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 comment + your signature's gif = giggles
At the very least, I'm holding off talking about this until I've tried it myself to judge how clunky/smooth it is.
No, it just doesn't make sense.
The idea of this suggestion is so that people that want PvP get PvP - is it not? I mean, if you don't want to be attacked, you are not going to use this toggle.
How would that impact on the people that don't want PvP? They clearly wouldn't use it.
You could say similar about many aspects of the game. If someone doesn't want to go on the ocean, they won't use Shipbuilding. Does that mean it shouldn't be included in-game? No. Somebody who doesn't like Dwarves won't be playing as one. Does that mean it shouldn't be included in-game? No. Someone doesn't want to toggle to Combatant status from Non-Combatant. Does that mean it shouldn't be included in-game? No.
Your comparisons don’t even make sense. It’d be like you were asking for a toggle to show you intend to build a ship. Like, ok but if you‘re going to build a ship you don’t need an indicator to do so.
Same with the dwarves, you wouldn’t ask for a toggle on your account to indicate you want to play a dwarf character. You just make a dwarf.
That’s why this suggestion is so pointless. If you want to PvP, attack people. Nothing’s stopping you. Someone comes up to your while you’re gathering and you want to PvP? Attack them. If you don’t care about getting some PvP combat at the moment, then don’t attack them. You don’t need a toggle to invite PvP. You don’t need a toggle that just reduces the options other players have.
It’s not needed for PvP-happy players, not of any positive functional value in any way, and disrupts core systems of risk and reward by negating the risk that attackers are supposed to be weighing and by inherently reducing the attacker’s potential gains by half at all times.
The point was that just because some players aren't going to use a feature, it doesn't make it pointless putting it in if others will be using it.
You're lost man. The idea of the suggestion is to remove accidental or unintended corruption from the game by allowing players to opt into combat manually. It should take some pressure off of players who do not want PvP by making it more obvious in terms of who's going to accept a fight or not.
Does the toggle stop combatants, corrupt or other non-combatants from attacking non-combatants? No. Does it stop someone who starts as combatant from going corrupt when killing a non combatant? No. Would it reduce the need for players and groups to tip toe around a bullshit non-combatant flagging when attacking each other in circumstances where all parties involved have combat toggled on? Yes. Will everyone use it? No. Would it make sense to use it 100% of the time? No. Does it add to player agency? Yes. Does it hurt the game? No. Will @Noaani ever use it? No. Will other people use it? Yes.
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
Except, again, your comparisons make literally no sense. You aren’t prevented from seeking PvP in any way without this toggle which has no functional value. Avid PvPers don’t need it anyway, as you aren’t required to be a Combatant to attack others. It’d be no different than asking for a toggle to show that you intend to build a ship, even though you aren’t required to announce your intent before you can buy or craft ship materials.
It provides no functional difference in the open world. It has no impact on your ability to seek out PvP. You can just as easily goad strangers or openly invite them to attack you. The only time there’d be any “unintended corruption” being avoided is if you went afk and someone killed you while toggled. With a 1 on 1 ttk being 30s to 1min, there’s nothing “unintended” about earning corruption.
The only functional uses I can even imagine are all toeing the line of exploits. A low adventuring level crafter securing themselves a permanent safety net in which they always halve their penalties even when killed by a high adventuring level player even though they would almost always die before they could get a hit back. A player toggling on so they can step away from their computer for a minute knowing at worst they’ll take half the death penalty.
There’s not a doubt in my mind we’ll end up with a way for non-combatants to flag on a corrupt players before the game goes live, so I don’t even see that as an arguable point.
And it’s also completely and utterly unnecessary! You don’t have to be pre-flagged to invite and engage in open world PvP.
People will go around looking for flagged on players to fvck around with, instead on focusing on playing the game.
What dont you still get?
Except for those folks, that IS how they are playing their game.
That said, I feel like this has pretty much been argued into the ground and the devs will do what they will.
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
"This" but keeps going on with the thread for weeks.
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 I do dispute is that this will have an impact over all. You see, for every player that doesn't attack an unflagged player, there is another player out there that PvP's for profit - and that player is unlikely to attack any player that has flagged, as they are clearly not going to be as valuable a target.
What this system will do is focus people that want to PvP for profit or griefing on to the players that are least wanting PvP, and seeing them easily avoid those that actually want that PvP.
Now, it may well turn out that this suggestion would make life harder for people not wanting that PvP - it would make it easier for people wanting to grief others as they can more easily identify those easier targets. However, I am not suggesting that right now because there is no real way to know which way it would go without testing.
What I am saying though, is that it "could" very easily go either way, and so claiming it will go one way as opposed to the other is kind of missing the point.
If there is no toggle and green players cannot flag up against red players, you will incentivize corrupt play. Hence the belief that there will be a toggle in the design so that green players have a choice and intrepid does not promote players going corrupt.
Ill be real here, if a green can't flag up against me as purple when i attack them as a corrupted player I am going to FARM the hell out of people like there's no tomorrow. You will see MANY roving bands of players that will take trash gear to gank with and overwhelm solo players for maximum profit/lowest risk.
This is it right here 100%. You know the greatest part about this, even in your worst case scenario above? The corruption system would then work as intended. The "easy" targets would get to choose to fight or die and the griefers would get a fight or corruption. That's 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
If someone particularly enjoys it, they will be able to do it - but they will be doing it at an over all loss. I am of the opinion that if someone wants to do this at a loss, then the game should (and currently does) allow them to do it.
Once you go deep in to corruption, there is no real way of escaping the experience debt aspect of it, and if you go deep enough, that aspect of it will be very, very time consuming. That is the real punishment of corruption, not gear loss.
Gear loss is simply there so that people don't put on the best gear possible while going for a murder spree, it isn't there as the punishment.
Betweem the low quality gear you will have on and the corruption based penalties you will have, it will be interesting to see how long people could actually carry on like this though. I'm actually wondering now if the penalty for experience debt and the PvP penalty for corruption stack.
No. With a toggle, all you do is make non-combatants out to be players who won’t put up a fight when attacked. Without a toggle, an attacker has to weigh the odds of their target being ready to fight back even if that target hasn’t been in recent PvP combat.
Your toggle is not needed to PvP, and it doesn’t provide any positive benefit to the game as a whole.
Why would a party of 5 players go "deep" into corruption willingly? Only the player that deals the killing blow will get corruption, and if they just target players around their level they can easily split the corruption between them while also farming out mobs to reduce said corruption.
if green players cant become flagged against a red player there will be issues.
What you see as "issues", I see as the basic gameplay of Ashes.
Huh? In a system supposedly designed to give players the choice between fighting back and trying to run you think its ok for a green to be forced to fight the corrupted player with full penalties even if they decide to fight back?
Yes.
Not every aspect of every system has to be designed from the perspective of the player being attacked.
Once a player is corrupt, they have a penalty in PvP. That is there in part to encourage other players to attack and kill them. The fact that these players don't have the option to flag as combatant and take a half penalty only encourages them to fight back. They may well lose, but that just means that corrupt player gains more corruption, and thus a greater penalty.
Seems to me to be kind of what the whole thing is designed around - hence me not thinking an alteration to that is a good idea.
Let me ask you this, just humor me for a minute. If toggle exists as generally suggested in this thread and there are 100 people in a random hunting ground area/zone how many of them do you believe will be toggled combatant versus non combatant? 50/50 90/10 60/40 other?
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 doesn’t matter. You’re being purposefully obtuse.
The entire premise implies that toggling purple means you are willing to fight back. You yourself have said that you want people to feel invited to attack you knowing they won’t get corruption (aka, purple = will fight back). Do you really, truly not understand how that then creates the assumption that green = won’t fight back?
If purple means you want to fight, then the logical conclusion becomes that green do not want to fight.
Whether that’s true in 100% of the cases or not doesn’t matter. A toggle creates an atmosphere in which greens will be seen as easier targets less willing to fight back.
I asked you a very simple question. Your refusal to answer it makes me believe you're worried at what your answer would imply.
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
First Noaani if you'd like to jump back into the conversation with me you should pick it up where you and I left off above and not jump into someone elses discussion because you're going to likely derail his response which will further perpetuate him answering my very simple question I posed to him above.
However since you brought it up let me explain this.
Green should look like a player who is neutral and if you actually guestimate an example of how many would be green/purple in a zone of 100 with the toggle you would likely see this. However you both look at this from the perspective of your lone individual self "I'm green I would be viewed as a lamb".
Let me show you just a handful of examples where I may prefer being non-combatant.
1) I am on a quest line that runs me 45 minutes in some direction to speak with a random NPC. If i'm doing this solo I may want to just get it done without engaging in a fight so I'd likely choose to do this as a non combatant.
2) I'm in a dungeon with a guild or random group of 8 players in my party, all of them are non-combatants so I would likely choose to be as well.
3) I want to solo grind some NPCs for xp in some random camp/area while I eat dinner or watch a tv show or pick my nose.
4) I'm in town
5) I'm afk
Now it's fair to say I may choose to be non-combatant for 100 more reasons or not but what I will say is that in all of the scenarios above I would likely fight back minus the afk one.
I think it's fair to reason that other players would likely do the same thing, unless of course they wanted to play the game differently and toggle it more or less who cares. The point being is you are both projecting that green means "soft, easy, not fight back" etc.
Now that you're also here @Noaani creeping on @Caeryl response instead of mine maybe both of you can feel free to share your estimate for how many people would toggle in a random zone of 100 players if the option was available.
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
If there are 100 people in an area, and even only 10 of them are flagged as a combatant, that means a player coming in wanting to attack someone for profit or griefing can discount that 10% immediately, and only look at the 90%.
Straight away, that makes each of those other players - the ones not flagged as combatants - 10% more likely to be attacked by this player.
Now, you may well be one of that 90% of players there, but so are all the players that don't particularly want to be attacked right now. By contrast, those 10 players wanting to be attacked straight up won't be attacked by this player.
The more people actually use this system, the worse the game will be for those not using it. You keep looking at things through a micro-lense.
Sure, with this toggle the people not wanting to fight would have the option to fight or die ewhen attacked by others.
What you are missing - and seem to not want to understand (as it would ruin your entire argument if you admitted) is that this system would see these people attacked more. It isn't a case of what they can do each time they are attacked, it is a case of how often they are attacked.