Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
By what I can tell, they are trying to design a game system how they see it works for the majority of players. Not all games are to everyone's liking.
It is advised to group with other players when levelling. It would be social, would be safer and would be quicker. Should you decide to venture alone then the risks will be amplified. It is the same in any Open World PvP Environment.
I've been in situations in MMOs where I've seen someone in 1 spot killing the same players over and over for like 12 hours. People are weird and it will happen. It will especially happen to players who have something to lose or popular youtubers/streamers.
All I'm saying is they are trying to eliminate what they can, and I applaud them for trying to make efforts to eliminate as much griefing as possible.
You can continue to contest content against me . I could chose to kill you again and be penalized even more for when a bounty hunter comes. But you chose to retaliate with violence so I should be able to defend against it with out extra punishment. I'm going to stop because we are just repeating our selves there is no convincing the other on this point. Like someone else said if I don't like it don't play.
Are they really eliminating griefing though? If the bounty hunter system doesn't give good rewards, then I feel like corrupted players will be able to just go on murder sprees for free. There is nothing stopping a max level from farming level 1s all day and it doesn't seem like the GMs will do anything to stop it if there are "in game systems" to help alleviate it.
Like I said, people will game the system, no matter how strict, no matter how punishing, people will just find new ways to grief. It doesn't seem fair to the people who just want to pvp and aren't actively going out of their way to cause people harm and torment. You will either have non-combatant griefers or you will have a guild where they have a party of corrupted players tormenting non-combatants with a whole raid, or maybe two raids, or maybe three raids, there to help them. Maybe they want to farm a specific enemy or resource and don't want anyone else to have it, so they just have 1 party of their best players going around killing everyone that shows up, and if bounty hunters appear they just take them out. It would be easy to make a bounty hunter accidentally flag himself as combatant as he's going out to PvP anyways so I'm sure he'd attack back if a green started fighting him in the middle of him fighting reds.
Maybe corruption should only occur once you've killed someone drastically under your level or have killed 5-10 non-combatants with no retaliation. It shouldn't be on your very first kill.
Even if a level 50 goes on a rampage kill on level 1s, he will gain even more corruption and become PvP ineffective super easily, being killable by almost anyone.
If someone follows you around, that' is hardly griefing. If someone is taunting you, that is hard griefing. You can ignore them /ignore. Done, problem solved.
If someone is following you around farming what you're farming, you always have the option to kill them, but become corrupted.
Is that annoying? I'd say yes, I'd hardly consider it griefing. For all I care it could be a strategy to initiate a war forcing you to attack him and then saying "He killed me, now you have proof that all Elves are murder hobos and can't control themselves".
In a game with corruption people will find incredible ways to make you rage and start arguments, that's the funny part.
We do have open PvP.
Any interaction, at least written ones, can be ignored. If you can ignore someone, they can't grief you with words.
What else can they do? Follow you around? How is that griefing?
If one kills worth of corruption made the game unplayable, the game would be unplayable.
In this situation, what I would do is kill the one player, let the 7 kill me, and then just go off and do something else. Those players can't follow you, as you will have respawned in a random location.
At the end of the day, if 8 players are working together to prevent you doing a thing, you aren't going to be able to do that thing. This is intended game play, not griefing.
In this situation, the best you can do is walk away, as they have actually beaten you and will continue to beat you. Taking the one hit of corruption is merely what I would do in order to facilitate walking away.
Hmmm, so argument hits a wall again. I would go the complete opposite way on with this, NO open world/non-consensual pvp. There problem solved.
This isn't even the only way this system can be abused. It is just the easiest to remedy by making it so anyone who attacks a corrupted player is flagged as a combatant. If you attack someone you are a combatant flat out. You are free to continue to grief the grind spot. As They are free to decide to incur more penalty to stop you.
I do have to agree with you on this one point it isn't fair. But, I do understand the argument for having it this way.
Linstead Wrote Previously
Are they really eliminating griefing though? If the bounty hunter system doesn't give good rewards, then I feel like corrupted players will be able to just go on murder sprees for free. There is nothing stopping a max level from farming level 1s all day and it doesn't seem like the GMs will do anything to stop it if there are "in game systems" to help alleviate it.
If you read what I said.....
All I'm saying is they are trying to eliminate what they can, and I applaud them for trying to make efforts to eliminate as much griefing as possible.
I didnt say they would be able to eliminate it.
Players respawn at random locations within a certain area of their body. Greifers will not be able to just chase them down.
The same problem means that friends killing a PKer to remove corruption will have a hard time doing so because the body keeps respawning at random locations and travel time is an issue. If the PKer is red named, then while jumping around the map they may be getting into more fights and getting more corruption as a result. It may end up being better for the PKer to hide while working off experience.
Per OP post, saying that bounty hunting will not be worth anything. There is no way to know that. If PKers are dropping fully developed gear, one piece could take months of grinding to earn. Of course, they will be trying to protect their gear in various ways, so it remains to be seen how much bounty hunting really yeilds.
One major difference between BDO and Ashes is that BDO essentially had no PvE content for characters at the level cap. The grind spots that people had in that game were essentially the last little bit of content designed for leveling up - players would just grind these spots because there was nowhere better. Due to this, there were far fewer of these spots than there were people wanting to grind them.
On the other hand, Ashes has actual content at the level cap. Not just occasional spots to grind, but actual dungeons with actual mobs and actual bosses. You don't need to defend a grind spot in Ashes like you did in BDO, because of the simple fact that there is actual content rather than just grind fodder.
If you do decide you want to grind a spot and someone comes along, you can easily just go to another spot if you are not interested in gaiing corruption. You can atempt to contest the spot if you like, but if you are unable, then you have essentially lost the contest and thus it is only right that you be the one to move on, not the winner of said contest.
Stay inside the town and craft, because you're weak.
sounds like a good plan. Not weak just smarter than you.
U.S. East
What powers a bully? Your reaction to them. No reaction, no reward. They move on.
The system will be tweaked but for the most part the penalties will outweigh the rewards if you do not give the bully want they want.... Fighting back.
Make friends, be social. Do things with others in a group. AoC has been very clear that the game is meant to be played with others. Players who refuse to accept that design philosophy seem like they will get less out of this game than those who accept it and play socially.
Cannot stress this enough. This is when this system works.
If your mindset is still stuck in the WoW/ESO etc. soloing from 1 to max kinda mindset try to lose it.
I have played ~15 years on and off with this PvP system and I can assure you there's plenty of PvP to be had in the open world if the other features of the game are well thought.
You cannot put this PvP system in to a game like WoW and expect it to work. You have to understand there's other game design choises done in AoC in order to promote PvP with this system. Steven himself has played years with this same system and I'm sure he knows how to design with these things in mind.
What's to stop you asking if they want to join a group with you so you can both kill them faster?
You know, social game and all...
Like said it seems it's not so solo friendly as even the classes won't be balanced for 1on1 combat. If you are not a DPS I'd suggest you group up with either them or someone else.
Since people like comparing things to RL let me give an analogy. The authorities when searching for a known criminal may give you a description of that known criminal, but they never then tell you to go arrest them yourself. Why? Because it is not your job to do that. They say hey call us to take care of that known criminal for you. If you attempt to dispense justice then you are a vigilante and are treated as a criminal. Similar should happen in game.
Vigilante greens have no right to attack reds without repercussion. Reds should not have to deal with more corruption for defending themselves. If you want to dispense justice then go pick up the BH job spec and all the risks and benefits that come with it. Not because of fairness but because we have a BH job spec in the first place that becomes meaningless when greens can just attack reds with no issues. Lets BH do the red hunting. Greens just need to go back to whatever they were doing before hand.
/thread