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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
One this is my first post, what initially attracted me to Ashes of Creation is the Open world PVP flagging system that is identical to L2. (Im a 10+ year L2 player).
Assuming AoC's pvp is similar to L2s in the sense that open world PVP is a constant threat you would never ever ever want to run around constantly flagged, culturally if it follows the same path as L2 (which the system itself kind of dictates/invites) being flagged is inviting people to attack you, and also a combat disadvantage.
In L2, flagging order (especially in the early years, not so much in the later ones) was a HUGE part of pvp.
What I mean by this is your tanks, heavy warrior classes, and tanky bard-buffers (Swordsingers and Bladedancers in L2) would be flagging in a pvp encounter, generally in that order, with your high DPS Mages, Rogues, Archers and most of all, healers trying to stay non-combatant as long as humanly possible, or until a soft target (Another healer, or your enemy parties top DPS who you desperately want to knock out of the fight early) flag.
This was one of the joys of L2 PVP. Coordinated, skilled parties could absolutely decimate their (better geared/higher leveled) opponents by communicating more effectively.
I played at the high end of pvp in L2 (Castle owning/pvp dominating top 3 guilds) most of my career there (Sieghardt in the early years, took a break, came back to Chronos if theres any other L2 players around
You will never want to run around flagged for PVP in AOC, needlessly giving up a huge tactical advantage of getting to choose when/where/how to enter a fight. If you do, players like me (and im sure many others) will take advantage of your stupidity and carelessness and punish you, repeatedly, and you will stop doing that. A toggle in a game like this will also be worthless. Fast-travel is limited. Zone/area management via PVP means will be a real thing. Clans and guilds will work to control the best zones and spots. Only the absolute top players/guilds would ever want to be always flagged for PVP. I promise you that there will be guilds that form that declare war on every other guild in the game, and fight all takers at every opportunity. In real life terms, for the average player in AOC, being always toggled for PVP would be the equivalent of dropping your pants to your feet, then handcuffing your wrists to your ankles, and THEN challenging every person you come across on the street to a fight. My old L2 players who are used to this system know this.
If you never played L2 and are not used to this flagging system, youll understand that a toggle completely defeats the purpose of this for open-world PVP. Sieges, caravans, guild wars, etc where everyone involved is a combatant will be treated/handled completely differently. Everyone involved will be ready, on-guard, buffed and paying attention, and the style/way the fights play out will be entirely different than the large open world pvp encounters. Parties will be organized differently, min-maxed to the absolute bleeding edge/limit of the current game knowledge. Your open world encounters wont be like this (unless of course you leave town explicitly to pvp and you prepare for it). Open world will be alot dirtier, grittier, and full of twists. So before you beg for a toggle, play the game first XD
Going off his posts, that's exactly what he wants. He wants to be attacked at random as he goes about his business, cos he enjoys it.
I can appreciate the fact you think being in combatant state would be stupid from your experience in L2 I would likely agree with you if this was L2 considering the grind that game involved. However based on the current level grind intended for this game I do not view it the same way. Furthermore I come from games that had no corruption system, no level restrictions on attacking other players etc. What I mean by this is I've played games with full open world pvp without restrictions that also involved death penalties, loot and durability loss no safe zones, no insta kill guards etc etc.
In my opinion I would prefer the pvp to come to me, if I'm going to flag for it myself then i'll be prepared for that to happen. So yes please attack me, it's the entire point of me flagging for combat. I'm not trying to play a cat and mouse game tip toeing around a corruption system that has no business preventing or impacting open world pvp from players who want to participate in it.
This is a flat out bad design. The corruption system impacting your ability to attack or not attack because of it is wrong. Again the corruption system has no place in pvp unrelated to ganking/griefing players who unwillingly get attacked and killed. There is absolutely no reason two groups fighting each other should risk or become flagged for corruption in this situation or the one I explained in the OP. It's not skillful play having to limit who in your group can attack until XYZ because corruption. It would be more skillful if all players could attack and be attacked at will as there would be no outside concerns and restrictions put on the players.
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
The toggle would give everyone the option to play the game as they want without fear of corruption or of course having to play around it. If you want to go tame some animals no one is forcing you to toggle it on.
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
Totally get your line of thinking, and its completely valid. I understand where you are coming from a bit better, and only basing it off previous experience, very very few people would do this, atleast in L2 on the servers I played on, youd be condeming yourself to death to the point where youd be better of just standing outside of the town gate and attacking everyone who walks by then trying to be in the world that way. Even the players who WOULD do this and be PVP flagged all of the time, were also the players whos own reputations or guilds were already a standing invitation to attack them. In short, it would be an entire system that would be sparsely used, at absolute best.
If you want to decide that every time, cool - I'm sure PvP players on your server will know you are always up for a fight, and will attack you regardless of how much they outnumber you. However, since corruption is a key aspect to the game, and it being acquired at a reasonable rate is actually key to other systems in the game functioning, the wide scale ability to opt out of it is simply not a good fit for this game.
So now lets put this into further review, 25 people spread across a zone that may take roughly 10-15 minutes to run (or longer) it's likely there won't be that much "risk" with being in combatant state at nearly all times. This would equate to roughly 3 full parties per hunting ground. Sprinkle in a few solos, smaller groups etc it seems like the average risk level won't be that high.
Add in the fact we do not currently know if there are any tracking type classes and of course we always have the option to tuck tail and run when players or groups pop on screen.
Anyway this is some what irrelevant to the OP but it may add some transparency to how spread out the world is going to be with 100+ nodes and all the accompanying leveling areas.
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
What world do you live in? Why should that not be something I get to pre-determine? Where is corruption listed as a "key aspect" to the game in the sense that it's incentivized to become corrupt? It's a deterrent and allowing players to flag for combat has absolutely no impact on the corruption system for it's intended purpose.
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 personally dont see corruption as a big enough deterrent to wait for a healer of an attacking group to engage. But I do like the points you make of a tactical viewpoint that evolved from a games system. I have actually been wondering whether or not they might flag a n entire group if one person flags, but I don't think they are going for that direction. It would definitely remove the problem of people using the corruption system as a shield in open world team fights though.
The corruption system is in place to protect people from griefing, not PvP. Why shouldn't a person be able to opt out of a system that protects them? It gives them zero advantage, and actually puts themselves at a disadvantage in the world, and seeing as it is already an implementation in the pre alpha, no resources would be lost in development of the feature. To me its more like a hardcore mode being turned on, makes the risk factor way higher which could be very fun.
Yes 100% just meant opting out of the protection the corruption system offers.
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
Any system that has another system built entierly on top of it is a key system.
A game where almost all players are walking around as non-combatants has a different feel to it than a game where 10% of the population is walking around as a combatant.
You are looking at it from the very narrow perspective of someone that wants to PvP all the time (a small segment of the playerbase), where as I am looking at it from the perspective of the actual game - not even of a player in the game, but the actual game.
A game that has groups roaming around the world that are flagged as combatants is absolutely a different game to one that doesn't have groups flagged as combatants roaming around the world.
He didn't want to "PvP all the time". His examples included being attacked while he's out farming/gathering/etc. He just wants it to be a more inviting and more likely prospect at any time.
The current system, based on that video, is that players can toggle the combatant flag on and off at any time, but there is a timer after it's toggled off before it takes effect and the player becomes a non-combatant again.
Are you guys arguing about whether or not that's a good system?
Before the video, Tyrantor said he'd like a toggle to be able to get Combatant status. After the video, Noaani suggested it might just be there to aid in the testing process before the full Corruption system was implemented.
It's true, it's gone on a pretty long time...
How would this be impacted exactly? Again the toggle would have no impact on this.
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'm saying that this is a system that was implemented for alpha because they are not developing the corruption system just yet, and that we were told a long time ago that this would be the case.
They are all saying that a system we were told a long time ago was going to be put in place temporarily for alpha is proof that there will be a toggle in the final game.
To my knowledge, it is still at "a few minutes" or a variation thereof.
While it is an assumption, I would assume it will end up lasting either 3 or 5 minutes.
If there are more people running around as combatants, then there are fewer ways in which people can gain corruption.
There are people in this thread that have said they would never turn this flag off, meaning there will absolutely be fewer people in the game over all by which players can gain corruption.
This means fewer people with corruption, and those with corruption will have less of it. In turn, that means the bounty hunter system - which is a progression path in Ashes - is significantly less valuable as a path on which to spend time.
The Corruption system is to deter griefing. If there are less players being griefed, then surely that's a good thing?
Griefing, for example, in a non-consensual PvP enabled game: What is that exactly?
To me, being killed a few times by the same person while out gathering is certainly not griefing, not matter how much stronger they are. It is expected gameplay you sign up for by playing the game. I can choose to go somewhere else. However, if that person follows me around and starts spawn camping and harass me no matter what I am doing, we enter griefing territory after the 10th death perhaps.
That completely goes away if it's a node or guild war though. Then it is to be expected that lower level, weaker players will be KOS anytime, anywhere. Unless the offending player is using exploits or similar (or verbally harassing obviously), there is no such thing as griefing in a guild or node war.
Less corruption sounds like a win-win how do you not understand this? The only reason they have to put a bounty hunter system in the game is to further disincentivize going corrupt. What it means is that the corruption system will work more efficiently by only applying corruption to people who do not accept the risk of pvp. The bounty hunter path doesn't lose value for it's intended purpose, which should be the point of both corruption and BH quest line.
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'm not sure what you are saying here.
The kind of people that would be griefed in a game like Ashes are not the kind of people that would use a toggle like this.
It's obvious you don't know what any of us are saying.
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