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
Plus there are plenty of games out there in which PvP is isolated only in BGs and in 1 piece of the world map. Two of them are considered top mmorpgs.
You and I don't agree on many things in regards to PvP, but I totally agree with what you are saying here.
If people don't want open PvP, there are other games out there to play that don't have it.
But 1) if I'm attacked I probably don't know the level, etc. of the attacker. So if I decide not to fight back for the other to become corrupted, I will die to a player which is way lower in level than me. OR I try to fight back, but notice then that the other one is 50 levels higher than me - then I die and the other one becomes NOT corrupted since I tried to fight back.
And 2) As a combatant I have decreased penalties when I die. So when I'm attacked by a high level player, I have basically two bad options: either I fight back so that my penalties are lower, but then the other one is not flagged corrupt, or I do not fight back to make the other one corrupt, but then I have higher death penalties.
So whatever I do as a low level player against a high level player attacking me, I do the wrong thing and loose in any way.
When a combatant kills a non-combatant that’s significantly lower level than them, they take a significantly higher corruption penalty.
We’ll have to see in practice to fine tune it, but I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to view player levels. That would be fairly nonstandard to hide such basic information.
So if you are a griefer, just running up to random people and trying to kill them could end badly for you. You are a 50 and think you are a badass because you like to randomly grief people. (They are out there.) You end up hitting someone who is level 5 and one shot them. You accrue enough corruption that your gear is locked in place and you might lose it on next death. Your stats are gimped already, and once you are found and killed, enjoy those probable multiple hours or even days of working off that exp debt. Working as intended.
Unless there’s some other feedback to indicate a players remaining health and approximate level (which should mean armor style but so far all the armor looks nearly identical), I don’t think that no-info system will last past Alpha. It’s impossible to weigh risks when you have no information to base it on.
I agree.
Making choices matter, player agency, all that kind of thing - if players can't make informed choices, it is all meaningless PR drivel. In order to make informed choices, players obviously need information - a choice without information is literally the definition of a guess.
I mean, the theory is all well and good of taking away information so that I can't half kill a player and leave the rest up to PvE to take care of - but the mechanic proposed to do that also means that if I want to PvP over a resource spawn point, I have no idea if I am attacking a level 50 player or a level 5 player, and thus I have no idea what potential penalties I am facing.
Not knowing that means I can't make an informed decision at all.
Thus, Intrepid have three real options. Ashes needs to provide players with as much information as is possible for players to take on board, Ashes needs to not make consequences matter, or Intrepid need to be ok with forcing consequences on players after players take a wild guess at what the best course of action would be.
To many players, only one of these is acceptable.
If Intrepid want to stop players dealing damage to others and leaving it to PvE mobs to finish them off, all they need to do is make it so you gain corruption if you attack another player and they die within 30 seconds (or some other time frame). Problem solved, the very thing you are trying to do to avoid corruption still actually just gives you corruption - and additionally means if you attempt to warn another player by attacking them and hitting them once, they can retaliate by running in to the nearest mob and letting it kill them (though sucks for them if it takes more than 30 seconds).
I mean, I'd personally be fine with players not being able to see my level, but still having their punishment be based on that level if they attack and kill me. I can think of a number of ways I can turn that to my advantage at both a small scale (harvesting with a level 5 character with a hidden friend/bounty hunter nearby), as well as at a raid level.
If I have a raid going, but half of the raid members are level 5 with expensive cosmetic gear on and no actual armor, if another raid attacks us they are going to end up with a significantly larger penalty than they would expect. If we make a point of not being the initial aggressor, when they do get around to attacking us, half of our raid would fight back, the other half would die as soon as they are hit - and the opposing raid would have no way of knowing which is which until they attack each character (hence cosmetic gear). The corruption they gain from killing those players would mean that the half raid we have left would be more than able to take them out with ease, and take a good portion of their gear at that.
All for what seemed to the attacking raid like a legitimate raid v raid situation. Not sure how healthy a PvP game Ashes will be if this kind of thing happens - but if it is able to be done, you had better believe I'll be making it happen.
So yeah, I don't see that system making it past alpha due to how obvious and easy it is to misuse.
Well don't forget, we'll be able to turn those cosmetics off. So if you see half a raid in noob gear, and half in good gear, you know somethings fishy. I think they should display levels at close range, maybe a name at slightly further range. That way if you see a guy and want to go kill him, you have to get a little closer to get the info you need. If you decide to just charge him, then thats on you.
If it is, that's a good thing. I remember a debate about this on the old forums and my stance on it was that players should be able to opt out of showing cosmetics (at the time, Intrepid were leaning towards not allowing this, iirc). My main point at the time was that if I am about to attack another player, I should know what type of armor they have on (heavy armor, cloth etc). At the time, it was suggested that we won't be able to see the class we are attacking, and so using cosmetics to gain an advantage in PvP due to misinformation seemed to be a real possibility. At the time, I never even considered the possibility that Intrepid would think to obfuscate the level of the character you were about to attack - a notion that - to me - still seems completely at odds with player agency and ensuring choices matter.
However, unless there is a fairly obvious difference in the look of armor based on level, this doesn't really mean too much - a level 5 with level 5 armor will probably still go down in one hit.
Showing level when you get close to a character isn't a bad idea, but it does depend on range. You would need to be able to see that level from any range at which you can attack them in order for this to work. Something like this may well be an acceptable compromise.
I'm pretty sure this was Stevens exact response, but i'll look for the soundbyte.
Yeah they would have to figure out at what ranges what particular information was available, maybe giving ranged classes either just a flat increase, or maybe more like an ability/tool (spyglass, scope, farsight etc.)
No, the only time they talked about cosmetics not being seen was as a possible solution to load issues during instanced siege events if they need to go that route to be able to get more people to be able to handle the load.
Really? I feel like a question in one of the live streams asked roughly the same thing, And Steven responded to it likening it to a risk V reward situation, where knowing what you were dealing with, in regards to armor, was what they wanted.
Reasons given were to know what you are most likely facing/ not being able to hide plate armour behind a fabric cosmetic / particle effect reduction / and quite a few more.
Steven has talked alot about not just plainly giving numbers and icons to know what you are facing, but visual telltales. This was what sparked quite a lot of talk around cosmetics and I'm VERY sure it was confirmed as said above.
I can be a life devouring nightmare. - Grisu#1819
After 12-18 months maybe sooner. Will we see twinks? Level 5's wearing higher gear trying to game the system like in Noaani's raid.
Gear might not be outright locked away, but they did say that classes will gain benefits using certain gear types that other gear types lack.
It's all very hypothetical still, there is just so little actual examples to go off, but I think if all their envisioned combat bears fruit, the way you approach a fight against a robed mage should be different from how you approach a plated mage.
It's actually a good enough example, a robed mage might need an assassin, while a plated one a skirmisher to deal with effectively. So depending on what you play you might pick a different target to ensure the success of your group.
I can be a life devouring nightmare. - Grisu#1819
Well, if that is the way it turns out, and if player level is obfuscated from others, I can see myself setting up many raid traps for PK raids.
Sure, the attacking raid may well get the encounter/resources/what ever that we are all fighting over, but they will also gain so much corruption that they will lose half their gear.
We need to be able to see some rudimentary information about potential targets in order to be able to make informed decisions, and if decisions are going to be meaningful, they need to be informed.
It has nothing to do with corruption. In fact it's totally legal. You just have to be smart to figure out how.
even better when you have the slave rope and it glitches out
Level should not be given at all.
HP? Well, I don't like seeing HP, but you have several options:
- have a Heal skill, and the higher this skill you're allowed to see status, like Injured, Bloodied, Dying, Healthy, otherwise you see nothing beside Healthy/Injured
- just have status that everyone can see, but you can't know current hp. You can know that Injured means between 75-100%, but if that % means 500 hp or 2000, no idea.
If you want to kill someone, you can look at their weapons, armor and equipment to notice their level, unless it's obfuscated by cosmetic, which I wouldn't like.
Never really liked the idea of a Plate Armor Tank running in a dress, makes no sense.
The only way to avoid that is for player level to be shown. There will always be ways to make a lower level appear to be a higher level, even without cosmetics.
If you are in a raid setting, you are not going to examine the gear that every player has on.
That said, it does detract a lot from the fun, and swaps out good stress with bad stress whenever you have to constantly deal with bored, discontent, toxic players who can’t seem to have a good day without ruining someone else’s. That, or they’re narcissists with an unhealthy craving for any attention (negative or positive).
https://www.splicetoday.com/writing/me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me-me
I have seen a lot of games that remain too passive about this issue. It can erode the community investment in the game so much that the diversity of the population dwindles and entire servers empty out.
I did read about the Corruption System that will be implemented and I am hopeful. Fallout tried with their MMO to turn gankers into interesting game content, and it was a brilliant idea (too bad the MMO game itself went sideways). There will be PvP zones within AoC. Hopefully they will stay busy. I hope they will add enough seductive content to those areas that will make the risk worth stepping over into it for people who may be new to PvP in general.
Just as there are pkplayer that kill lowlevels, there are also pve players that are farming in your face and they take advantage of the fact that you cannot kill him to screw up the farm, there are toxic attitudes on both sides.
I think New World was pretty good on this topic since as a pk player they could all kill you without consequences and apart you threw all your inventory, and in my case it went for the players of the large clans, since we were one of the top pvp clans of the alpha, I hope that intrepid gives us the place to the pks and makes it difficult for us, but not impossibleI don't want to see pveplayer laugh at me in my face without being able to defend myself.
Sorry for my English