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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Sieges do not happen at any time, they are timed, and have long CDs, those are called events.
Same as caravans, also events. Caravans are not compulsory, you are able to move your resources without caravans only at slower pace.
You are able to obtain everything, be max geared, have cash, everything, purely through PvE, even if you avoid ALL PvP events.
You can't have anything remotely close purely though PvP.
Red player dying is punished heavily more severe than green player dying.
Green player can attack red player and remain green.
Etc.
This is a PvE game with optional PvP events, regardless if you want to admit this or not. Nothing more to say.
Also, PvP is more than just PKing. I hope you can at least agree with that.
As has been discussed in this thread, it is in Intrepids best interests to make sure that "some" people are still doing this, and they have many points of balance that they can easily alter to make sure this is the case.
That makes it a PvX game.
Just remember, as you two continue to discuss, that you both represent the opposite ideologies that Intrepid is trying to cater to.
Basically, don't get heated over this. Neither of you are going to agree.
I agree to some extent that the punishment is a bit harsh for a single kill. No matter how much Corruption you have, you're still going to die eventually with increased penalties. That in itself favors the PvE camp.
Alter that so that a small amount of Corruption is just a bit of a pain to get rid of through whatever means, and we've got a reasonable, albeit pretty basic system.
Can you both agree on that. Just try and consider it from each other's viewpoint for a second lol. Humor me please
- Sikuba
It's not unregulated PKing. It's meaningful conflict for resources.
You get flagged purple (for a while) only when you gather. Then another player can challenge you for the resource.
If you are just walking through forest, green, traveling to somewhere, and other player kills you just for the fun of it, then sure, he gets corrupted.
So it is not unregulated and unrestricted at all as you put it.
The thing is PvE players want to be able to avoid PvP during their gathering fully, by the help of mechanics punishing and discriminating to people who would engage them in conflict.
Then they say "but you CAN attack me", and conveniently avoid to take into account harsh punishment that stacks up for those attacks.
People should not be able to avoid conflict for resources, while gathering, in a PvX game.
This has nothing to do with people randomly ganking without meaning. THAT is a separate issue, and "getting flagged for gathering action" ion no way interferes with corruption punishing gankers who kill people for nothing while they just roam around.
Of course, people who want to avoid PvP completely, write in such ways go avoid saying this, and twisting the truth, that you become to "feel dumb" because you actually continue to try to discuss things with them.
But if decide to pull out due to not wanting to discuss things with someone that's twisting the truth, then they have it their way, devs see only their posts and cater to them.
It's sad. But it's how it is.
You can still kill people, you will just die as a result. It's not super harsh if you're someone who is regularly engaging in killing other players. But if you need to kill someone for some reason every once in a while, the punishment borders on severe, compared to the crime.
as i said before, i think instead of trying to use this term(open world concept) as a marketing tool, they should have area's for low-medium tier resources that maybe keeps the current system we have, the corruption and all.
However, on the high tier resources, lets say (end game content) those penalties are now gone and here is why.
1) in the low-medium zone players had a chance to not only learn the game, but progress all with semi PvP availability.
2) In high tier area's players will now know that these resources which are limited are worth a lot, thus creating a balanced economy, and also understand that if you so **CHOOSE** to go for them, you are putting yourself at risk for a **CHANCE** of PvP, because of the resources value to both the game(economy) and player/guilds.
This produces a balance of risk vs reward. low/medium resources have much lower risk, but much lower reward because of the current corruption in place.
High risk would be going for high tier resources which you can sell or use to craft and thus make high tier weapons and armor or money, but also have higher chance of POTENTIAL pvp and thus higher risk, that in my opinion is balance.
This isnt forcing anyone to do anything they dont want, but is also not simply rolling over and letting everyone just constantly farm these resources(bots included btw).
And who knows, there might be plenty of area's in the world where a smart gatherer will be able to quickly hit the nodes and run away without any PvP, but still have that thrill of having to actively watch his back. If anything, it would also improve the immersion for role players, being a top tier gather would actually mean something when there is risk involved, not when you can afk while being green because every1 is scared to pvp you.
balanced risk vs reward, anti bot system, and great for the economy, that makes perfect sense in my opinion
No. A real PvP game would be:
- corruption does not exist, not even for ganking
- no safe zones, not even freeholds
- not only a lack of punishment for PKs, but in fact an added rewards for PKs
- more incentives across the board to go and kill anyone you see
- ...
On a contrast:
- corruption still existing for ganking and meaningless kills (excluding kills for resources)
- safe zones in housing
- no added incentive for PKs
- necessity to PvE for the gear
- ...
would still very much be a PvX game.
Currently:
- punishment for "unwanted PvP" even around limited resources
- much harsher punishment for dying red than for dying green
- occasional PvP events that you can avoid if you want
- green players getting to kill reds without flagging
- bounty hunters having easy job hunting targets weakened by lowered stats
- gear breaking for reds
- ...
It's a very much PvE game with occasional / optional PvP events. That is not PvX (unless in mind of players that want to avoid PvP).
So my suggestion to flag people while gathering doesn't come even close to turning game to PvP, it infact gives game a HOPE to call it PvX, rather then it really being a PvE currently
(Ganking is still punished, killing people who just roam the forest for no good reason is still punished, continual killing of people for no good reason is punished even more. However, attacking people for limited resource while they are gathering is allowed. And that is in a true spirit of PvX.)
Would I rather corruption be removed for all equal level fights? Yes. However, if it would get removed only for fights around gathering resources, I would find it a fair compromise.
It may be PvX favoring PvE over PvP, but it is still PvX.
I have never seen a persistent MMO that favors PvP over PvE succeed, and no developer is going to take that step to creating one. The closest thing to it is EVE, and if EVE's gameplay were translated to Ashes, people would spend 90% of their game time in their home node - not exactly riveting gameplay.
As has been said many times, @Gothix, that level of PvP puts the enjoyment of the game in the hands of players rather than the hands of the people that paid the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to get the game made. Even games that are only slightly more PvP focused than Ashes - but still firmly on the side of PvE - fail due to giving players too much freedom to ruin others game experience.
If a PvP focused game were ever made, even PvP'ers playing such a game will leave if they end up not being in the one group on each server that is able to continue progressing. That level of PvP can only ever work in a non-persistent game.
Other players are not your content. Any player that feels they are more content than participant will simply find another game to play, or even play no game at all as not playing a game is better than being someone else's content.
If PvP players so desperately want a PvP focused MMO, do what Steven is doing - make it.
@Noaani
So I suggest a slight modification to corruption system, where players get shortly flagged while gathering, to allow for competition around resource nodes, and you basically go ahead and say that will turn the game in full fledged murder box, where zergs of grieferes will gank everyone around full time and game will die?
Did you miss the part about corruption remaining in effect as it is besides around resource nodes, to allow people to actually fight around resources (and not without a reason)?
I'd say apparently you did. OR more likely, you didn't but you don't care, as long as you get to grind untouched 99% of the time.
Hmm, not sure if even to respond to this, lol. Why don't you go make a PvE MMO and then play it?
Again, we do not hope for a PvP MMO here, but rather for a real PvX MMO.
I don't believe that the system is prohibitive to PvP. The biggest barrier that discourages it is the Corruption Death. Once you are already Corrupt, the amount of Corruption you gain for killing a similarly leveled green player is minimal. This means that you'll probably be able to kill several before you really start to feel the effects of the stat dampening.
Also, remember that kills that actually give you Corruption are only those in which the enemy allows themselves to be killed as a green out of spite or trying to deter you. If the enemy decides that they are carrying too much to allow themselves to die as greens, they can flag purple. Then, although the loot that you receive is reduced, you do not gain corruption as a result. If they don't flag, you end up with a fair amount of loot as a result.
It is a complicated system that is tackling the issue from what I feel is the wrong angle, but saying that it doesn't allow PKers to do their thing isn't fair.
A similar system to this exists in Black Desert Online, however, BDO is a little more forgiving in terms of how much you can kill before it starts to impact you. BDO basically gives you between 3-5 kills before you become Red. Beyond that, you become a Red player, who can be harassed indefinitely without consequence until you farm back into good Karma, which can take hours or days. Even so, PvP thrives in that game. The thing is, you don't drop inventory in BDO the way you do in AoC, so kills and deaths are less valuable.
Basically, there is a very high incentive to kill in this game, so a fair amount of regulation is needed to prevent abuse of this high reward.
Unregulated forced PKing in high-end zones only would basically turn anyone who doesn't want to PvP into second-class citizens who either forage for scraps in lower-level zones, or spend hours farming and gathering only to be cracked open like a pinata by a passing PKer. The loot drop is why the punishments exist.
So there is a reward for PKing, and a big one at that. You get to pick up part of whatever they had on them when they died.
It's a huge incentive, which is why Corruption exists. Why would anyone farm for hours if, at a moment's notice, they could be cracked open like a pinata by a passing PKer free of charge?
Unregulated PKing would make farming almost impossible, and would hinder the growth of the game. Even PKing while gathering would force players trying to gather resources to constantly travel back and forth between the resources and their node, so as to avoid losing too much if a PKer happened to pass by.
If I go out harvesting, I don't want interruptions from people whom mistakenly think I am their content. If people do interrupt me, I want to at least have options as to what I do, including forcing a penalty on him that will use as much of his time as he wasted of mine.
If I am harvesting, I want to harvest. When I want PvP, I will go to where PvP is expected - sieges, caravans, arena, what ever.
This isn't a new concept.
I don't want a pure PvE game. AoC the way Steven has described it seems to me to be about what I want.
So if I attack a player trying to harvest something that I want I can use a small damage attack thus interupting his gathering and move in myself. He attacks back or when I move in and we are both purple. Game on right?
The cowardice would then probably be abused. The play would be to "tag 'em and bag 'em". Basically, someone pokes you and runs, then, once you're yellow, cleans you up for twice the profit of killing a green. Maybe if they had to break stay visible, and within a certain area?
Regardless, it still end up forcing people to PvP for their resources. This is something that Intrepid is trying to reduce. It's a tough problem to deal with, especially with their current approach. There's just so much balancing involved, and it's such an important topic to the MMO community.
Like i said, if you are one who likes this current system(very pvp punishing) then we can keep it, and use it to prevent low/mid tier zones/resources from turning into war zones. This should keep players who dont want to PvP relatively happy because they most likely wont encounter much in those zones that are so to speak "protected" by the corruption and heavy penalties.
Now the other end of that, high tier zones which NEED to have high risk should have no corruption penalties no pvp, but could have something like BDO, which will force you to take another activity for a short while if you killed too many people in the high tier zones. That is a compromise, which even i am not a fan of, but its still would be better then what we have right now...
Combined with the bounty hunter system, revealing you on the mini map, that is more then enough negative effects on the HIGH TIER ZONE to get anyone who slays too much in trouble, even greens can group up and gang up on you. What we dont need is a thing that lowers youre stats, takes away your hard earned XP and makes you lose your gear, which is just crazy cuz that is counter productive if you are trying to gather for gear and to protect your gathering spot to be losing gear, oh and time wasted since you have to die multiple times to lose the corruption buff we have no globally.
Like i said, risk vs reward is the issue here, and PvP is regulated with this system, very heavily in low/medium zones, and less so on high tier zones, but you cant have a global regulation that treats all the resources as the same, that just does not make sense, even from an economic perspective.. If people are allowed to gather with no risk all these resources and items will be worth next to nothing which is bad for the longevity of the game.
Ashes isn't built on a system where - for example - iron is used to make armor and weapons for level 1 - 10, then players move on to the next metal for levels 11- 20.
The idea with Ashes is that all materials will retain valid use at all levels in crafting, and location of harvesting resources has nothing to do with the level of surrounding mobs.
Not only is this the way Ashes is designed, it is really the only way it could function - mobs in a given area can change to be any level range, and resources can appear anywhere in the world that is appropriate for them to appear.
This is why notions of "fighting" over resources seems odd to me, but also makes your suggestion unworkable in Ashes.
The thing I'd like to point out to all the people looking for a compromise; we have a compromise, the corruption system already *is* a compromise.
I already talked a bit about the reward with Gothix, so I'm just going to quote it above. I believe that addresses what you were talking about. If not, feel free to further explain why you feel the system is too prohibitory.
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(continuing my point from the quote)
Depending on the amount of loot that is dropped by a Green player, PKing can become more, or less valuable under this system. Instead of making it easy to go out, kill and collect loot, you now need to choose a target of value, otherwise the risk to yourself might not be worth it.
As I said before, for people who aren't killing others to collect resources, rather, as a means of defending their own mobs or farm, the system is overly harsh. But the dropped loot is a nice little bonus.
I'm slowly being tempted into buying my way into Alpha 1...
Must.. Have.. Restraint.....
Lol
That only leaves mob defending - and since Verra is going to be much, *much* bigger than BDO, and with ever changing mobs meaning players won't know which area is necessarily the best to farm, I don't see any need for this to occur at all out side of group or raid dungeons.
So really, I only see two times a player should gain corruption - attacking another player while resource hunting either to defend a limited supply of resources or to take the resources that player has harvested in order to save time - or to remove another group from the same area you are working through in a dungeon.
In both of these cases, there is a need to consider risk vs reward. If the system was changed (say, harvesting resources made you a combatant) that risk is mostly removed, leaving only reward.
I would just like to add, that in a PvX game (ergo PvP is included) players ARE the content (fights between players).
So those people aren't mistaken about you being "the content" as you put it.
You may kill a player to get to content, but players are not content.
This is not a MOBA. This is not a FPS. This is not a Battle Royale.
Players are content consumers, not content.
Its not 50/50 sceniro half pve and half pvp. It seems heavily pve 80/ 20 ( I am being generous) and really disregards any true open world competition. I get there are variables but over all that seems to be the sentiment.
Yes there are battlegrounds, seiges and so on. But as I stated many times over that takes time, planning and as someone said it's really like side pvping. Mini games at best. It's just not something I feel is indicative of a real
pvx game, more at pve with some pvp stuff added in.
The elephant in the room to me is the fact it feels bias and is not really offering so much in the way for pvpers. Of course pvers want this and will fight tooth and nail to keep it that way.
it really goes down to how much, how fast does the corruption system can build up. How hard is it to remove it. But the punishments seem to sever and the idea you actually get weaker, seems silly. Somehow magically I can hardly lift my arms up cause I killed a farmer wtf? Really dispenses emmersion and it is an obvious attempt to dissway pvping but I feel certain things go to far. You can dissway sure but taking a sledge hammer to hang up drywall is overkill
We do not know how severe the actual punishment for killing another player will be. We know the mechanics that will be in place, but if killing a single player results in a 0.01% stat drop and 0.01% chance that each item in your inventory could drop - that really isn't much of a penalty at all. On the other hand, if those 0.01% figures were both 10% instead, that would be a massive penalty and I'd be arguing along side everyone else that it needs to be toned back.
What we do know is that Intrepid *WILL* keep this system balanced so that people will generate corruption. Intrepid don't want a game where there is no one attacking out in the open world - they just want to put a regulator on it so that they can stop it getting out of control.
When players like PvP focused actually realize that Intrepid will modify these factors to maintain a given desired overall player behavior, one that sees enough people gaining corruption for Bounty Hunters to have something to do, they will stop arguing against the system and realize that they have a whole lot of freedom within it.
A game that has open world PvP defines players as content, which is why they have moderation, so that the balance of PvE, PvP and gathering stays balanced, even though currently it seems to be messed up.
In terms of high end resources, i dont necessarily mean like different glowing zones, its just more or less the rare stuff, that probably wont be growing at all inches of the map, so if i see that the economy values lets say wood, and i see a person gathering tons of wood that either me or my guild needs, that should be considered a high tier resource and i would want to defend that node and should for that is my objective in the game,to gather and craft all of which i cant do without gathering that wood my self.
If i let every single player gather before me, then that would leave me poor and weak both in terms of gear and crafting items. I think since its still early in the development the devs could indeed make certain things more abundant while others more rare, and therefor maybe only flagging players when they gather the rare stuff, regardless of the zone, once again kind of applying what i said earlier about risk vs reward, lower tier stuff or more abundant tier stuff should give corruption, but higher tier stuff or more rare things might cause you to flag if you want to gather it, that might be a mix between what i said and what gothix has been saying, but its a split, a compromise between both system and neither getting what we want but still a more forgiving system then just a global corruption buff on EVERYTHING.
I have a big problem with any game that causes you to drop gear or lose xp as a result of simply playing the game without those effects applicable to the other party in some sort of way.
I can see how my wording might have been confusing, though.
If that action is to kill them, that is what I will do (as someone who plans to spend the plurality of my time in game raiding, I'd likely be able to do that). If what will convey to this player that I am not their content the best is to let them kill me and take a corruption hit, then that is what I will do.
I do not pay $15 a month to be someone else's content.
Don't increase this thread by 25 pages while I'm gone.