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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
Sorry I don't agree with this and think its a stupid idea. Human review is important but any system like Dota or league with systems that give players bad standing is just really stupid in a mmo. We all already saw that with new world, those systems do not work. You need to be an adult when you are playing a mmo and be mindful of the people you play with rather than askign for police on a mmo or automatic ban system.
YOU need to put the effort into getting to know your community and make friends that you enjoy playing with. If you are getting pvp'd in a pvp game that is not worth reporting unless they are abusing a bug or huge exploit. If you are being targeted by a entire guild for no reason and can not escape from them no matter what than you can contact a gm. Too many people do things piss off people and don't realize consequences happen which can revolve around pvp.
I think a lot of things about this topic, some of them are definitely unpopular opinions, but, in the end of the day i guess it all comes down to:
U should balance corruption, period. Corruption has to be strong enough to minimize no sense free griefing, but not too strong as to kill world pvp. I know there will have a lot of contents ''corruption free'', but i guess world pvp has to occur also outside those contents, in dispute for farm spots for example.
I'm just sick of games balanced to please carebears, and i want to play again a MMO where the open world pvp is a strong feature. If u dont wanna be disturbed when u are doing anything, pls go to FFXIV, WoW or any other MMO that allows you turn off the pvp, but don't try to impose this game vision in Ashes, because this game CLEARLY is not being made for players like u. Please, i dont wanna sound rude.
And please, dont tell me :''u can kill anybody, just go ahead and deal with the consequences''. In a game when u have a 400% penalty in your first kill u DONT WANT to kill anybody.
"Dude, the person will fight back your agression, they need it to reduce their own death penalty'' No, if the corruption is this punitive, nobody will fight back any shit, because the attacker will NEVER take the risk to receive a 400% penalty. The players will know that the attacker wont finish the kill, and then u have a game with no world pvp besides the events.
Balance corruption, but be careful on this, that's all.
And come on... we problably wont see the most gamebreaker kind of griefing: Kill someone over and over again to the point of not letting her play the game, because when u die u will spawn far away.
I agree 100% needs to have a good balance of pvp, not where everyone is attacking senselessly every second, but not where you don't see any pvp outside of guild decs and wars.
As a open world pvp Lover I understand what you say,but no so many people like this,being in a bad day,you try to relax and someone kill you for no reason and if that happens several times can make you quit the game,and these game visión clearly Is not a full pvp game but a game for everyone. It's true that corrupción punish a lot and I okay with that,you become basically a killer in the world,but what devs needs to give reason to players to become a killer,basically risk-reward,these reason could be having good farming points for XP and for resources, dungeons that áre easy to contest,zones that gives different perks besides castles, like a zone that enhance a profession or gives the holder some combat/económical perks(could be a tower that enhance your magical Powers e.g). If you have a Lot of objectives in the game that involve pvp less people Will kill people for Zero reasons and big punishment.
They have literarily said the game isn't for everyone. It is a pvp game, yes someone can camp you but if thy are doing that like 7 times there are major consequences and active in game bounty hunters.
Just don't fight back poof they are red
Any exploitation of bugs should be harshly punished and can be considered griefing in some cases, or just cheating in others.
Automated systems don't work, so unless you want a GM to read through 20,000 petitions, it's hard to say who is or isn't innocent. If someone is harassing you in chat, that what ignore is for. World of Warcraft had a report system for chat that would silence the person and it got abused all the time. Didn't work as intended.
In Everquest, it could be a challenge to get experience for your character and finding monsters appropriate for your level so groups would camp areas waiting for the mobs to respawn. If a group claimed an area as "camped" for those who remember that term, killing a mob was deemed rude and could get you killed by the group.
Griefing is a matter of perspective. I can see killing a player half your level as griefing. I could also argue that on a PVP server, before Blizzard got rid of them, that killing Horde players was my patriot duty as an Alliance member. In Eve Online there was safe space and no law space. You could say in safe space and play the game never having to PVP and Corcord would come destroy the person who attacked you. If you chose to go to the lawless space, you made that choice. They incentivized players to go to those regions and fight over resources because the best materials were in that area of the game. AOC could also do that by putting high end materials in certain regions of the game and common materials in other regions.
i 9001% AGREE WITH THIS.
That is why my post is against automatic reports banning people and putting people in the bad category automatically. Reports are important for the right reasons though.
So, in that context 'griefing' seems like the repeated killing of 'innocents' (greens) where they are not posing a threat to your objectives. Killing other gatherers in an area with necessary material for your crafting / guild objectives is totally understandable.
Standing over a level 10 green as a level 50 group and repeatedly kill the green. Griefing.
Repeatedly following that green and killing him as he's trying to escape. Griefing.
Following that green into town and bragging about killing him in chat. Griefing.
ArcheAge - cart blocking trade routes became a thing, and while some hated it others found it extremely enjoyable. Easily patched if they felt the need.
WoW - people dispelling world buffs, again easily patched if they wanted.
WoW - people entering your raid instance in order to prevent you from entering yourselves. Definitely griefing.
Also scammers, are they griefing? Is someone who slanders you over text to others griefing?
Really it just comes down to what the developers allow. Spawn camping lowbies? This can be addressed with game design, or rules that a GM must then use valuable time on to enforce. If you want to sit on a trade route line with a whole guild camping and controlling the area some may see that was griefing, others as content. There is a fine line between griefing and emergent play and I urge caution when branding something to be griefing.
Many actions will elicit negative emotions for the recipient/victim, it's a pvp game after all. I think the important factor is the effort vs reward.
Examples I consider okay :
Examples I consider NOT okay:
I think a key aspect of griefing is that it's often a lose/lose situation, one person will go out of their way to "hurt" someone, wasting their own time to make sure someone isn't having fun. If something is unfair, making the experience bad for someone, I don't think we can call it griefing if there is a clear benefit for the perpetrator. To be called griefing and be considered "unacceptable", an action's main purpose must be "harming" someone else, and/or it must imply a significant effort for no meaningful "reward". Griefing is targeted at the player and not the character they play, it's the human being that you're trying to harm.
Kill them repeatedly and relentlessly on sight to your heart’s content.
This is the way.
they confuse pvp with nuisance.
corruption will not solve the problem.
the pvp player is a frustrated fool in his life who gets his pleasure by preventing others from progressing.
he only likes the unequal fight.
the only solution is the tag that we would be free to activate or not during the leveling period, and that would automatically activate at the maximum level
There are other ways to grief too, not just killing people. Imo, it is when any system is abused and taken too far to prevent or severely hamper someone from enjoying and playing the game, their way. Some examples I can forsee in Ashes:
1. Repeatedly targeting the same people in freehold/node/caravan raids, taking a percentage of their gathered or refined materials, eventually leaving them with very very little and wasting hours of their time to point they no longer want to play. Perhaps you can put on quickly rising diminishing returns on this if you keep doing it to the same player/group.
2. Bodyblocking, if groups get together they could prevent people from getting past areas, particularly in open world dungeons etc. A solution to this New World did well was putting away your weapon let you phase through people.
I feel there are likely going to be numerous ways to grief we haven't seen or thought of yet in Ashes as its still in development, and the best way to manage it is active GMs. This was mentioned as a goal in an early interview I watched and I really hope is still the goal. Perhaps even recruit them from the player base, set strict rules and harshly punish anyone who exploits their powers and reward them for helping others and help making the game a better place.
Then if the issue is bigger then what a GM can handle they can pass it up the chain and it can be hotfixed or addressed in the next patch depending on the urgency.
One thing I am concerned about griefing the game and its players are people using exploits to get economic/item advantages. New World was ruined by this and I really hope the back end system lets the Ashes team track things very easily, if someone suddenly gets a lot of gold it gets flagged to look at, item duplications, there are so many.
I think active GMs with alerts from out of the ordinary gameplay patterns, as well as people creating tickets for help.
I very much enjoy the thought of the current system in theory. I would like PvP to be a present risk and opportunity throughout the world, save for some few sanctuary locations and protected pockets available at key locations; perhaps city temples, one's own freehold outside of war-time, a noob-spawn location, etc.
I would consider "griefing" to be repeatedly killing a player or otherwise continuously or significantly hindering their progress and presence. I do not suggest that griefing should be eliminated, and I do not consider standard sporadic PvP to be griefing. The current system of punishment for the non-consensual slaying of non-combatant players appears, on paper, to be sufficient. If a player is personally motivated, to such an intense degree, to kill another player that they willingly accept incurring increasing penalties while putting themselves at risk and placing a target on their back, this should be reasonably permitted.
Players should not be able to simply tick a toggle to entirely evade all PvP content and risk. They should be able to seek aid from others, rely on a bounty system, relocate, and make an effort to avoid hostile oafs when a situation presents itself. Let the world live. Sharding/phasing is not a tolerable solution as is evidenced by games such as WoW.
Where would I draw the line? I would not appreciate if there were a quick or easy way to remove corruption from oneself or a friend, effectually permitting beast-brained savages to run rampant, annihilating lowbies or travelling in unopposed hordes to commit regional genocide on a regular basis. This should not be an efficient method for such aggressors to farm anything, and it should result in undesirable corruption consequences.
In contrast to the above, I would advocate for shorter-term negative impacts for a measly murder or two of one's unsavoury adversaries when spotted in the field. As I understand it, this is how the current concept is designed.
EDIT:
•On a related note, non-combatants should be able to accidentally strike their attacker a few times or inflict a small portion of overall damage to the attacker's health before their state converts to combatant. Having a combatant run into your AoE directed at some rodent shouldn't change this.
•There is also a possible issue of combatants getting themselves to very low health, jumping into your attack, converting your status to combatant, and giving their buds the green light to murder you without risk.
•More than exact enemy player health uncertainty, there should be a system guard in place to prevent aggressors from reducing you to very low health and having a mob finish you off, keeping the aggressor clear of corruption.
As long as the community has access to tools to exact justice, I think it's best to allow communities to establish their own standards.
This allows the community the freedom to establish a spectrum of standards - maybe these standards could be governed by each node?
Of course, give GM's the ability to step in to pause/suspend any big situation that gets out of hand (i.e. if players start exploiting loopholes, etc.) for situations where the in-game systems cannot handle (yet).
I struggle the most on this topic when it comes to Trash Talking - for some people, it's fun to try to get under other people's skin and undermine their mental state (try to make people crack). For others this is a really negative behaviour that doesn't contribute to their play at all. There is no rule you can enforce that will please both parties - this is why I suggest giving tools for subcommunities to establish their own standards.
I'd give a couple very easy irl examples, but the mods always get mad when I do that.
Pm me we can discuss.
I hate being low level, and only enjoy the game at max level.
if on top of that i'm prevented by pvp players i get angry and leave the game.
I would love the idea of a tag or some other form of protection, which would allow me to level my character quietly.
If one of your examples is about sex, then it's not comparable at all
I am with @CROW3 on this one. There is always an option to play another game where the intended gameplay doesn't include being ganked at random.
Can't tell if joking or serious... I hope it's a joke.