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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Best Of
Re: Player enemy visual Health Bar update on hit.
Ludullu_(NiKr) wrote: »And considering that it seem that AA's player-driven deaths only led to trade pack drops (which in Ashes would probably be mule runs?) - I'd imagine those would be separated from any mob location, so the abuse being discussed wouldn't even apply to them.
That's just it though.
You imagine.
Whereas people are telling you 'no that doesn't work like that'. Isn't that a huge problem in your mind? Isn't it the same? People imagine that this game will be unpleasant because of L2 stuff and you say 'no that's not how it works you just have to trust us'.
Why aren't you doing the same for the other side?
It literally comes down to the fact that you are the one who has not, afaik, played the games that work like this, and nearly everyone that has played them tells you that your viewpoint is wrong. If you ever expect others to listen and not just 'stick with whatever they imagine will happen due to L2's system', then do the same.
Azherae
1
Re: Player enemy visual Health Bar update on hit.
Imo this would have to be designed in a convoluted as hell way, to account for all the potential interactions, and it would also change the player behavior overall.what about changing kill count to "green attack" count?
As for the convoluted part, there's multiple questions about how exactly the GAC is calculated
- is it on each attack?
- is it within a time window?
- is it based on variating distance between players (i.e. attacker puts a ton of distance between them and the victim, at which point the game's system no longer sees this as a "single interaction" and creates a new count if an attack happens)?
- what about dmg done?
- what about dots (in case they're not seen as a debuff)?
You told Flanker that you don't want the 'green hp is invisible, others are visible" cause it's convoluted, but imo this system would be way more convoluted.
And if your answer to those questions is just "every single hit/ability used gives +1 count" (dots would be a single ability here) - then we come to the change of player behavior I mentioned.
This kind of design would obviously achieve your personal goal of "you only attack a green if you're going to PK them", but this flagging system is designed with a "throw a glove into their face" challenge in mind. Every person is in a "quantum" state of pvp. They can always be killed, but you only learn if they're a pvper once you start attacking, collapsing the function by doing so.
Gaining a corruption multiplier for each hit against a person would mean that you cannot collapse that function w/o making things way worse for you in the long run. This would then require softer balancing on corruption gain per kill and costs of the count reduction methods, cause otherwise you'd be removing the danger of being attacked in the open world.
And even then, if each hit gives you a GAC and the ttk takes several hits (let alone a situation where the victim can heal itself) - the multiplier would need to be something like x1.1 and going up by 1/10s per hit, otherwise you're reducing the amount of PKing ever further.
And any other design brings us back to convolution of the system, as opposed to the simplicity of "you got corrupted from a kill - that's 1 PKC".
I feel like you're oversimplifying the design differences here. You said that AA had enough content for people to not really contest it too much, right? This means that reasons to attack even just your enemy faction would already be fewer in number.Again, keep in mind that Archeage had visible health bars showing perfect information and didn't have the issues you are talking about - so the issues you are talking about are not an inherent result of showing health information. It is possible and proven that you can show perfect health information of rival players and still not have this kind of behavior.
It is worth pointing out that since Archeage was a faction game, you could see the health of people you were able to attack without any penalty at all, and still there wasn't any of this issue.
Iirc AA's "corruption" system only applied to within-faction attacks, right? So any potential player who COULD PK someone in the way we're discussing here, would need to find a location that was only filled with factionmates, not have enough content in that location for himself, AND not care enough about his rep within his faction (while PKing someone or trying to remove them from a location in L2 didn't really impact your rep with other players, cause it was seen as a normal part of the game). And from what I've understood of AA from your explanations, this kind of situation was well-nigh impossible.
In other words, both game design and social pressure made it so that the kind of actions we're discussing would've been insanely rare in AA, while they were fairly normal for the same reason (except with an abscence of social pressure of course).
Your suggestions in this paragraph have big consequences for other things in the game.1.) Just as imagination: What happens, if non-combatants cannot be attacked.
Which fear does a L2 player have here?
Creating a full pvp zone around a boss immediately means that zergs go unpunished.
Randomizing gatherables spawn locations means that the caravan/market system needs to get a rebalancing. And this also makes the life of gatherers way harder, because instead of knowing where to go and building your business around that knowledge, they'd have to wonder around aimlessly hoping to find something valuable. And with a limited amount of professions per character, it's not like you could just take all the gatherer professions and just pick up everything of value you see (and this doesn't even take into the account the bag system).
Other games use pvp toggles or different server types because they're completely separating their playerbases into 2 groups. Steven doesn't want to do that, because such a split is artificial.
And considering the fact that all those other games have to have a full system-protection for their pvers - I'd imagine that there's nothing "fair" about the pvp side of things. Otherwise those pvers wouldn't need such a strong protection. Ashes will also have a protection in the form of the corruption system, but it's a softer one, which allows people to decide on the spot whether they want to pvp at that moment or not. Because even pvpers want to chill sometimes, but they also don't want to lose their ability to defend their farm if someone comes to contest it.
You are still thinking about it in WoW pvp terms. The whole point of this discussion has been "people who attack others TRYING TO AVOID BECOMING A PKer". Yet you ask how does invisible hp help a non-combatant in the case where the attacker is completely fine becoming a PKer.2.)Only hp bars from non-combatants should be invisible
Would you please provide me some situations, where this is an real advantage for the non-combatant?
The advantage to the green player here is that the hidden rogue would NOT know how much hp the green player has. So if that rogue was trying to avoid becoming corrupted (and he's trying to avoid it cause corruption is bad for you, due to the penalties related to it) - invisible hp of a victim that's been in a fight means a much higher risk for the rogue to become Red.
And this higher risk for the attacker would then decrease the risk of being PKed for the green player. That is the advantage of the system.
As for building up a gauge of attacks on the greens, at the end of which you gain corruption - the result would be really similar to what I explained to Noaani above, so you can just refer to that. The behavior would change too much from what Intrepid is going for. And I know that you dislike what they're going for, but I've already spoken with you about that before.
Just to reiterate what I said above, the goal of arguing for invisible hp is to decrease the amount of green player PKings that go unpunished.that means the specific action you are trying to stop via not displaying health bars would have to be considered a part of gameplay (that action can specifically be defined as attacking a player without the intent to follow through).
Your suggestion decreases the amount of attacks on green players.
Your suggestion would just umbrella our goal, but would also influence other interactions as well. So these two suggested mechanics do not achieve the exact same goal.
To you and some others, but not to everyone, nor is it a problem for Intrepid, cause, as I've said before, if it was a problem for Steven - he wouldn't have taken that part of the design from L2.For sure it is :-) It's the only one.
They arleady exist, and I'm sure some people will use them for this purpose.You are not, make a feature called "duel", because you want to do fair pvp without pk-score or corruption. That's fine, that's normal, thats not toxic. Its the most easy solution available since 20y in MMOs and open world MMOs. You fear an artificial issue.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Duels
But duels are not pvx. They're purely pvp. They also will do nothing to remove a player from the premises. If anything, when the weaker player loses - they'll stay in the same place on purpose and will never flag up, because they'd know they'll lose. So the stronger player would need to go corrupt.
But what happens when the stronger player was the one who was farming the location in the first place? Instead of having a full fight that would've removed the other player from the location, which would defend the farming spot - the stronger player now has to go corrupt to achieve the same thing. And I know that you dislike the notion of "competing over content", but that is what this game is about, so, no, they cannot just share with each other while dancing under a rainbow amidst the sunflowers.
And if you're fine with the duel fully killing a player - I dunno how many others would support your position there. I'd be personally more than fine with that, cause I'd never use a duel or accept one, but I really dunno about others.
You are still thinking in the binarity of WoW's pvp/pve servers or of toggleable pvp.Health bars are not the topic, attacking greens is the issue and the consequences (or better: no consequences) out of it. But there MUST be consequences, because non-combatant dont wants to fight, otherwise he would be combatant and would stay combatant by fighting and attacking all the time. That's his decision.
In this kind of system any green player can be a pvper whenever they want. That's their freedom of choice at any given moment, instead of only at the server choice or in town at an npc that flips the switch.
And those greens that DO want to pvp in that moment - will simply fight back. And not only that, but they'd now have the advantage of the first CC, because they themselves couldn't be CCed when they were green. And this is the fairness of this system. The initial attacker might've chunked your hp a bit, but you can now use a CC against him and turn the battle around.
Except attacking other players was not an issue in L2, nor was it griefing. It was a normal occurrence in a competition for limited content/reward.We dont want to have griefers in the game at all. That is the MAJOR goal. This can only be achieved if there is no possibility for those toxic players to fullfill their wet dreams. So stop providing systems to them and feeding those trolls. IF L2 didnt count about that, its an issue in L2 which was not solved correctly or with the community playing it and abusing it. If you want griefers in the game, stop all those mechanics, all of them. Invest the effort in something better.
And Steven kept this competition for Ashes, because he likes this design.
If anything, those of us who want invisible hp are the exact people trying to minimize the amount of griefers in the game. That's exactly WHY we're asking for invisible hp. Because we know that whatever the amount of griefers that L2 had - Ashes will have more due to visible hp.
And you should treat Ashes just as you would those WoW pvp servers, except here you have even more choice, because you choose the time when you want to pvp, instead of simply choosing a server and submitting yourself to constant attacks by the enemy w/o any rest.Excursus: WoW pvp servers had those trouble makers. Really, believe me. But there was support from the developer with Gamemasters and ticket-systems were you just published the cause and those players were punished if griefing was to bad. On the other side. On this servers you are a permanent "combatant", so by intention you want to play pvp all the time. No mechancis needes, nothing in place to safe you (beside real human support from humans working for blizzard helping you if your game experience really was disturbed too hard. Helping means in "real time" of course. The stepped into the game and the PKer just is removed or thats done via console command and the player is logged out or his account is just banned - nobody needs them, nobody wants them).
The reward for any green player is the content of the game. The risk for that player is the ability of others to kill him for said content.What's the reward for the non-combatant player being attacked and killed? Tell me.
You know why he is non-combatant, right? Because of no attacks and pvp fights - he just dont want to play pvp. Otherwise he is a combatant by his decision. The game should encourage this by allowing players to actively pvp-flag themselves.
The green player has a lower risk, because the corruption system limits the amount of people willing to kill the green player. A purple (and let alone a red) player will have way more risk because anyone else is free to kill him w/o penalties (though killing a purple does raise the risk of the killer as well).
That is the risk/reward equation of this system.
But the situation you described here will exist within the flagging system of Ashes. Someone will flag up on another player, because they want to compete for the content, and that other player will just fight back and they'll both have a fair pvp.Everything else is no competion, because only one side wants to be competetive. And this is the special scenario and situation we are talking about all the time. Nobody is talking about two players attacking and fighting each other by intention - that's fine, that's ok, that's fair and real pvp. Everything else is inbalanced and unfair pvp were only one side, the harassing attacker or murder, is entertained.
And both of these players will have made a conscious choice to participate in pvp right at that moment.
But where you're wrong is saying that nothing else is competition. The entire game is competitive, because it'll have limited resources, limited open world content and waaay more players trying to get those resources and participate in that content. There's an inherent competition imbedded into the design.
So far, the only non-competitive thing is the instanced story content, because Steven wants everyone to experience it. Everything else will be fought over in one way or the other.
The example you gave is not an example of meaningful pvp. I do believe all L2 players would agree with that.So, you are Kevin here. I'm Jason. What's my reward? Whats the meaningful "pvp" here? Whats a serious, professional, mature, balanced and reasonable pvp skrimish here?
A meaningful PK there would be if Kevin killed you because he wanted to fish in that location. And that PK would've become a meaningful pvp if Jason fought back, because he neither wanted to lose the fish he had already caught, nor the spot itself, because the fish was highly valuable and he wanted to fish there for longer.
And our suggestion of invisible hp would help punish Kevin for being a dick and just attacking a random person for no real reason. Maybe Jason was only wearing the fisherman gear and had super low defense and hp. Kevin would hit him once and do half hp dmg, but wouldn't know that. Then he'd hit Jason again and kill him, making himself Red.
Now Kevin is hunted by BHs and/or by other people in the vicinity cause Jason shouted in chat "there's a PKer by the pond named Kevin". Kevin gets killed, suffers high corruption death penalties and potentially loses some gear. Now he'll think twice before mindlessly attacking others.
If he does decide to repeat this bs, Jason can just shout in chat about him again, and any pvper in the area would gladly come there and have a fun time killing Kevin-the-dick. If Kevin doesn't stop with his bs even after that - he gains bad rep with guilds and node communities. And he might even become a KOS target for Jason's guild, if Jason is in one (this is also the reason why I kept pushing for people to join guilds in our other discussion).
Imo, this is how a social mmo with deeper player interactions works. This is how L2 worked and it was great. People would always come to each other's help against dicks like Kevin.
Ah, funny how pvp-toggle/server games also need workarounds for their pvp designs. Seems that systems like that are also in no way perfect.And follow-up workarounds and features can still be in place for special situations like corpse ganking or whatever, because even for combatants that can potentially be an issue, if a combatant permanently gets ganked at his corpse (due to respawning at closest respawn point and that will be known/found out soon from toxic players).
This is exactly why I'd rather have a system like the current one. Yes, it will need the workarounds too, but it'll have a broader spectrum of player interactions than just "pvers can't be touched, while pvpers can be slaughtered with no penalties".
The other player does have a choice. He can fight back and potentially win, or he can put high penalties on his attacker, which will punish said attacker for killing this player.YOU should have a choice but the other player not? Why? Thats egoistic and childish. But we want to play a mature game. If you want to fight me, fight me under same conditions, dont be a coward.
And this choice can be made at any point in the game instead of only at login or in town.
It's real funny to me that you keep saying "mature and adult design", while suggesting utter coddling of poor pvers who cannot be touched by any means, or they'll get upset and leave. Really doesn't sound all that mature to me.Balanced fair open world pvp in a mature and non-toxic community enviroment is the goal for a healthy PvX MMO.
I don't need a Big Brother to defend me from spooky attackers. I need a choice to be able to do it on my own or to punish my attacker in a bigger way.
There's also now fairness or maturity in a toggleable/server pvp system, because zergs will always abuse those systems to their own benefit. They'll be slaughtering anyone who's not with them, all the while not suffering a single penalty for doing so. They'll dominate a region (if not a server) and no one will ever even try toggling on pvp.
Such systems are the exact reason why all the wow-like players are scared shitless of pvp. Because the only design they're used to is them being assblasted by way stronger foes, while those foes not only do not get punished but even get rewarded and celebrated for having genocided their enemies.
That is neither good nor a mature design. It's a "big bully in a sandbox" design. They can stomp your sandcastle all the want and you can't do shit about it, except leave (as all the wow players did by either switching to the bigger faction on the server or by going to a pve server completely).
Ludullu
1
Re: Player enemy visual Health Bar update on hit.
Ludullu_(NiKr) wrote: »Seeing Asmon get PKed over and over and over will definitely be a glorious moment Hell, I might even try to get onto the same server and catch him myself.The murmur will become a roar one way or the other, but unless they intend to ignore the feedback and opinions of anyone who is not actually playing in the Alpha at that time, they need the concepts to be as clear as possible.
I don't think that is going to be possible unless you bring a zerg, he has tons of body guards ready at any point.
His server is the one id avoid if anything lmfao.
Mag7spy
2
Re: Player enemy visual Health Bar update on hit.
Nah, I'm shit at expressing my thoughts verbally, so I much prefer text, even though I'm a super slow reader and it takes me a long time to word stuff properly.Yup, that's one of the reasons why such discussions rarely lead to something constructive. People should rather discuss it in AoC discord voice chats as in that case it could be much more meaningful
My post took me almost 3 damn hours to write
Ludullu
1
Re: Player enemy visual Health Bar update on hit.
In my view, I've always preferred having less data cluttering the screen in games, especially when it comes to things like numbers flying off players or health bars gradually depleting. These overlays, along with name tags , tend to break immersion for me. Once you've taken down a few mobs, do you really need to see their name tags anymore? Players though, you kind of do need to see their tags.
I think it would be far more engaging to rely on visual cues—like a character's movement slowing as they take damage or showing physical wear on their armor and body. These types of indicators would immerse players more in the world and make combat feel less like managing a series of numbers.
Reflecting on my time playing Lineage 2, one thing I appreciated was how distinct class attire made it easy to identify who to engage or avoid in PvP. You could tell what a player was capable of just by looking at them, which made targeting and decision-making much easier. In Ashes of Creation, however, this doesn’t seem to be as prominent. You might have to wait until a player attacks before you know their capabilities, which could make combat feel more chaotic.
Given that, I think the time-to-kill (TTK) in Ashes of Creation will need to be longer to allow for more strategic depth. If you can’t immediately tell who you’re up against, longer fights would give players time to assess the situation and adapt their tactics accordingly.
I think it would be far more engaging to rely on visual cues—like a character's movement slowing as they take damage or showing physical wear on their armor and body. These types of indicators would immerse players more in the world and make combat feel less like managing a series of numbers.
Reflecting on my time playing Lineage 2, one thing I appreciated was how distinct class attire made it easy to identify who to engage or avoid in PvP. You could tell what a player was capable of just by looking at them, which made targeting and decision-making much easier. In Ashes of Creation, however, this doesn’t seem to be as prominent. You might have to wait until a player attacks before you know their capabilities, which could make combat feel more chaotic.
Given that, I think the time-to-kill (TTK) in Ashes of Creation will need to be longer to allow for more strategic depth. If you can’t immediately tell who you’re up against, longer fights would give players time to assess the situation and adapt their tactics accordingly.
akabear
1
Re: Well requested a refund on my Alpha 2 package
Your account was created on Jan, 20, 2022, so you knew about the Ashes for at least 968 days. Miraculously, you found some "serious evidence" specifically within these 2 days after you presumably bought the key. Let that sinkBought this Friday, but last 2 days I’ve found out so much about this company and Steven in particular, I just don’t trust them to deliver a decent game, or any game
I’ve always had serious doubts, but now I downright do not trust anything he said.
Company has/had two liens for not paying tax. Lied about why they stopped selling cosmetics, the battle Royale fiasco…just to many red flags l will give them till Monday then do a PayPal forced refund if needed.
You see the stories about him and AA…
Flanker
1
Re: Well requested a refund on my Alpha 2 package
One other thing, company seems to have a lot of loans, funny that for a supposedly self funded mmo.
No, people with money do not use loans in the same way people without money use them.
People without money use them because they don't have the money for the things they want/need. People with money use them to get the things they want/need without taking that money they have out of the investments that it is currently in.
As an example, if I have $10,000 in an investment scheme that is paying out 8%pa, and I want to purchase something for $10,000, if I can get a loan for that $10,000 at 4% interest, that is what I would do.
Sure, I have the money, but that money is making me more money than the loan would cost.
To be honest, not paying their payments is also kind of a thing people with money do. Look at Elon Musk after he took over Twitter - he stopped paying rent on most of the buildings they were renting because, well, because he could.
I'm not specifically defending Intrepid/Steven here, I'm just saying these things you are talking about aren't exactly a smoking gun.
Noaani
1
Re: Well requested a refund on my Alpha 2 package
Following active development isn't for everyone and that's ok. There's no need to contribute money at this stage if you don't feel confident about the advertised product.
Happy to hear that you were able to make use of the refund period and got your money back!
The first phase of Alpha 2 starts in October, which will allow everyone to stream/upload their gameplay for others to watch. Hope to see you coming back for the release, when AoC will be a "game" and not a "testing phase"
Regarding the lien claims, this is Steven's response:
I'm closing this thread as this discussion isn't going anywhere productive.
Happy to hear that you were able to make use of the refund period and got your money back!
The first phase of Alpha 2 starts in October, which will allow everyone to stream/upload their gameplay for others to watch. Hope to see you coming back for the release, when AoC will be a "game" and not a "testing phase"
Regarding the lien claims, this is Steven's response:
I'm closing this thread as this discussion isn't going anywhere productive.
ShadonSol
11
Re: Player enemy visual Health Bar update on hit.
Ludullu_(NiKr) wrote: »Naa this needs to be tested right away as its part of the core pillars, it being disabled with their systems in place is more of a indication PvErs are right.
IT needs to be in and tweaked until the amount of pvp they expect of corruption wise balances out. The moment it feels like a chore you won't see people recklessly doing it as they would only be wasting their own time.
Neither of those 2 first lists seem like something that would require pvp/pk testing to me. I guess economy testing could relate, for the exact reason Azherae pointed out, but even then "economy testing" is a very nebulous thing. Is it market/trading/caravan functionality or is it the full cycle of "loot a mob, put the loot up for sale, use the money to buy something at a node, buy something from a person to combine with the thing you bought at a node, sell the combination at a different node at a higher price after transferring the item in a caravan" or some shit like that.
Balancing minute details of PKing and preventing other players for testing core functionality by pvping them seems kinda counterproductive at that stage of testing.
Not really its pvx PvP is a core connected to all elements of the game, connected to all systems and elements of general gameplay.
The basic rules for corruption should be there then its just adjusting those elements which isn't really difficult. Doesn't mean things need to be precise, and id expect corruption to be on the higher side of scaling to start out anyway.
@Laetitian
Do to it being easy to tweak this really shouldnt be a big deal, where as turning flagging off would be much more of a big deal, in a game that calls itself pvx.
Mag7spy
1
Re: Player enemy visual Health Bar update on hit.
Ludullu_(NiKr) wrote: »Yeah, I definitely foresee Intrepid disabling flagging and PKing real fast. I was kinda surprised it was even planned for Phase 1. Really thought it'd be something that we test way later on, cause there's a ton of other things to test and pvp/pk will stand in the way of that.My prediction is that people will literally lose their mind during Alpha 2, because there will be a lot of PvP and PKs, including absolutely random PKs. Why? Because it's Alpha with wipes and people dgaf about the consequences.
I do not believe Intrepid can risk having PvP/PK and corruption disabled for Phase I because Phase I is also when the NDA officially drops.
The murmur will become a roar one way or the other, but unless they intend to ignore the feedback and opinions of anyone who is not actually playing in the Alpha at that time, they need the concepts to be as clear as possible.
Azherae
4