Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
It's partially about the time invested in progression - and having other players deciding for you how much extra time is added on to your progression goals for a specific play session.
It's partially about other people forcing you to participate in an activity you're not in the mood for.
Just like I don't want people forcing me to eat when I'm already full. Or forcing me to exercise when I've already had my fill of exercise for the day.
If all I want to do for the rest of my play session is build or explore, I should be able to do that without some other player forcing me to fight.
Although, if the fight is not going to significantly add to my progression time and is going to take less than 5 minutes, it's fine - kill me quickly and then we can both move on to finish out our game sessions as planned.
Again, in Bless Online, the PvP combat is fine because it doesn't affect my progression or my plans for the game session. It takes up about 5 minutes, including corpse runs.
Any gear degradation takes pennies I'm not really counting.
So, PvP combat there is mostly irrelevant because it has no significant impact on completion of my game session goals.
Once another player is able to add 20+ minutes onto my game session simply because they want to have 5 minutes of PvP combat fun, non-consensual PvP combat becomes a major issue.
5 minutes is a minor interruption.
20+ minutes is a major interruption.
It's more a matter of preference and balancing fun, time and effort.
It's especially an issue of what fun in an MMORPG means to each player.
We like to really refer to ourselves as a PvX game, because in those systems of PvP, PvE, crafting they're all intertwined: They're interdependent on each other... Our system of development really requires some interdependence there between those things. You're going to need a crafter to give you the best items. You're going to need PvPers to secure cities and castles. You're gonna need PvErs to take down those world bosses for those materials to craft.
We're very clear with our objective and philosophy on the game and we understand that they may not appeal to everybody. But you know it is an important reciprocal relationship between the content that's related to PvE and the content that's related to PvP and they feed off of each other. They're catalysts for change: Their progression, their development. It's things that people can value when they see something earned and they see something lost. That elicits an emotional response from the player: That they've invested time in to either succeed or fail; and PvP allows for that element to be introduced into gameplay. And we're very clear that is our objective: That risk versus reward relationship, that achievement-based mentality. Not everybody's going to be a winner and that's okay.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/39558/some-minor-but-spicy-changes-to-keep-open-world-pvp-alive-and-healthy#latest
If you attack a player, and they don't fight back, and you kill that player then you gain more loot than if the player fought back. You also gain corruption. It's not a 'very little reward' when compared to PvP fights that don't end in corruption because you actually gain more. Is that risk worth that reward, that's for you to decide.
As for the corruption aspect, it's meant to be a deterrent so there should not be any encouraging reasons to gain it;
-Pirate Towns
-Areas that allow killing a green without gaining corruption (or as much)
-Areas that allow corruption to fade away outside of PvP death
-etc.
All these things, imo, encourage players to partake in part of the game specifically designed to deter them from doing that thing.
As for the OP, no separate servers. Imo, separate servers would kill Ashes. I might be wrong and one day we might know for sure.
If all the victim has been doing is gathering resources, then the loot they lose may feel significant - but it's not going to be as significant as what's on a caravan.
The best resource rewards will come from looting caravans.
Risk v reward has little meaning in that context if you don't care much about carry resources on your character.
And if the victim isn't carrying many resources, there's not much to lose.
Especially since it's never gear or processed items that non-combatants suffer from the death penalty.
Is corruption worth getting something I could have gathered in the same time? for me, no.
Is corruption worth getting a bit more than what I could have gathered? for me, again no
Is corruption worth a rare resource that is now dried up in the area? for me, probably. The goal would be to hide it away in my apartment/house/keep before being taken down.
What about fighting someone because they are part of a rival node? Different organizations but similar idea.
Meaningful is going to be about a rival node's objectives impeding the objectives of your own node.
Sure, sieges are meaningful. So is preventing them from building up to make the siege easier.
How is this subjectively not meaningful to the devs?
Guild wars will have objectives that are more meaningful than just, "You are a guild that is not our guild."
Meaningful isn't directly related to rival node competition?
That's what we're trying to indicate. Guild PvP is meaningful, it's not always node vs node, and it's not always a siege.
Rival objectives are meaningful.
Those objectives are specific mechanics that are not necessarily node related.
Still, after YEARS of what people call "carebear" playing in other games, people have forgotten what it's like to be in a tightly knit guild (make friends online?? No WAY!), have your own city, your own player house, and want to DEFEND that stuff. In fact SWG pissed me off because houses couldn't BE attacked. I wanted my skin in there, I wanted to defend it. This looks like a a game where alts will be a thing so you can do both. It's not scary, it's EXCITING!! For people new to this style of play, though, it can sound really intimidating. It's not. Really, it's NOT. Pretend the griefing player is just another mob and kill it. It's that simple. If it keeps coming at you, switch to your alt. They'll get bored and wander off to find another target. Always have alts so you can keep playing. It's NOT that big of a deal, I promise.
If players were as easy to deal with as NPCs, people would pretend that the players attacking them are mobs.
Players are not as easy to deal with as NPCs, which is why many players want to be exempt from PvP combat when they're not in the mood for it.
Switching to an alt is no solution for completing the game session goals set for a specific character. The major issue still remains that some other player gets to decide whether or not I complete the goals I've set for my character.
EXCITING is subjective.
And that's the problem with trying to have all playstyles play together on the same servers.
"PvP in Ashes of Creation is intended to be both organized and organic. We want to create an atmosphere where PvP is meaningful by utilizing different systems that create fluid PvP events including: Castle Sieges, City defense/assaults, Caravans, and a scenario-based Arena combat. For our open world, we have designed a flagging system that severely deters people from griefing other players. Much more will be explained in great detail, in our upcoming developer blogs."
Flagging means a TEF (Temporary Enemy Flag) system. If that's the case, if you're crafting or surveying or just enjoying some scenery, and you haven't flagged yourself for PvP, then you can't be attacked. IF that's the system they put in instead of just corruption, that might work out better and I'm sure they're reading all of these concerns. Now if we choose to join a caravan, that sounds like it'll flag us, or engage in an assault or defense of a city - that sounds like it'll flag us too. So be it, we made that choice.
The nice thing is we're still in pre-Alpha and the MASSIVE surge of people put off by the thought of griefers is probably going to cause them to place a TEF system in the game for people who don't want to PvP when they're busy grinding crafting or fishing or whatever (let there be fishing!!!). They'll PvP anyhow though - if the devs were ever in Theed (and I know one was) on any given weeknight, they know PvP comes organically just fine