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Alpha Two testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about Phase II and Phase III testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Establishing a Village - PVP and Battle Royal Are Winners

Here’s three things I see happening at release for which the programmers let happen in the ‘self-cleaning oven’ scenario:
To establish a village, you need natural resources – so if anyone you don’t approve of comes around harvesting, then PVP kill them.
If you know of another group establishing a village near you, take their natural resources and set up an ambush and PVP kill them.
The WOW loophole I learned was, get a group together and body block PVP raiders, wear cool skins (or not) and martyr yourself so they have bounties on their heads.
In my opinion, people only see the trees and not the forest. The breadth of ideas is great, but the depth is lacking. This PVP and battle royal centric play will isolate the more PVE centric community. Am I off base here? Cheers! Skaff.
To establish a village, you need natural resources – so if anyone you don’t approve of comes around harvesting, then PVP kill them.
If you know of another group establishing a village near you, take their natural resources and set up an ambush and PVP kill them.
The WOW loophole I learned was, get a group together and body block PVP raiders, wear cool skins (or not) and martyr yourself so they have bounties on their heads.
In my opinion, people only see the trees and not the forest. The breadth of ideas is great, but the depth is lacking. This PVP and battle royal centric play will isolate the more PVE centric community. Am I off base here? Cheers! Skaff.
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Comments
Unless like you sayd the building of a node is being disrupted. Or the resource is in a very high demand. But in that case it brings risk/reward and PvE/PvP players working togethere and all that stuff. And that is the reasons many are excited about the game right ?
One big paladium ore mine in the next 5km radius, one guild will try to keep it all to themselves.
And then there is me, with an intricately planned farming routine somewhere in a dense forrest, scavenging and brawling with wild mushroom monsters.
its that the point of being human
Ahhhh good times.
Yes you are off base, you have completely ignored the Corruption Mechanic.
Nope, his third option specifically uses the corruption mechanic as a deterrent. "Wall of bodies that sacrifice themselves to give thieves corruption".
I suspect he's off base by thinking 2 dimensional rather than opening up to more perspectives.
Frankly, it will take a large (likely multiple large) guilds to build a node up in any amount of time. Nothing stops scavangers and thieves from attempting to steal from that node's resource pile, particularly for their own node, however this will more likely result in guild/node wars than groups of randoms gathering together to sloppily PROTECT THE FIRE!
Basically the game will operate on organized chaos rather than attempt to organize players by force through mechanics. Give a group of guilds/players a single task, they will work together towards meeting that task.
However, this is partially why I think citizenship should impart an "ally" flag, or at least allow players to note fellow citizens. For major cities and metropolises, it'll be hard to identify foreigners from domestics and may force guilds to ally together and independents to guild up to avoid being attacked when trying to contribute to the node or it's people.
Except if the resources fall into that villages ZOI, then harvesting their resources will help them grow. Also, partaking in PvP in that villages ZOI could also potentially help level that node (not sure if PvP adds xp to a node).
Either way this option helps the one you are trying to hinder.
Is this another "the game is over before it begins" thread. Even I am becoming bored/tired of trolling these types of threads. But you gotta do what you gotta do.
Dude it's Snuffleuffagus, he's off base by default. We don't question why anymore.
As far as I know, the resources for the buildings don't have to come from that area, so...trying to camp individual and/or small-group local gatherers probably is not going to help prevent Node progression.
Most of the resources required for Node progression is going to come from caravan runs.
No corruption there, but also there will be random defenders as well as random attackers.
PvE players would be the ones getting the gear and resources necessary for this to happen. That means economic-based players that play around the auction house, trade, and supplies will be satisfied. Players that farm bosses and mobs for gear will be equipped and have the ability to sell the gear to PvP players or even barter. Back in Archeage some people and myself played as bodyguards for merchant guilds during their traderuns. They get protection to not have their stuff stolen and I got money, gear, or resources.
That's how you make a good balance. Make people have to interact with the three main groups, PvP, PvE, and merchant/trade. PvE players go out to dungeons and mobs to obtain equipment/resources, merchant/traders use those resources to transform them into more through crafting/similar mechanics to transform into better items to sell, and then PvP players buy equipment from both and PvE/PvP players buy crafted resources such as potions from the merchant/trade players. PvE players farm stuff for friends/guildmates that need resources and PvP players protect the merchant and PvE players in the world while PvE and merchant players provide equipment for the PvP players in a guild setting.
To me it's like reading the first few chapters of a novel and then saying the story is short.
I don't foresee a lot of the problems here, but I guess my view is blocked by all these trees.
I believe that Intrepid are still working out exactly HOW a lot of the systems will work together.
If my friends and I are at the park on the ball field playing kickball, I don't want other people interrupting our kickball game to force us to play baseball. I don't want my friends to stop playing kickball and start playing baseball. And I also don't want to be forced to have to kick the asses of the baseball players.
The way Corruption is supposed to work...
If my PvE session is interrupted by PvPers who force me to interrupt/prolong my game session by "participating" in a PvP battle, I can choose to retaliate by not flagging and ensuring that my attacker(s) gain Corruption. When I die, I will suffer the normal death penalties - same penalties as if killed by a mob. When my attacker(s) die, they will suffer significantly higher death penalties than normal. I'm supposed to feel OK about that karma. I don't know that I will feel OK about the karma... I don't really give af about my attackers' karma - I just want to be left tf alone when I'm not in the mood for direct PvP combat.
Although, in Bless Online, even without a system similar to Corruption, if I just let my attackers kill me, the battle was over quickly and I was able to get back to doing whatever I was doing in less than 2 minutes, so there was no significant impact to my game session goals.
So, I really just have to see how frustrating the normal death penalties feel to know whether it will piss me off that other players are able to force me into gameplay I'm not in the mood for or are able to afflict me with penalties just 'cause that's fun for them.
Or, I could choose to flag as a combatant and still let them kill me, minimizing the time wasted in combat and cutting my death penalties in half as a reward for not sticking my attackers with Corruption. Again, I would have to see how debilitating those halved death penalties feel to know whether that will piss me off.
Even if I flag as combatant and kill my attackers, I'm going to be pissed off that I was forced to waste time actively fighting in PvP combat when I wasn't in the mood for PvP combat. And there is no adequate reward for that if I win the battle. I'm just going to be pissed of that other players were able to force me to do something I wasn't in the mood to do.
And having bodyguards do the fighting for me isn't going to alleviate that. Just like having my friends play baseball with the baseball players when what I want is to finish my kickball session would leave me pissed off.
Good sportsmanship is letting us finish our kickball session and then starting a baseball session.
We might even be interested in playing baseball at that point. A lot of MMORPG PvPErs don't have good sportsmanship - which is why I typically end up playing on PvP-only servers, even though I like direct PvP combat sometimes.
But...
We will have to play Ashes to know how this gameplay will feel.
Meaningful conflict could literally be a game-changer. Seems likely it won't be uncommon for me to feel compelled to instigate direct PvP combat, even though I am typically a carebear. Kinda like, I will typically go to great lengths to capture bugs and spiders I find in my home and release them outside, but - if a spider is on my bed, I'm gonna kill it.
Meaningful conflict - more meaningful than, "I want to loot your resources" - could entice me to frequently flag as a combatant with a considerable amount of zeal.