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
You cant see a players HP. If they do this, they risk landing the killing blow, gaining corruption. If they pull it off, good on them.
For years I had treasure hunters leading a train of mobs on me. They would use a skill called fake death and the mobs would attack me and I would die.
So I went on the offense. If I saw a treasure hunter with a train of mobs heading towards me I would use a stun and get them killed by the mobs and pick up their items.
Stop feeling victimized and you might have some fun.
Personally I am tired of games being designed for carebears, dumping down content to non challenging, restricted and boring. Deal with it by playing smarter or stick to picking up alchemy ingredients or baking cakes on your freehold.
There are tons of mmos out there. AoC aims to be a good one.
There are no loopholes in the system. It works fine since 2003.
While your corrupt zombie sounds interesting and quite fun it did make me think of another major flaw in the corruption system. Have intrepid ever explained if there are any drawbacks to, on a max level character, stripping completely naked and then going full murder hobo in a low level zone. Based on the wiki, there doesn’t seem to be any draw back to this. Just slaughter to your hearts content, lose nothing when you die, and then get a friend to kill you a bunch of time to rid yourself of the corruption once you’ve had your fill.
Also, if a player is willing to invest thousands of hours to become max level, not many would want to waste this advantage on low level players...they would rather rule a kingdom and fly on dragons!
Another disincentive to do this is the probability that 'max level' will be raised as the game ages and expands. So you don't want to get negative experience on your level 50 when next summer you need to raise him to 76.
Some clans would bring in their perma-red with regular player wing men to pickup gear or to assist if there was a fight back.
But L2 did not have dampening of any kind, so I think once the AoC mechanics are worked out, sadly this will not be so common. I say sad, as nothing brings a group closer than some strongly disliked adversary!
What do you mean by perma-red? Based on my understanding, just having a buddy or an alt kill you enough times should pull you out of corruption. Does corruption stack multiplicatively or something?
In L2 it was a different setup. What would happen in ashes to avoid social discrimination you will make an alt that is set up to go corrupted and yes you would need to cleanse them to keep them viable for their job, ruining other guild's farming spots.
The average of 45 days if you play roughly 4-6 hours per day, will probably end up 1/2 to 1/3 that once players start dissecting the game especially the adept clans / high end players..
In fact, that mirrors being a Zombie.
Is it thousands of hours to become max level?
I think it’s hundreds of hours to become max level.
This really depends on how much time the player has free to play.
I am a casual-challenge/hardcore-time player who typically plays more than 40 hours per week. Even if it took 4 months to reach max level, that’s 3 max level characters in one year. One of those could become the Corrupt Zombie alt.
I don’t think Zombies care about advantage, so lack of advantage is not an issue.
With alts, you can rule a kingdom and fly dragons on your main and also be a Corrupt Zombie on your alt.
If you’re using alts, you may not be interested in raising all of them past the original max level. Depends on what the purpose of the individual alt is. I have some mule alts that stayed under Level 10 for decades.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Leveling
"Level cap
The level cap at launch is expected to be approximately level 50.[6]
The developers anticipate max level should be attainable in approximately 45 days if you play roughly 4-6 hours per day.[7][8]"
270hrs or there abouts from zero to hero.
For L2 players back in the day, 200-300 hrs was level one level past level 70. So any ex-L2 players might not find this so demanding.
The current Time to Max Level (TML from now on), is set to be at around 45 days, playing 4 to 6 hours per day.
That is about 270 hours of TML. Compared to most MMOs out there where the TML is of about 2-4 days of playing 6 hours a day, I'd say Ashes is pretty hardcore.
What kind of TML would you then prefer? A full year?
0-40 3 to 6 months to get to 80%..
40-45 3 to 6 months to get next 10%
45-48 3 to 6 months to get next 6%
48-50 3 to 6 months to get 4% and max.... 1% of population after 1 year.
But that mindset may mean less perhaps in this setting, yet to see.
I mean... you're kinda wrong. They have a ton of content for going around killing people constantly, you just have to do one of the pvp events or attack purples to avoid corruption.
The issue with this is that any game with actual content wants its players to be roughly the same level.
If Intrepid go to add new content 6 months after release, there is no obvious level range for them to make that new content.
If the game takes 45 days or so to get to max level, new content after 6 months can be either aimed at the 45 - 50 range to get stragglers leveled to the cap faster (used if large numbers of players are leveling slower than anticipated) or at the level cap.
Slow leveling works in games like L2, where content is basically irrelevant, and like Path of Exile, where content is procedurally generated. It doesnt work so well in games that place real importance on hand crafted content.
Ashes is not a typical thempark mmo , where you level to max , do all the content and just wait around for more content. The ever changing sandbox nature of the game is going to keep players in invested with what is happening in the game world , the raise and fall of the nodes and how they unlock content is going to keep the game fresh. The living world has been missing in a lot of modern mmorpgs.
I like the Idea , But " some realy good items or resources" are to mutch. It need to be risky and not a reasone to kill someone whitout loot.
if the reward is like a pvp set " open world " skin , or some Ship skins ect. why not ? its skins , it dont push your power lvl . so a kill give you a PvP token that you can trade into skins. and you can show every player that cross your way , what a bad A** fu*** you are.
EDIT : I forgot .. The problem that a Player maby dont have Rescources. YES . but its your risk. if you want a looted player , stalk him ... look how mutch Iron or items he get... THEN kill him. remeber the names , put it into a list , kill the farmer boys again, the chance that a farmer boy farms again is high.
its a hard job , and maby its better to farm for yourself, we need to see it in the finished game. but you can choose.
- Level up with support of our guild
- Fight increasingly difficult bosses to get better gear
- Fight other guilds to be top dog
- Finish game, get bored, look for another game and do it again
So Levels and Gear and Guilds and Raids are what we naturally look at in a new game, so much that it is difficult to see (much less understand) any fundamental shifts. Sure, we look at AoC and see levels, gear, guilds and raids so it is natural to assume the same relationships we have grown accustomed to in the past will exist here.
But IF things work differently, it will be the players who are able to adapt to the new environment and change their ways of play who will be the most successful. Just like successful competition in the 'real world.'
What do I mean? Let me toss out a couple of 'What If' scenarios which are not more than informed speculation on my part. I do not know that these will be the case in AoC.
What if....it turns out that being attached to a NODE is a better path to success than attachment to a GUILD?
What if...it turns out that your advancement in your PROFESSION (crafting, farming, tavernkeeping...) brings you more success in game than your advancement in LEVEL?
What if...it turns out that the augments you get from your rank in your RELIGION or SOCIAL ORGANIZATION (Bounty Hunter Guild, Scientific Guild) are more fulfilling than the augments on your weapon or secondary class?
Yeah, AoC might turn the multiplayer game world on its head, or at least tilt if differently than in the past. Players who were successful in other games might not be successful here, some will complain that the game sucks and others will adapt and thrive. Players who never reached high renown in other games might suddenly find themselves at home in AoC and fly like an eagle.
Single player games introduce meaningless leveling, tedious crafting and boring copy paste endless open world.
I blame the players
NOPE
Yeah, well your hat is big, stupid, and funny looking.
Its my skeleton pope hat
From what i have understood, not mindless PvP or PvP to troll people.
But this is to what OP's first post
Just because our flagging system gives corruption to pkers, doesn't mean PvP won't happen. There is plenty of reason for PvP to occur open-world. Scarce resources, open world hunting grounds, caravans, sieges, guild wars etc. – Steven Sharif
Vying for ownership frequently started in the open world days or even weeks, well before the siege itself was scheduled though shifting of alliances, pvp, pk`ing, payoffs and diplomacy.
I recall a few intensive weeks of our guild being relentlessly pk`ed to back down from siding a certain way at a pending seige. Better to side with thy enemy for future peace than go up against unwinable odds.
But scheme to ninja the relic! but the schemer gets schemed!
That may end up being the objective of in some pvp / pking.
This part, right here.
You have X drops from Y mobs, in Z locations. That loot has a certain intrinsic value to it that the game is balanced around; the rate it drops, the rarity, the difficulty of the mob, the NPC value of it, etc.
If a large group of players turned that location into a gank fest for everyone who isn't them, that loot now becomes rarer for the rest of the server. The player-value of that loot now rises, people start auctioning it off and selling it off for higher and higher prices, making it more and more worthwhile to camp those areas.
The rewards of having this access to rare loot with hugely inflated value, makes it more than worthwhile for people to take the penalty for a murder spree since they can now gain ten times the wealth they would if they played cautiously.
What you have just described is fighting over resources for profit, which is an intended feature of Ashes.
Most likely, the players involved in those fights will be in consensual PVP most of the time; so, no corruption involved. The value of limited resources is intended to drive meaningful PVP just as you described.
Killing low level players results in more corruption per kill. Dying causes negative experience with most of the same penalties as being corrupt (Such as skill and stat dampening in PVP, reduced drop rates from mobs, etc.). So, removing corruption through death instead of grinding makes it necessary to remove death penalty through grinding. Also, since the penalties apply to max level characters, they can't just ignore negative experience even though they don't have to level anymore.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Player_death
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Corruption