Remove Family summon

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To me, that's the life of a party in a party-based game. You have to plan accordingly and account for any possible member losses along the way.

And a lot will depend on how important any given member is. If the whole party loses its pve potential completely from just losing one member - yeah, it'll be a bad time. But this would also be a bad party design imo. Yes, let them lose some power but not all. L2's bards had that kind of power void and as much as I liked them in L2, I definitely hope the same doesn't happen in Ashes.

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This was never possible in the first place. Only the family leader can summon (and presumably it's not easy to switch that around or they wouldn't have bothered with the limitation), so it was only ever one-way.

I went to reverify my sources, and... I couldn't find anything. I can therefore agree it's a matter of concern.

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Not everyone has 8 friends who also play their exact same video games. I don't think it's really an unreasonable convenience due to that factor. It needs sensible and extensive limitations, yeah. I don't think anyone is arguing against that.

Design the family system to not be abusable by pick up groups or guilds. Make it very difficult to swap in 'new' family after the initial has formed. Limit range of the teleportation by some reasonable amount that doesn't limit convenience. Only let two assigned members of the family have the ability to do the actual calling. Have significant cool downs. Don't let people carry anything in inventory other than their gear. These are some basic limitations nearly any conversation that discusses the family summon system have brought up, basically every time.

I feel like the design parameters and possible flaws for basic alpha 2 testing are so well known and talked about at this point that it can be expected that IS has a very clear set of things to watch out for and tweak. And hey A2 is a testing phase. If it breaks a part of the game, patch it, and if it can't get 'patched' then delete it. But not testing is just hamstringing what could be a very reasonable compromise that would helps make the game competitive and attractive to casuals. That means more money for IS and more content for hardcore players in the long run.

Much like corruption, I'd find it weird to give up on certain untested systems without actually doing extensive testing. Hard to go 'yeah this has a negative impact on this situation' without background testing data to compare to first.

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You making more friends just to optimize the family summon system would be a 'win' wouldn't it? Being able to make new friends is one of the joys of gaming for me personally.

With the 'obvious' restrictions in place to make it less exploitable for pick up groups, what it is really doing is... making it easier to go to content together with your closest in game friends. If you don't have friends you want to do content with regularly, you are not really 'losing out in effectiveness'. You not having regular party members is the real 'loss of your effectiveness' here.

There are arguments why this is bad. I agree with some of those arguments. I just also think they are pretty resolvable with yet more design consideration and limitations than it is via complete removal.

I'm glad your willing to leave the door open for testing. I think that's as reasonable of a reaction as your hesitance about it being exploitable. It is definitely exploitable if done incorrectly and not thought about on a wider scale of the impact on content.