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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.
Delivery Items in Dungeons- Incentivize movement and open world PvP
neuroguy
Member, Alpha Two
From my understanding, open world dungeons in AoC will be large and sprawling and different parties may want to camp out in certain rooms with good spawn rates to farm (xp/loot/crafting mats) or they may want to to look for randomly located boss spawns. In such an environment, PvP is incentivized and may arise vying for good farming locations or for a boss that multiple groups may stumble upon. Either way, the PvP interaction itself has no inherent value (at best a portion of farmed crafting materials may drop from players), but is instead rewarding in a second-hand manner: it earns you good PvE opportunities.
In general, I find this to be one of the main issues I have with open world PvP and why I seldom take part in it despite not being a carebear. I just don't often find open world PvP to be predictably rewarding enough for my character's progression. I suspect others may feel the same and why for many, their main experience with open world PvP may be by griefers, because other forms of open world PvP are not really incentivized and therefore not popular. Just a thought, don't want to discuss that theory in depth. Battlegrounds, arenas, sieges etc are great imo not because they provide a confined space for PvP, but rather that they provide clear goals and rewards (like honor points, some systematic rank increase, allowing your nearby node to advance instead of the one you are sieging etc) that can be obtained with clear end points.
With that in mind, I think a great addition to the game would be to have 'relics' that randomly drop from dungeon monsters that could be delivered to a faction of interest (i.e. thieve's guild, trader's guild, scholar's academy) for reputation upon exiting the dungeon (either via some delivery NPC, or some spell/delivery owl that would take the item from you once you are out). These relics would be 100% drop rate from any player who is holding them providing a clear and explicit reward for open world PvP. Such a system would not incentivize repeat kills as the relic would drop if it was owned and you want to get out and deliver it if you do get one. It also does not necessarily force PvP, you can negotiate and drop/trade away your relic if you have no interest in PvP removing the incentive for you to get killed. It would simply provide another way to engage with dungeons and actually reward/incentivize open world PvP without promoting griefing.
Would love to hear thoughts on this.
In general, I find this to be one of the main issues I have with open world PvP and why I seldom take part in it despite not being a carebear. I just don't often find open world PvP to be predictably rewarding enough for my character's progression. I suspect others may feel the same and why for many, their main experience with open world PvP may be by griefers, because other forms of open world PvP are not really incentivized and therefore not popular. Just a thought, don't want to discuss that theory in depth. Battlegrounds, arenas, sieges etc are great imo not because they provide a confined space for PvP, but rather that they provide clear goals and rewards (like honor points, some systematic rank increase, allowing your nearby node to advance instead of the one you are sieging etc) that can be obtained with clear end points.
With that in mind, I think a great addition to the game would be to have 'relics' that randomly drop from dungeon monsters that could be delivered to a faction of interest (i.e. thieve's guild, trader's guild, scholar's academy) for reputation upon exiting the dungeon (either via some delivery NPC, or some spell/delivery owl that would take the item from you once you are out). These relics would be 100% drop rate from any player who is holding them providing a clear and explicit reward for open world PvP. Such a system would not incentivize repeat kills as the relic would drop if it was owned and you want to get out and deliver it if you do get one. It also does not necessarily force PvP, you can negotiate and drop/trade away your relic if you have no interest in PvP removing the incentive for you to get killed. It would simply provide another way to engage with dungeons and actually reward/incentivize open world PvP without promoting griefing.
Would love to hear thoughts on this.
1
Comments
The EQNext scenario the devs shared with us is:
Kithicor Forest is filled with Dryads who have Life Energy which can be siphoned as a resource. The Dark Elves kill the Dryads to siphon the Life Energy and convert it to Shadow Energy, which powers Shadow Magic and Stealth.
I typically have my characters max Stealth and I am usually a carebear, but... if I have to kill Dryads to siphon their Life Energy to power the Stealth abilities for my Rogue... any player character Druids who try to stop me from killing Dryads will just have to die!!
Draining Life Energy from Kithicor Forest will, over time, negatively impact all life in Kithicor Forest, so there is incentive for players to prevent the Dryads from being killed. Unbeknownst to the players, a tipping point of Life Energy depletion will allow Shadow Demons to break their shackles, roam across zones and destroy all life in their wake...Dark Elves included. Which will push the Dark Elves to ally with their former rivals to re-imprison the Shadow Demons.
I don't think a relic, as described, would entice me to participate in PvP combat.
I'm not going to try to kill a player character because of something they hold in their possession.
In the EQNext scenario, I'm truly focused on the PvE. And it's not really anything material I'm seeking - what I'm seeking is to improve my non-combat skills. If other players are gonna try to impede that, it could provoke me to initiate PvP, even though I would consider that a last resort option.
Also, a relic seems more like loot than a resource and loot doesn't drop upon death, just resources.
If I understand the concept correctly, it doesn't quite sound like something the devs would implement, but...
that could be misunderstood semantics on my part.
One person's relic could be another person's resource.
Could be similar to the Ketra/Varka quest lines in L2 where you would need to kill hundreds and hundreds of mobs of one faction to swear your allegiance to the other, and as you progressed in the quest line you would unlock more shops/items/bosses. I believe the final tier of the quest would give you a random S grade recipe. This quest line helped draw people into the areas and groups that did not like each other would routinely run into each other and fight.
Hopefully they come up with several different things to keep the world exciting, keep people farming in it, and ensure conflict arises to drive the server.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Relics
Then you could siege a node just because you want to take their relics.
Why does that sound like something that happened in the past IRL?
Haha yeah I was hesitant to use the word relic because of the node relics but I actually would definitely not want it to be related to the nodes since dungeons are spatially going to fall into some nodes' ZOIs anyways and killing mobs there will already contribute xp to that node. Players there may not really be incentivized to steal a relic from another player if they are already in that ZOI and would in principle benefit from the node bonuses just as much as the other guy.
However, the social organizations provide different competing factions within the same nodes, and if we do it through reputation it is a individual (player-based) bonus that is earned so it does not matter which node you have allegiance to, you would want that bonus reputation.