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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
I remember the devs talking about it and the issue they saw was things became static as there wasn't enough incentive to fight over each others cities. It's why the creator designed crowfall campaigns to go for a limited time and added a win condition.
Ashes is trying to combat this issue in a variety of ways like limited how many nodes can be developed and making sieging a node rewarding.
Failed because not enough people found play to crush fun to play.
So, no, I don't expect respawn camping at cities to be a thing in Ashes.
That was one of my initial concerns with AoC nodes but I do think they've done a decent job keeping the feel of the burden off of the players.
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
I don't consider harvesting to be "grind spots", but, PvE-only folk will harvest if Corruption works as intended.
And then they will sell their resources and/or craft gear. Mounts are capable of carrying resources. And Caravans can have NPC guards. PvE-Only don't have to travel with the Caravans, AFAIK. Hardcore PvPers and casual PvPers who will benefit from the resources on the will defend as well as attack Caravans.
No but you need to be ready to PvP in order to play the game. I think it's wishful thinking to believe NPCs are gonna save your caravans but we will see. And I highly doubt a PvE player will be getting the will to be doing a whole lot of gathering if they routinely lose it all to someone who PvPs. When I say grind spots I mean your room in a dungeon, your area that has a really high earning potential through AoE pulls, etc. You will probably have to defend your harvesting areas often too though.
What exactly is the benefit of defending a caravan for random people? Genuine question here. I can't think of a single scenario where it wouldn't be more lucrative to kill everybody and take whatevers in the caravan unless you are like a RPer or something who's interested in defending the common man.
I suppose someone could possibly etch out a PvE only existence if they are ready to lose 80+% of what they earn because they won't defend it and they are prepared to progress much slower than the rest of the server. Oh they are also probably gonna need to find a guild who doesn't mind carrying someone who sucks at or flat out refuses to PvP in a PvP-centric game as well for all the group content.
Pretty sure the motto isn't what makes a game fun or not, either is it representative of the gameplay.
I don't expect respawn camping to be a thing at cities either so not sure what the point of this statement is. Spawn camping seems to be one of the primary things the corruption system is trying to fight against.
I never said they could avoid PvP my point relates to the fact they don't have to be the person(s) initiating the pvp. If you look at the response I replied to it suggested they would need to pvp to get gear via contested spawns/caravans.
I don't even believe they would need to perform a caravan to play the game. It seems likely if they own or participate in a freehold there will be systems in place to utilize and share these and the processing facilities.
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
Maybe. I'm of the belief that they won't have a whole lot of materials to process and sell if they are getting smoked by a PvPer all the time though. Especially if they make a reputation for themselves in their area as being the gatherer who doesn't fight back and gives you free things all the time. Seems silly to me to avoid massive portions of the game and shoot yourself in the foot as far as progression.
This type of thing is perfectly legit gameplay.
In Ashes, spawn camping a rival while allies of yours take out a caravan, a boss, whatever else. These things are all perfectly fine, and arguably smart gameplay.
Spawn camping that lone player that is just wanting to solo geond mobs and has no guild to back him up? That is griefing.
This is why you can't point to an act and label it as griefing. You need to look at the intent behind the act.
No it isn't.
Not all griefing involves killing another player.
If I follow around some new player to the game, killing every mob they attack before they get a chance to, that's griefing without any doubt.
Since that player is new, they have no real course of action to stop me griefing them within the game, andno corruption is involved.
I expect PvE to be the equivalent of a “fetch quest” in a standard MMORPG. A fetch quest involves delivering something from one place to another, or gathering items out in the wild to deliver to someone. No combat is required to complete the quest, yet the quest will take you to areas where aggressive enemies are and conflict will probably be unavoidable. You technically don’t need to fight enemies to qualify for quest completion, but you’ll still be fighting them.
To me that’s how PvP will be. You’ll be attacked at some point and there will be an incentive to fight back, so while you don’t have to initiate PvP you will be involved in it.
While i agree it's not good to be known as the person who can be killed with no repercussions, i'm sure it won't be that hard for a more passive player to get resources. There are steps you can take to mitigate loss, like banking often and not farming in popular ares. Even with the death penalty, it's hard to tell how much that will set someone back.
I think it would be fun to do that role at some point.
Anyway, there were graveyards in that place that players would respawn at, and it was customary to station at least a couple of people at them to try to take out respawning players unaware (I often played a rogue and would usually be one of the people doing that, in stealth). It wasn't cheating or griefing, it was part of the challenge of the place and legitimate strategy. There was nothing wrong with it, both sides did it to each other.
Also speaking of WoW, I had one experience that I'm fairly proud of, where I was being griefed and turned it around. I was playing my rogue character on Alliance, and I was in a forest area doing a quest. I had to kill a certain number of enemies that only spawned in one spot. Well, there was a Horde guy who was high level, and he was killing everything that spawned. He had no legitimate reason for doing it, since he was far too high a level to be there and he knew very well that I needed to kill those things for my quest. He even kept doing the /laugh emote at me after killing them, proving that he knew what he was doing and was only there to ruin my quest.
So I went into stealth, and snuck around behind him. As soon as an enemy spawned, I'd quickly hit it just once with a ranged attack before he attacked. That would tag the enemy for me, and as he burned it down I got credit instead of him. He took out a few enemies before it dawned on him why he wasn't getting anything from them. At that point I think he realized he was inadvertently helping me so at that point he left. Again, I was very proud of that.
It's definitely possible to grief people without any sort of PvP needing to occur.
I think it's just a thing but it might lean towards positive as it creates variety that helps innovation.
If everyone liked the same thing then people would probably be fine with the current games on the market and this game probably wouldn't be developed.
I think it may be harder than people would think due to the localization of banks, resources, and economies. People are gonna have to go to certain parts of the map to gather certain things to my understanding, so there's a chance for PvP right there. They are just gonna use the their mount and transfer small amounts back and forth the whole time across extremely large distances? They are only going to stick by themselves in extremely subpar gathering and grinding areas to avoid PvP? I even wonder will they be shunned by the server community as a whole because everybody knows they won't defend the group and now they can't pug? Will they able able to find a decent guild to help them if the guild knows they refuse to PvP? Sure these things are possible but my whole argument is that while PvE only MAY be possible it'll be extremely difficult and time consuming compared to what everybody else is doing.
I think PvE only players would much sooner quit the game before they start jumping through these hoops left and right only to progress very slowly while still losing progress all along the way because they refuse to PvP.
And here is where players like you are wrong.
It's the players problem, not the games problem.
I am a hardcore PvPr and I played ffxiv when it came out, knowing there was 0 PvP. I loved it for exactly what it was.
AoC will be an open world mmorpg and if people complain about the design, wanting way more dungeons and rewards or PvP gear farm in BGs, or Safe Zones to gather and quest I hope that IS wont sweat over their rq.
I dont see anything innovating about copying the 10 other mmorpgs that are hailed as top mmos of the past few years, cataring to casual questing with optional raids or bgs.
Alterac Valley was the one aspect of early WoWthat confused me. It was good, really good, which was a stark contrast to the rest of the game. I heard a lot of friends talking about it back in the day,and it was the one aspect of the game everyone always had nothing but good things to say about.
That kind of spawn camping in your post is also perfectly legit gameplay. Even if you enter the matches so player, it is in everyone on your sidesbest interest to ensure your respaw is safe, so players should always have some assistance in dealing with the situation.
That is about it to me, at least. An action in isolation could never be griefing, no matter the implication. Knowing a player has no way of fighting back at you and still performing an action that is negative towards them and provides you with no reasonable gain seems like griefing to me though.
Even if it's for less, i don't think it's a big deal for them to sell their resources at the local node and let others travel for greater profit. They could also try to transport stuff during off hours to reduce the risk of being attacked.
There is also forms of progression that might appeal to people like this, like social organizations. At least in the past, they were described as being something you can do if you don't have a lot of time to put into the game.
Yea, if they flat out refuse to help their group in pvp, then there probably won't be a reason to play with them and i could see it being hard for them to get a guild.
I'm not saying this is a good playstyle for this game, just saying if someone really wanted to try it, there are probably ways they could make it work to varying success.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
The scariness of PvP is being blown out of proportion, imo. I don't think AoC will be like Rust where every person you meet has a 95% chance of trying to kill you - so I'm keen to see how the dynamics play out when alpha1 releases, bearing in mind that alpha1 is going to be wiped so people will probably be more willing to play risky.
Thinking of griefing, people camping new players was the first thing that popped up in my head - but the corruption system somewhat handles that. So I was thinking within the corruption system.
Wandering Mists' post was way broader though, so I switched gears - but it's kinda out of my depth.
@Tyrantor I take back what I said about backstabbing allies - the party system is the toggle, so just quit the party/guild/raid in the moment you want to backstab and that basically is the toggle.
Totally agree on spawn camping though - corruption system handles this well imo.
@Vhaeyne It's hard to understand what you're implying. Which comments are you poking?
Ganking a gatherer for their stuff? Not griefing. It was an attack for an objective gain.
Killing that gatherer when you see them gathering in the area again later? Bad form perhaps, but not griefing. It was an attack made with the assumption of gain.
Stalking the gathering spot and killing that gatherer the moment they return? Griefing. It was an attack with no objective or assumed gain.
Your example of camping new players for example. Unless I am wrong, Killing new players and spawn camping would offer little to no reward for the risk of damaging your reputation or possibly going red.
I think I personally could live in the game with the corruption system as is and not call anything griefing. I have been PKed my share of times in L2 back in the day. I don't even think we had the word griefing back then.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
"It all comes down to "Agency". Do the players determine the most important aspects of the world, or do the developers? In a sandbox game, the objective is to empower the players to take the leading roles, to be the Agents that create the total experience through their interactions, through their play, and through the persistent results of their actions."
I have a less is more leaning; the fewer rules the more the onus is on the player base collective to determine what are the acceptable norms and create the justice system. A scaled response, be that through friends, clans, alliances and hopefully somehow even nodes!
The full set of ideas from the quoted thread here
[url="http://"]https://reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/2rztoi/what_is_the_distinction_between_theme_park_and/[/url]
I'd say the better true system would be to remove the safe guard for friendly fire from guilds and leave it on for group/raid(s) only. This would require much more skill in large scale pvp.
Also I suppose leaving the party/raid solves that to some degree but it would seem that if the party/raid is going to let you kill someone it would make more sense for you to kill that person and then boot them from the party/raid instead of you leaving first no?
Also it doesn't really make sense to leave your own guild to just kill one member of the guild over some grievance.
Master Assassin
(Yes same Tyrantor from Shadowbane)
Book suggestions:
Galaxy Outlaws books 1-16.5, Metagamer Chronicles, The Land litrpg series, Ready Player One, Zen in the Martial Arts
I didn't say anything like "it's the game's problem".
I also didn't even think anything like "it's the game's problem".
Stop making shit up in your own feeble mind.