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
This is why you have been repeatedly referred to as a troll.
On the off chance that you aren't, i do agree with the point that having your things be taken or destroyed while you aren't there sucks (in the situation it's over night) I have played full pvp games with this, and while it does indeed add a tension and adrenaline rush that other games without it just can't touch, it isn't a good move for long term server health. However. in the case of ashes, at the very least, you are given a 3 day warning, an event that will occur during a set time that should be your optimal free time, and a protection should you succeed so you don't get siege spammed. In addition, this can't be started willy nilly, there is actual cost.
Real life happens, and if you're trying to put together a game that has memorable, awesome, player driven events, some people are going to miss some things. People have jobs, kids, relationships, and other pursuits they want to follow, and that's how it always is. If you are living in a metro, and it comes under siege, and you don't log on or have communications with guild or other contacts for more than 5 days in an mmo, then you have to be honest with yourself and admit you aren't that invested in the game. Which is fine, but also your choice.
All in all there are only 2 aspects of the current pvp system that concern me, but i'll hold those till we can get our hands on them to test. Everything else seems to have balance and counter balances, and is just fine.
And last note, if anyone is regretting their backing, then they listened to nothing and turned every bit of information into only what they wanted to hear, which is on them. IS has been clear on the tone of this game from day 1.
Most MMOs fail. You can find just as many, if not more pve mmos that have failed as pvp ones. The number of successful MMOs is too low to draw such conclusions. If making a MMO PvE was the recipe for success then we probably wouldn't be having this conversation as you could be playing the newest pve MMO while I wait and support this niche PvX one.
Open pvp is a part of the game which means it's not griefing. When you buy ashes, that's what you are getting. it's gameplay some people enjoy. Calling it griefing would be like playing fortnite and saying you are being griefed when someone attacks you. When you play the game, expect that you could come under attack.
The corruption mechanic is there as a deterrent so the game doesn't become an all-out free for all. It's to attach a risk to pvp to make the player question if it's worth it. It will decrease the number of times you are attacked, especially if you work to not give anyone a reason to attack you.
Even if they play on two accounts, they will have to grind off the corruption/negative exp at some point as it eventually makes you useless. We also recently found out that there is another pk score that goes up as you get kills and increases the amount of corruption you get per kill. If all you do on a character is kill, you will have to spend more and more time working off those kills. It's also unrealistic to think that a corrupted player will always be able to get away, especially when we have a bounty hunter system that makes it easier to track corrupted players down.
I would like for this effect to only impact players that are killed by opposition 5 levels higher or lower. If you’re getting these from a high leveled player it’s just salt in the wound.
It's part of the game, it's not griefing. I play this game expecting to be attacked and losing my stuff at times. As I said in another post, calling it griefing is like saying you are being griefed when attacked in fortnite.
Just because you have played MMOs in the past that didn't have systems like this doesn't mean every MMO has to be like that.
If you were being open-minded, you would be stating your opinion, arguing your points, and then waiting for testing to see how the systems feel. You would not be telling the developer their game will fail and be memed on (lol) because they have this system you don't like.
When you log into CoD and demand it play like Stardew Valley, then yeah you should leave.
What you’re demanding is completely opposed to the vision of the game. Your opinion is completely pointless because it has no place is the game. It doesn’t work within the systems, it’s trying to get rid of them.
So yeah, please leave if you’re entire argument is “No one should be able to mess with my stuff ever” in a game where player conflict and territory destruction is the primary drive behind change.
Death penalties should have permanent impact. You could argue that you can grind the exp back, but the exp loss is permanent if you do nothing. I can wait out debuffs by going afk rendering them useless.
If the gameplay is slow and methodical I'm already doing everything correctly I just got caught off guard by new information that the game surprised me with. Im making sure Im buffed, full health/mana, checking corners, watching patrols, etc. Dying penalties aren't about preventing people from being a Leeroy, at least they shouldnt be imo.
I have a feeling this game wont be slow and methodical in its combat which will be really weird and I gotta say, I'll probably dislike it. But hey, AoC is the last bastion of hope besides Pantheon:RotF, and having a community split between 2 games will be rough.
Experience debt
Skill and stat dampening
Lower health and mana
Lower gear proficiency
Reduction in drops from monsters
Durability loss
Drop a percentage of raw materials
I mean, I suppose it would depend on the final balancing. I can agree there should be something more than just a small debuff cause there should be incentive not to die. But even a game like Dark Souls only has:
experience/currency loss
durability loss
lowered health max
And even in it's hardest incarnations that Experience/currency loss is recoverable if you can get back and kill the thing that killed you (in the hardest version of the blood/soul echo mechanics). A lot of people consider that system tough and the list of negatives does "look" daunting when compared to that especially since this is an MMO and MMO's require 100 times the amount of grinding, looting, and leveling a Dark Souls game requires. Not an MMO expert though, can't really tell how the system would feel playing in it like that.
This is a human problem not a game problem.
Humans gonna human kind of is what it is.
As of right this moment looking at the WoW classic server list the only high population servers are PvP and 1 just 1 lowly PvE server has high population and 5 PvP servers.
Sorry you feel you wasted your money and time on a game you don't want to play. While not as much invested I feel the same way about GW2.
Not sure if you read my post or not but it's my belief that the stat debuffs are going to act as a way to prevent rushing back into a fight right after dying. Think about it this way, in WoW when you died you could simply just charge right back and avenge your death no questions asked. However this creates an unfair advantage for you essentially getting a free reset on health mana so the debuff is there to give you pause. This gives the winner of a pvp engagement the proper opportunity to heal, mana up or move to a new area before you can just charge back with full power. Since the game will have penalties for dying, if everyone just respawns with 100% effectiveness and runs back and kills people it sort of defeats the risk to dying. Think about when you were a kid playing freeze tag, the whole "no tag backs" adage would be comparable here I mean what is the point in playing if they just tag you back right? lol
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
- Skill and stat dampening
- Lower health and mana
- Lower gear proficiency
- Reduction in drops from monsters
- Drop a percentage of raw materials
are tied to experience debt. The penalties increase as your experience debt increases and you have to burn off your debt while under the penalties.There’s dozens of casual-catering games out there for people who are absolutely against consequences to death
While I agree - it is worth remembering that we are talking about a game that is considering adding a family summons to cater to these casual people.
Honestly, some aspects of this game seem so out of place...
IS will not neglect the casuals as they will make up the majority of the player base. Nothing wrong with creating a game that is enjoyable by casuals and hardcore players.
At least the most pressing concerns of item muling via Family Fast Travel have been addressed. Empty inventory, no corruption, set arrival points.
Granted I would’ve just let people choose their starting locations and call it done, an actual family unit can go from there.
But we all know it’s not gonna be the casuals using this system the most, but big guilds and serious players.
It’s not a matter of neglecting casuals, hence why is said there are casual-catering games for them. People asking for removal of death penalties aren’t asking for the game to have appeal to casuals, their asking for the game to cater to casuals at the expense of a serious playerbase.
Alright. Still, the group summon isn’t going to be used as intended the majority of cases. It’ll be used by guilds, PvP groups, and other hardcore players to get an edge.
It’s just fast-travel that shouldn’t be in the game.
@Dragonwaz
Dark Souls is designed for you to die.
(most) MMORPGS have never been designed like that.
I generally agree with most what you say, but most people here enjoy the concept of punishing other players, so they won't ever agree with you. Looting other players (especially after they gathered stuff .. for them) ist some form of griefing, I agree. But in AoC it doesn't matter. The point is: the death penalties are that harsh, that the simple act of killing the other player is fun enough for every griefer. So if someone just wants to do some pve and gets killed without fighting back, he not only losses his stuff but exp and such too. The frustration generated by the AoC system is even higher than you argued here.
But you learned in this forum, that this is intended and the developers obviously like griefing. It is just like EvE Online. They created a full space pvp zone, but told the player, don't worry, there is police, jumping in to help. Over the years the griefing growed and the developers even made it easier to be ganked even in high sec. They never listened to the peaceful players, the drove them of, one by one.
In my view, no developer creates a full blown open pvp system, where players can be looted, when he does not like to grief other people. No one ever likes to be looted and the risk vs reward phrase is only a cheap excuse for it. When you create such a system you like such a system. It is that easy.
So Great Brae, I agree with you, lootable player pvp is bad design, if you want to be succesful in the long run. They will either face the toxic community that will arise eventually or they will strip the game from it. After all those years playing MMOs (with and without pvp with loot) I would guess, when lootable stays upt o the release, they will strip the game of it, when more than half of the initial players have left it. Like every other such game, the death penalties will be smoothed then as well.
I will wait and see. Without this loot crap (sorry only my view, nothing personal) I believe the game would losse nothing but attract way more people.
The devs at CCP are a bunch of gigabrains for not catering to those carebears and creating an interesting game on the base of an otherwise boring spreadsheet simulator. The player population is stronger now than it has ever been since launch. The game surely would've been dead by now if they had switched to a PvE flagging system where you can choose whether or not a player can attack you. Everyone would have quit when they realized how meaningless spending hours on spreadsheets gathering virtual currency is when all there is to attack are some PvE space aliens.
The recent events of allowing aliens to take over a major trading vein in high sec space was nothing short of amazing. Now players have the option of taking on more risk but more reward by going through a null sec system, or taking low risk but low reward by traveling through 40 high sec systems instead. This is all intended gameplay mechanics, and it creates meaningful rewards
Exactly. No one ever likes to be looted. This gives you an incentive (aka reward) for not getting killed, and that feeling of reward makes you feel more accomplished because it means you've beat another player by being better at a skill.
Think about it this way: no one ever likes getting killed and losing in an FPS. Does this mean we should ban FPS players from killing each other? Hell no, because getting better at the game and pushing through the times you've been killed and learning how to win is extremely rewarding for the player. So the second part of your sentence makes no sense, it is all about risk and reward, as most multiplayer games challenge you and create a competitive atmosphere and the reward function is to win and get better. If you want to neuter a game because you hate getting killed and losing (everyone does), then that's fine, but it would make for a very boring game full of just participation trophies. This results in the game losing almost all of the essence of direct competition against other players.
Death without consequences is meaningless. The only time there shouldn't be a penalty is if you don't fight back when someone attacks you.
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 do want to point out that CoD Warzone not only lets you kill other players but loot them as well (95% loot ratio) and it has up to 60 million people that play it.
Loot FTW.
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
PVP in Ashes is being driven by the risk of loss to make PVP meaningful. Loss of cities, loss of possessions, and loss of ships or mounts (for a period of time). Probably other loss. That loss could just disappear from your inventory. It makes no difference as you will still be motivated to protect what is yours. The only difference is that in Ashes, the loss will be the attackers gain; and, this will be one factor that motivates PVP to occur.
Losing things (or gaining) things due to PVP is core to Ashes. Is losing something from your inventory due to PVP all that different from PVP while killing a world boss, dying and losing the loot that you would have gotten? In some instances, the only difference is that you died just before picking up loot rather than just after. Does there really need to be a line for whether loot can be taken in such a world?
PVP will be everywhere with a focus on fighting over resources, dungeons, world bosses, territory, the ability to move resources, and the list will go on. PVP is over resources. Whether they are in your inventory or not.
I would just like to add, just because Steven likes a system that allows very low restrictions on PVP (and allows looting players) does not automatically mean that Steven likes griefing people. It may simply mean that Steven recognizes that many people will fight harder to protect what is theirs. It is called loss aversion and it is very common. Given that I don't know Steven personally, but he has described building meaningful PVP into Ashes at great length, I am inclined to assume that Steven's intent is to create meaningful PVP rather than some kind of griefing cage.
that makes no sense at all, "lets insert ridiculously extreme and unpractical nonsensical situation here to try and make OPs issues seem relatively minor." you shouldnt have the ability to post on forums
These games exist though. It's called 'permadeath', and it's extremely high risk, high reward (assuming the body is fully lootable), on the risk/reward scale. To say that this doesn't exist, and you shouldn't post on the forums because it doesn't exist, is completely incorrect. I mean, even single-player games have hardcore/permadeath modes. Why would it be common for developers to include these modes if no one likes or plays them because their progress is completely reset if they die? Hint: maybe lots of people like there being risk in video games.
Anyway, no one is advocating for permadeath in AoC as far as I know. A lot of people, including the creator of AoC, just wants there to be more than no risk that you see in most MMOs nowadays.
Well that does appear to be true, based on the May 5, 2017 podcast (so unsure if this has been revised). If i'm reading this correctly now that also means people who die in PVE will suffer the same consequences on death as a non-combatant in PVP. This would mean that solo PVE will be much riskier than group PVE due to the fact someone walking by or waiting for you to die could simply stroll over and loot your body on death with no penalty because you were killed by an NPC.
Furthermore I think that the fact the XP debt controls the stat/skill dampening is kind of strange, from a PvP standpoint I understand why it's important to have this function on a time basis, from a PVE standpoint I do not especially tying it to XP debt - if you died with full stats and skills lowering this seems to fit more in line with de-leveling so to speak as you'll have to go backward in terms of NPC's you can likely kill. The way I would view this is if you're at 100% effectiveness and you die to the level 10 NPC that is in line with your character level, quest line. Now on death you suffer XP debt and are reduction in stats and skills, it seems likely you would need to revert to killing the level 8 NPC (or other lower level NPCs) in order to advance out of the XP debt.
Personally I think it's more reasonable to attribute the stat/skill loss based on a timer that can multiply on concurrent deaths prior to removal, versus forcing removal by XP gain. The forcing of XP debt removal seems like a great system to avoid grief at max level however during the leveling process to max level it seems more in line with actual de-leveling regardless if your characters level changes or not, since it would have constant strain on your characters ability until you climb out through lesser game content.
With that said everyone so concerned about non-combat/Green players dying by PvP and losing their things may want to re-think their argument as it's likely they will die to NPCs way more often LOL.
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
They’re not harsh at all. People crying about them have refused to acknowledge that the majority of these penalties exist on a sliding scale based on total exp debt accrued, much like corruption when people cry about that.
If you die once in PvE or when refusing to fight back in PvE, you lose a bit of your materials, accrue a little exp debt, and might feel a small debuff.
If you fight back in PvP (die as a Combatant), you lose half the mats of a PvE death, and accrue half the exp debt caused by a PvE death. Or you win and get someone else’s stuff.
You don’t start getting smacked with massive debuffs after one death. You get a small penalty that is there to make you reconsider your approach, because if you run back to die again, the penalties will start getting harsher the more you run in recklessly.