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I can't be sure if the issue you have with understanding the reaction is because you don't enjoy/understand crafting yourself...

'Long term purpose' isn't the point. Serving a long term goal isn't the point. Artisanship is supposed to be fun in and of itself and it can be judged on it that way. If you view it as a primarily competitive activity, it's impossible to get a result that is appealing to anyone except those who 'just drudge through it so that their group can be competitive', which is certainly a design option, but not the one that has been pitched so far afaik.

But more importantly, the part that matters to the concept of changing it, is related to 'why is it so unpleasant in the first place?'

Some amount of effort, however tiny, had to be put into coming up with the recipes we have in game now, for testing, and for setting temporary incentives for players. The issue is that what we have is so unappealing that it comes off as purposeful.

It looks and feels like someone did work to try to make it good without understanding it. (or did work to explicitly try to make it bad).

But, again, if you view Artisanship as 'a thing that someone is assigned to do for the sake of competing' and therefore they shouldn't seek for it to be an innately rewarding experience, especially if you think this design type is normal or good for the game, that's why you don't understand the requests for changes. At that point it would make sense for you to say 'the game would be hurt by changes' because you'd essentially want the Artisanship to be less fun on purpose to keep people out of it.

Note though, that this isn't necessary. The game forces specialization, and more importantly, the only thing these games need is a structure where available time/resources is the limit. Granted, Steven has already said 'I hate and don't want the system that's normally used for this', but even then, that system was only vital because of the economy type of the games he's familiar with.

Laetitian wrote: »

ShaggyRyn wrote: »

I’m all for making the game tough but it can’t have friction in everything you do or it just isn’t fun anymore it’s work.

If you don't enjoy this voluntary work in your pastime, have you considered...just not doing the work? And focusing on the parts of the game that you care about instead?

I really enjoy crafting systems, and I think once I truly understand this one, I’ll probably love it. I’m not asking for things to be easy—make it hard, make it meaningful. But after 40 hours of grinding, even if the reward isn’t amazing, let me walk away with something. Give me a little money, some grey gear, a health potion—heck, a slab of Grem Butt BBQ. Anything that shows my time wasn’t wasted. That kind of small win gets me invested. It encourages me to keep learning the system instead of avoiding a core part of the game that I’d normally dive headfirst into.

Are there any recommendations on what I should harvest, process, and create that you think displays the crafting system well? I'd love to try again this week.

So, if I log back into a zone I camped out of a few days earlier, that has since turned Lawless, does this mean I have to fight my out to leave? Should there be a "Get out of Dodge fast" option?

Edit: Not to derail from the original topic but just following the stream of consciousness of this thread....

Ludullu wrote: »

The problem here is that these zones become the most valuable, because Steven thinks that somehow the pvpers who go there have a higher risk to their gameplay, even though, as you yourself say, they don't even care about the pve which is supposed to be the higher reward in this context.

This is why I want systems that make the entire world have way more pvp, instead of just a few zones only made for pvpers.


... except for some peculiar reason we're getting way more pvp-related changes rather than pve-related ones, which, to me, simply screams that Steven only cares about appeasing the pvpers that are in his ears constantly.

Also, it's real funny that you say pvers are entitled, while pvpers start crying like babies the second a few lawless zones got removed I've seen waaaay more complaining from pvpers about "waaah, there's no way for me to kill people w/o penalties" than complaints from pvers about shitty pve. Mostly because pvers said that at the start, saw that things wouldn't change all that fast and left to do better things while they wait, exactly because they're not entitled to keep crying to Steven to add THEIR content first.

If there is more "valuable" rewards in there i assume that is indeed intended to whom likes that type of content then, and they (pvpers) get exactly what they want which is pvp at will...(i feel because you are unhappy, the others must as well not have fun because you say so).
You said well few zones dont know why it bothers you so much, while pretty much the rest of the world is pve based.
Yes i can say that by already backup experience, oh and the only pvp system (so far existing, because even caravans people avoid to do go figure why...) getting removed oh yes that one. And i've seem the same amount if not more usually is always more of pvers on a constant complaining about everything and anything, even when the matter isnt really related to them (cough pvp).

Ludullu wrote: »

1. PvPers come into A2
2. They get a handout in the form of land lawless zones, which are presented as "a way to test player behavior in the open seas w/o having seas" (except gameplay on land and at sea are completely different, so this was already a bad approach)
3. PvPers see that all the other PvP systems are not finished
4. PvPers exploit unfinished mechanics to bully people (mostly leashing and CCs against greens)
5. PvPers use unfinished war design to abuse absence of city guards around storage
6. Intrepid have to address this
7. PvPers abuse bad guard AI around ember springs and node to keep killing people w/o proper punishment
8. Intrepid have to address this
9. PvPers overabuse wardecs and war rewards
10. Intrepid have to address this
11. More lawless zones get added to distract PvPers from abusing the little amount of non-pvpers left in the game
12. PvPers start complaining that caravans can be exploited by crashing the game, so a 1-2 group of attackers can't kill it in time
13. Intrepid have to address this
14. Ships get added waaay ahead of schedule do add more pvp
15. Lawless zones get removed cause the game is growing
16. PvPers complain that their ffa PvP is now gone
17. Intrepid have to address this
18. *We are currently here

Also, which one of those groups have created way more needless work for Intrepid through their complaining? Half of the pvp list shouldn't even have been in the current version of the game ffs.

Needless work!? interesting choice of words... and yet you say 'yes it is an alpha' but im not quite sure you really know or understand what that means after all. Also its crucial for Intrepid to keep pvpers interested/around, without them game will be dead on arrival have no doubts (most mmos stopped caring/ (neglected) about the pvp aspects of the game or the pvpers long ago, hence why the dire state of most of them nowadays).

Kallysha wrote: »

lawless zones are great for roamers/gankers or whoever organizes and wants to do a zvz/bvb, worry not there will eventually be other gankers after those same, this just for the sheer splendor of pvping with other pvpers (pvers venturing themselves there are just collateral damage) 'want risk for both the victim and the attacker.' yeah the victim already did took the risk of venturing himself in there which led him to get attacked/ambushed, and well the attacker also has the risk of getting himself killed, goes for both ways)

I want proper balancing for corruption, not what we have right now. And by proper balancing I mean that the PKer who has a 0 PK counter can kill 2-3 times, which would be cleansable on mobs within roughly the same amount that the victim would need to return to the same place (this design would also require a much better placement of ember springs).

This way the victim has to gamble whether they really want to lose more of their stuff (and time) by dying to someone who might be on their first kill and that kill will go completely unpunished, or the victim should just fight back and not only lose less but also have a chance of winning the fight. This was also Steven's initial plan, which is exactly why flagged people are meant to lose less stuff on death.

But none of that works in the context of a lawless zone, because the victim always knows that their attacker will go unpunished, because the kill is always free. All while the attacker has barely any risk, for not only their loot on potential death is lessened, but they're also sure in their pvp abilities, which simply means that they're way more likely to win a fight of their choosing.

This is pretty much the same issue that caravans have. The attackers suffer no real penalty, they have pretty much 0 risk, yet they not only reap the reward of spoiling someone else's gameplay, but they also get the loot from it.

This then ties into my P.S. of wanting only gear decay for sanctioned pvp, because this way more people would be willing to/intersted in participating in it. Intrepid immediately experienced the issue with the current system of wars when "pvpers" would simply wardec people in nodes, immediately gank them and loot their bodies, right by the storage vendor.

And that issue then led to several overcorrections in design, that in themselves took weeks to implement (with several bad implementations). None of this would've happened if we only had decay as a penalty (AS WAS PREVIOUSLY PLANNED, STEVEEEEEEEN!).

In other words, gankers would still exist just fine, but they'd simply have a higher risk floor, which helps the game to have more than just ganker-pvpers as its audience.

This then also requires corrupted players to only be visible on the BH map, rather than on everyone's. Which requires BHs to even exist (and right now I'm fairly sure that system will be gone too). And the cat/mouse chase between BHs and PKers would be its own good source of proper high stakes pvp for the gankers.

And I'd fully support (and have suggested several times) a system where the PKer would only drop items if they were killed by a BH, so that the cat/mouse chase happens purely between those types of players, rather than "a whole village with pitchforks are hunting a local monster" type of deal.

All of this would result in an overall pvx setup of

• pver is farming mobs/gatherables
• a ganker kills them
• BH sees the PKer on their map and starts running after them
• the PKer now has a timer and has to kill as many mobs as they can in hopes of cleansing corruption
• once the PKer has 4+ PKs under their belt, that timer gets exponentially longer
• PK count reduction methods should be balanced around node-related activities, to help nodes grow better

I've also suggested a system that would return the victim's mats to them if the PKer got caught by the BH, but that's a whole separate thing.

To me, all of that stuff above is much more fun and interesting than "duuuhhhh, I can murder whoever I want in this zone w/o a single shred of punishment. And I also most likely play a Rogue, so I can escape anyone who tries to chase me too, so I have even less risk".

Kallysha wrote: »

*A land of milk and honey plus ponies* yeah pvpers will only stick around if there is pvp happening, regarding pve content we only do pretty much what we are forced to do...

Which is exactly why I said I want PvXers in a PvX game. I played a PvX game for 12 years and it had more open world pvp than majority (if not all) other mmos I've heard about. And that game had this exact corruption system (but with better balancing) and relied on wars rather than on lawless zones.

Kallysha wrote: »

well there is corruption tho hence why pvpers want the lawless zones so they can pvp with each other without corruption on the horizon, wich is a system made pretty much as a safe "instance" for you pvers, so the irony

Addressed this above.

Also, when I suggested those "pvpers" go to the tropic islands that are still lawless (afaik) - they said "it's not about thaaat! We want to gank people over mobs rather than just pvp". And the same was said in the context of arenas as well. I'm sure there's gonna be some people that do just want to properly fight each other, but I'm not sure if they're the majority, in this particular context.

Kallysha wrote: »

'zerg control everything and everyone' yet to see that happening...so far havent seen such

Do we even have zergs in Alpha right now? I think Pirates were the biggest ones, but Lyneth' culture wasn't really about that iirc.

And in P1 Vyra was all about deathballs running around ganking each other. Though, what a surprise, they didn't even need lawless zones for that.

Which mostly goes back to my point of "pvpers", who're asking for lawless zones, not being real pvpers and instead just being gankers who wanna murder people w/o punishment.

First 6 years of this game's development it was presented as "murderhoboing is not a thing in this game". And yet here we are... And yeah, I know, "everything is subject to change". Which is exactly why I'll keep telling Intrepid that this is a shitty-ass subject to have changed.

Kallysha wrote: »

now if they would do lawless zones on a rotation instead of static zones, then you wouldnt needed to be afraid of not getting that precious loot, just saying

From Steven's words, the lawlessness brings the bigger rewards. Cause he believes that having a literal ffa zone on murder will somehow increase risk for the strongest players in the realm.

And I'm doing a storm in a cup, because I'm worried about the consequences of these kinds of actions. We all knew that Steven was already way more lenient towards pvpers, but now he's getting deeper and deeper into an echo chamber full of those pvpers who're yelling at him about their preferred design, rather than something that would create a pvx game and not a pvp one.

I gave this example before, but I know from personal experience what happens when a game that's supposed to have the pvp systems that were promised for Ashes suddenly gets a lawless zone. None of those other systems get interacted with, while the only ones interacting with the lawless stuff are the strongest/biggest players on the server. This then inevitably leads to complete drain of the playerbase, because those big players become even bigger, due to getting literal BiS loot from a pvp zone that they dominate, while everyone else on the server can't do shit.

Afaik TL players have been complaining about zergs dominating pvp zones since release of the game. @Azherae , correct me if I'm wrong in remembering that. And TL has those exact "rotating lawless zones".

Imo Steven is killing any meaningful, complex and deep pvp in Ashes by going down the lawless zone route. Remember this tweet when only the big guilds remain on the server, while everyone else has either left or is simply passively playing a tiny part of the game (this is usually a super minority of people).