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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
That said, as a player that has taken specific aspects of games quite seriously in the past, I can tell you that someone that wants to be only focusing on farming will do what ever needs to be done to be the best at farming that they can.
If by farming they mean using their freehold to grow stuff - not only does that not need adventuring at all (as far as I can tell), but it also likely won't take up much time.
If that player means going out gathering in the wild though, adventuring will be required to a degree.
Some people who focus on farming will also be interested in adventuring and raiding and even PvP.
Hardcore challenge people are likely to.
Casual challenge people are much less likely to.
And my farmer friend happens to be a casual challenge player.
Farming probably won't need much adventuring at all, which is why they might not put much effort into leveling the Adventurer class.
That doesn't mean they won't spend their time out gathering.
How much adventuring they do depends, of course, on what the individual's playstyle is.
My Darwin character in Wiz101 spent most of his time working on pets and very little time leveling. Although, he was often escorted by often the premiere PvP group. My alt was actually the character who leveled to max.
In WoW, I had several characters playing the carebear challenge of leveling via harvesting only. Any kills meant scrapping the character and starting over. Sometimes I played a hardcore version of that with any deaths requiring a restart, in addition to any kills.
There is not only one playstyle in MMORPGs.
Not everyone plays the way you do.
Not everyone cares about the stuff you care about.
Ashes does.
Also, I'm not sure what the difference between running away from harvestables attacking you and running away from mobs attacking you while you harvest is supposed to be.
Harvestables attacking people doesn't change anything I've said.
* die without resistance, taking a full death penalty and giving them corruption
* fight back and die, taking reduced death penalty
* fight back and not die, becoming a combatant and a target
If you don't initiate combat, your tag should not change. But fighting back should prevent attacker from getting corruption.
Here is a scenario. You are out hunting alone and some one attacks you, you can choose to not fight back, hoping they don't want the corruption, or fight back. If you choose not to fight back and your gamble is wrong, you die with full penalty. So you take option B and fight back, as soon as you are flagged a combatant, 2 of his friends pop out of the bushes and slaughter you. Simply put, the only win scenario for someone who wishes to avoid world PvP relies on someone else to not be an asshole, in my experience on the internet, that is a bet that will rarely pay.
Return to the scene and then stay a non-combatant, so they'll gain Corruption if they attack you again.
(And remember their names for future encounters.)
Here's my response that I wrote last night, but was eaten by the forums.
Mind you when I say self-policing I mean it from the context of "keeping interaction within the game world" rather than through an external system like corruption, i.e DM enforced policing.
I think a part of the answer resides in supplying players with a much stronger means to deny PK; however, this would require a fundamental rewrite in the approach to combat in general that is admittedly absurd sounding on the surface. Ultimately what makes PK so frustrating is the feeling of hopelessness and loss. It feels unfair, and when it's unfair of course it's not fun. Supplying players with better means of denying PK is a way of allowing self-policing without sacrificing what I see as authenticity (edit: or encouraging pvp) . This alone is not enough, but it's one thing that can be done to instill confidence in players and simultaneously decrease the reward to habitual griefers.
I think a part of the answer resides in supplying players with a much stronger means to deny PK; however, this would require a fundamental rewrite in the approach to combat in general that is admittedly absurd sounding on the surface. Ultimately what makes PK so frustrating is the feeling of hopelessness and loss. It feels unfair, and when it's unfair of course it's not fun. Supplying players with better means of denying PK is a way of allowing self-policing without sacrificing what I see as authenticity (edit: or encouraging pvp) . This alone is not enough, but it's one thing that can be done to instill confidence in players and simultaneously decrease the reward to habitual griefers.
Arbitrary limitations, while efficient, have 2 major negative effects.
1. They slow down play.
2. They feel forced.
This ultimately impacts peoples enjoyment levels if they feel stunted in their ability to choose. Additionally arbitrary limitations have the capacity to be very indiscriminate in their reach, negatively impacting those who are playing 'fairly' so to speak.
An approach that appears more organic would be less frustrating to deal with. Not to say I don't see the merit of a system that you suggested, it's just a personal opinion of mine that arbitrary limitations of any kind are best avoided.
And I especially don't understand how a non-PvP method of denying PKing relates to the word "policing".
Do you have a couple of examples to share with us?
In principle, time travel is possible. How do we achieve it?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I had responded directly to a question on a solution. More often people will wish and want for things l, but never really offering a resolve or a how to. So I stood up to the challenge and offered my advice.
If you continued reading further this was far from arbitrary. You also got a very short abbreviated version and I clearly stated I will clear up any questions you may have. Being a pvper for many years and coming across this same problem within a cross between the pve and pvp worlds. I wanted to devise a simple
yet and effective solution.
You can say corruption system is arbitrary. I can as easily give the conditions I have some sort of name too, with lore backing. But my intent was not to go into the exact nuisances of every little detail.
it also does not effect a route you choose because you can have different avatars for different reasons of gameplay. If you decided one day to switch one gameplay to another on a different charecter you can. But there has to be a balance between the when and how often. If it's to small well ppl can exploit the system far to often. If it's to long well ppl will be turned off by it.
last but not least this has been tested in real world gameplay. My friend has worked on a design of a game ( has 130k gear peices no joke). It's a d&d game designed to go into Our real world ( well pc real world) gameplay. I am behind the pvp aspect of it. This worked like a charm, but it was tested with 12 ppl. There is only so many willing to get involved. I do feel strongly it could work l, but again you only have the short version.
I feel it is is a good balance between both very different worlds of gameplay. While offering limitations and freedom for both sides.
one things for sure at least has a solution rather than arguing about more problems.
No War and Peace novel
You want to pvp? Great, flag yourself for pvp and you can battle it out!
You don't want to pvp? Great, don't flag yourself.
If you want people to pvp encourage it by making xp gain 5% faster when pvp flagged or similar things to that.
Althrough you didn't even need a alt for it, as your friend can do it either.
But having a alt hides your main's name from the victims, and it can have less valuable gear too, with griefing focused build.
It deepends on system. Assuming you hunt very low level ones, you probably can kill them with very high amount of corruption, so unless there's a level where you have like 100% dmg reduction, maybe a perma corrup alt will work too for griefing.
Othervise you just farm your alt for like a hour every week to get rid of it, or just afk naked, so the bountyhunters farm down your corruption while they getting rewarded for it...
The system is full of loopholes, and it only punishes the actual PvP players.
In the end, the low lvl/casual players game will be ruined as long as there are no PvP off areas, and so does the outdor PvP players game as long there will be corruption.
And the griefers will be the less affected by a system that deseigned agains them...
Most (sucesful) mmorpgs uses the PvP off / PvP on areas/servers for a reason.... As there are no better system. It not realistic, but neither do corruption and other systemls like that are.
Should be easy enough to find a friend to kill you who does not meet any of those 4 exceptions. Especially, should be easy to find a friend with alts who don't meet those 4 conditions. Or have a friend create an alt who doesn't meet those conditions.
But, most likely my zombie alts would not would not be in a guild or alliance or group or raid in the first place.
In eve players did run like with 8 paid account / palyer on avarage.
You need to learn much much much more about things like that. Players can be very creative if they want to exploit something...
A veteran palyer didn't really have any doubts that this system will be abused heavily, but well... you will see it once the game releases....
The fact that you thought that a friend will be exclusively in your guild already shows heavy flaws in your thinking. In my friendlist in wow, there was barely anyone who was in the same guild with me. And even had friends in the opposite faction. I could've easily asked someone to kill me...
Yeah asking soemone, just /w at soemone to "kill m8 pls", and you give him a few coins in exchange. So nice system, such unexploitable, wow....
Knowing full well that Steven has considerably more experience in Archeage than BDO as a player, each of these three things instantly translated to a controversy from AA to me.
I'll only focus on the one that is relevant to this discussion though, which is the first one.
In Archeage, people used to use vehicles to block bridges. This prevented people from being able to do trade runs (caravans) effectively - and in some cases, at all. Some people would park their vehicles on bridges and afk - sometimes for days at a time.
Trion was asked to put a stop to this, as it is unintended gameplay and causing a serious negative impact on players experience of the game. Rather than doing anything about it, they called it "emergent gameplay" and said it is fine.
This one statement from Trion cost them five figures worth of subs in less than a week.
While the story absolutely carries on from there, the basics of it were that Trion refused to act in the best interests of the bulk of their players, and as a result lost enough players for the game to never actually recover from that point. When they did eventually act, they didn't change anything in the game (not immediately, at least), all they did was say that players blocking bridges would be despawned and their vehicles blown up (they could be repaired).
This was a controversy that I have no doubt Steven was at least watching - if not actively involved in from a player perspective (as I were).
Right, back to the point at hand.
Stevens comments that I quoted above tell me that in such a situation, he plans on being far more responsive to actions players are taking, and ways players are getting around the systems in undesired ways.
As players find loopholes in the systems of the game, and these loopholes are bought to Intrepids attention, they will make a call on whether they think that is acceptable gameplay or not. If they think it is acceptable, then they need do nothing about it. If they deem it unacceptable, they will do something about it.
Every system has it's flaws. Asking Intrepid to develop one without flaws is pointless.
Judge Intrepid on how they deal with these flaws as they are exposed.
Its the idea you have to sale. For example corruption is tied into the lore. But at the end of the day it is coding with 1's and 0's. You attack subject A within so many levels and points are acquired against subject B that will accumulate negatively.
So the concept would not be 48 hrs nor would it be EXACTLY 48 hrs. I time frame with a reason aka ( lore) would be injected. Even within that time frame ( just like corruption) you could influence it "within reason" based on doing certain criteria. You can make a concept of a planet with Two moons aligned and give a story as to how the influence characters. A path beholden to truth and destiny and judgement befallen to those who seek a different future. The edge of sanity is but a whispers way of death and it is only you who can change what will become.
Now this is off the top of my head with no real thought. But I would NEVER ever make something so bland and generic without differing odds and twists and will have reason.
So I gave about as basic bland of a concept to get the overall idea. What I do in real life has story that goes well beyond anything Ashes will have.
I would simply not play an MMORPG that locked me as combatant for 48 hours or even 45 minutes.
How long we stay flagged as combatant before turning green will determine whether I play Ashes.
And if it's longer than 20 minutes, I won't be playing.
Locked flagging for more than a half hour is probably the worst option I've heard.
By who's standards or rules?