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'm seeing a lot of people talking about how any pvp that happens to them that they don't consent to is their carebear definition of griefing. This couldn't be farther from the truth, and maybe Ashes isn't the game for you.
Griefing is part of any open world pvp centric game. There are many tactical, military, and economic reasons to grief players who are citizens of an enemy node. These reasons are essential to keeping the world dynamic and ever changing. If pvp were toggle only then nobody would never pvp outside of curated situations where they have a clear advantage (Zergs love toggle pvp btw) or within a forced pvp flag only game loop. Thankfully Ashes isn't toggle only, so unfortunately we are all going to get griefed at some point. There is nothing wrong with this as this will drive conflict within the world and force people to become part of a community/guild in order to not be a walking loot pinata out in the world. This is not Sword Art Online, and you are NOT Kirito. This is not your solo story and nobody cares that you accomplished something by yourself. This is an MMORPG. Notice the MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER part of that acronym. Griefing is a natural part of this kind of world, and the sooner you accept that fact the sooner you will start thinking of ways to avoid being griefed instead of being determined to do it all solo.
People who grief for no reason at all will build a bad reputation for themselves. We as a community will weed those people out and they shouldn't be welcome in any of our nodes, and that is the player-based solution that we will have available to us. There shouldn't be a need for GMs to step in and players should be encouraged to sort these things out themselves. Of course if people are abusing a bug in order to gain an unfair advantage then that is a perfect chance for the GMs to do their thing, but outside of those situations we as players need to deal with these issues ourselves.
Permaban for a bug? That's a little harsh. This is exactly why software development has testing phases. If serious bugs/exploits are in the game at launch, the development team messed up (in testing, design, and/or implementation).
If you are griefing another player, the penalty should not be different if you took advantage of a bug or not.
I take griefing to be harassment, or to rearrange that, when PVP becomes griefing is when a player interaction becomes harassment. A good legal definition of harassment is "the act of systematic and/or continued unwanted and annoying actions of one party or a group, including threats and demands." Simply killing a PVE player is not harassment, but continued killing of a PVE player is. As I stated previously, I hope the corruption system is sufficient to prevent this behavior. What "systematic" and "continued" means is clearly an adjustable parameter for the developers to get the system how they want it.
However, this definition does extend griefing into the situation of "I have [some large number] of players in front of this area, and no one gets in." That would be systematic unwanted actions, and the GMs should be empowered to stop that type of behavior. I've played other PVP MMOs where that was a thing; it literally adds nothing to the game except mass annoyance and causes players to leave the game. This is especially true if "some large number" is sufficient to where another group of logged in players cannot stop them. Such a large group could rotate corruption effects and/or defend each other from anyone hunting them. This seems to be a possible method to get around the entire corruption system.
Steven has stated previously that the corruption system won't be active in world PVP events, such as sieges, caravans and guild wars. This implies that participation in the event restricts the definition of griefing. In my words, since harassment requires unwanted actions (and griefing is harassment), a player accepts an expanded group of actions during these events (e.g., they consent to repeated death in PVP combat by another player or group). Thus, in my mind, that system should work well.
To be clear, PVP will not be a toggle only system. This is well documented in the corruption page of the wiki (https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Corruption). Corrupted players cannot toggle off PVP flags. There is also a bounty hunter system, which will aid players who want to hunt down corrupted players.
Permaban for the continued use of a serious bug, aka exploiting, used to grief others, yes, absolutely. When it is super obviously not intended and completely OP like that exploit was, there is no excuse ever.
I am talking about release here btw. Not during Alpha.
An example of this loop can be found is Sea of Thieves, where if the boarder is so inclined, they can simply kill you constantly without sinking your ship. But, as a preventative measure against this, you can choose to scuttle your ship, sinking it instantly and respawning you on a faraway dock. Allowing a means to "disengage" from the situation could go a long way towards avoiding griefing.
While griefing can't be prevented in it's entirety, you can prevent it from lasting any longer than it has to. Can you still be ganked for no reason? Of course. But you can just leave it at that and move on, being more cautious the next time you head out. Or at the very least, bring some friends next time.
For me "greifing" is any time in a game I am forced (by other players or game design) to interact with my fellow players in a way where the other players are making my play experience negative. For me the key is whether I can leave/avoid the negative situation.
Some examples are if I am being outnumbered in pvp, do I spawn far enough away to flee my attackers? If I'm gathering, are there other resource nodes? If I am following a quest chain or objective, am I forced into a situation where stronger players can gate keep or verbally harass me?
I understand there may be exceptions to the examples above, but in general, I would say griefing comes from players being forced to endure a negative experience without recourse to resolve the issue through their own means.
To constitute what is a griefer is pretty simply. One who deliberately harasses, annoys, trolls and ruins the games fun by using exploits, game mechanics in unintended ways and of course flat out cheating.
Everyone should already know this game has open world PvP so that alone isn't griefing. But gathering with 10 of your friends on a resource spot to curb stomp solo players is griefing. It is not griefing you are actually farming that spot with 10 of your friends but if you are just camping to jump someone, that is griefing. You're being annoying and trolling. However you can not have open world PvP and expect that not to happen. It's going to happen. That's on the devs to determine what players want versus what players need.
Every MMO has a guild whose sole mission in life is to do nothing but absolutely destroy the server until everyone quits that server. It's happened in every single MMO I have ever played that has open world PvP. I don't know how AoC can change it but that is absolutely griefing. Is there a fix for it? I don't know but it has killed countless servers and caused massive amount of players to quit MMOs.
Another aspect of a game mechanic that I see being used as a griefing mechanic is the freehold attack mechanism. I am not against this but a freehold should only be open for attack by the people who are actually in the siege. Players who are not actually in the siege can just run around and destroy freeholds and steal loot, as i understand it? Whats to stop someone for going around and destroying freeholds for no other reason but to simply destroy someones freehold to ruin their work. Personally, I think this is a huge issue and probably the biggest thing I am not looking forward to. Every player should have something that can not be taken away in such a manner. I fully understand there comes a set of problems like hoarding resources in a freehold but that is way to easy to fix. Limit stash sizes is just one example. Again I am not against a siege party being able to destroy a freehold, this will force people to choose wisely where they build. However I am against a dirty rat being able to lurk and destroy peoples freeholds while they contribute nothing.
Spawn camping is absolutely griefing. Super easy to fix and I'm not even sure it will be an issue when the game releases.
I think trying to balance an open world PVP is incredibly difficult task for developers. You either have to scale everyone to be equal or come up with a system no other MMO has been able to figure out that didn't lead to games dying. Ultimately what is and what is not griefing from a PvP aspect, will be reflected when the game launches and we see who sticks around and who doesn't. I think everyone who is an ACTUAL MMO fan already knows, deep down, what the future holds for the open world PVP flagging. We are just lying to ourselves right now. So I suspect griefing will sort its self out. I look forward to see which fork the developers decide to go down. Good luck..lol
Last sentence quoted you stopped being correct.
If that is within the game mechanics to do that is legal, you can get your 10 friends or more to prioritize a resource point. Why does "soloness" have any merit to auto claim in an interactive and competitive open world?
A "solo player" is not a protected playstyle, it is simply someone who is ALONE, he is not a party or guild that has the potential to do much more, he has OPTED into being weaker.
By your logic, a person should be encouraged to go Solo to guarantee resources and a big and "evil" party should be off doing "better things", such as slaying in a dungeon or like every WoW/FF14 player keeps barking on "Raiding!". You're stating what should be solo and what should be group, this isn't for debate in an mmo that contains many productive activities.
Quite a few people need to play and understand the actual MMO element before they start going deep into these kinds of discussions.
It had open world PvP and to discourage griefing if you were flagged blue(basically an innocent) and if another player attacked and killed you; you had the option to give them a murder counter. You didn't have to give them a counter but you could if you felt it was justified.
Once they received too many murder counters they became perma red which meant they were an outlaw and couldn't go into any cities without being killed by the guards and any other player could attack and kill them without consequence. The only place they were safe(sort of) was the one outlaw town in the game. Eventually you could work off your murders as the game allowed for redemption for reds but you had to spend many hours logged in without committing crimes to pay your penance.
The PvP system in AoC seems almost like a successor to that system in many ways. I am looking forward to it.
Starting from Second age UO, Shadowbane, L2, MO, Darkfall but all I know about grieving I learned from UO. A bit of grief in all games I listed above but insignificant and all easily fixed.
UO with honor system turn game into grieving competition. Goal to gloat players into unfair fight (and good if its once), provocation to turn honor system on "good" player, MOB kill by leading train, jumping into AoE or near chaos summon, Blocking, My favorite suicide town killing. I'm not talking about Trap boxes but temporary char loaded with greater explosives
Basically UO grievers deliberately run people out of game. Hell, I'm very friendly player but in the end I turn red with who knows how many kills case I got sick and tiered of grieving and whenever I sow some players I would attack right the way. Invented a few trick to grief pl too. I use to put drake in house of one bard and release it or track him in the dungeon and cast reveille
The worse things about grief its chain reaction.
Shadowbane has no grief to speak of. There was some bugs that let players to lead MOB train in town and some camping of re-spawn points but only in the start of the game.
In Darkfall the biggest "grievers" were l33t guilds who actively recruit all good players and this lead to lower PvP level of many guilds and left some leaderless. Guess what happen? To add insult to injury l33t interfere in 90% of sledges and of course it lead to population decline. In the end leaders of l33t were sponsoring newbi guilds, they went to other guilds to teach PvP tips and tricks but... too little too late. Of course game owners mismanagement played mail role but IMHO l33t help it too.
I would describe 'griefing' as anything done solely with the intent to annoy another player. For example, a high level player camping a low level player. Or, as an example from League of Legends (because I've been playing recently): not ending a game because you're enjoying dominating the other team.
This is ok for a little bit. After all, people inherently enjoy the feeling of 'winning'. Also, in my experience, it can make for a bit of faction conflict. In WoW Classic, nothing made me hate the Alliance more than getting camped by end game players for no good reason. It makes for a good, emergent 'villain' to try and beat.
Not a joke, completely serious; I think getting griefed is OK for, at most, about 10% of your time played. About 5 minutes per hour.
Some nuance: A situation like a WoW corpse walk where you auto-run most of the way means you're not really playing while auto running. I wouldn't consider the 5 minutes looking at my phone while running as 'time played'.
There are also different 'intensities' of griefing. Maybe I'm ok with a complete halt of progress for 5 minutes, but if that person is killing me and I'm earning EXP Debt then that would be negative progress. This means I might be ok with getting grief for a shorter amount of time. If somebody is just following me around, stealing every-other resource node, then he might be slowing my progress by 50%. So then I'd probably be willing to put up with it a bit longer.
Yeah I have been trying to get some of these point across too
Actions are all that matter. Exploit? Ban.
Verbal/written harassment (as determined by their ToS)? Ban.
Grief? I think Intrepid needs to define that to us, after we have given our feedback. And I like you bringing up dev responsibility vs player responsibility to curb that type of behaviour. It should almost be a separate discussion.
Not only that, Ashes is a game uniquely unfit for such a system because literally every player has a conflict of interest in their local disputes. So even if we could rely on people to not judicially bully others just because they are unlikable, they'd still be unreliable merly from a 'how does this effect me or my guild' level.
It is better to have clear actionable guidelines.
Good point. Agreed.
Read what I said again please. I'm not sure how you completely failed in interpret what I said. I can tell you didn't actually comprehend it because not one thing you're saying actually addresses anything i actually said. You're creating a straw-man about your own emotional opinion and trying to tie to my comment to falsely make an argument with yourself.
I am not stating what is and what is not solo content. I am stating what is griefing. If you can't read that and clearly understand I said there isn't anything wrong with it IF YOU ARE PLAYING THE GAME but if you are doing it for no purpose but to grief people, that is griefing.
Again, read and actually comprehend it.
If a resource is valuable then why should a Group/GuIld who is willing to kill for it in order to secure its acquirement and potentially suffer the Corruption system's penalties result to griefing?
You may be referring to say, in other games, being in a lowbie area and established players are simply denying resources (usually quest related) of which there is no value to them personally but you did not state that and Ashe's is not a lowbie/mid/high level area experience.
I'm not sure how you don't understand what my comment said the first time. I meant exactly what I said and how I said it. Its pretty simple but it could be a difference in geographical locations. No harm no foul. I don't know how to explain it anymore clear then the 3 sentences that explained it but I'm sure the devs understand what I mean.
I'm sure the devs will exactly know what you mean, just ignore me, not like I've been playing hardcore community games such as the likes of Lineage 2 since 2001 where I've bartered with many men, GM's and devs about all sorts systems.
I must state that I am in no ways ruthless (and I have read your post in its entirety) and I care for all players enjoyement inside a game but just straight out labelling certain actions as griefing needs context as to why.
You've said that dedicated guild and communities in past open world pv(p/x) games have been the main contributer to why less dedicated players have quit but I will very much argue that it is down to a lot of ingame systems not caring for them IE 1 example is over enchanting gear is generally of extreme benefit, where winner's are rewarded far more than people with less time and ingame social structures.
Can you blame past communities for not helping and showing mercy to people with less time? You can, to a degree, however ignoring the lack of work of past games to accomodate all of the playerbase is by far the main culprit.
What are you even talking about at this point? I have zero clue what your entire first paragraph has to do with anything. Its not even related to anything. Actually I never said that, you're the only person saying that. lol Dude just stop. You have continually goal posted and straw-manned countless things to keep crying about your opinion. Over and over you claim I have said things that I have never said but you just keep making it up to literally argue with yourself. NOBODY is saying what you are saying and nobody cares. Thats not the point of this thread. Holy smokes.
Go read again and actually comprehend the words you are reading. This is the like the 5th time. A guild who is solely built to destroy a server with the intention of making the game so unpleasant people QUIT isnt the same as saying PVP is the reason people quit because they are not dedicated players or whatever the heck your point was in your made up sentence. What a ignorant way to interpret that statement.
Can we get a block feature on the forums please mods. Edit: nevermind i found the ignore button
So this isn't at all related to what I quoted you on?
If yourself or anyone else in this thread are unable to back up or at least discuss the reasoning as to what is labelled as griefing then I really don't see how you've provided any value or insight into how Dev's are going to develop and improve Ashe's accomidations for a broad playerbase.
I really don't appreciate being labelled as incompetent or rude toward your point of view when I was just merely trying to unearth what exactly you were getting at in terms of griefing for one instance that you stated of which you could not answer. This has been nothing but a waste of time.
I agree.
In my experience with other games, player driven systems that purport to address other player's behavior do not work (generally, for the reasons that you listed).
I'm my opinion, when developing a platform that allows social interaction, a developer should ensure that it is a healthy platform (i.e., one where harassment is minimal and positive interaction is encouraged). This is very hard, because people.
Turing the system of social enforcement over to players is like having prison rules enforced by inmates (or... schools by students, traffic violations by fellow drivers, etc). Notice the common threads are conflict of interest and accountability.
It seems that Intrepid believes that the corruption system is going to discriminate the player's intent (or serve as a useful proxy). It does seem like a good system in paper, and it gives them some controls to adjust. I hope that they are right.
I also think Stephen is saying that you can kill anyone at anytime, but you take the consequences. He is not giving a green light to griefing or harassment. As you mentioned, his stick to stop you is the corruption system (inc. bounty hunters).