zergy, guild-focused, grindy and time intensive MMORPG in an era where most players prefer to play solo most of the time, have shorter game sessions (for multiple reasons), and complain about the smallest grinds. I guess we will see how this pans out in the end.

I'll try AoC when it comes out but I expect it to not live up to the hype.

28:44 Plus, having to get wood to build the raft transition structure would give the crew guarding it something to do during the journey other than PVE/PVP

Scented candles? Did we ambush Bath and Bodyworks?

I like the airship idea! I think you could make it work too. I would be cool to have it so you have to 'sink' the enemy airship, and then either land your airship to collect the goods, and choose to either load your airship up, or convert the score to a land caravan.

Summoning the caravan is supposed to be a race against time, because once you've summoned it, you gotta go ASAP otherwise the enemies you've just killed will return and curbstomp your ass. This very easily creates tension and excitement for the players. And the ability to pick up the supplies with an aoe mechanic is useful as you do not want to delay for a single second.

This brings me back to Silkroad Online type days. That was an amazing system, Trader/Hunter/Thief this gets me excited. @Asmongold TV ; on the topic of not spawning a caravan on the spot. In Silkroad we used to spawn it in town and cut off the caravan we were hunting because its much faster to take out the enemy caravan and then grab your hidden one fill it up and be out quickly. The way they show it in the game, wouldn't be very efficient anyway

My biggest fear is that, when this game comes out in 21xx, only hardcore players will have a good time due to how much time you would need to invest if you ever want to keep up or not have it wasted by the game's mechanics and PvP system.

EverQuest had Swashbucklers in the Big Tunnel, who traded to anyone, regardless of race or factions. It was also the Birthplace of the first open players market before player trader vendors were created. It was fun to shop the Individual player, going thru market and the aisles.

Alright, I'm semi sold.

I feel like this could be really cool, imagine Roleplaying as an information broker, go into guilds, find out when people are doing caravans, selling that info to other guids, making money from each guild, then imagine multiple guilds attacking the same caravan, then having to fight eachover. This could be great, getting rich off information.

I really don't understand how people can get excited for a full loot PvP MMO after basically how all the others tend to perform after a year at most. Most of them are dead in 2-3 months.

They should put three things for me : 1) As Asmon' said : More funny animation for the Caravan's loot 2) You can't open crates on site, except for the smallest loots maybe but not the worthest ones. Those one have "Golden lock" that you need to bring to a place to open. That way if someone steals it from you, you're upset but not as if you knew what's inside. 3) You need linked crates too. Like few of them have a golden chain between them, so you MUST BE 3 People to carry all of them.

My grandkids might enjoy playing this when it launches in 50 years time.

This kind of Caravan System exists in an old game called Silkroad and I never understood why no other developer was introducing a simular system like this into their game. Its super fun and keeps player interacting with each other.

Love how Asmon keeps comparing AOC QOL mechanics in a PVP event, to a single player cartoon styled survival game like Valheim

A thing I'm curious about is how it'd work with others in your guild tailing behind or walking near the caravan as backup. As well as if you can have people inside the caravan that pop out when shit hits the fan. Like imagine you're attacking a mid level looking caravan and the moment you do a max level Chad bursts out and starts kicking your shit in.

Yall thinking its gonna flop or be good?

Take in mind that the caravan summons delay gives time for the defeated group time to attack to reclaim.

Cant wait to just dive into this and forget that i have a life outside this game.

I believe that the caravans should have a (say) statue of some god that gives certain buffs to the defenders like being able to respawn closer to the caravan or something that makes it easier to defend the caravan, since the defenders would never have the initiative in a fight like this while traveling.

Scope creep = keep adding stuff = never release

I think contraband should only be considered as such if it is stolen from the town in question or one of its allies.

34:20 It could be interesting to see elemental effects in these fights. Fire (be it magical or fire pointed arrows) should burn the sail, freeze could make the boat slower and even stop it at the frozen water beneath it, even some "grass type" or "earth type" magic to make the water mudier. But that may be a little hard to implement in a game that already promisse so much content

Honestly so proud of the gaming community for being skeptical about ashes. Tragically this is the one time it doesn't matter, where the company developing the game already has boatloads of money and no pressure to release prematurely and we can just watch from the sidelines as it gets better

Def should be more of a building aspect on all the player sides, like a build timer bar and the more people working on the structure the faster it goes, so when combat happens some people will have to stop working to defend it so it gets built slower. Instead of like, ordering a new caravan to instantly pop up at your location maybe have them gather materials nearby or even from the caravans loot itself to repair the same caravan you destroyed to use it for yourself. In that case an incentive not to kill the horses otherwise you have to provide your own.

What I'd really like to see is some massive high level PASSIVE mobs that are only aggravated by attacking them or by fulfilling a certain condition like taking from their territory or attacking their family or something. I'm sure there will be a load of cool passive mobs in the future, but seeing A massive mob altering the landscape as it walks around, but isn't aggressive would be super cool

as someone who loved vanilla wow as a kid and loves tarkov as an adult, i really enjoy fair inconveniences. if this game adds a captivating story and more distinct art, it will probably be the next game to consume me

I'm all in for more immersive mechanics and slower things. I'd much prefer an activity that was slower and way more dangerous but converts into a much bigger reward at the end. Some things I thought about: you should bring your own caravan to ambushes like these, or, you should fight while being careful to not kill the horses or destroy the raided caravan, so that you can use to ship things away; alternatively, you could bring carts or just carry things by yourselves (way less than you can get with a full caravan); turning the caravan into a raft should also use player input, like you said about picking up the crates to transfer to the second caravan, and moving the raft also needs player input, some players rowing and/or some mages using wind magic. Another idea I had was about creating a hideout nearby to store the loot at the possibility of losing the caravan. There's a lot of potential immersion here, please go at it 100%, ashes of creation devs.

The summon caravan isn't instant though. It takes time based on the distance from where you got the item so you have to defend it as the caravan is built. They never said it would be built instantly.

My input - I largely agree with Asmons feedback - instead of standing around waiting for caravan, or for the caravan to convert to raft, you should craft it with skill trees and wood and nails, premade wheels etc (think of a traffic jam, what feels better, waiting for traffic to move or taking a side route that might be slower but at least you're driving and making progress). But also if people are often converting caravans to rafts because of the good river systems, the caravan should already be built to float, definitely can be built in a way it doesn't need complete deconstruction and reconstruction... maybe a higher level caravan is amphibious. Horses should board the caravan as well. And finally, when the wind is calm, you don't raise a sail, that does nothing. You row the boat unless the currents provide enough movement.

What if the raid atacking the caravan needed to have it's own empty caravan wagon, it could be stationed anywhere they want and they need to bring the boxes to their caravan (or the other way around)? It even brings up the possibility of caravan special skills based on classes, like conceal the caravan in the woods for a ranger, armor it like a tank with smiths, even weaponize it with other specs. Imagine a big armored caravan with 2 balestras up top and 4 big armored horses! If the raid need to build the caravan, they could even select the mounts they would use to pull it (and lose those mounts if the caravan got destroyed)! A special skill to drive more mounts on it and control more powerfull ones, another to be able to capture the mounts on the oposing caravan, even maybe be able to just rob the entire wagon without destroying it. For the raft, just make it a buildable asset that you need to build and put the wagon in it. It could be pre build to prepare, but that would be signaling a caravan will be comming that way. That would be much more immersive imo and bring a layer of stability to the world.

I think if a group is prepairing to raid another caravan, they should have to bring their own wagon from some town ahead of time, and stash it somewhere near the area. That way it requires people to plan for it, instead of just farming it from people. Either they do that, or someone has to go to the nearest town and ride one back themselves. Then after they break the caravan they are attacking, they pull it out from wherever they hid it, everyone has to help load it, then they have to defend it the rest of the way to where they are taking it.

How about let it build anywhere in a world, then you get horses to it and now it's a player controlled vehicle which you need to get to loot, building in city = safe but everyone sees you go, outside build can be interrupted but travel distance to loot is shorter, or have some caravan specific magic that makes it invisible until it's ready to go

TBH I can really empathize with Asmond's way of desiring a bit more tedium in these games. I want to be left behind if I fall overboard, I do want my boat to crash if I don't stop soon enough, and I think having provisions dedicated to building the docks would be great as well. Like make a cargo slot or 2 be filled with these materials for it. Or make it a modular upgrade you can put on before each caravan begins. Maybe one gives better traction in muddy environments whereas the others might make you not have to gather materials for the dock at the cost of additional weight or loss in speed etc etc.

Caravan to Raft conversion. I think people escorting the Caravan has to que up for the building. So that if you have 15 people escorting and like 7 que up for building then only 8 is left to defend. Depending on the amount of people building, should reduce the amount of time it takes to build the raft. You can que out of building the raft, but then it gets built slower. Also, theres carpenters in the game. If you have a Carpenter depending on its mastery level the build speed could increase 5-25%. If you have two carpenters, it doubles and so on. If we are going for immersion, and narative, I think it makes a lot of sence.

The problem with a slow project, as in any kind of work or field is that by the time you complete it, the people don't need it anymore, because something else has come up in shorter time period and it's newer.

31:19 even if the entire game loop was about just that. Collecting resources and transporting them from point A to point B to get rich, at the risk of being atacked and loose it all. It is still a game I would play happy.

They should let union spells so that 3 or more mages put big static area spell to help defend the caravan transformation or easy to craft small barrier/walls/tours to make poor defense and then make them boost with rune magic. A complete team would then be really hard to attack. And in the attack team make big siege spells with 3 or more mages that takes time and maybe resources to complete

If you can't summon a caravan and need to get one on the spot, then every bandit group just prepare a caravan in advance and skip this entire mechanic. And because of how towns work in this game, ie. you don't just spawn at the closest but at your 'base', no matter how far, there's no chance of recovering your assets if the bandits just immediately grab and go. The reason the summoning system takes a period of time and you can't just bring your own caravan is because the time is proportional to how far you are from town, and that means if you caught people that were on longer trips, they have more time to retaliate.

I'm convinced that, based on how negative the comments have been around this game, even if it's the best MMO of all time, people will still be talking shit because people don't like being wrong. So no matter how good it is, people will continue to find anything and everything to talk shit about

you should be able to damage the caravan to like half hp and then hi jack it, drive it back to somewhere, half health means its a little slower 30% and is obviously more vulnerable

Cant believe chatters who are out here with 1000 hours into New World have the audacity to call the combat in AOC "Lame", despite not even being in alpha.