About convoys.

[quicklite]

Well, I'm back. And after playing a few hours of grid, I see that the game is pretty largely focused on convoys. This is good! I love chasing, trapping, and running down convoys with you all. But there's just one thing that bugs me: If the game's gonna be 50% convoys, there's gonna be a lot of convoys. If there's gonna be a lot of convoys, there's gonna need to be variety. And variety through gun, health, and arrangment, frankly, only goes so far. So how will convoys stay unique? Here's a few ideas of mine.

Missle/Bomb Convoys

Firstoff, I don't want this game to become Realm of the mad Grid (that was terrible >_>), but I don't think it's a crime to have convoys that revolve more around fancy driving as well as tactics and whatnot. Of course, there should still be some tactics involved, but it would be a nice change to have to rely on driving skills and high-speed tanks to reach and then dismantle (aka disarm/immobilize) the convoy to lead it into the clutches of your waiting allies.

Portable Fortresses

Basically, what I mean by this are slower moving convoys that spawn a good amount of minions and/or have rotating (and maybe even spawning?) walls to help protect it. That way, you need not only tanks to hurt the convoy, but tanks to hurt the convoys defences and expose the damn thing. I think convoys like this would do a good deal to stop corsairs from basically being the wizard of grid, as the one thing corsairs can't do is clear out multiple targets.

Aircraft Carriers

"Wait, how is this different from the last one?"

Basically, this convoy would have little to no guns on it. However, every few seconds (give or take, idk), this convoy would release a squadron of 5-10 fighter jet minions that can only shoot forward, which would then proceed to strafe run the convoy's attackers from different angles. These minions should have as much, if not more life than flankers, and enough firepower to shred a good number of people in one swoop, if said people aren't prepared. The convoy should be able to spawn up to 10 more fighter jets if said jets get destroyed, but after those 10, the convoy is left defenceless. The point of this one is to give the convoy means to attack the group from different sides and angles then from directly from the convoy. This would change things a little, meaning that people have to "parry" the jets' incoming attacks, and that attacking convoys is not a matter of just standing in front of the point where all the fire comes from.

De-buff Convoys

Basically, this convoy, either through bombs or just flat-out AoEs after the convoy reaches a certain amount of life, has a (relatively) minimal amount of firepower, but also has a large amount of de-buffs at its disposal, such as halving range or damage, disabling certain triggers (or maybe the ability to turn left? :3), and if we're gonna get really sadistic, we could throw an EMP debuff in there. This would force players to have to compromise and get creative as certain stats and abilities are randomly cut down, or even cut out.

NB: On the flip side, this would be a really cool use for towns. Although I'm against having flat-out turrets at towns, I would find it highly amusing if we could build facilties that halved convoy speed/damage/range, "confuse" convoys to set them into spirals for a bit, or maybe even just disable some of its guns or get its flankers to wander off for a while. Could be cool. ^^

Challenge Convoys

The idea of these convoys is that they change and "upgrade" once they are damaged a certain amount. For example, how about a convoy that starts off normal, gains minions at 4/5 life, gains a few rocket turrets at 3/4 life, gains bombs at 1/2 life, gains more flankers at 1/3, and then doubled in speed at 1/4 life? These would be sadistic and really freaking hard, but these would be a darn fun fight.

Speed Convoys

These convoys visit more towns than most convoys, and seem relatively normal, but have one catch: they are really, really damn fast. You can't outrun or chase them. You have to predict their movements, intercept, and then dismantle them. Heck, if we wanna be sadistic (again), we could make it drop a fortress or something after being immobilized. Although this isn't nearly as different as all the others, this would be easy, but could be kinda fun.

Welp, I'm done. So what do you guys think? Any of you got any other ideas?

[Duco]

+1 karma for you there.

I like all of these ideas... Kinda sadistic tough.
And how about losing the ability to drive backwards? Not being able to turn left seems a bit extreme.

[quicklite]

Haha, yeah, I was kinda aiming for sadistic in a way. If something is sadistic, it discourages soloing, charging, and just 'tanking' damage and fire. Sadistic things encourage teamwork and co-operation, and force people to think on their feet. Heck, sadistic things keep vets entertained and keep em coming back, hence the appeal of tombs in realm. But that's just my opinion, anyhow.

Also, about the turn left thing...well, turning backwards would work too, but I don't think killing a convoy without turning left is impossible. It would just be really hard, and involve a crapton of circling :3.

[hypevosa]

What if we added modifiers to convoys to randomize them, making them more interesting, challenging, and possibly drop better loot. Every modifier on the convoy would simply add 1 to the level of items dropped.

Imaging a Speedy, disparaging, Antimatter Tanker Lord Convoy (fast, debuffing, challenge). Get our roguelike on lol.

[Duco]

Haha it's getting more and more sadistic...

[hypevosa]

Well, as much as I like having turned convoys into a science, it really just makes some convoys... sad to go after.

I should mention that all fast convoys should "be" fast because they've halved their hull weights, I.E. they should have half the HP of normal ones since they cannot be chased to death like normal ones.

[quicklite]

Jul 7, 2013 17:45:11 GMT -5 hypevosa said:

What if we added modifiers to convoys to randomize them, making them more interesting, challenging, and possibly drop better loot. Every modifier on the convoy would simply add 1 to the level of items dropped.

Imaging a Speedy, disparaging, Antimatter Tanker Lord Convoy (fast, debuffing, challenge). Get our roguelike on lol.

Although I will say that this is a very good idea, and that some pretty cool convoys would come from it, I don't think it fits grid. Imo, having lots of individually designed convoys (which would take longer, but wouldn't be too hard) instead of loads of convoys dictated by factors in a RNG would just work better, given the nature of grid. Firstly, it would allow much more room for creativity and ingenuity in rob and co.'s part (rob and co.? I confuse myself sometimes ), give more character to the individual convoys themselves, and avoid the problems with repetition and boring/plain stupid convoys when the RNG hits the wrong things.

[hypevosa]

Why not both?

[gingerbear]

Just some thoughts:

1.
When the convoys go through infected areas, they are technically having "portable fortresses". When we front-fight a pizza convoy sometimes I'm shooting forwards instead of backwards so we don't get smashed between the convoy and the towers, and generally noone else is doing the same, too busy shooting at the convoys... Same goes if we trail something from the back. People don't really bother clearing lanes without even convoys, if they at least took some effort while fighting those (as small towers go down fast, it should be easy to make a "dotted" lane and keep fighting the convoy too), things would become easier and easier as the time progresses.

People are too caught up in fighting the target and dodging everything else, that I'm not sure having more minions around would change anything, and will likely end up in "man, this thing is too hard" instead of "yeah, we have to kill more stuff around". Right now when a convoy passes through an unclear area, people just try their best to follow and stay alive, and the one lucky, tough or sneaky enough to be around when a main eventually dies will get all the loot. Not really cooperative at all.

2.
I agree with quicklite that it might be better to have different convoys for the different configurations, instead of resorting to the RNG. In another game I played there were some units that came with 3 random "buffs" when they entered the field, and thus they ranged from ridiculously useless to OP. This of course caused a lot of anger, and eventually the total random had to be customized into random subsets, so the result would be more-less balanced even being random. Which means, if they want the random convoys to be enjoyable, they should think up random "variation presets" which are really just one step away from creating an entirely new convoy.

Another thing with random "deviations" is that they should be obvious to the players. Rob mentioned that he wanted to include "colors" as stats for the enemies, so they got different behavior for different colors. This could likely work with convoys: for example synchronized to the augment colors, convoy minions with green tint did more damage, red ones had more hp, light blue ones more shield, etc. That way assessing the situation would be more easier upon first glance. (Not to mention the visual delight a convoy with colorful patterns would mean.) This might work well, but would lessen the impact of having different convoys to having different "variations", visually, at least.

Speed should be consistent within a convoy else the formation breaks up easily. Other individual deviations could result in other shenanigans, while having the same buff applied to everything is not making the whole convoy experience that much better, and also could make the different convoy types too similar to each other (aside from the actual shape of the formation). In this sense, having uniqueness due to unique convoy builds rather than due to RNG seems to be a simpler and arguably a better choice for game experience.

3.
Quicklite: I think you are wrong in assuming that Tombs are popular because of their sadistic nature. They are popular because once you know the drill (and are skilled a bit), they are easy and give the best rewards of the game. It is just as repetitive as any other dungeon, the "thrill factor" isn't really that much higher, more like the "reward factor" that is interesting. How often you see elite groups raiding the dragon eye? or mad lab? Or anything that is a pain to fight (difficulty should be thrilling by this logic, no?) but has no actual good rewards?

[quicklite]

Jul 10, 2013 5:39:16 GMT -5 gingerbear said:

Quicklite: I think you are wrong in assuming that Tombs are popular because of their sadistic nature. They are popular because once you know the drill (and are skilled a bit), they are easy and give the best rewards of the game. It is just as repetitive as any other dungeon, the "thrill factor" isn't really that much higher, more like the "reward factor" that is interesting. How often you see elite groups raiding the dragon eye? or mad lab? Or anything that is a pain to fight (difficulty should be thrilling by this logic, no?) but has no actual good rewards?

I think that the rock dragon and the mad lab are completely different cases to tombs. Firstly, mad labs give good rewards. The fulmination sceptre and the recompense are higher-than-top tier weapons, and the mad lab robe (whatever it's called) isn't bad either. Secondly, mad labs aren't hard. Just using a fresh level 20 necro farming class, I got to the boss alone, and only had to quit because my dps wasn't good enough to deal with those annoying green things healing the boss (back before they were nerfed). They are just boring. Everything has slow, predictable, easy-to-dodge attack patterns, making them easy to kill, but then everything just has a buttload of life, and most mad labs are pretty big. Meaning that in order to beat one, you just have to spend a really long time wailing away at wave after wave of intensely boring enemies. Which sucks. So nobody really does them.

As for rock dragons, firstly, not only do they have no loot aside from pots and T4 abilities, making them not really worth going after, but also, I don't like to think of them as hard, per se. I kinda think of them as cheap. Unlike tombs or Oryx, the rock dragon doesn't have a 'trick' to it, nor does it have any nice dodgable attacks. It just moves really fast, and shotguns the shit out of anything that comes near it. And cheap, frankly, isn't that much fun, especially in a game like realm. And finally, about saying that things aren't that great once you learn the trick to them, well, I disagree. Although I couldn't speak from experience about tombs (I suck at realm ), I'll just compare something I did manage to learn the 'trick' to; o1. I got down all of this guy's attacks to the point where if he lasted more than 1 stage, I could get a sb from him even if my char wasn't level 20 yet (For the record, I'm not stating that this was any actual accomplishment as o1 is pretty damn easy, but that I could do it ). But did knowing how his attacks worked, and dumbing things down to a matter of when and where to move make him less fun? Heck no. Although I knew what I was doing, I still got a nice adrenaline rush from maneuvering (Did I spell that right? ) the maelstrom of bullets and timing my abilities to get maximum damage. I can only assume the same applies to tombs. Not only is the reward great and the difficulty not that bad once you 'learn' a tomb, there still must be something about navigating the waves of bullets coming from a mad Geb that brought people back.

Jul 10, 2013 5:39:16 GMT -5 gingerbear said:

1.
When the convoys go through infected areas, they are technically having "portable fortresses". When we front-fight a pizza convoy sometimes I'm shooting forwards instead of backwards so we don't get smashed between the convoy and the towers, and generally noone else is doing the same, too busy shooting at the convoys... Same goes if we trail something from the back. People don't really bother clearing lanes without even convoys, if they at least took some effort while fighting those (as small towers go down fast, it should be easy to make a "dotted" lane and keep fighting the convoy too), things would become easier and easier as the time progresses.

People are too caught up in fighting the target and dodging everything else, that I'm not sure having more minions around would change anything, and will likely end up in "man, this thing is too hard" instead of "yeah, we have to kill more stuff around". Right now when a convoy passes through an unclear area, people just try their best to follow and stay alive, and the one lucky, tough or sneaky enough to be around when a main eventually dies will get all the loot. Not really cooperative at all.

Well, imo, that's not the gameplay's problem, that's the problem of the loot system, which is easily fixable. Just expand what qualifies you for drops (perhaps damage as well as range), and maybe add a craftable shard that releases an AoE that collects loot for you. I honestly find chasing convoys through uncleared territory one of the most exciting things about grid. You have to keep the convoys damaged and in sight while holding back the waves of minions and keeping the group intact. You have to stick together, use your triggers, shields, and allies wisely, and anyone who decides to bring a support tank needs to help keep everybody intact and alright. Honestly, although I know what you mean about these encounters sometimes becoming frankly the opposite of co-operative, they can on the flip side be the most co-operation-encouraging things in grid.

But on the topic of the 'Portable Fortress' convoy itself, I agree that adding uncleared-fortress minions to the convoy's minions would be a total pain. So why not have the portable fortress avoid un-cleared territory, or maybe even just move much slower (Giving it more time in cleared territory)? And as for the 'Let's not bother killing it' problem, that has a simple answer: loot. Put some sweet loot on anything, and it'll give players that much more willpower. More than enough to tolerate the annoyance of minions with the convoy, at least imo.

[gingerbear]

Sorry Everyone for the impromptu walls of text!

@ql:

Well, then your previous argument still has to be reworded, as what you have been describing in the post above is more about finding enjoyment in the game, rather than about the level of difficulty. (You yourself have proved that difficulty means not much - O1). I won't restart the arguing about the specific dungeons (As I find both O1 and Tomb quite boring, much rather do a plain old UDL, Abyss, or even Trench), so I just ask the question in another way:

Would the convoy ideas increase enjoyment the way they intended to?

For example if you go for sadistic:
- At which point does it stay enjoyable sadistic, and from which point it will be not worth it? I would like to remind you that by each death you lose half of your temp storage, which means two deaths are enough for a wipe. Considering that I doubt you have the time to constantly meld, use and store every valuable item in your temp, from an economical point of view, would it be worth fighting everything unless they give out ridiculously high rewards? (Which is undesired, it will lead to cherry-picking and also general dissatisfaction with other aspects.)
- Similarly, wouldn't exactly this lead to an escalation? As soon as something gets solvable and turns out less and less sadistic, wouldn't the adrenaline-craving voices ask for more? Flux seemed to be pretty hard first (and they still pack quite the punch), but now they are obliterated just as easily. What will happen to a convoy twice as hard? Or three times as hard? To quote from one of my fav. webcomics: "If your gun leaves scorchmarks, you need a bigger gun". Would this really work?

---

As for the loot system, I think Rob hasn't yet expressed any will to change it a bit; In-game he even said Zeta main's small loot range is too in order and will remain intact. Just because something seems to be easily fixed in a way, you can't dismiss the problem itself because there is no guarantee that, in fact, it will be fixed that way (or in any way at all).

I find exciting to chase convoys in enemy area too. What I'm saying that it is still uncooperative: the middle ones in a bunch that take the least damage and probably do the least are the most likely ones to get the loot. The ones who actually try and fight will get shot both from the convoy and the towers initially, the ones who are in corsairs and have protected the group suddenly find themselves too exposed with the all-around fire with not many people protecting them, and so on.

Moreover, have you ever seen people stop and shoot down small towers along the way? I'll be honest, when I'm on, I never see one. People flee out to more cleaned areas and chase there if they have the chance - a sound tactic with a small problem: the enemy areas won't become any less infested. What if people actually bothered to kill at least 1 tower each time? Or kill every 6th? That's not a big number given the fast trigger recharges, and still, at the 3rd time of the convoy passing there the area would be just half as hard to pass through. What you have now is people dodging all the towers, disregarding that other people nexus out, or that there is a perfectly clear and empty area just about 30 secs in front of them. Which also means that if you want to get loot you are forced to join them and have the same behavior, in other words you have to play the game in probably unenjoyable conditions - which I think is the same kind of "griefing" just like pulling bombs.

You could argue that you don't clear because you like how hard the things are. The next questions is: what are you doing then to help the other people around you, to be cooperative? Do you hop over to a pally, or to a meatshield? Or do you just stay as you are hoping that as long as you are having fun the others will manage somehow too and you don't care? In that case, how is the game/system promoting actual co-op when in reality is just co-mob, where selfish gaming thrives just as good? (Don't take the "you" personally, it's more like "let's take average player X" as a general subject of the question.)

My point is, from my experience as long as people can get ahead without cooperating, they won't do it. It is nice to have the chance for teamwork, but it is not the same as actual teamwork. Also, the more people are there, the harder is to get them to work together: this comes more from cultural differences, you can't ignore things like that only because the idea in theory seems to work. (E.g.: west propagating individualism while east is more like discipline and tradition - just look at how people play in asian, us, or european servers, for example in rotmg as that seems to be a common base to judge.)

[quicklite]

Thanks for the feedback, gingerbear! Since everything you've said there is a slightly different point, I'll answer what I think one paragraph at a time.

1) Well, as I said (though probably in not enough detail ) in my second post, I think that sadistic is fun. And I think this for 2 reasons: First-off, as you said in your post, if people don't have to be co-operative, most of the time they won't be co-operative. Most people tend to play selfishly in a game that revolves around loot (such as this one), even if the loot doesn't directly make your stronger per se. The idea of these convoys is to be hard enough to force co-operation and teamwork (which is fun) in ways more imaginative, clever, and hard to get around than the plain old solution of 'Give it REALLY BIG GUNS.'. Secondly, since there will be a lot of convoys, the time it'll take to learn the 'trick' to all of them would be a hack of a lot longer than the time it'll take to learn the 'trick' to, say, a tomb or o1. Therefore, vets craving endgame will be satisfied for longer periods of time, especially if the convoys aren't straightforward, which I tried with my ideas to not make them so. And since loot is all public, there will be much less encouragement to get rid of/ditch other players, as they really aren't a 'threat' to your progression, like they can be interpreted as such in games like realm (though seriously, if loot isn't re-worked, this might change: 'OMG YOU **** RUSHER I WASN'T IN LOOT RANGE AND I DID ALL THE WORK AND NOW I DON'T HAVE LOOT CUZ etc. etc.'). This means that newbies will have an easier time on the harder tanks, because they can follow the 'pros', who they are basically just as strong as, and heck, maybe even get helped out by a nice player if they screw up. And as for your point on dungeons: well, I agree, let's just leave it there. At this point, we're just arguing about preferences. Nothing wrong with having them, but they're also stupid to argue over, because everyone's different.

2) Well, unless you do what hype was doing and start merging all the ideas, I think that none of those ideas on their lonesome cross the line of 'too sadistic to bother with'. I tried to make the ideas hard, but I don't think that any of those concepts on their own, unless done really badly, would get into that level of frustration where people will just look at it, find no possible solution to it, and leave. Simply because everyone is at roughly the same level in terms of power, there's enough versatility in tanks for there to always be something else to try (especially when the game grows older and tanks start to get into the 50s and 100s), and that if someone isn't that skilled, they can just play an easier class (such as a support class, a tanky class, or just choose a high dps class and attack disabled convoys). Secondly, as I said earlier, with enough variety and interesting content, the 'adrenaline junkies' will be satisfied for longer. I guess you could take hype's 'randomization' route to do this even more so, but I have mixed feeling about how that would work out (although I would approve of a convoy that had several configurations decided by an RNG, I wouldn't like every convoy to work like that). And secondly, not every convoy would need to be sadistic. I'd like to think that convoys would show themselves a little like in the rate of dungeons, and thus have different difficulty levels like dungeons. If you always die on the challenge convoy, or just don't feel like fighting another portable fortress, you can pass it up and fight the flux or ion convoy that will eventually show itself later. And since I can only hope that as the game develops, severs will start to get up to 30, 50, and maybe even 80 people, there'll be enough people so that if 15 people don't wanna fight a convoy, and if 20 people are in the middle of something, then there'll still be 20-25 people around to help fight the convoy.

3) Fair enough. Though having a drop system based on entirely on range and nothing else will just lead to the 'everyone else is a threat' culture that seems to be plaguing realm nowadays (see the 'fake rage' on my first point).

4) I've had that experience with convoys. Though I've also had a different experience. Firstly, people will stay in this range of convoys, because a) it is safer, and b) it'll let them steamroll dismantled convoys and get the loot without taking any flak from them. But I prefer to think of them as a sort of safe haven, the only 'cleared' place in existance. After all, there'll always be someone with good shields there to hide behind, and there'll usually be someone with a corsair who'll take pity on you and give you a heal if you barely made it back. In my experience, what happens from there is that small groups of people who are more skilled/confident at the game branch off, take the risks, (sometimes) help each other, and dismantle the targetted convoy, which is quicky torn apart by the waiting allies. Although you are right that said 'allies' aren't really doing much, I'm okay with this arrangement, because it allows people to participate and help out with this sorta thing without putting themselves at large amounts of risk if they are new/less skilled at the game. Again, I understand what you mean about the loot, but I think that usually the middle group that you meet up with after dismantle a convoy will provide a stronger meatshield to hide behind, and maybe even a heal, and although that sometimes isn't really enough, I think that again it's not a problem with the convoy, but more a problem with the loot system (you should get loot if you did your part as well as if you were close enough when it died).

5) Why don't people shoot down small towers along the way? Heck, why don't I shoot down small towers along the way? Well, although I don't feel comfortable speaking for everyone, my answer is simple: When it comes to clearing, I don't like multi-tasking, and when it comes to chasing, it feels pointless. I'm more than happy to scuplt convoy corridors (and do so frequently) when there's no convoys around, but when chasing a convoy, by the time I've killed a small fortress (and yes, I have tried), even if I used a shotgun trigger, everyone else has usually passed it. I removed a threat that wasn't really a threat anymore, and I'm left there, lagging behind, with weak shields, one less offensive trigger, having theoretically contributed nothing to the convoy chase. Now, I'll happily push back minions and keep others safe that way, but I feel that going after static fortresses in an engagement that has a signature quality of always moving doesn't really make anyone's life easier, and just lessens my chances of survival and loot. Okay, that last one sounded selfish (and probably was >_>), but hopefully all my other points were less so ^^.

6) I've already explained my reasons for not clearing small fortresses. So what do I do in grid that's co-op and not co-mob? Well, several things. Sometimes, I hop onto a pally, do my best to keep everyone alive, and then use triggers 2, 3, and 4 to pull ahead of the masses and bring them back a nice, dismantled convoy . Sometimes, when there's less people around I play avenger, and try to pick out and dismantle convoys in a slightly more risky, but also more damaging manner, which makes up for the lack of dps with less guys. Sometimes I go corsair, in which I usually try to shield others to make their approach easier, heal them if they're weakened or dying, and then just flat out shear the big guys to make everyone's job easier. If there is a satisfactory balance of dismantling and support tanks, I go cutlass, simply because the group can handle itself, and that the cutlass can pull off unparalleled amounts of dps to help wipe convoys off the face of the grid in a much faster, albeit less 'helpful' manner. And to answer your last point: unless the convoy is going through a completely cleared region, 'co-mob' in my experience gets you nowhere. It usually just ends up in a bad balance of tanks, wasted disable triggers, a lot of careless deaths, and a nicely intact convoy. Sure, you could be selfish and try co-mob like tactics, but they don't really work as well, and in fact just flat out damage your progression, as if you played with others in mind, you'd kill more convoys and get more loot.

7) Agreed. That was my biggest thought, and that's my exact drive for making everything this in the first place. Although the community atm is about as good as it can get, that won't last, frankly. People now want to, or at least will try to be co-operative in situations where that might not be as necessary, but in a year, that'll change, and I get that. Heck, that's one of the most infuriating parts in realm, the one design flaw that really got me to quit: the game design accidentally created a 'all about me, screw everyone else' culture that just makes the game unbearable somtimes, and has brought a whole bunch of un-co-op things into realm, from leeching to rushing to dragging. That's what I was aiming for, to discourage selfish, co-mob play in the only way I can really think of: giving people no damned choice in the matter. If things are clever, hard, and unique enough that blindly charging with corsairs just doesn't work anymore, people will start to look for other ways. And then, hopefully, people will start looking to each other, using the other guy there, who you know is just as strong as you are, and who you know could make a substantial impact on how the convoy goes. Since you can't 'dodge' or 'solo' your way to success anywhere near as easily as you can in realm, you have to work together, and use teamwork, because otherwise you aren't gonna get that precious loot. Which is one of my favourite things about grid: usually, most games, accidentally or not, reward you for doing things with less (or no other) people. Higher loot chances, more challenging gameplay, you name it. In grid, it's the exact opposite. I'm not trying to alienate newbies or create a ridiculous, free-for-all veteran game. I'm just trying to expand on that fun little feature that keeps me coming back to grid, and if there's a better way to go about doing so, then I'm happy to hear it.

Holy crap, these walls of text are getting bigger and bigger ._.

[gingerbear]

@ql: Ok let's keep up this discussion, I guess everyone else has prepared their popcorn and sleepbag by now.

Replies para-to-para

1) I know sadistic can be fun, I just mentioned it might not necessarily is. Depending on the playerbase and the actual "theme" of the game it can be very adequate or wrong. Nevertheless, I - too - like good challenges, and all the ideas in the OP were interesting, and I approve them.

2) Yes, maybe if convoys are like dungeons regarding their variety and frequency, it might be less of a "deal" if someone misses them.
The situation right now is:

• You get to kill 500 convoys before map reset. Even though technically you can still fight infinite amount of convoys, that arbitrary limit still puts some percieved importance to them. Combined with the fact that after map reset the first ~50 convoys will be too hard to fight (short and infested paths), it really is laziness desiring to kill them while you can do it easily.
  
• Convoys drop the best loot, and - as for the moment, coins. This is also a big factor in fighting them, if you have the chance to obtain something you cannot do otherwise, your greedier self nudges towards to do so, even if you know that it's just pixels.
  
• The arbitrary limit between their spawn also makes them special, event like. Note that in Realm an event happens moreless with the same frequency, however there are so many things to kill and do, that one more event barely makes the difference. Unfortunately, convoys now ARE the event. Once the game fills up with things to do, that would alleviate a lot of the problem, in my opinion.
  

4) Well, yes. Also, I'd like to add that infested trailing is only hard when there are not many people on. Some days ago when we were about 15-20, we literally mowed the land while chasing the convoy... Maybe with a generally higher amount of regulars the difficulties of these situations also become irrelevant.

5) Those are valid points why not to clear. All I want to add that the "no benefit" is only percieved in short terms: the next time you pass there you will have it easier; one less tower to dodge, all with the minions. Because, interestingly, the small towers have the most minions, it is easy to dodge most of everything else... There is nothing wrong with looking at close-time gains, but I think it's just the same logical mishappen as for example only leveleing towns because that pays out instantly.

6) I'm happy that you indeed try to find on which tank to hop, my thoughts were inquiring more-less whether everyone is aware of what to do, and if so, how many of an actual mob would be team players. Perhaps if communication would be easier (embedded voice chat, or macros for strategy messages, like "get a healer", "get a shield", "need more dps", etc), that would also help in forming competent groups in the mass of players.

That's for now, will be back with more relevant stuff when I'm not this tired.