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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.
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Play the game the way you want to play, but prove any of the assumptions I have made about that play style to be incorrect. You can't prove me wrong here (nor can I prove me right), all you can do is argue against me, rather than against any point I am making - as the above post succinctly demonstrates.
It’s even better if they make bad puns while doing it.
“I got a bone to pick with you mister!”
“This combat is humerus.”
“I’d call this a marrow victory.”
“Let’s get this through that thick skull of yours. By this, I mean my axe.”
“The head bone’s connected to the neck bone... Oops, not anymore.”
Just curious: How do you see node conflict working on a PvE server? Given that you wouldn't be able to destroy nodes to build up others, to unlock new PvE content, etc.
(Of course now you have scissors griping that rock is OP and needs a nerf.)
There are ways to make it work, strictly PvE-only.
For instance, have raids of monsters attack nodes on a weekly basis. If you manage to defend the node, the raid becomes stronger next week and every time you manage to fight them off, so eventually a node will get destroyed.
Eternal Guild
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So...cooperative, consensual, pre-planned character v character combat.
(Roleplaying)
I enjoy PvE, but that sounds dull as hell. Unless every node attack was akin to a max-level elite dungeon raid, there’s no way a node would ever get destroyed. Ashes would never work as PvE only, it’d be trash.
So, your PvE-Only server would have PvP between different characters?
A simple rename to character vs character means that it is not them as players that is fighting, but rather their characters.
Seems to me like an argument of semantics to say that these are not the same thing.
Indeed.
While I may be a PvE fan moreso than one of PvP, there is no way to separate PvP from this game. You either like this game with PvP as it is, or you don't like this game.
It's character conflict rather than player conflict.
The nuance being that it's more cooperative storytelling - rather than competitive gameplay.
There would still be caravan raids and sieges, but it would be RP character driven rather than gamer driven.
And, probably there would be a staff gamemaster presiding over when caravan raids and sieges are possible.
Games are used to experience something you can't experience in reality to find fun. How to choose is the idea. Rich gameplay is the future direction, so there is no such thing as sadness.
But, ultimately the game design will be according to Steven's vision.
Which means Corruption and everyone playing on PvX servers.
That's my hope. That the players who are truly griefers will gain infamy on the server and will be actively avoided and/or hunted at all times.
This gave me an idea..
In BDO there is a detective NPC that tells you the location of a character name that you enter.
How about a NPC in Ashes that tells you the whereabouts of corrupted players, similar to a bounty hunting system? Maybe even rewards based on how many corrupted players you killed, but that could probably be abused by friends that farm each other for gains.
Eternal Guild
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Pretty sure there will be a bounty board. I only have a vague recollection of hearing/reading about it but even if it's not some official bulletin board in game, people will figure out how to make one, you can bank on it.
And Bounty Hunters have an ability that enables them to track Corrupted on the map
From the wiki:
"Bounty hunter maps
Players with a high enough corruption score will be visible on the world and mini maps. These players will have markers posted on the map by an NPC from a Military node of at least stage 4 (Town), and will only be granted to players who have the Bounty hunter title.[27] The accuracy of bounty hunter maps is determined by a player's progression in the bounty hunter system.[28]
Taverns are one of the locations that bounties will be posted. As players gain corruption, taverns may offer bounties to eliminate those players; or have a specific area cleared of problem players, thus giving a POI (point of interest) on the world map."
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Taverns#Bounty_hunter_maps
As soon as you become Corrupted, and for the entire duration of being Corrupted, you should be hunted down by Bounty Hunters.
In real life, you don't get away with your first or second murder or robbery, police will hunt you down after the first.
Eternal Guild
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In real life people don't respawn after a murder, so I think the "it's not realistic" argument falls flat here.
Police work would be so much easier if that was true.
On the other side, I kind of want to consider stuff like karma bombing griefing. If someone attacks you at a spawn/resource node, you don't fight back, and get killed. If you return to the spot to continue to take more resources that your attacker is trying to farm, trying to increase their punishment, i think that can also be considered griefing.
For me at least, it's any action (not just PVP) that is done with the sole intent to annoy, and harass a player, for little to no gain for the offender other than their enjoyment in upsetting the other person. If a person is attacking a player over and over, knowing full well they don't have loot to drop, and knowing full well that person is not going to fight back, they are doing it JUST to harass and annoy the other player.
Meaningful PVP doesn't just mean consent from both parties, it also means it has a purpose within the game world, whether that be securing an objective (world boss), gaining supplies, stopping your opponent's progress (trade run ambushes), and having open war between guilds.
Anytime a person takes actions that are motivated only out of a desire to piss off or harass another player, that's griefing, regardless of if they do it one time, or 100 times. I'm not saying you "shouldn't kill people just for fun" what I'm saying is your intent is key. PVPing for the sake of meaningful PVP, such as for fun or enjoyment is 100% all good. But if you are doing it "for the luls" and in hopes the other person "uninstalls the game", then you stepped into "Over that Line".
2 Examples I can think of are:
In Alpha 1, there were people killing other players during a loading screen when they teleported to the other islands. So the player would just load in dead. This is using a non-mechanic (the loading screen) to grief players. I think Lt.Toast ended up sorting that in the end and this wouldn't be a problem during release as there wouldn't be loading screens if you are sailing between continents.
Another example I can think of is in Archeage. A background to their mechanics for anyone who hasn't played are: You craft a trade pack in one zone and you deliver it to another zone for gold. How much gold you get depends on the pack you craft + the demand for that pack. The demand for the pack is based on how many other players are delivering that pack. There is a bit more too it but for this example that is the quick version of it.
So I remember players were blocking the only road that lead into the city where you deliver the pack so no one could use it to bring their packs in. Which caused the demand to go up. This would be fine itself as the solution would be to destroy the blockade however it was in a peace zone so you couldn't break the blockade. This is an example of where 2 in game mechanics (supply/demand of tradepacks & peace zones) don’t compliment each other and would require GM intervention to destroy the blockade.
My summary is: in-game griefing is OK as long as player problems have player solutions.
The next point to talk about is: Griefing / Harassment in chat.
I’m sure most (if not all) of the people reading this has experienced some form of harassment. It varies from game to game and usually is a lot worse if you are female but regardless, if you’ve ganked people in Gw2’s WvW or flanked some enemies in Planetside 2 or just straight up played WoW’s arenas, I’m sure you’ve received chat harassment. At the end of the day it’s a good rule of thumb to just laugh, screencap it to share with friends and block/report the player doing it, however it doesn’t really help foster a quality non-toxic community If the player in question isn’t punished.
I loved League of Legend's Tribunal system and think a similar system should be implemented.
So players who are in good standing could sign up and review cases of reported chat harassment. It would show relevant logs so there can be clear context given and then they would have the option to either Punish, Pardon or Skip. X-amount of players would vote and if the majority say “Punish” then the case would be forwarded to a GM to be reviewed and the GM would have the final say on what ends up happening. I think this would help filter out proper reports vs reporting for disliking someone or people trying to dodge the chat filters by misspelling hate terms, racial slurs, overall toxic behavior vs “this player killed me so my guild will report him” etc.
I don’t think there should be compensation in game for being apart of it. Maybe a forum badge or statistics like “Players Punished” (if you guessed right) and “Longest Tribunal Streak” which would be how many punish, pardon, skip cases you chose correctly in a row etc.
As a mostly casual PvE player, feels bad to get repeatedly killed by much more powerful players while doing low-impact (i.e. grindy activities that aren't gated or contested) activities. I know that's part of the excitement of full pvp games. But when I only ay 6-8 hours a week and someone can cause 1-2 of those hours to be wasted by killing me in passing, that is the thing that makes me want to give up.
I also think it can be useful to encourage the community to respond as well. Now perhaps this should be more of a ground up solution, but I heard the idea where- particularly in chat, people would just type "stop" with no further engagement.
Last note I sort of want to play devil's advocate. Taunting can be one of the most engaging things in a game, especially if it's baked in, in some way. Now, I certainly don't think this example is... relevant, but if anyone remembers the game Battleborn when you killed someone you could press a button and play an animation they'd also see as a taunt. This was genuinely one of my favorite things. It was comedic, infuriating, satisfying, and I suppose due to the light hearted nature, never felt annoying. This sort of "playful banter" I think is great because it can motivate people to try harder while also not really plaguing a community. Another example is the emotes from Dark Souls- though admittedly I know less about the community's feelings I think they can enhance the experience. Perhaps there's ways to turn what otherwise would be toxic behavior into something enjoyed by the community? Give the trolls something they can get kicks out of while everyone else doesn't get upset with, because it's not that bad. I have no idea if that could work, but maybe someone gets a good idea from it.
Which means I'm in a no win situation, where even if I win the battle, I'm still stuck with the PvP flag being restarted.
Other than that... I can ignore whatever other players try to do to cause grief.
(Also, that really depends on how debilitating the death penalties are and whether corpse camping is possible. If I can just let them kill me and basically go back to being left alone within 5 minutes, I'm happy to just be killed.)
I view griefing as more taking advantage of exploits in a system in order to cause issues to players and avoid penalties.
1. Feeding people to mobs so they die without you getting corrupting (Can easily be countered if you do a certain amount of large damage to them, even if they die to mobs it still counts as them killing you.)
2. Killing inside towns (towns should be a safe spot.)
3. Running in and out of town to flag and attack someone and have protection when they enter. (Maybe have the safe zone extended out so they cant run back and forth between town safe zones. With it being extended them will have to do more than a few steps before they are back in the safe zone.)
4. Going to a low level area where people are just starting the game and carelessly pvping everyone so they can't play the game. (Though with the corruption system if you build up high corruption form killing low level players I don't see that as much of a issue since people will want to kill them for gear. But they could use alt gear they don't care about losing).
5. Group of people having no desire to pvp and just want to annoying you and killing all the mobs around you while they follow you as much as possible. (This is more so a group of people targeting and harrasing one person, not really 2 groups trying to complete for mob drops and gear.)