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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.
Corruption system
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These two posts pretty much sum up my feelings on the whole subject. Wait and see when we get to use the system and with both sides complaining its about where it needs to be.
Yes, voicing concerns and delivering feedback is important, nobody is denying that. The problem is that right now we are voicing concerns on a system that we haven't yet experienced first hand, or have much information about.
One thing that I'd like to remind anyone giving feedback on Ashes is to not just look at the individual system. For a game as complex as an mmorpg you need to look at the bigger picture, not just at the individual system but in how it interacts with the rest of the game.
That's what the PvP system needs.
This is literally not the point at all.
We have not seen the system functioning.
We know we do not have all the details of the system
Even if we had all the details of the system, we do not know how they interact with other systems, which we have not seen functioning and know that we do not have the details of.
We know that the system is being designed in a manner where Intrepid have easily adjusted controls in order to impact player decisions.
Because of this, there is nothing at all to talk about in terms of how well the system will function.
When we see the system in action in a state where players are acting as they would act on live servers (which in all honesty, doesn't happen until the game is live), that is when we "may" have worthwhile input for Intrepid.
Right now, nothing we may want to say can be said with any sense of understanding of the topic at hand - and if you don't understand the topic at hand (as none of us understand the corruption system), then the best thing to do is not talk about it.
A conversation on whether or not corruption is working can only be had when players can answer the following three questions...
1, How many equal level character kills does a player need to make before their corruption level is enough for them to drop items?
2, How many more kills does it take before multiple items will drop?
3, How many equal level kills is one kill of a character 25 levels below you worth?
If you don't have an answer to these questions, you have no grasp as to how effective the corruption system will be, and thus have no place discussing how effective the corruption system will be.
Oh for sure, we can talk about it.
But Skaff is specifically talking about giving feedback on a system we effectively know nothing about.
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I get a lot of pointless/uninformed feedback in my job, and that makes it really easy to just ignore all feedback. You either ignore all feedback, you take on all feedback, or you spend far more time than you should sifting through piles of feedback looking for that one piece that you feel is valid.
Clearly, this is a bad situation to be in.
People giving feedback should consider it as much of a resposibility as people taking that feedback. If you don't know what you are actually talking about, you should not be giving feedback, as that feedback will just add to the pointless white noise that the people you think you are trying to help will eventually and inevitably block out.
Separating the constructive feedback from the mindless whining is something that every company needs to deal with, and unfortunately a lot of games companies choose to bury their heads in the sand for as long as possible when things go wrong. It doesn't help that there are far too many people on the internet who flat out don't know how to give constructive criticism and it makes it harder for the actual feedback to be heard through all the hate.
When people start throwing personal insults around, let along racist hate, etc can you really blame a company for ignoring it all? At the end of the day we (the players/customers) are just as much at fault here. If we want companies to listen to us we need to learn how to give feedback in an acceptable manner, because right now all the hate speech and insults just hurts us as much as it hurts the company.
Completely agree.
The value of player feedback in something as complex as an MMO is minimal. If you then have to put a few people working full time to try and find that single occasional gem, it just isn't worth it.
Occasionally, random people hit upon a totally great idea, but generally speaking, if your clients are regularly coming up with to make your product better, you need to seriously look at hiring better people to make that product.
I've played a few games now that have had invitation only programs where developers invite around two dozen players to participate in a more refined discussions on specific topics (usually a hidden section of the official forums).
This kind of thing is usually done to gain an insight in to specific player viewpoints (ie, what a specific change to a combat mechanic would mean to people that solo, group or raid). As it is invitation only, and the invites only go out to those that demonstrate a knowledge of the game from their perspective, this kind of thing does have "some" merit, but even then it is only useful when developers want player perspective on a change.
Blizzard actually did this last year with their Content Creators Summit where they invited a bunch of WoW content creators to their headquarters to test some things and talk with the devs. I don't know if any of the feedback given during that summit actually impacted anything though so....."shrugs".
Content creators are rarely the best people to offer feedback.
It's kind of like asking your marketing team to offer up some QA testing.
I disagree personally, especially since the people they brought in for the summit were people who had been playing for a long time and (more importantly) had been very open in their criticism with WoW.
I've never played an MMO where creators are the most knowledgeable players - or even among the top 50 most knowledgeable.
They are usually the most influential, which in itself is an issue, but not the most knowledgeable.
I will concede, however, that WoW may well be different in this regard (I could go in to why I think this is the case, but will shorten it to; WoW is not a game for smart people).
It is when said content creators also happen to be in the top 100 WoW raiding guilds, plus they brought along a few guys who used to run Vanilla WoW private servers to get their opinion on how to do WoW Classic.
Top 10 may well be, but top 100 really isn't.
Seems more to me like Blizzard were working this from a PR/marketing angle than anything.
Top 100 is still the top 0.01% of players, and I definitely wouldn't call this a PR stunt. After all, Blizzard didn't officially announce the summit and had all the participants under NDA until about a week before it happened. If this were about PR and marketing I would expect Blizzard to shout about it from the rooftops.
Just because someone is in such a guild, doesn't mean they are in the top 0.01% of players. All it means is they are in a guild with a good strategist and a good leader, and are able to follow directions.
This applies to any game, not just WoW.
I've never been in any guild where the creative types are the ones that people in the guild turn to if they have a question about a build or an encounter, because they are not the type of people - generally speaking - to figure that kind of thing out. Thats what the people who work as engineers or scientists (or military or police, in my experience) are great at - and these people generally have a similar attitude to content creators as I have.
I am not saying Blizzard held this thing to let as many people as possible know about it - Blizzard don't need more people to know about the game. What Blizzard need are more "influencers" saying good things about them, to detract from some of the issues with the game, but also with the company as a whole.
Content creators are not journalists, and do not have the same basic set of rules that they should follow. A trip paid for by a company a journalist is writing about is something that any journalist should and would turn down - but some random guy making videos at home has no need to turn it down. I mean, most influencers are just in it to get free shit from the company anyway.
Despite this, many people look to influencers more than anyone else, and most companies wouldn't - and don't - think twice about influincing the influencers.
Edit to add; while I hold them slightly higher than influencers, I do not place much faith in the word of a gaming journalist - I've yet to come across one that is both able to write something worth reading, and has an agreeable ethic.
We'll gaming journalists are a whole different story. Right now there are only 2 gaming journalists I listen to and they are Yongyea and Jim Sterling.
you have good taste then
Taste aside, neither of those could be considered journalists.
At best, Jim Sterling could be considered the equivlent of a newspapers opinion column, and Yonyea could be considered a news agrigator.
The sources Yongyea uses (Kotaku, Polygon, IGN, Gamespot et al) could be considered journalistic websites, but all people like Yongyea do is take their content and repackage it.
I'm not saying there isn't a place for both of these (unlike game streamers, which I find to be the most idiotic trend of the last 10 years). I'm just saying they are not journalists. Sometimes it is easier getting news of a particular type from one place that will agrigate all the stories others have assembled on the topic and present them all to you at once.
Thing is, if you were Bethesda and wanted to put out a press release regarding how shit Fallout 76 is, neither of these people would be on that list.
A pvp game with no rules and let you kill people on sight with no consequences will not work..
This bounty system that we know of is a good concept and i think will work very well..
i think the penalties on corruptions players is too severe... like losing stats/gear and such.
but ye comes to this question: what system you want in place when 2 players meet each other in the world and this 3 way player status could work if it cant be exploited..( and usually it will)
Fine, call them news commentators then :P
One thing to bare in mind is that the Bounty Hunter system is only available to citizens of a level 4 military node, so the amount of available PvP will depend a little on which nodes get built up in each server.
I have a feeling that the dedicated PvPers will all congregate to a single server, making it the unofficial "PvP" server even though the game won't have dedicated PvP and PvE servers.
The problem with the bounty system is... if there no corruption players.. there is basically no bounty system.
So the question : why would a player go corruption mode when there only severe penalties and no rewards?