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.
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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
so you are against the caravan system and the monster coin? and if you aren't then what is wrong with thinking up new ways to do interesting bad things in the game that is allowed?
I am sorry sir but you are not reading everything and it is ok, u just want to have your voice heard it that is allowed. However, others are making conversation and talking about the systems that already exist like monster coin, caravans and guild raids. We are only trying to think of other potential systems not random pking. It's ok to have a point of view, but don't falsely put others down just to make yourself seem more legitimate to your own personal view. The great think about such an expansive game is there are many roles to fill, and u are not going to like all of them.
So much potential including the systems already in the game, so many things could come from just a step back and a new point of view on a mechanic.
Ultima in lieu of corruption had something called murder counts, short and long term - you got them for killing blue players(non combatants), I can't remember the exact durations but if you had 4 or more long term murders you turned Red basically, which meant you couldn't set foot in most major cities - and if you did players could simply say "guards" and you would be struck down dead from a bolt of lightning, give or take. Murder counts only cleared based on elapsed time, long term was like 1-2 hours I think per count, and they expired one at a time. So players who wanted to keep their murder counts low - could, but if you wanted to forsake access to towns and conventional social settings, you could be permanently red.
Anyone could attack you - and suffer no penalty, and often probably similar to this system, there were a lot of rewards for killing the player(outside of the ffa/full loot system in place already). There were also specifically designated revive points(wandering red healers) for Red players, and a city or two(a pirate themed one), where Red players could still interact with certain shops and other things. It was a lifestyle choice, rather than a system to necessarily game with penalties/etc. I don't really see a similar spirit in this system, here it seems very cut and dry that Red(corrupted) is not a lifestyle choice, just a penalty, and one you will invariably get rid of, and if it's something within the players immediate control and ability to influence (like dying/other mechanics), they'll likely be aiming not to stay that way very long.
I could be wrong, but I think that's the dichotomy between what this system is, and perhaps something in the spirit of what the OP is discussing. I was personally a fan of UO's method, and being able to be a player killer as a lifestyle choice, once a character was at a point that most conventional social/town settings weren't as necessary. Also(in my case) I was Red, but strictly killed other Red players, it was just due to certain scenarios with non reds assisting red players, that one might end up becoming Red anyway, Blue players healing Reds, or doing other things to influence a fight in a support capacity. In any event, old school nostalgia, I at least like that this game has some kind of nuanced system to begin with, even if something in the past has done it more to my personal preferences, and again possibly in the spirit of the OP's thoughts there.
Edit: Just to note, this is purely hypothetical, since I haven't seen this games actual system at work, and I don't know how it will play out, just speculating
Hear hear! Accurate and concise. Thank you.
I agree that this appears to be just what Steve/Intrepid/they intend.
Role play as a free bad guy without ruin other player gameplay is not easy.
And play a bad guy role within boundary isn't feels good, especially if you have that trait in your real life.
So it is ended up in the developer choice. More freedom on bad guy role play usually bring toxicity into play. Less "normal" player will continue to play.
But in the same time they have less space for bad guy addict. The irony is, they usually bring (ehm).. more cash than "normal" player.
WoW seems to be doing fine in this regard.
But there are no factions in AoC, therefore the only way to flag someone as killable in the open world is through guild-wars. There's bound to be a guild dedicated to declaring wars on every other guild, and using it to flag as many players as they can, giving them the freedom to kill players, rendering corruption useless. I've seen this happen in EVE, so players can kill others in heavily patrolled concord systems.
So don't feel discouraged yet OP. There's always a way!
Whether he wants his voice heard or not has no bearing on any arguments. This is coming dangerously close to an ad hominum fallacy by implication.
Monster coins and the like: What others talk about is not germane to your own line of argumentation. Those are other threads with their own subject matter and own varying arguments. The fact they are being discussed does not lend strength or weakness to anything here.
He is not falsely putting anyone down. He said your argument or suggestion has the appearance of a certain type of personality. He implied that personality (or game-play style) was unwanted. I think I can say that without putting words in his mouth.
Regarding your original post:
What you are saying, then is that you actually do want not just a relaxation of punishment but "rewards" for PK-ing other players. And your only offered reasoning is "to keep them on their toes."
The reason you see more "in=game mechanics punishing these types of actions" [sic] is because they have been deemed unwelcome by the developers and creator. Furthermore, the only reason you are giving the creators to relax these sanctions and offer you a reward instead is to "keep players on their toes." A vague statement which almost certainly must be understood to mean to keep them scared, or to cause them to act in fear. And do you think this is an appealing point for what you, yourself, admit are a majority of the player-base?
It is known that you are certainly welcome to ask for such a thing. You are certainly not wrong, or out of line to ask the question or report your opinions. I think the developers welcome the question. However, there seems to be clear and overwhelming evidence that they are (presently) dead set against what you desire.
There is plenty of pvp on all scales, from every day things like robbing caravans which can massively imped players as well as nodes up to massive battlefields and sieges. Somehow you want more than being able to cripple nodes and being able to destroy an entire days work or even week of a player AND be rewarded beyond that. So yeah, no.
I can be a life devouring nightmare. - Grisu#1819
While I can't speak for everyone, I will say that your initial statement is NOT me. I really love PvP but when I choose to, not when I'm jumped from behind by some ******** while I am chopping down a tree. This why I enjoyed playing games like DAoC, WAR and ESO. I got to choose when I PvPed and when I didn't. So when I was out in realm or the frontier, whatever, the moment I stepped out into the PvP zone I was accepting that I would most likely be killed.....multiple times.
AoC will admittedly be a bit of a different animal for me however because of the open world danger around every corner BUT it's a challenge I'm willing to accept. While I won't like the gankers, I will however hopefully like the siege battles, guild wars and other PvP activities the game will have to offer. Hell I may even like bounty hunting, who knows.
But I digress........I tried skimming through all the posts and didn't see anyone mention the one thing that I feel being a corrupt player should be about......the challenge. If you can take on bounty hunters, and kill combatants while fighting at diminished fighting ability, that will be a bad a**ed player indeed and what you should be striving for as a 'bad guy', not ganking non-combatants.
I will also say that terms like, "I don't want to just be a griefing player killer" bother me because that right there tells me you do indeed plan on being a griefer. Being an a**hole only occasionally doesn't really make your argument any better imho.
I have mentioned UO a few times but I completely understand that will NEVER happen in here if you read everything in this evolving thread you'll see we are trying to think of new ways using the mechanics of the game already in-game, but thank you for your reply and yellow fellow UO player!
I get what you are saying but there is a tiny bit of assuming, only because you aren't in my head and maybe haven't read the entire thread.
We have had a few decent ideas come from this thread that allows some wiggle room to be bad within the mechanics of the game. Just like the caravan system, there are ways for good players to get greedy and go further than they should and open themselves to being punished by the willing and waiting bad guys. This game has man features and areas for players to want to take risks and maybe venture into zones that are scaled harder but neutral, or join a religion that directly opposes another evil religion. This is all we are discussing, the potential for more, and NOT GRIEFING people lol.
Outright pvp isn't the main goal of this conversation but it is a factor and this is a very good thing to point out!
U.S. East
Regarding your original post:
I believe if you read this entire thread and set aside your bias (assuming there actually are some) then you will see that stated by myself and others in this thread that we quickly spoke out against outright unwanted pvp. I have brought up a religion/faction system several times and suggested a quest line or scenario that players could choose to participate in where they choose or be the bad guy or good guy in a smaller scale situation. I have talked about the caravan system and how it punishes the "good guys" for being greedy and lets the "bad guys" take advantage of their greed by killing them and taking some of their stuff. Many things have been based on systems already in the game and other things are being built upon other systems that could be tweaked slightly to fit inside of AOC.So your entire point of view on how I and the select others are just fantasizing on things that will never happen is honestly a bit of a pompous assumption.
I am not speaking on behalf of PK GRIEFING. Pvp or player vs player is simply anything BUT player vs ai in this conversation topic and this game as stated above does have mechanics and the potential for more. This game is not finished and will have many years to adapt and change and build upon itself and some of us are enjoying talking about that potential from the point of view of being a bad guy.
Some current thoughts found on this thread and a few other threads with the same basic topic
1) I see nothing wrong with an average player wanting to take a risk and take a completely optional quest from a back alley fur pelt dealer for 10 rare monster skins that only spawn in one area and it pays slightly more gold than your average quest of that level, and that area happens to be a neutral zone were free for all combat in all forms is allowed.
2) You have an evil religion that makes you an open target to an opposing religion and it creates an open flagless combat situation where members of each gain renown within their religion and maybe have a title as a reward.
3) The game already has a bounty hunter system so why not give them a counterpart? Create a thieves guild that let's you be sneaky and kill a selection of rival city's npcs and you are fair game to these hunters?
4) The node systems will allow a camp to turn into a town and then a city and so on, and these new kingdoms will be rivals to others, well the town mayor could increase taxes or declare a small zone as protected hunting land for passive income for resources and to protect those laws they could have a select few sign up to enforce illegal hunting or tax invasion.
This game has so much potential for ways to be bad that aren't randomly killing people who don't want to be killed. Being a bad guy can be as simple as joining a guild just to snitch to your real guild and give away secrets, to being an evil town mayor taxing the hell outta your people. The game has lots of ways to be bad and we are just thinking up more ways.
So good sir or madam and anyone else reading this far, if you don't like players who like to be bad, then you do not have to. Don't ever take part in a caravan for more rewards, and you'll be fine, and if any new systems come up then don't venture out into those situations. But if you want a sense of risk, and you want more bang for your buck and you do want to get more rewards then originally promised or you want to take that optional quest for extra gold then work for that risky reward by dealing with a real person going out of their way to keep you on your toes.
You may have scanned over some posts but you clearly have not read everything. I respect your reply but to be an actual voice in this conversation then please read up on everything so you have the complete story. This is not completely about pvp, it has evolved way past that and yes people should be rewarded for things they do but this isn't incentivizing griefing. It has been made clear in the most recent posts and I hope you do read them and maybe have a thing to say, feedback is what causes growth but only when the feedback is based on all the information and not selective. I do not seek your agreement but I do want a fair understanding
This game has ways to reward people that feel very unfair to those who aren't the ones getting them like flying mounts for the top small percentage of castle owners, city leaders or guild leaders and this is ok because those players have to have an entire second life in this game to manage things and represent other players they rule over and thus they should be rewarded with a cool flying status symbol. So what is wrong with rewarding a player with waiting around for someone to finally flag themselves by accepting an optional questline that makes them flagged by their own choice, or they join a rival religion faction that opens them up to a holy war? you could gain bad guy status and be rewarded by it viz 100% choice-driven decisions and there is nothing wrong with that.
Very true and nobody is talking about spawn camping in here. We are discussing another way to be bad, a way that punishes the good guys for being greedy and going where they choose to leave a protected zone or choose to accept an optional quest that makes them compete with a rival human player and not ai. Stuff like that. Not open world ganking of unwilling participants.
I never said anyone was fantasizing, you are putting words in my mouth and creating a straw man fallacy. Also calling me "pompous" is the fallacy of ad hominum. I would ask you to simply stay within the laws of logic and reason. There is no need for personal attacks.
I think you're moving the goal posts when defining a "bad guy" in your first post it was clearly a PK-er. Now you're using that term to also refer to any sanctioned PvP activity. Moving the goal posts is a way of confusing everyone. For clarity: a "PK-er," is a griefer and a "PvP-er" as a player who engages in authorized PvP. There is a world of difference between PK-ing and a sanctioned PvP fight.
"I don't want to just be a griefing player killer, ..." This statement implies that you actually do want to be a griefing PK-er, and then something more. Now, I grant you that there may be something lost in translation. But I am going off the precise words on the screen. Which mean A. you want to be a PK-er. B. You want more than that as well. Based on that statement we conclude you are speaking on behalf of PK-ers when you ask for penalties to be removed. Maybe you did not mean that, maybe you made an error in typing the statement that you did not mean to make. Again, though, I have to go with what I read on paper.
So, after having read through everything, I find they have not addressed my and others' arguments. They have simply asked us to "set aside bias" and called us names. Dismantle our arguments. Your position is to ask for rewards for ruining others' gaming experience when they do not want to engage in PvP. And your only offered reasoning is "to keep them on their toes." To: "make them afraid." Convince me. Even better: you don't need to convince me, you need to convince Intrepid.
As for your examples (using your numbers)
1. The majority of the players appear not to want open world free-for-all combat. This would reward PK-ers with an essentially no-penalty zone. Nevertheless, these zones will be created and will move around in the world. So: You get what you want.
2. Open/Flagless combat will not be allowed. The player base welcomes this. What you ask for can be done by using a dedicated PvP zone for this faction war. Dedicated PvP zones and faction wars are known to be in design. You get what you want here.
3. There is a proposed Thieves' Guild. You get what you want here (presumably with quests). What you do not get is the ability to PK without penalty, but that could be handled in exactly the same way as your above religious faction war.
4. I'm not sure what this has to do with PvP, but I get a vague idea of what you mean. However, there is no reason to suspend PK penalties. Just make it a temporary opt-in only PvP zone using the present flag system. You get what you want here.
So, as you can see, it is entirely possible to get what you're asking for, except the part where you get to grief with no penalties.
That is something that actually could be doable under the religion system I think. Obviously we are not devs but I feel the potential is there for something for the players who go out of their way to choose to do this.
That is the very best thing about this game Steven seems great and the other devs seem very passionate. The face that they are doing so much in this game is scary ambitious. I kinda hate that the pve focused players are so quick to write off pvp. You don't have to participate in things, we aren't asking for open-world ganking. They have added guild war, city raids, and some mid-level things like the caravan and the monster coin. We are just trying to think of other things, maybe even smaller scale or something a game dev might read and say "wow we didn't think of that". Player vs player is so much more than griefing unwilling participants, it is a way for you to play against the best possible opponent which is another human. There are endless potential ways to do this outside of ways already allowed and promoted and we just want to bring light to them and discuss them.
We are and I like how our two threads kinda merged lol.
I praise the caravan system by the way, I have even been suggesting more systems like the caravan system to let people who want to be bad, to be bad more of the time.
I mean I'm just here to see how much you trip up with your story which you do alot.
How can you mess up so bad and actually believe people don't see it? First you directly respond to me with caravans and now lecturing you on how wrong it is, somehow I don't have the full picture.
also if you don't see the irony of you telling others of only being a voice if they know everything surrounding the topic, then I don't know. +1 bamboozling
Have fun justifying being a negative influence.
I can be a life devouring nightmare. - Grisu#1819
Ehh... nah.
I said that point of reference had evolved beyond what people consider pvp because as it was clarified, nobody was including griefing or ganking and simplified pvp too much.
Then I went back to clarify that as stated above by more than one post that the caravan as it is an in-game system that rewards you for being a bad guy is something that is promoted because *clears throat* it is a in-game system, and it is very cool sounding.
The conversation overall has evolved because of posters input and further details on others ideas (mainly mine as it is my op and my thoughts) and more clarification through refined discussion to point out that non of my responses have been to see the reward for negative impact on innocent players. I seek the reward for being a bad guy legally but outside of the arena and guild war stuff because I want to focus on smaller-scale things. The caravan system is cool, so we think of other similar systems and discuss as much and part of a conversation is growth on the topic and adapting to new information.
You are either trying too hard to make a point and then trying to make me out as a bad guy or you simply don't get what is intended from a topic meant to discuss the potential of things. I am not seeking fact-checking here, I am seeking conversation on the ideas and concepts of new systems or ways to tweak current ones.
It's ok friend, nobody is out to bully you or say you are wrong and I/we are right. I just do not think this particular thread is for the type of conversation you want to have, which seems based on a different viewpoint based on how the game currently is.
If the corruption system is set up in place to deter players from killing other players unjustifiably, then what use is allowing PvP at all? It doesn't only deter players from killing low level players, it also deters players from killing other players, ANY player in the open world.
And if the entire PvP is revolving around flagging systems, then it's no different from a PvE game. The caravans feel like a mini-game in which you're allowed to kill other players.
I'm still hopeful that one day I'll enter a guild that's dedicated to flagging every other guild for war, so we'll be able to go around the whole corruption bs that's dampening the skills until you can't fight at all. lol.