The Case for Removing Mobile Banking

[DocHollidaze 1,274]

On 12/4/2020 at 12:29 PM, Medicaid said:

while we are at it,

why get mobile bank at all?

just get loot. log out. unlock from campaign world. simply reenter campaign world and BOOM, all ur gear goes to your bank and u get a free recall.

 

 

Damn Medicaid. You're over here playing 4D chess in Crowfall...

[DocHollidaze 1,274]

Anyway, why was mobile banking ever added?

We had spirit banking from anywhere for the longest time and it was primarily made harvesting or farming a zero risk activity. ACE comes on and says, hey we are finally getting rid of global spirit banking! And people were like, yahh! And then ACE says, we're adding mobile banking. lolwhut?

[Karoshi 4]

Remove Mobile Banking / Make Recalling drop your inventory as a Cairn or something

Earn your keep.

[Chillmate 20]

It makes all the sense, game needs more risk, all the Warstories of people defying odds and getting the loot to the temple will start flooding in.

[blazzen 4,434]

13 minutes ago, Karoshi said:

Remove Mobile Banking / Make Recalling drop your inventory as a Cairn or something

+1 

[Communist_Puppy 238]

+1

[Sirktivo 119]

On 12/4/2020 at 11:11 AM, Ruq said:

The case for removing mobile banking:

Players have been yelling about mobile banking, often times in very direct ways (https://community.crowfall.com/topic/29397-mobile-banking-is-stupid/), for quite a while now. But why is the community so opposed to Mobile Banking as a gameplay mechanic? Let’s dive in.

 

Risk versus Reward:

Mobile banking provides a risk-free way to secure rare resources in campaign worlds that otherwise would require strategic thinking and group coordination to obtain. One extreme example of this is the looting of forts. Currently, players can utilize the Mobile Banking buff to secure thousands of Ethereal Dust and Gold with zero risk. These players are protected by the invulnerable guards positioned at each fort for defense and each hour (or once a day) can login, loot the chests, and utilize mobile banking to secure a huge resource advantage for their guild. This removes all risk from looting forts, a massive problem in the current gameplay loop.

 

Emergent Gameplay versus Static Gameplay Loops:

Beyond the reduction of risks outlined above, the Mobile Banking buff decreases active engagement in a campaign world. It limits the need for players to either travel to a world bank or a keep and thus robs players of the chance of stumbling upon emergent gameplay. It ends the need for any type of caravan system to be organized by a guild because a single stealth player can refine and bank within seconds. Zero risk. Zero chance to be found out and punished for the risky behavior.

 

The simple fix to this problem is to remove the Mobile Banking buff from the game. R3 Storehouses can provide some other benefit, possibly additional keep storage chests (beyond the default of 2 per keep).

/sign

 

P.S increase the timer on recall 24 hours, force inventory to drop, or remove it from game

[veeshan 1,713]

33 minutes ago, Karoshi said:

Remove Mobile Banking / Make Recalling drop your inventory as a Cairn or something

Earn your keep.

or super long CD like once a day kinda thing

[Cur 2]

I always viewed Alt P and mobile banking as temporary things. In an ideal setup the zones would be larger, more of them and the player count higher. The further from a temple, the better the loot and the higher the odds. Holding a keep out in "the black" would mean something and moving materials to attack a keep would require logistics as well as moving materials to build said keep. Some kind of inventory size or weight change where having a mount that would move larger items (but be slower) would be ok too. There's not a lot of risk compared to reward right now

Edited December 8, 2020 by Cur

[doomstove 73]

The fact that a mega leader thinks this change should occur is a good indicator about the impact it would have on the health of the game.  

Troop movement in this game depends a lot on Recall currently, and it lets large groups of players have tons of access over the map as a mass teleporting mongol horde. 

Making larger groups of players reliant on running across the map, being harried, slowed and picked off sounds very cool and Crowfall-y.  Recall prevents these interactions from happening, especially if we're able to Temple hotswap like before.  It also reduces zerg zone of control and gives smaller guilds a better ability to play for objectives.

Mobile banking further exacerbates this problem, especially with pain in the butt war machine items like siege equipment, seeds, and even stuff like food and bandages.  It makes those early skirmishes outside keeps way more vital, as well, which I think is awesome!

Thanks for the suggestion, Ruq, I love it!

[BarriaKarl 2,116]

Can we at least get a reply about why it is still a thing? @jtoddcoleman

It is mindblowing to me that you guys had the guts to get rid of the Passive Skill tree but still allows for such a bad system such as mobile banking to stay. Whether we like it or not inst even the point, it clearly causes a bunch of issues to the game. heck, it goes against the core of what this game was supposed to be and what your core audience expect from it.

Just remove it. Dont even need to worry to add a replacement to rank 2 banks. We can worry about it later. Just remove it...

[PSIcoh 20]

Agreed on this. JTodd even said he doesn't want people farming without risk in God's Reach in the last Q&A. I don't see much difference between zero risk farming in God's Reach and the nearly complete risk mitigation that Mobile Banking provides.

[Ivellian 76]

I agree mobile banking should be removed.  

It not only provides a benefit to the PvE gatherer, it also protects items one might need at one location but one does not want to carry there.  For example, mobile banking allows one to refine materials at a refinery without the items in one's inventory for the trip to the refinery.  Mobile banking allows individuals to place a mobile bank at a empty keep, retrieve a tree of life item from the bank, and claim the keep.  Mobile banking allows groups of PvP players to retrieve only the food or bandages they need at a given time by placing the buff on each member of the group. 

All that, not to mention it disincentives PvP because it lessens the potential rewards from ganking harvesters.  It also removes the natural funnels that would lead to PvP (i.e. the harvest no longer needs to return to a world bank so waiting at a bank for PvP is less viable).

Additionally, the lore reasons behind mobile banking are unknown to me.  Someone explain to me why I need to run pack pigs to a refinery (or keep) to get building materials, but I can deposit those materials into a summon-able chest at the refinery that then magically teleports those items to my bank in the temples/keeps.  It's internally inconsistent as a matter of lore.

Finally, to distinguish mobile banking from recalling (though I agree some of the arguments also apply to recalling), recalling to deposit items in the temples is on a significant cool down - in contrast, the mobile banking buff can be refreshed and functions from groups of individuals at a time (so a group can use several mobile banking buffs for multiple people).  Moreover, recalling repositions the character (this also applies to the log out, unlock, and relog method).  The character must go back to the temple and then navigate back to where they were to continue play (potentially allowing for PvP along the way).  This also removes the character from controlling or farming a point of interest for a period of time (incorporating a visible cost to recalling with loot).  

To those who think of mobile banking as a favor to PvE players, all it does it provide an easy out for harvesters.  They no longer need to locate, gather, and return safely with the loot.  They only need to locate and gather the loot (the banking is rendered a nominal activity unless the gatherer is ganked while actively gathering).  Why even have looting at all in Dregs if the objective is to even further reduce the risk of losing inventory items to PvP?  For those that want that type of game play, Infected provides that type of game play.

If we abandoned a core tenant of the game in passive training, I do not see the challenge of removing mobile banking.  Simply eliminate the buff and replace that level of the bank with a different buff or reduce the max level of the bank for keeps (there are certainly enough other things to spend resources on).  

[Bzra 538]

/signed

[Kendread 59]

For this games economy and pvp to matter we need more scarcity and logistics based issues. As an ardent solo harvester, mobile banking needs to die in a house fire.

Edited December 9, 2020 by Kendread

[Mogres 80]

Please remove it, there are allready to many banks on the map. 

[Groovin 556]

Mobile banking just isn't fun.
Less people traversing the world back to a keep or world bank, whichever might be closer.
If you have a keep, there's no reason not to have it, no hard choice to be made.

[Ruq 213]

#EvenPamAgrees!

[EvilGhandi 122]

7 minutes ago, Ruq said:

#EvenPamAgrees!

#shenanigans

[Zarii 30]

Mobile banking AND being able to delete items WHILE IN COMBAT needs to be removed. Both these functions are completely against the foundation of this game.