for starters, flat out, WE DONT REALLY KNOW how much risk it will be when it comes to attacking a caravan just yet and at best can speculate. for me, i believe there is already PLENTY of risk and while more wouldnt be amiss, i think that its not really an issue that needs to be worth worrying over. to list it out in a clear format before i watch the video ill start by saying that at a base level you can just be doing random shit like going on a farming run and see a caravan roll by and expect there to be no risk in taking a podshot at it because you WILL be risking all the resources you gathered and time you spent to get them and even if you were say, traveling to a dungeon to take part in a raid, if you win the random caravan assault, you either get left with stolen goods that will not really be worth it and bog you down from being able to get good loot in the raid AND take the time up of everyone else taking part as well as making everyone on that raid haveta be associated with bandits which you would be if you took out a caravan which especially depending on the guilds rep, they may not like that fact and kick you off of future raids and disassociate with you leaving you needing to look to find a new guild that would willingly take highwaymen into their midst. beyond that there is the fact that if you die even if you were just traveling, the length from one end of the continent to the other end will likely be around 900km to 1000km meaning you will be putting yourself HEAVILY back in terms of going wherever you were going especially since travel time will likely be hindered by other highwaymen and monsters especially if your destination is off the main road. beyond all of that, if you win the caravan and dont want to sell stolen goods, you than need to stop whatever you WERE doing and take on all the risk of trying to hold the caravans remains until someone can return with a caravan package to make a new caravan to transport the crates meaning it will be even riskier for you than it was for the original party cause they will also 100% be sending people to come reclaim the goods. lastly i will say this as a guy wo will be running a caravansary myself, the sort of troop layouts on any even half prepared caravan would be HEAVY for defense and make raiding a half decent well enough prepared caravan a challenge for a ambush party that itself prepared pretty well. the example of what the standard layout of teams i would have protecting any of my customers caravans would be 3 tanks on the main party with 2 flanking either side of the driver with than 1 behind the caravan with than the driver would be a summoner who can summon creatures to fight for them while they drive the caravan away with 2 extra summoners all on either side of the caravan with them all being damaged focus'd summoners with the ability to help heal or tank as needed and than 2 double clerics who can use revive magic and thats not accounting for the part ty that would be on either side being made up of 1 ranger at a far distance but keeping pace with the caravan protected by 2 tanks and a double cleric with they would be summoner secondary's who would serve as surveillance and long range support in the case of a ambush that sprung whether they noticed the ambush beforehand or not with than a group of 8 double rogues staking out the entire front of the caravans path in stealth whos whole purpose is to remain hidden and try to find ambushes and in the event of an ambush, make key picks on targets like healers or mages before the enemy team even realizes they walked into a flank formation. full stop, good guilds with even half a brain about how to run a good caravan WONT be caught out by impromptu attempts by pug groups who thought they could get lucky. nevermind these sort of guilds like mine who will proly become the majority of caravans you see roaming around likely will both build up A LOT of money through taking a portion of the profit as payment for transporting the caravan safely but due to that money will also likely easily be able to become BIG and WELL FITTED groups so honestly the less risk to random attackers means the bigger guilds running the caravans will have competition and before someone tries saying it, this game is not meant to be solo and big or small guild, take your pick, you will NEED a guild supporting all actions you take and do which is why they have allowed those who want to start building up guilds do it so early on the forums. full stop if you are trying to run a caravan as a pug or ESEPCIALLY as a solo than just stop or be ready to be fucking obliterated.....

all in all, the people that want more death penalties either dont understand the penalties that are already in place or are intentionally or not complaing that the game is going to be hard and require teamwork and heavy planning with guilds to make work and that it will be a serious understaking and risky for anyone trying to do anything and that while the risk level varies depending on how much your aiming for, it will always be there.

2:24 EXCACTLY! like if they decide to to just take whatever they can carry whether they planed to attack a caravan or not than they get very little reward and leave a lot there for the original caravanners or other players to come and take and if they risk it all and wait for one of their guys to bring a caravan than they take on EXTRA risk well beyond what the original caravanners took on until they kill the original caravanners on respawn and as seen in the stream, they attacked the caravan multiple times being able to reach it over and over again meaning there is serious risk cause you piss off what is likely another entire guild of people who not only want to hunt down that caravan but in each attack, remember each of your names and any guilds you all are in to than hunt you guys later for this transgression. hell no matter what thats a massive not just risk but full on penalty to even trying to raid a caravan is that they ca see all your names and if your group is all a part of the same guild, they know which guild to look for to get any revenge they may wanna take or to take any premeptive action to stop you guys from ever trying to raid them again, hell part of why i will have assassins is so i can contract people out to go hunt anyone who crosses me with the promise of a lot of gold in case the player stops fighting back to avoid corruption being an issue that would stop them from sending the message to fuck off or be killed till ya stop even trying to fight back. hell it feels to me like people havent watched people play rust before and dont understand how big groups work when it comes to weaker groups or really other groups in general trying their luck at their loot. like it ends with the biggest group swatting all the flies buzzing around it or asserting dominance over any other big group who would dare try their luck...

3:22 i think you forgot to add the word 'hit' to that one ;D

4:10 agreed, honestly either there should be wayshrines that EVERYONE spawns at if they die dotted around probably outside dungeons or near them OR they respawn back at the node with maybe some of the caravan and attack progression would be the ability to set down temporary respawn anchors or for the caravan itself to become a temporary respawn anchor with like maybe 5 or so respawns every time you get the chance to use the ability with the attackers getting limited camps they can maybe get li9ke 5 or maybe 10 respawns at MAX with more like 2 or 3 at the start UP TO that big boi 10 number. hell that does make it more interesting as you can know just how big and powerful the guild is and how treacherous of highwaymen they are based on how many respawns you see them get and this can let caravansary guilds like mine figure out whose node we need to crush or which guild hall to level.

The risk should be as simple as a death penalty. And the way to balance the loot piñata is to incentivize the attackers to summon their own caravan like n the stream so they can be subject to the same system. This can be done by discouraging looting on the spot. Their risk should never be equal but hopefully we can have it so that looting on the spot yields only like 10% of a crate at most

the death penalty would apply to defenders aswell though so its not really something to consider as a factor when evaluating if you should attack. The risk shouldnt be the same I agree with that, but it won't be. The defenders grinded for the mats so they are already risking 75 hours in this example. Its about finding the balance of rewarding successfull attackers but not encouraging the "see caravan attack caravan" behaviour that imo also takes the fun out of attacking a caravan in the first place @@Nyce-Gaming

I think what you're missing here is the opportunity cost of running said caravans. The roi has to be made by intrepid well in order for the caravan runners to want to run them. So in your hypothetical scenario of 75 hours of farming yielding 5k gold for transport to that node...if the gold amount you get at home not running a caravan is 500-1k...then getting a 5x or 10x investment is your reward. So in a hypothetical example: Caravan runners can either transport their goods at another node for 5k gold, or they can turn it in at their local node with next to no risk for 1k. In 5 runs, depositing all of the gold at home yields a return of 5k, whereas just 1 turn in on the other node rewards you the same amount. To go even further in this same situation, if you are *Only* successful 40% of the time(2 out of 5 times), you double your output on 5 runs that you would otherwise get at your home node safely. So even if you are not good at caravan runs and you lose more than you win, it's still optimal to make these runs if the ROI is there. As a pvper, if it is hard to complete these runs, but the ROI is 5x for completing them and my group is good at it(we win 3 or 4 times out of 5), im possibly incentivized to run caravans more and attack less

Is the death penalty not enough in itself? Are those attackers of caravans not gonna need to run their own caravans eventually and subject themselves to this same risk? And sometimes they have to run their own caravan right there on the spot to get the most from those goods 👀 as shown in the video. That’s my logic to it

I mean the whole point of people whining about the death penalty of RANDOM ganking outside of objectives like them just gathering and getting flagged was there HAD to be some sort of way for people to gank w/o punishment or you would have a dead pvp game. They already mentioned that the game was made with PVP in mind before hand. You can't have both systems of gank encounters of out in the wild and objective based ganking be punished to the extreme, have to pick one. You have to view it from both sides. Us gankers are already punished harshly for the open world ganking, which fine ok I get it, walking down the road and 6 guys randomly attacking you isn't very intuitive. But to try and take away the only other method to get mats that isn't pve grind to hell? come ooonnn

@@Nyce-Gaming Seeing as the death penalty is there by default, I don't feel it's a big enough factor for someone to even consider it. If a defender fails, they have exp debt and loss of all their work collecting what they had. If an attacker fails, they just have exp debt. There's more incentive to attack every caravan than to defend them. That's why I think people feel there should be a system directly involved with attackers failing to take a caravan the way defenders have a system punishing them for failing to defend it.

@@vexillian I respectfully disagree. We have the corruption penalty to deter random ganking. Caravan PvP is meant to be OBJECTIVE BASED PvP. You know the risk you take of running a caravan. It’s one of the few instances of MEANINGFUL PvP we’ve seen in MMOs as of late. To put another negative on attackers is counter intuitive and counter productive to the goals of the game, Steven, and anyone wanting PvP outside of node sieges and furthermore disrupts the balance of risk vs reward

@miorosa318 No one said to take anything away. People just want the risks balanced. Because from the perspective of the people moving goods with caravans, why even try if they know the game is set up for attackers having less to lose? Might as well just not move goods with caravans unless you bring a large guild with you. Which means less caravans out there to gank, and the ones that are out there are harder to.

I know there’s respawn timers. I think They’ve said you won’t spawn too close to where you died, but we’ll have to see and test

All facts

Agreed you can carry supplies on your self more safely/discreetly, albeit not as many but a caravan is a way to move TONS of supply's/mats at once. So with a big reward of being able to move tons of mats at once comes a big risk. That's the balance...

If my experience tells me anything about people in general chat is that once they attack the caravan and raid it, they will backstab each other. This game encourages baboon behavior and I like that, because in a long run, you cant create anything in chaos, so the guilds will form some sort of makeshift rules against such measures. You raided a caravan without permission of the guild? You are kicked and you are no longer citizen of the node because we have a non-aggression pact with that caravan's owners. What you just described I can see it at the release of the game, but not in a long run.

If they act like baboons they will likely turn on each other, undergo an ineffective use of their time, and or lose reputation. If they do a long caravan siege and crack open the crates on the spot they in theory are wasting their time because it being stolen materials and yielding less profit or efficiency vs making their own caravan. If they do stuff their pockets then hey thats on them. I gotta assume taking a caravan down will be quite a time investment. Especially if they use their caravan skills which weren’t used in the PvP showcase

Very well said 🤔 honestly I don’t think there’s a way to please everyone, but punishing attackers too much could discourage PvP and like you said lead to even more Zergs. Don’t punish them enough and well… you know

to be honest, controlling a zerg to have the discipline to not just loot the crates is a risk on its own. one that increases with every additional person you add. :P

Staged or not I think we know enough about the system to form an opinion as it’s more of a perspective thing. But true knowing if death penalties will apply to the caravan attackers and how far they spawn and such is key

True, I saw that in the wiki, but it’s been a while since they elaborated on it and said mostly. I hope to see this clarified as personally I’d like to see death penalties in caravan runs. Node sieges I wouldn’t want personally

Everyone partakes in the system at some point facts

I feel that. During the stream they showed that you don’t need to use the black market. If I recall (could be wrong) the black market is only for stolen items as in the ones you opened from the caravans on the spot rather than transporting them sealed in their crates via caravan 🤔

Right. I BELIEVE it's only for when you loot the caravan it needs to be taken to a black market and for less value. Otherwise if you transport by caravan you assume the same risk but same reward

I like the idea of bounty hunters being involved in the system 🤔

Facts. All in due time and testing

Oooh I could see that 🤔

Nice take ! 🤔 can control supply and demand

Very well said 👏 I actually like this take even being of a different mindset. I think the risk first of all shouldn’t or need not be equal because the game is looking to incentivize PvP and a PvP game loop. Breathing risk into the world. The goal shouldn’t be to make risk equal for both parties as only one was initiating a risk for economical gain imo. However I’ll say this . The amount of materials you receive from taking materials directly from caravan crates should be very low. Like only 10% of the mats. Whereas hauling your own caravan from said stolen mats should be full value

@@Nyce-Gaming well if I remember correctly even after successful raid defenders can retrieve some part of their goods which makes things little bit better but still sounds horrible for players. :)) balance this can help. But I still think it can be more approachable and still interesting if you get for example corruption after raiding or some kind of bandit status. I am somewhere on the middle as I looks more on design perspective than as a player :) I will be too casual in time this game go out. :'D

Facts! That caravan and person is contributing to your node network likely 🤔

I think there will definitely be changes in a2. Pasted the below from another comment. I think eventually players will get what they want. Maybe not more risk to attackers, but less incentive for attackers 👀 The risk should be as simple as a death penalty. And the way to balance the loot piñata is to incentivize the attackers to summon their own caravan like n the stream so they can be subject to the same system. This can be done by discouraging looting on the spot

you also need to take into account the diminishing returns on caravans ie i start a caravan with the value of 10k gold i hire some mercs for protection cost 2.5k we get attacked and lose attackers loot it and load goods worth 5k onto their caravan my mercs attack their van with reinforcements we win and load loot worth 2.5k onto our new caravan and get it to destination ..i sell the goods for 2.5k and pay the mercs caravan profit 0g@@Nyce-Gaming

Full release?.. hmm 2026

I’ll summarize cause I typed this in other threads and discord 10x this morning lol, but I feel like the initiator of the caravan is the one looking to haul the goods and make a profit upon success. They are the ones initiating risk for reward. I do not think it should be 50/50. The only way to view it 50/50ish is to make the attackers have to use a caravan to haul the goods themselves (already a thing) but also disincentivize opening crates on the spot

Fair take. This is y the system needs death penalties to be applicable

If the only penalty for attackers is a corpse run and a small repair cost, and the reward is equal, this is exactly what will happen. Players will simply stop making these caravans. They need to find some way to try to balance the risk vs reward.

FACTS! Word will spread. If u spend 2hrs gathering and constructing a caravan . You’re gonna remember the guys who f’d you over

Seeing alliances of the small guilds forming against big bad bully of the server will be epic.

THIS THIS THIS! Exactly! After succeeding a caravan attack;?If u want to be efficient you then take on that same risk

Yea I’m not sure why everyone is being so surprised now…

@@Nyce-Gaming The caravan crew has the initiative giving them the upper hand in preparation including the where and when. Where as the bandits/aggressors will have none of those advantages.

@@irishned6464 people ignore this factor and the size of the map

THANK YOU!!!

lol yes indeed

Adding more time on respawn every time you attack the caravan and fail could work.

Awesome, I need to check that out tonight

THIS! Plus this world is soooo huge

The death penalties can be gold sinks for gear repair and/ir mayyyybe xp debt if they wanna go that route. But the way to fix this is lessening the incentive for attackers to loot on the spot. Force them to make their own caravans

@@Nyce-Gaming I agree with the loss of EXP as a way of helping fix an issue. Something I thought about also was setting up like 3 caravans with 2 of them being decoys. That is if things start to get a little hard. And if the other 2 are not getting attacked then you know you have a rat in the house.

@@franklinrichards8851 can’t wait to see spy and espionage drama 👀

Yeaaaa man. And the map is frickin huge

Unlike T&L we’ll have a long alpha and player feedback in an open development mmo. I think that will be the hope factor here, but yea we’ll see

I think the vast size of the world will help alleviate this personally but we’ll see

👏

I get where you are coming from. We’ll test in alpha 2, but as things are currently constructed I’m hoping to see death penalties and large respawn timers against attackers. If it’s too negative of a feeling things may adjust. Yes the gatherer put in that work but they initiated risk by using a caravan and attempted to do so for profit with a PvP objective. The attacker in this situation did not. However they will then have to use a caravan to haul those goods or their own mats one day so they subject to the same system. Let’s hope looting on the spot yields very minimal resources

@@Nyce-Gaming No the developer made it so they had to create a pvp environment. This we must remember is a system and the crafter is forced to comply by having zero none pvp routs available. Ergo the crafter has no choice and is no being made a content creator for the developer and the other players making their investment even steeper and your lack there of even more sinister. Those that can't work through it will simply stop doing it. In real life someone doesnt rob you or you dont see it everyday in the street because you might get shot. Now add a reward modifier to the crafters reward based on the number of attackers and maybe we can talk. The attacker here has clearly more return fun for man hours invested. It will be fun to see it all pan out but there is a long long LONG line of this very choice leading to so much toxic servers imploded. I will be like I said at least make you openly pick a side at character creation.

I can definitely see gank guilds forming inspired by Steven’s opening ranger snipes 😆

I like this concept 🤔

We’ll see! We have a lot of testing to do but things looking good on paper

yea true. But tbh that Zerg will have to run caravans too

I would be worried about that if this was faction vs faction mmorpg. You will basically have all sizes of guilds fighting against each other, so it will be zerg vs zerg vs zerg vs zerg, which basically annuls the said zergs. Think more like war between houses in GOT and less Horde vs Alliance. Players groups will be too fragmented for massive zerging.

@@nataslaih great comparison! Something a lot have to consider. I for one am so used to faction based systems

@@Nyce-Gaming I havent played a faction based mmo since 2008. Drama that this game will create will be on Eve Online's level. I can't wait to get a death threats again, like the good old days lol 💀Fun times.

@@nataslaih lmao that’s when u know it’s a good game