Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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
Caravans: I can not log on and immediately go to where a caravan may or may not be taking place. I work nights ( late nights) and I often solo. So even if I found one it would be impossible to take on a guarded unit.
Battle grounds: that's the one saving grace that helps.... however being primarily a pvper seeing the same battlegrounds day after day get extremely boring. Also it does not offer you the same appeal as open world. You have two opposing teams ready with a litany of potions available, they got for the match. Also it does not offer the real world experience of the excitement of the unexpected. You tend to see the same ppl over and over in these things. It gets mind numbing boring after awhile.
Guild wars: There are tons of solo players so there out. Or tons of small pocket guilds, there out. This also takes time and planning again not possible for some of us to join with our work schedules. You can't just log on and boom in a guild war.
Nodes seiges and castle seiges: same problems as guild wars. Takes time, planning, if you even have enough ppl
to do it, And not everyone likes that type of pvp. You lose out going rogue and the thrill of the hunt.
edit sea battles: that's a very different mind of pvp. It's you ether into it or your not into it. This also would take a group of ppl and a decent boat if your into that kind of pvp. As a ranger with limited movement on a damn boat is not appealing at all lol. So we are back to needing a group and pvp that's not rest for everyone. Sure is pretty being on the ocean water though. But again experience dictates been there done that your going to need a party. That's not always an option for some of us
Monster coins: to be fair I have no idea what that is or how it allows me to pvp
Bounty hunting: how prevalent will that even be? If the system is to harsh I can promis you there won't be many at all to even bounty hunt. There risk vs reward is not worth it. But let's say there is a bounty hunting with that system, even w/o punishment. Ppl usually have already found them, you have to luck out and see him run by. I am not gonna log on ready to pvp and see a bounty waiting for me to attack.
So yes it sounds like a lot but been there done that and hours and hours go by and nothing. Just like you said some ppl only get on to play a few hours during the week. Well same goes for us. I play to pvp and most of those options are not viable for me and quite a bit of others. Sure I can battle ground ....... yet again. But no matter how much you may enjoy planting corn you are going to get sick of it.
Other PvP combat is available, but if PvP players look at those five systems as their main objectives to find content, they should be happy. If a whole guild is actually wanting PvP all the time, those systems should easily keep them occupied - especially when you factor in preparation time.
The only people that won't be happy with what is offered in these systems are the people that don't want actual PvP, but rather want to be able to gank others. Any player I come across that looks at the PvP systems on offer in Ashes and thinks it isn't enough can only really be after this one type of activity. This is a game activity that isn't prevented in AoC, but has two entire systems in the forms of corruption and bounty hunting dedicated to punishing.
None of the PvP activities mentioned above cause corruption, and if you attack someone in a fair fight they will almost always fight back if for no reason other than to protect what they have on them (the act of fighting back - win or lose - saves a portion of their resources).
This only leaves people attacking those with no chance of defending themselves as a source of corruption. I mean, let's be honest here - ganking others is the only time a player will really accumulate corruption. So if corruption is a system you are worried about, it puts a fairly sharp label on you as a player.
Also those five things would apply if I am in a large enough guild ( to a point) because I work odd hours and those types of things tend to happen long before I come on. Even when I was in a guild thinking the way you did I found out very quickly I was unable to attend.
Joining guilds and listening to the drama our what someone's dog ate that day is tedious. It is far more fun for me to solo and or a very small group of friends. So again those stated above would not allow me to pvp. Because the circumstances of those events would
be rare for me. I am not some rare isolated breed ether. There are tons of pvpers and pvers who prefer to stay with a small collect group of friends and or solo. A mixture of both honestly.
I also enjoy being out gunned and at a disadvantage. Still to me that's just plain old pvp. The things you mentioned won't keep me occupied other than arena. The rest is a waiting game and if I am lucky I may get into something. I know this for a fact cause I have lived through this time and time again.
Nothing allows for just pure pvp then and there and all the benefits the way Open world pvp does. I can log on late in the night and go hunting.
But again the corruption system may not be extreme. Maybe I will be fine or maybe you will fine. But planned out pvp events is not for everyone and even if it was not everyone can join.
If you log in after most people in NA have finished for the night, Oceania players will be starting to log in and get active. Go play in that region. You'll enjoy the game more, especially if you actually make an effort to get to know people in a PvP focused guild on a server that is active at the same time you are active.
If you are a PvP-centric player, you play on a server outside of prime time for that server *and* you aren't in a PvP focused guild, then AoC isn't going to be fun for you.
You want a license to grief as you consider it valid PvP.
Griefing will not be tolerated....hence the corruption system.
Griefing will never be tolerated in this game.
I love PvP and spend probably the targets percentage of my time doing exactly that.
There static areas (castle system/arenas), transient areas (siege and war declarations betweens nodes/guilds), and there are mobile areas (caravan system).
And even then open world PvP is not banned, because you can still murder anyone anytime anyplace you want.
Its upto you if you if you are prepared to pay the price for that.
And this game also needs to give RP's a place to exist.
Such players need peaceful areas to conduct peaceful activities.
You cant have peaceful activities with a bunch of clowns that want to turn such events into war zones for the shits and giggles.
............ Sometimes I feel like everything else I said was ignored. Lets say I am on like everyone else. Please read everything else I said.
It's almost like you think this game should cater to gankers, just because that is what you want to do.
That kind of play-style kills games if it is left unchecked, regardless of what *you* like.
AoC has implemented many PvP aspects in to the game as core mechanics. If these PvP aspects of the game do not appeal to you as a PvP player, then find a game with PvP goals that does.
Yeah no... sorry but if youre killing someone because theyre in your "spot" well youre a dick... if youre concern is that hes slowing down your farming, odds are he isn't because i seriously doubt mob respawn rates are that slow.
"But hes taking a lot of the resources in the area". < This exactly is why open world pvp exists. If you don't like the fact that the guys taking resources then kill him but be prepared for the consequence. This is the whole point of risk vs reward. How rare is this resource? How much of it do you need? is it really worth it? If its worth it the guy will most likely fight back and if its not then youre getting corruption for barely any value. You kill when its worth it not just "cuz he was in my spot bro"
If youre killing someone because the guys hunting in the same area and hes slowing down your xp gain > well is it really worth fighting over xp of all things?
Sometimes you encounter a rude person and you go pk and kill him. You dont necessarily have to be a ganker to go pk sometimes.
A bit of corruption + the rush of being bounty hunted just for offing an ass, I'm down. Item drop should occur less frequently for smaller amounts of corruption.
The game *allows* for people to attack anyone that pisses them off - and that is a great thing. All the corruption system does is make it so you don't make it the basis of your game-play.
People can not go around and ask hey is it ok if I attack you even though we are in a game that permits me to.
Now there are things that would indeed cover ganking, but what I said is not one of them. So if a system is in place to deter actual ganking be it camping, sever lvl difference, multiple teams on one, and so on. I could careless really. However pvping is just pvping. Pvers tend to think them being attacked cause they were planting cotton on a farm and was killed suddenly is ganking. Noooo that is just pvp.
Even you fighting npcs and you get jumped again thats just pvp. There is a difference between taking advantage of a situation and all out abuse.
I also work late nights and I often solo. Which means I might be running a solo caravan when you are on. Which is something you would be able to anticipate for the people on your server.
Solo means that you are not formally joined with a group. You can still play solo and attack a huge caravan alongside 40 other players attacking that caravan.
Or you could start your own caravan and let it be known when and where it will run. Players would likely attack - especially players who know your reputation.
And you could try to defend with your NPC guards even if you have no other players helping you.
You could go on the forms and find people who play when and where you play in order to make allies and adversaries in the game.
In Ashes, battlegrounds are mobile; not static.
Battlegrounds refer to caravans and sieges.
You can move around to find different and new battlegrounds.
That would be the life of an itinerant mercenary.
Or, again, start your own caravan and escort it.
Frequent Economic nodes, where caravans are likely to be very common.
Actually, you can... even if you are solo.
Guild war in Ashes means that your guild is at war with other guilds who have declared war against your guild and who will always be flagged as a combatant to you - while the war continues.
Use the forums to find a guild that loves to be at war. And then go solo in enemy territory.
I think you don't understand how sieges work in Ashes.
There will be rogues to be hunted during sieges as they try to stealth towards solo objectives - like stealing a reliquary or disabling shields - as seen in the Art of War video.
I don't know what type of PvP combat is not to like if what you like is killing player characters.
Focus on hunting and killing as many player characters as you can.
You don't have to win the siege. Just solo and kill folk.
Kill folk who are focused on the PvE objectives of the siege.
Again, depends on what your objective is.
If your objective is to find some player characters to kill, you should be able to stealth onto a ship and kill some people. A Ranger doesn't necessarily need tons of room to fight effectively. Typically, Ranger isn't just about bows and sniping.
If Ashes is going to be "been there; done", then the devs will have failed at their game design and nobody will be playing anyways.
Monster Coin events are where players are able to take over the controls of mobs in a horde that attacks a node. Instead of the zombies or dragons being controlled by AI, they are controlled by players. You can't necessarily participate in a Monster Coin event every time you log on, but you could schedule your time to coincide with some Monster Coin event dates. That's what alts are for.
If you want to participate in a bounty hunt during every play session -or even want to have some PvP combat every session- create an alt character who loves to gain Corruption and be hunted by bounty hunters.
If you log in with a Corrupt character, bounty hunters will track you. Or go spend some time accruing Corruption by killing some non-combatants.
Or if you really must be the hunter - find a server with a large population of players who enjoy being hunted by bounty hunters.
Sounds to me like you complain a lot about a game design you know little about... and just make stuff up to complain about.
Ashes is not a PvP game. Ashes is a PvX game.
If Ashes doesn't have enough PvP combat for your tastes, you may have to go find some other game to play.
Same if Ashes has too much PvP combat for our tastes - we may have to go find some other game to play.
Currently, Corruption is the feature designed to allow hardcore PvPers, casual PvPers and non-PvPers to all play on the same server. Will it be successful? No one knows. We will have to try it to find out.
It doesnt say no PvP, it says if you are the person whose sole objective is to be a murderhobo whose idea of being leet is KDR vs noobs, inexperienced and non-combatants (as opposed to a warrior at war)..this game is not for you.
There are 100s of games about that cater to that playstyle.
This is not one of them.
All full PvP games will have limited persistence. This was true in the past, it is true now, and it will remain true in the future.
No developer will spend tens, or even hundreds of millions of dollars on a game that gives players free reign to totally ruin others playing experience, and to band together to dominate a server making it unplayable for anyone else.
Instead, what people that want all out PvP have is Battle Royale games, MOBA games, and soon, Crowfall. These are all games that are either full PvP or near full PvP, but have built in resets to both prevent permanent outright dominance, and also so that players know that a death or failure isn't actually an issue as everyone will be starting again soon anyway.
This is the absolute best you can ever hope for in terms of full PvP.
You are pretending as if any time a kill out side a siege or a caravan is "griefing", god these games must be hard for your type lmao....
Thats just called solo open world PvP, has nothing to do with griefing whats so ever, and you can have a role player doing that, not sure why you separate Role players vs griefers, a person who kills another is not a griefer, thats just PvP.
Sick and tired of these "role players" trying to paint horrific pictures of war and gore from a player killing one of their role players, like its the end of the world, and then painting that player as a griefer and an elite pvper when that player could of just been a noob who wanted to learn some basic pvp skills, or was just experimenting in the game and didnt have time to get to a caravan or a siege.
Like i already said, if you want a zone where you can hold hands and sing kumbaya all day while staring and butterflies flying around, then ask dev's for certain safe zones, i have no problem with that, at least it is easy to comprehend that there is no PvP there, not falsly bait everyone into thinking that its ok for you to attack because its an open world PvP zone, yet get super crazy punishments for it that will cause you to waste hours of your time to get your account back to full strength.... then thinking WTF is going on if PVP is this awful in the OPEN WORLD.
This is the reason single player open world games exist.
Using the term "open world" in the context of a PvP discussion is actually baseless - unless you also complained about the lack of PvP in Skyrim.
Edit; you not understanding a term correctly does not behoove the developers to bend their game to match up with your misunderstanding of what they have claimed they are making. All you not understanding a term correctly means is that you didn't understand a term correctly.
Lol, nope.
I guess I'm just not the only player in the world that would like a real PvX game, where fights for resources aren't actually punished.
Your first point and already wrong.
- Freeholds and housing areas are safe zones where no one can attack you at all.
- Also cities will be full of OP guards, so those are practically as safe as they can be as well.
Also, wouldn't be surprised if Intrepid extends safe zones from housing to more areas, like churches, and what not.
Problem is the people who do not enjoy PvP have a very twisted picture about what ganking / griefing is.
According to them any attack on green player is griefing, which is laiughable to say the least.
Ganking = killing much lower player than you
Griefing = following same target around and killing him 100 times in row with no valid reason besides to making him suffer (swearing ad him and insulting him as you keep killing him)
Killing a green player to get (or to protect) resources (either zoological or plants/minerals) ISN'T griefing.
Also bounty hunting system will, imo, be complete fail due to the fact that "bounty hunters" will go against targets who have their gear broken, and stats buried into the ground due to corruption.
It will not be challenging at all but simply a race who can find target first and 2 shot him.
After a failed siege defense though, these areas are not safe.
It sounds like you need to build up corruption before it actually starts impacting you, and you don't gain corruption from players that fight back. If two guilds are fighting over a mine for instance, it's safe to assume they both will be attacking, ergo, neither side gains corruption.
What would be punished is jumping level 10s questing or some lone guy standing in his farm. Of course this is how some people play the game, so it's still possible to do. But do it too often and you see a downside.
I'm not opposed to having actual consequences in game for behavior the game decides is "bad". It makes it more challenging, more fun, and not just a cookie cutter game full of murder hobos that every other MMO has at this point.
Do I think the system is without flaws? Not at all. It does seem to be more geared towards non-pvpers. It may be too harsh IF you gain corruption quickly. And it may drive open PvPers away from the game.
But. We don't know the full picture yet. We don't even know how the system will work beyond "you kill green you get corruption, corruption is bad, make you lose stuff".
So I'm willing to go on a little faith here and see.
All it takes is a handful of the population to ruin a good game. AoC seems to be working twards an idea that might just work in the long run. Just because you cannot run amock and kill people countless levels under does not make this a bad game.
I play wow and one of the worst parts of being on a pvp server was entering a bottleneck area and getting ganked by someone several levels higher than myself over and over. One such place was when you first entered into the outlands. Heaven forbid if you just wanted to level a toon with Honor Hold quests. Some days it was not possible with an opposing faction comprised of capped toons one shotting everyone The excuse was "world pvp" when the real reason was bored human syndrome. If AoC finds a way to fix hot messes such as my example then more power to them.
I fully agree for corruption gain due to "killing lowbies", hell I'd even make players X levels below you unattackable completely (unless they attack first).
I could also see corruption gain for an actual griefing (following and killing same green target many, many times over for no reason) as fair mechanic.
Other than those 2 cases, imo, corruption has no place in PvX game.
In your scenario of guilds fighting over a mine though, I think you'd find that one guild would declare war on the other, so neither guild would get any corruption at all.
Some things I personally think most PvP'ers are forgetting - either willfully or not - in this discussion.
Most players will attempt to fight back if there is a chance to do so - as the act of attempting to fight back lessens their losses regardless of the outcome of the fight. Obviously this attempt to fight back means no corruption for the attacker.
The real penalty with corruption isn't the stat loss, it is the chance to lose items in your inventory - since we don't know what this percent chance is (it could well be as low as 0.2% per item for gaining corruption equal to killing an equal level opponent), we can't make actual assumptions as to how severe the penalty is.
There is a wealth of PvP systems in the game that do not make use of the corruption systems - this is where Intrepid want PvP players to focus.
Even though Intrepid want PvP players to focus on the systems in place as above, Intrepid will still want people to attack other characters, and will want people to earn corruption - they will keep the system balanced so that there are still people doing this - the reason for that is if no one is gaining corruption, bounty hunting is a wasted system.
There are very few PvP players that would be able to take an objective look at the systems in AoC and claim the game doesn't have a whole lot of opportunity for PvP.