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A Couple of Concerns
Neaux
Member
I am very impressed by the scale and attention to detail I am seeing in this game so far .. but I do have a couple of concerns.
I've basically been gaming since Pong and have run the full spectrum of MMO's including: UO, Everquest, WoW, Anarchy Online, Planetside 1 & 2, DAoC, Guild Wars 2, Rift, Warhammer, ESO, Eve and pretty much everything in between.
I've talked to a few old gamer buds about jumping in AoC with me and they all had the same concern: "Nope, I'm not up for getting ganked and losing some of my stuff." From what I've read here, even non-combative players killed by other players will lose a portion of what they've gathered (in addition to durability loss, exp, etc)
I think that would be fine in a world like Wow where you have hundreds of 20-40 member guilds running around but it looks like your gameplay will encourage larger scale communities. There will likely be a dynamic like Eve where you have giant Corporations that control large areas and just trash anyone else that tries to venture through it or around it. They could do this without fear of the corruption process because being in the same 'Guild' they would be unable or unwilling to attack their own members. Solo players or smaller guilds would probably brave this for some durability loss or whatever but I don't think they'll stick around if they are constantly losing things they've gathered and exp to other players.
I know risk vs. reward is a big aspect of this game but you might want to leave that to larger scale transport like caravans or mules and take a closer look at the penalties you want to apply to solo players' experience, bagspace, etc.
I've basically been gaming since Pong and have run the full spectrum of MMO's including: UO, Everquest, WoW, Anarchy Online, Planetside 1 & 2, DAoC, Guild Wars 2, Rift, Warhammer, ESO, Eve and pretty much everything in between.
I've talked to a few old gamer buds about jumping in AoC with me and they all had the same concern: "Nope, I'm not up for getting ganked and losing some of my stuff." From what I've read here, even non-combative players killed by other players will lose a portion of what they've gathered (in addition to durability loss, exp, etc)
I think that would be fine in a world like Wow where you have hundreds of 20-40 member guilds running around but it looks like your gameplay will encourage larger scale communities. There will likely be a dynamic like Eve where you have giant Corporations that control large areas and just trash anyone else that tries to venture through it or around it. They could do this without fear of the corruption process because being in the same 'Guild' they would be unable or unwilling to attack their own members. Solo players or smaller guilds would probably brave this for some durability loss or whatever but I don't think they'll stick around if they are constantly losing things they've gathered and exp to other players.
I know risk vs. reward is a big aspect of this game but you might want to leave that to larger scale transport like caravans or mules and take a closer look at the penalties you want to apply to solo players' experience, bagspace, etc.
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So even a big group becomes killable at one point.
Correct me if I'm wrong
You can check info about players death and what kind of penalties you will suffer in this wiki link: https://es.ashesofcreation.wiki/Player_death
It saids that a non-combatant (green player) who dies suffers normal penalties, which include:
- Dropping a percentage of carried gatherables and processed goods.
- This also includes a percentage of the certificates a player is carrying.
- If a player dies there will be a period of time before their mule despawns. Other players must kill that player's mule to be able to loot it.
- If a player's mule dies its corpse will contain the same percentage of lootable items as the player.
And you can check more info about how player corruption works which is what @Korkum is talking about: https://es.ashesofcreation.wiki/Player_corruption
- If a combatant (purple) player kills a non-combatant (green) player in Pvp, they will be flagged as corrupt (red).
- A player’s corruption score increases with each non-combatant player killed.
- The higher chance of dropping of carried raw materials and gear (Weapons and Armors) when the corrupted player dies.
The issue with mega guilds has been a big one for many people. unfortunately I can't remember anything being addressed about it yet other than Steven saying he wont allow zergs be a thing. I don't expect them to be able to do anything about it either, I can only hope.
Also, PK don't looks like something you can do freely since if you get a lot of player corruption you will be weaker, you will be able to drop your equipment when you die and your location will be revealed to bounty hunters.
I know in theory that should work, but in practice where all of the 'bounty hunters' are in the same guild because everyone else is afraid to go in that area you might have an issue where whole trade routes and areas of interest (like dungeons and raids) are under one control.
If sending a caravan is a large risk it will have a large reward. Risk-reward is the core principle the game designers emphasize, as you also point out! If attacking and PvPing a large caravan has a large reward, it will have a large risk. This may take balancing to make the game work, but fundamentally this approach will make the game actually fun and interesting. As a caravan runner, I should have a large reward if I am risking a lot to send this caravan. If there is a large portion of Pker's in an area I will avoid it because it isn't worth it! I'll change my plans to participate in less volatile areas. Maybe they could implement a system where nodes can actually hire defense for caravans that come in their node. A form of NPC escorts. This would cost a lot of money, but this level of protection will give their traders a baseline protection. Just one idea.
Also a large scale guild protecting resources will happen, this is the design. There will be a lot of conflict about anything in the game that has a large reward. If you want access to the best rewards then you'll have to have the most power. Not everyone is a winner and I really like that as a game design. This will lead to large scale battles too.
Underdeveloped nodes that are far from a Metropolis will naturally have less players and less rewards in general, but there will be less risk that your hard earned loot will get stolen or that other resources will be camped by a large guild, which follows the core principle.
The size of the map, combined with 5 metropolis's existing on every server should provide a baseline separation of power between 5 different power structures too. Also those Metropolis's aren't capable of being dominated by a single guild from the way they are designing the scale of them There will be a large focus on preventing hegemonic entities in the game as far as I can tell, e.g. Democratic Mayors in some node types.
If a guild is poaching a node and constricting resources, people will become angry. Other guilds and individuals will directly work together if it actually interferes with their goals. AND that guild will have a bad reputation now as a bad faith actor. Again balancing will have to be implemented. What if guilds have corruption levels? This is a thought off the top of my head to help with PK oriented Guilds. Members of a guild that commit corruption actions, have a guild level corruption that they add to a guild that the guild has to remove in some fashion. It could be a lot more punishing than individual corruption to help balance.
My strong opinion: I want to play in a world that is living, not another Themepark MMO where everything is dandy no matter what and everyone can play in their isolated corner ignoring everyone **ahem** most MMO's. This is boring, I want conflict, greed, loss, anger, humanity, defeat, triumph, victory, pride, impact... You can't have the positives without the negatives.
On the flip side, I could also see them raiding other nearby nodes to slow down progression.
If you are getting jumped by large groups of people while you are doing caravans, gathering, or whatever else, you should join a guild and align yourself with some strong players on your server who are similar minded to you and interested in accomplishing similar goals within the game.
If you have to always be grouped for all content, then you will see a lot less players actually doing the open world content (cause they either only log in for scheduled activities or they sit in town waiting to form groups).
Also, it's a bit of a contradiction in game design if a resource node can only be mined by a single player, but you always have to have a group to go out.
We agree on most everything here. Believe it or not I am looking at this from the perspective of a hardcore PVPer. I used to run with PVP Guilds (Corporations, Outfits, etc) that were so large we'd crash servers when we zoned in. In games like Wow, guilds that size can exist along side your average family-sized guilds because everything is instanced, travel is a click away and you have shard servers accommodating all of the peeps that overflow away from the zerg - and to be honest, being in the zerg got you the rewards you wanted (and quickly) but it really wasn't that fun over time.
From what I've seen about AoC it won't just be the solo players and PVPers that get left out it will be all of those family sized guilds too. There are a ton of these guys (that I know of) that have guilds that are ready to leave existing games and jump into the new best MMO - the problem is alot of these guilds are 20-50 members with maybe only 10 or 25 online during peak hours and they want to keep their own leadership and officers and they don't want to cede power to other guilds in the form of some type of merger so they can defend against some juggernaut guild.
All of this is just speculation ... the devs will likely sort this out and I know its on their radar. I'm just like you, I want all of these things to go smoothly and figure with 30 years of experience I should at least throw some of these concerns on the table for them to take a peek at
You DON'T always have to group to go out, but if you go out as a solo you should understand you run the POSSIBILITY of dying and losing a portion of your gatherables to a larger group of players. It won't always happen, it might hardly ever happen, but there is a possibility. Especially if you decide you want to go gather in territory controlled by a massive guild who operates on a kill on sight policy. Sounds reasonable to me.
It's safe to assume large groups of players are typically looking for other large groups of players to fight when they go out to PvP and not all be saddled with corruption in the first 20 minutes by ganking a few randoms gathering in the hopes of getting a few berries off them. You probably really only need to typically worry if you sit in one spot for extremely long periods of time gathering and allow players to see you doing it so that they know you have lots of stuff on you. Even then I think you will have to make frequent trips to town due to the inventory. It's just kind of part of the experience to get jumped occasionally and that's ok.
It is possible to balance that mechanic in an acceptable way for most people. We know that 100% full loot games are a recipe for small audiences and end up being niche games. But that doesn't mean it has to be ZERO percent. I would assume most players have the maturity level to be able to stomach the loss of a certain percentage of pixels. It's up to Intrepid to nail down what that percentage is. And we're only talking harvestable mats/mob certificates that would drop here, not equipped gear.
But yeah that's the game, a big part of it at least. And as the game gets closer to launch we are going to have to defend it. There are people here now in our midst whose only desire is to see this game turned into a pve only game. People who want to New World the crap out of this game. Slithering like snakes among us, waiting to pounce. I guarantee it. Thankfully we have a CEO who does not seem like he will bend.
Unless you are after a material that a player is gathering, it isn't really worth killing others you happen across.
If I am off picking some berries and you decide to kill me to take some of my stuff, I won't have all that many berries on me because the inventory system won't allow for it (in order to maintain the usefulness of caravans).
If you do kill me though, and take some of my berries, you now have a more full inventory and are closer to needing to head home to create some more space. You can obviously leave my berries on the ground if you like, but then why risk killing me if you are not after my berries?
I'm sorry but there just won't be massive groups of players roaming around griefing solos for their berries 99% of the time. This scenario will just rarely happen. Just go look at the guild recruitment section and very very few of them are full on PK guilds. Most PvP guilds will be looking for other groups to PvP against. You won't get very much time to PvP as a group in during a night if you are constantly waiting for 2 or 3 people to work corruption off because all you do is gank random solos when you have your entire guild formed up and ready to do something that's actually meaningful and productive like ganking/running caravans, world bosses, etc.
Anyway on the occasion it does happen you now have a large group of corrupted players roaming around ganking solos, map/area chat starts going crazy, people who were killed start calling their guilds/alliances with delight because there is a giant group of reds roaming around somewhere in the area. Enemy guilds of the red group start forming groups because they hear they are grouped up and they want to fight them any chance they have. Large amounts of people start converging on the location as quickly as they can with hopes of wiping a disliked red group from a hated guild for free gear before they vanish or work their corruption off. All this leads to large groups of players meeting each other in the middle of nowhere for a large fight. Sounds fun to me.
I like this perspective on it. I hope it plays out this way.