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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Concerns from a casual player
benthecarman
Member, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
I found AoC a couple days ago and been watching a ton of content about the plans for the game. I am not able to play games too much and I think it's possible this game could be tons of fun if you're willing/able to play it full time but for people like me who aren't able to play much, it may be unplayable.
One of the main concerns is that it seems lots of features will only be usable by the most hardcore players.
Obviously, flying mounts is the shining example, but since they can be used as gliding mounts and only a very very small subset will have access, I think this is okay.
Another feature I can see problems with is the freeholds and housing. These will have to be limited in quantity as I do not think there will be room for millions of players to all have housing, which sucks.. It seems these will be almost required as they provide extra storage and are just really neat things to have. Another problem I see with them is how materials will be locked at the announcement of a siege. This means that using these places for long term storage is not feasible and that I would need to store all of them on my character which seems ridiculous. I think there needs to be somewhere to store at least a good chunk of your mats outside of your inventory but still safe from theft/losing it to other players.
Finally, the mayor system seems very prone to griefing. From my understanding, a mayor is granted the ability for the next month or until the node is taken over to set the tax rate. If the mayor comes in and sets a 100% tax rate they can effectively make a node destroyed as players will obviously leave that node and have to risk losing there stuff while leaving. It would really suck to have a players invest time in a node and then have a group of griefers vote themselves as mayor only to be able to steal from everyone through taxation and force all of their hard work to be taken by the griefers. I understand the voting is supposed to prevent this but this could easily by sybil attacked.
Curious on people's thoughts on these and hopefully I got some stuff wrong and there are systems to prevent this.
One of the main concerns is that it seems lots of features will only be usable by the most hardcore players.
Obviously, flying mounts is the shining example, but since they can be used as gliding mounts and only a very very small subset will have access, I think this is okay.
Another feature I can see problems with is the freeholds and housing. These will have to be limited in quantity as I do not think there will be room for millions of players to all have housing, which sucks.. It seems these will be almost required as they provide extra storage and are just really neat things to have. Another problem I see with them is how materials will be locked at the announcement of a siege. This means that using these places for long term storage is not feasible and that I would need to store all of them on my character which seems ridiculous. I think there needs to be somewhere to store at least a good chunk of your mats outside of your inventory but still safe from theft/losing it to other players.
Finally, the mayor system seems very prone to griefing. From my understanding, a mayor is granted the ability for the next month or until the node is taken over to set the tax rate. If the mayor comes in and sets a 100% tax rate they can effectively make a node destroyed as players will obviously leave that node and have to risk losing there stuff while leaving. It would really suck to have a players invest time in a node and then have a group of griefers vote themselves as mayor only to be able to steal from everyone through taxation and force all of their hard work to be taken by the griefers. I understand the voting is supposed to prevent this but this could easily by sybil attacked.
Curious on people's thoughts on these and hopefully I got some stuff wrong and there are systems to prevent this.
3
Comments
2.The server can only hold 8-10 thousand players, and as far as I know freehold hosing is limited to one per account, yeah there will probably be people who train on two accounts but I'm pretty sure the game world is big enough to make sure everyone has the ability to build a house, also all of your housing can be destroyed if your node is destroyed.
3. I'm sure nodes with mayors that aren't hardcore or griefiers will be targets for nodes who have active mayors to expand and take over adjacent nodes, you can also just go to another node.
Is this true? That is incredibly small, there will need to be hundreds of different servers. That is going to section off so many players from each other.
> you can also just go to another node
The problem is that it isn't free to move to another node. You could be killed and lose your stuff
As far as I am aware, your housing setup and your resources will be saved as a template should your node be destroyed or delevelled. That way you can easily setup how you'd like somewhere else.
As for griefing mayors, well they need to be voted in in the first place. Whether it will even be possible for a mayor to set a rate of 100% is doubtful in my mind. Players could all just gang up on that mayor.
There is much for Intrepid to iron out yet. How will they combat possible griefing with mayors is probably not cemented yet. I personally believe mayors should be attackable and that killing a mayor should end their term. I also believe mayors should have to be logged in each day so they are targetable.
Of course, there are feasibility issues with all that that stop casual players from ever becoming mayor.
This is where we all come in. Through testing and posting our thoughts we can make the game better. Everyone's opinion is valid and helpful.
I don't think this is the correct approach but I agree there should be someway to unseat a mayor
I don't believe you can lose your stuff by being killed. Unless you are under the corruption system. I'm not even sure how resource storage works yet, and whether resources can be stolen. The game is far from something like Rust.
A lot will be worked out in alpha and beta. Even the most hardcore of players don't want all their storage to be able to be stolen. Not in an MMO.
8k to 10k players per server is a lot for an MMO. It is also normal for the player base to be split up like that. Games like Wow and EQ had many, many servers.
There is no way currently to have everyone who wants to play on the same server sadly. Not in this type of MMO anyway.
Yes it is true and confirmed, you won't lose anything on death unless you're a bounty hunter that got killed by a corrupted, or a corrupted that got killed by anyone (and it's % based if you are either of those)
Is this your first MMORPG? 8-10k is a pretty high amount for a server in an MMORPG.
All of your points are how the game is. Intrepid want a minuscule amount of people to have flying mounts. They want the mayoral system to be prone to that sort of behaviour as they believe it makes it more exciting and entices drama which they want in Ashes.
The servers can hold up to 50k people. The 10k people that Ali is referring to is the concurrent player number - meaning the amount of players that can be online at the same time
I come from GW2 which only divides players by region. TBF they use clever instancing so places aren't overcrowded but if I want to play with a friend, we don't need to coordinate anything we just show up in the same area.
At 10.001 that one person enters a queue and has to wait for someone to go offline to make room for them.
But I think Steven would rather have separate different worlds where each server is actually different from one an other due to the evolution of the node system. Among other things.
The server will have 50 to 70 thousand players (I dont know the actual number)
There will most likely be a system to sell your house or move your freehold
https://knightsofember.com/forums/members/winner909098.54
I do not ever expect to have a flying mount as I don't really want to run a guild. This is a game, not a job.
I do expect to have a Freehold, as there will be changes in the world over time. If you time it right, you can put one up just after a Metro has been destroyed.
It might take me a year instead of 45 days, but in the end, I will have fun.
Servers are said to be able to have 50000 accounts, and up to 10000 players concurrently logged in.
It's called a siege. If the mayor pisses off the entire city they can band together with resources and effort and destroy the node. While this is an extreme example it's possible.
Furthermore the city features will likely having a sliding scale and I doubt the developers are going to allow a mayor to push tax rates anywhere near 100% - it's not realistic in any society.
Lastly I believe the tax system will work more like real estate taxes where you pay X % based on property value (as a reference it may range from 3-15%). The apartments will pay a monthly rent which is likely the full tax amount. It's possible the mayor can adjust the amount due each month for these but it's most likely based on another sliding scale per each apartment type and node level.
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
It's not small, it's 8-10k concurrent players at once. Plenty of MMOs cap out at around 4-8k users total.
A game that is meant to be worth your time instead of just killing it.
Flying mounts are extremely rare, only 10-20 per server at a time, as it should be. Flying mounts can destroy the immersion and flow of a game, as the majority of WoW players that played both pre and post flying mounts can tell you.
Gliding mounts are one of the types of mounts the regular playerbase is said to be able to acquire. Gliding mounts are much more acceptable since they still anchor you to the world albeit in a lesser way. If you want to get somewhere via gliding you still need to abide by the rules of the world, whereas a true flying mount just bypasses literally everything.
Since Steven wants to implement family summoning, a feature that is supposed to directly help casual players come together with friends while they have limited time, I don't think they want to neglect that group of players. What systems exactly are going to end up in the game to enable casual play is yet to be seen.
Flying mounts will indeed be very limited. You need to be one of the 10 most influential players in a server or hunt down world bosses to have a chance at having one. They're supposed to be markers of massive prestige, and even those players will not have access to them indefinitely. They're less of a feature than a nice ingame recognition of your success. Think of them as really big medals of honor.
There are three kinds of housing: Apartments, city houses, and freeholds. Depending on the mayor, some cities may have more apartments than others, so it's a question of shopping around for a good place to live. More importantly, cities have a vested interest in keeping as big of a population as possible. More players in the region means more growth and more opportunities and more trade. Additionally, only citizens can defend a city under siege.
That is a misunderstanding on how materials work. You don't carry them around like in other games, you have your gathered or bought resources stored at the city. That is why you need a whole wagon to transport resources between nodes, and why resources are locked at the start of a siege. Caravans can't get in or out, and rare resources can't be snuck away before the siegers have a chance at taking down the defenders. This also means that raw materials will never clog up your inventory. How exactly killing people works for getting their resources I don't know. If you die to someone, you will lose some, and they will gain some, but you won't just empty your bag.
It would be possible for a mayor to set the tax at 100%, but that would both piss off the citizens, as well as put trading in that node to a grinding halt. However, only scientific nodes has democratic elections, religious nodes use questing and military nodes use a big one-for-all match. Economic nodes allow you to just buy the seat. And if your mayor sucks, you can just wait him out. Do other stuff and become more involved in the next election cycle to prevent the same griefers to wield the power again. It's not really designed to be an airtight system that doesn't allow abuse, but should foster competition, rivalry and a healthy dose of drama. If things are REALLY bad, and you think you don't have a chance to make things better, you can always go out into the world to find a better place to settle down in pursuit of a better life.
@Beneverchio
Not unrealistic at all. A guild of a rivaling node could easily send a player to become a citizen of your Node with an Alt-Account.
Then all they'd have to do is supplying him with enough funds to buy the Mayorship from your Node. Set the taxes to 100% and sabotage the node in any way possible to set up the Siege that's planned in 2 Weeks.
I don't think this is a bad thing though. Spionage and Sabotage should be a thing. This just encourages the patron guilds of a Node to make sure that the mayor positions stays in the hands of people, that care about the node.
So what do you think the 100% represents? Also understanding how often people would be responsible to contribute this tax is important, is it once per mayor cycle, once per week, once per day?
It's sort of hard to understand how the system could be used to grief without understanding the mechanics behind it..
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
I see your point, and I thought about this, but still you have to put a lot of effort to achieve something like this, mostly because to run/vote for mayor you need to be a citizen of that node as far as I remember. So yes but I won't see this as griefing or ruining the experience for others because it will get into the gameplay itself where others will try in any way possible, gameplay wise to have the upper hand and expand.
TLDR I agree with you.
It will probably be an automatic system where, if you make a transaction in a city, you pay an extra percentage on top of the price. 100% tax would mean everything costs double.
2. Like others have said the vast majority of player housing is in the form of instanced housing belonging to nodes. Freeholds are going to be costly and bound to 1 per account. The only advantaged they bring is the ability to produce outside of a city so you're not bound to cities' focuses or taxes.
3. We know that every type of node has different election types, some being harder or easier for grievers to gain authority over. Their ability to change laws might also be different via nodes as well. I could also foresee limits being put in place to limit mayors powers. From gameplay shown 100% tax = double cost on merchants and transactions in town. You can see that in the video of them building new buildings in a town. They upped the tax rate and buy a bunch of mounts to sponsor the building.
Leaving a node and joining another is possible but not an easy process. Leaving your node is free to do, but then you likely will also want to sell your in-node Apartment or in-node home. realestate prices may have gone up or down, likely down since you all are fleeing from a horrible ruling government, so you may take a loss on your home sale. The current math/understanding of the game strongly suggests that the only housing that will be rare and out of reach for casuals will be in-node housing, however there will be Instanced apartments as well as Freeholds out in the wilds. Apartments and Freeholds are far more plentiful and it's expected even casuals will be able to get one. But open Freehold plots of land may be in boring places or a cheap apartment might only be found in small unpopular nodes. Also you cannot buy/sell a Freehold those specifically you just have to wait for the old owner to let it decay or for it to be destroyed in a siege, then once the land is empty again you can rush to lay claim to it first. https://www.ashes101.com/housing
"You could be killed and lose your stuff"
It doesn't sound like you will be the corrupted type, but only corrupted will drop "finished" items like swords, boots, potions upon death, and even then it's only a % chance. The deeper your corruption level the higher that % drop chance is.
Additionally even you as a lawful player suffer death penalties, which means when you die a % of your raw gatherables will drop, like if you had wood in your pack, or gems you just mined, or 50 wolf pelts, a % of that will drop when you die, that happens regardless of if you're corrupted or not. You drop 4X more if you're corrupted, and this may sound weird at first but you as a lawful player will actually drop less if you at least fought back against the PK. By fighting back with even 1 attack you get marked as a combatant and when you die your death penalty is half as much as it would have been if you had just let yourself be killed and you drop half as many of your raw gatherables that were in your backpack. https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Player_death
"only citizens can defend a city under siege."
This is not correct, any random person can sign up to defend or attack a node once a siege is declared. This plays into the intended game politics that the devs want to see happening, nodes will want to stay friendly with other nodes so that someday perhaps they help to defend them. The only limitation for if you are allowed to sign up as an attacker is that if you are a citizen of the node being attacked, you are automatically registered as a defender and you cannot change yourself to attacker (unless you renounce your citizenship, then as a citizen-less, person you are free to join either side)
(timestamp 13:42) www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqWsNeemuQI&feature=youtu.be&t=13m42s
(timestamp 1:16:03) www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GySx-cU6Js=1h16m03s
If the Siege against your home is successful then the current plan is that the entire node vanishes and turns to what graphically looks like a giant pile of burnt rubble (this is a change from their original concept that nodes would delevel by just 1 level). If you owned an instanced apartment or a in-node home then most, not all, but most of your items stored in your storage containers, your furniture, will simply be mailed to you, almost all of it as blueprints and your home layout can be saved as well for each setting back up later when you get a new home.
Going to a new node and signing up as a citizen is free. However to buy a new apartment or home will cost a purchase price. If the node siege fails but your specific apartment complex was damaged then a not overly large repair cost is required to get back into your apartment, the devs have staed they do not want that cost to be that large because housing is too important to player happiness.
We want consequences to matter and if that person got elected then you need to work within the means of the mechanics to get them unelected. – Steven Sharif
A new Mayor is picked every month so at worst if some jackass gets in there and sets taxes at 100% then just do all your buying and selling at a neighboring node for a month and once a new mayor is in then you start selling at home again. Mayors are picked through 1vs1 battle using champion avatars, not your own character (Military node), Election (Scientific), Who pays the most (Economic) and who completes the most religious quests (Divine node) The devs have mentioned they hope to have a donation system in economic nodes where you can give some gold to the person you like the most to help them win the mayorialship.
I'm not even sure how resource storage works yet, and whether resources can be stolen.
There is no stealing between players in Ashes. There are a few quests that will have you go to another node and "steal" a book from their library of rare magical books, but you cannot walk up to another person and pick-pocket them. You cannot walk up to a player stall or shop and steal a loaf of bread, you cannot go into a person's home and pick the lock on their storage container and steal all the loot inside.
You have various storage options, at the very first level of a node, the encampment, a banking NPC appears. Also in nodes there are Warehouses that you can store both raw goods and finished items in. And in your apartment, in-node home, or freehold you can buy Storage Containers and put your items in there. If you have an Alt character, then all of your alts can be listed as a trusted user of your storage container in your home and you can access the stuff inside between all your alts. You can also give access to your storage containers to other players / business partners.
Then you can move your goods around either by foot, or if you use a Pack Mule you can carry 10X as much, or if you use a Caravan then you can move 100X as much. If your caravan reaches an ocean or river then there is a process where it converts into a boat.
One of the main concerns is that it seems lots of features will only be usable by the most hardcore players
At this time from what we know, I honestly think the only content a casual will miss out on is the tier 3 royal mount / flying mount (you will likely get a tier 2 gliding mount though), in-node housing in a popular node (as I detail above though, plenty of other housing ownership options), becoming Mayor or a Monarch of a Castle, and getting top tier legendary gear.
Everything else even casuals can do, from owning a freehold and building a tavern on it and serving adventurers, owning a boat and exploring/fishing/fighting other ships. Fighting in the PvP Arenas for titles and rewards, joining a religion and progressing up its ranks through quests, joining a guild and progressing in it, buying/selling goods on an auction house if you find a economic node with one, fighting in a siege, if you're good at pvp then you don't need top tier gear, if you're bad at pvp then the devs like to point out that anyone can mount a siege weapon like a catapult and fire it, and anyone can help with repairing the walls or the siege weapon during the battle, and healing people. In any busy area there will be pick up groups for local hunting grounds and dungeons that casuals will be able to join in, will you get picked for the team to be 1 of 40 to kill the world boss? well... depends how good a sweet talker you are, would be hard as a casual. But hey maybe your in the guild that is doing it, and they have a spot for 1 more so they invite you in. Stranger things have happened in Verra.