Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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
I see why you think I had it backwards, I guess I didn't choose my words wisely.
What I meant was that etiquette is overrated as in people worry too much about it and might even go as far as demand Intrepid to enforce "rules" which ultimately goes against some of the concepts of Ashes.
In a game where being annoying might get you a hard time (AoC), you will think twice before annoying others. In a game where there's no consequences to anything (NW), you will do whatever you want.
I'm talking specifically about "bad manners" which do not involve PKing such as kill stealing, aggroing mobs to grief, etc which the game doesn't inherently tackles.
For instance, in NW people shouldn't be able to skin your kills for at least 15 seconds because there's no PvP (it's optional): that game has awful design. In AoC, if people are able to skin your kills as soon as you kill them, they might have a little surprise when they least expect it. That's how I want etiquette to work: not enforced by anyone other than yourself.
Obviously, I'm not saying there shouldn't be rules and punishment to people who abuse text chat, voice chat, upload dick pics to custom banners, etc.
It was hyperbole for emphasis.
Oil and water, I fear.
Eh? Do you read what you post?
But this is not needed. Depending on class theres bound to be lots of crowd control. Just use crowd control untill he becomes enraged, fights back and then you can kill him without corruption.
Avoiding getting corruption is going to be easy as hell:
1) be in a guild thats at war with everyone, you can kill almost everyone without consequences.
2) Be a citizen of a node that has hostile relations with everyone else, you can freely kill everyone thats not a member of your node
3) harrass the player with non leathal skills till he fights you back
The game should have the illusion of no rules, but it still needs some game systems to dictate the rules so toxicity doesn't run rampant. MMO's generally weren't that toxic until WoW came out. Ever since then there wasn't a single MMO that wasn't toxic ever again.. Well Except Guild Wars 2 and FF14. They got set ways they do things and usually abide by lineage 2/everquest etiquite for the most part. So I'd like to think that most of the old MMO community went there.
It's still mostly a community issue in the end, but it was amplified by doing nothing about it. The community shouldn't be hostile with each other from the very start. That is generally what breeds toxic communities. I mean look at LoL. That's got the worst community of any game because it's just pure toxicity. XD It's because the game doesn't give you a reason to be nice to anyone really. You generally aren't going to want to be nice to the guy going 1/10/1 on your team either.
Lineage 2 has some of the most out of control PKing a MMO ever had, but people generally weren't dicks to each other all of the time either.
The toxicity almost always comes from the rules being too lenient though. However silencing players because of toxicity will make them quit almost immediately. Also causes them to hate your company almost immediately.
WoW always rewarded you for being a dick until they turned off Master Loot. Did it too late though since the community was already a community of dickheads. Ninja Looting and women jokes are the majority of the drama in that game. xD They solved them now. No more Ninja Looting and no more women allowed in the game. Can't say I like the second solution all that much though. xD
U.S. East
Why would it be against TOS?
It would be nice for rare mobs or quest mobs if a person got credit simply by tagging it with damage before it died so that they didn't have to wait for it to respawn. We all have choices in life. Ignore the thief. Blacklist the thief. Give them a taste of their own medicine. Follow them for the next two hours and steal all their resources. Form a hunting party of 40 people and take turns killing the person to share the karma. There are always solutions to problems.
The etiquette you call for will only be given by those who fear retaliation. There will be no morons standing in line to use a NPC when the server is at capacity, like in FFXIV. It generates no good will in that game, and it will certainly not score anyone any brownie points in Ashes.
Not only should you expect to have rare mobs taken from you, but you should also expect to be killed in the process.
My best advice is to make friends and don't expect to get anything valuable solo.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I know this is an old post I somehow missed, but it’s standard for a game’s TOS to have some language that if you harass other players or break other rules of conduct (racial slurs, doxxing someone, etc.) they have the right to suspend or ban you. Much like banning someone on these boards.
That’s if we’re talking actual harassment, and not just “someone doing something I don’t like”.
You claimed "3) harrass the player with non leathal skills till he fights you back" would be against ToS. George was obviously asking about your claim relative to that and not obvious things like doxxing or slurs.
A few points:
1. Introducing any mechanics or systems to PREVENT "toxic" behavior is not likely a tenable solution. Firstly, preventing players from engaging in toxic behavior does not in anyway change the disposition of players willing to engage in it - if one thing doesn't work, they will find other methods.
2. Due to point one above, trying to implement in-game systems to prevent toxic behavior is likely to result in bloated mechanics that require constant updates and development staff hours as players gradually find ways around whatever safeguards are put in place.
3. The actions considered "toxic" are based on perception of the players involved. While I have no doubt we could come up with a "Top 10 List" of etiquette "Do Nots", introducing mechanics to control these areas sets the precedent for more mechanics later if a vocal minority of the player base complains enough - a slippery slope leading again to point two above.
4. Carrot AND stick - as in life, in-game you get the behaviors you incentivize and enable. PvP is a good stick option if applied appropriately. Nuke the person who bugged you and take some of his stuff. Too high level, call your guild and group gank them. It won't stop all trolls, but certainly some. Hell, build a "Policing Guild" if you are so inclined designed to handle such instances.
That said, the carrot is where the real work is needed, and most of it on the developer side. Bluntly, if it is more rewarding to work together than it is to be toxic, the community will tend away from toxic behaviors (though there will always be outliers).
A few examples might be to scale mob spawns, or harvesting nodes in areas with high player count and player participation to prevent scenarios where a few players camp objectives, harvesting nodes, or quest mobs. Allocate a portion of loot and exp. to all players involved in combat with a mob - with proportionate share based on some measures of contribution - effectively neutering the kill stealing issue.
While I wish the community could handle the issue themselves, I think the impact of a careful approach from the devs will have the most impact in this area.
You're still in good shape though, @nidriks, because Ashes has open world PvP.
As many forum-goers have already said, you have options against players engaged in "stealing skins" that aren't available options in New World.
New World envisioned open world PvP ... but then decided very late in the development process to give players the choice to flag for PvP. A very bad decision that resulted in some of the toxic behavior you describe.
I hope the premise of your post isn't an increase in enforcement of MMO etiquette at the expense of an Ashes change to player PvP opt-in (like New World). That's not going to happen.