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
I'm walking along minding my own business, a guy jumps out and against my will does X. I am a low level player and I can't do much against him, my options are be saved by others or run away. X causes me to not be able to gain xp or loot and waste my time, and frustrate me.
Now X can be kill me, or snipe all my stuff before I can do anything. I want to know why that should be any different. X could be anything. X could be he has a flying mount so he can just fly up in the air. The game is curbing that. X could be he can fast travel all his friends suddenly there to kill me, then fast travel away. The game is curbing that.
I would understand if the tagging allowed me to ignore them sniping stuff so I still get the loot, and reduced xp. The xp should be reduced because it was killed 1000% faster from them "helping" me. But if they get the xp and loot and I get essentially nothing, they are allowed to lock me out of the game.
I don't want a mechanic to protect from all conflict. I want consistent design. If they are protecting low level players from more powerful players, then killing is not the worst thing a player can do, so they don't go far enough.
You have the option to walk away and do anything else.
If this happens and he is following you around. Stand still for a few moments till he goes one way once he is out of sight you go the other way. Not all grind spots are linear
You are asking for punishments for problems you are dreaming up, have not encountered and have not been able to test your wit against.
@Niraada
I can question design choices simply because they don't seem to be following the choices to the logical conclusion. I don't care one way or the other if I have gank protection or protection from this, it probly won't happen to me, and if it does sometimes, thats an MMO.
All I'm asking is if anyone has insight into why the line is drawn at death. Who gives a shit if they kill you? You're not really harmed, you can still talk to them, respawn, run away, ask others for help. That's what I don't get you guys not seeing. If you get killed once or a bunch, you have literally the same options youre telling me I have in this scenario I'm ' dreaming up'. So why do I need protection coming from the game itself? Y'all are touting that the node will take care of you for rep or there will be other guilds, etc etc. This all exists for ganking too. If it's no big deal because griefers will get what's coming to them, then why does corruption need to exist? If they kill me bounty hunters can find them. In my "dream" scenario, no one knows anything happened unless I post in global or something. I could post in global if they killed me too, but the game itself helps me.
It just makes no sense to me, it's halfway there. Either you don't need corruption because y'all are saying I have all these options and the node and guilds and everything, or Corruption isn't enough because getting killed is only one (and arguably lesser) of several shitty things a player can do to low levels.
The only thing I can think to ask to straighten it out and keep corruption is to let the player get the loot if they tag it, then it seems fair and the griefer can't do a whole lot without killing you. It makes no sense to let them out dps you and take the loot.
Is that not griefing? We have the corruption system to deal with griefing so how is this allowed to happen?
What the rest of the chat doesn't get is why you ignore our solutions to the problem and say it isn't enough with out the ability to try them. One of the solutions you ignored was simply walking the other way or going somewhere else. There is a design solution to what you are asking for and that is instanced dungeons. The developer advertised the game with open world dungeons . So the community is not going to side with you on this one.
If you feel like you're getting answers to questions you haven't asked, consider how clearly you're asking the question, and maybe try being direct about what exactly you're asking. You're supplying all of these hypothetical scenarios, but I really don't see an actual clear question in there.
I hate to say it, but if you can't formulate a clear question, you have to be prepared for others to misinterpret what it is you do say. None of us are mind readers here. Well, at least I'm not.
The corruption system is limited in its scope to encourage meaningful player conflict. If someone is making your experience less than perfect, the design intent is to empower you to handle it, and not interfere. If you're determined not to engage with that person and remain NC and get killed, then there will be a consequence, but beyond that, you are on your own by design.
In RuneScape there’s a HUGE problem of ‘protection / lockdown’ guilds where they are paid to lockdown an area for others. I see this becoming a giant problem if a guild is allowed to lock down a raid just because they are better, have more gear and more time. This really is a blow to the player who can’t afford to put in as much time. Hopefully this kind of content lockout through pvp guilds will be addressed somehow.
This would basically mean that after a while these PvP players and guilds will pretty much instantly become corrupted after only a bit of PvP. Hence this could mean if they are so intent on killing Non-PvP players they will pretty much be corrupted all the time and have a chance to lose their items when killed.
So far I think the PvP system AoC has is one of the better ones I have seen, but I will have to wait and see if people can find a flaw or how to abuse it. (Such as rotating kills)
I personally believe, that corruption should be awarded to all currently existing characters on the account to avoid exactly these shenanigans. Before there is any realistic way of getting this changed, you'll have to wait for Alpha and abuse the shit out of it until the Devs realize this is a problem.
It's a problem that wasn't really common in Lineage 2 as it has nigh endless progression. Alts simply weren't attractive in this case. It's different in AoC, as there is a cap to vertical character progression. However, i do trust intrepid that they will address such an issue once it becomes a common occurrence.
I think I also remember Steven saying that ifyou kill someone you aren’t corrupted and just become a combatant, but that goes away with questing. So guilds could rotate a group through, kill everyone to keep others from progressing, take their loot, and take the area for themselves. Then rotate another 8 players in while the others quest and lose their combatant status. They can keep this going for a very long time. Even forever if they have enough alts and people in the guild.
Why I think this is easily possible and will happen is because in RuneScape, which is arguably not that busy, there are literally over 10 different clans that lock down entire areas on almost every world. There’s ALWAYS, 24/7, at least 10 online to come and kill you if you go there. Literally at any time of the day. I didn’t believe it and went there myself and died in literally 10 seconds, not even kidding!
I think this is way more likely to happen in this game than a person taking an opposition to this may think. There are massive groups of people who stay together and do pvp oriented things in game’s. It wouldn’t be hard to have this done and the open pvp raid areas worry me.
There have been many years of gaming and clan /guild interaction where real online guilds are very coordinated even in a new game. This kind of guild raid area pvp lockout needs a real serious look. Many gamers are very smart and find “legal” ways around all kinds of game mechanics. I’m sure any of you reading this can think of a group of players in a game finding a way around a mechanic that the game developers had no idea was possible. Everyone has a story, and open-world raid-area pvp worries me since it allows a chance at this content lockout by a superior group of very dedicated players who want to be the only ones. I know it’s a lot just a big worry, hope the devs have a plan for this!
Killing players bellow your level earns you more corruption the bigger the level gap is.
So killing 1 or 2 low levels might instantly put your corrpution to maximum.
As a corrupted you have 400% exp and loot drops. I think even your gear can drop as corrupted but im not sure. The higher the currution the more loot you drop on death.
Town guards will attack you.
Also corrupution will stay if you walk into sieges with it. So lets say you are corrputed and walk to a siege. Your own site might just kill you to get your stuff.
Also if i remember right, Corrputed players spawn randomly in the world when they die. They have no set spawn.
This means people interessted in Sieges and caravans or even dungen raids will try to avoid corrpution as it pretty mutch blocks you from doing the content.
Now if my group of 20 sees your group of 20 fighting a boss and we think, we can kill you and take the boss down before you come back. Then yah we will do just that.
If you do raid then you better be prepared to contest your claim.
And that, is the beauty of AoC. The feeling of danger of traveling the open world will finally come back to the MMORPG genre.
I Agree that corruption should affect the entire account. We dont know if thats the case allready. If not then keep giving feedback to the devs about it.
As for the +4/-4 level lock on dmg done to mobs / loot.
Steven already said he doesn't like that system. At least regarding dmg reduction for level difference.
If i as level 10 player can kill a level 30 mob using pure skill then i should be able to
And if im lvl 50 and want to farm level 5 mobs be course they have the best drop rate for certain type of resource i should be able to do it as well.
If the Dungeon is full you either try to compete with me or go somewhere else.
If you are low level and im high level, then ask some high levels to chase me out.
MMOs are social games.
Just becourse most modern MMOs try to carter to solo players and small groups, means not that AoC should do the same.
As a final note
The game isnt even in Alpha yet. We don't know how most of the Systems work and as Steven said, Feedback is extremely valuable.
Test it, give feedback, they change it. Repeat until perfect balance is obtained.
I think this is expected. Its by design welcome to PvX . I don't necessarily like it but you have to look at each MMO and understand they are all different. It would behoove you to really look at the core of this game and understand it. Also from your MMO experience what are you actually looking for. For me I don't like an indefinite gear grind so I know my time with this game will be limited. I'm not going to lobby for change as its a fundamental part of this games design.
Being a part of the world while it goes through its most substantial growth will be worth me playing it.
Staying up with the average gear curve while I PvP through caravans and such will be a lot of fun. But the game is designed for the top guilds to stay at the top. Once I feel the need to compete for top gear I will lose interest because they will have been farming that content for a substantial amount of time and it just wont be fun for me fighting them. If at that point Arena can not keep me interested and Caravans aren't fun. I will move on. If however they can design sieges where an 8 man team can run around doing objectives with out the need for S tier gear A tier being good enough. Somehow making that team feel like they can sway the battle or at least have an impact . I will probably play this game for life.
You don't need to rotate players around for that. You can just declare a guild war to get rid of the corruption penalty. -> Players that enter "your" farming grounds get a guild war declared upon them and you can get rid of them freely.
This, of course has the disadvantage, that you'd have multiple guild wars going with other guilds in the end.
Still, if a guild bands together to lock out a farming spot, then you should not rely on an arbitrary game system to stop them (That's the WoW kind of way). You should band together with other guilds in the area and kick them out yourself.
That's the whole point of meaningful conflict and the incentivized PVP.