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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
Sieges and Caravans are open world PvP. That's the primary focus of Ashes PvP: large group PvP.
Those are all going to be Combatant v Combatant.
The secondary open world PvP focus is skirmishes with rival groups in dungeons and raids.
Even in dungeon and raid skirmishes, that will be Combatant v Combatant the vast majority of the time.
Outside of that, people might find themselves having 1v1 or small group PvP encounters - perhaps when competing for resources or in a fit of passion, as Steven says, but even then much of that will likely be Combatant v Combatant. Many people will flag Combatant if attacked so that they only suffer half the normal death penalty, rather than full normal death penalty if they are killed as a Non-Combatant.
Caravans will have way more loot than individual farmers. And there's no Corruption for successfully raiding a Caravan. So, it's more advantageous to raid Caravans if what you're after is loot.
Also, it's not full loot. It's just a portion of resources and processed materials.
Which is why Steven says that PKing Non-Combatants will be rare.
Caravans and Sieges are truly open world because they do not occur in an instance.
Everyone who paritcipates in those are auto-flagged as Combatant, so there is no Corruption to worry about.
I suppose people could risk attacking players who appear to be wearing Artisan gear. Could be very risky.
Just because someone is Gathering at that moment does not mean they don't have a high Adventurer Level.
Might not want to assume the people nearby those Gatherers are also truly Gatherers rather than disguised bodyguards.
You are just tossing out concepts like "killing Gatherers for way more loot" and "clearing Corruption again and again" without much merit.
If it's truly that easy to bypass Corruption, the game is doomed in any case.
How do you now you will lose in your Artisan gear when you don't know what the Level disparity is?
That, again, is merely unsubstantiated fear. Your attacker will have to hope they properly guessed that you are a Level they can actually vanquish.
That being said, your best strategy is to not fight back so that your attacker gains Corruption. It has to be that it takes them longer to work off Corruption than it takes you to work off your xp debt and regain your stuff - otherwise Corruption isn't truly a deterrent.
Corruption is not 0 accountability - you are simply being overdramatic.
Yep. 100% non-combat - as in never being attacked by a player character - means you will most likely be stuck in cities as a Processor, rather than a Gatherer.
Adventurers who choose to bodyguard Gatherers will probably be pursuing similar resources for the Artisan track of their character. For all we know, they might also have some associated tasks that were given out by a Node, Race, Religion or Social Org. It's likely that there will be mobs near whatever it is you're farming.
Might be boring for them. Might not be boring for them. We shall have to see what's available in the game.
But, sometimes, it's just fun to hang out with a friend in-game while they're doing whatever they're doing.
Why would it be an effort to find someone who wants to hang out with you while you farm?
We will know where people live. There is open world housing - which means you can walk over to your friends' homes/Freeholds to find people who like to hang with you in game at the same time you play. You could do the same thing at taverns/Freeholds and probably also at Guildhalls.
The best part about open world gameplay is that most people will not be sequestered away in instances.
Players will be working together to progress and defend their Nodes. Citizens of your Node will want to help you Gather resources for crafting and for pushing the Node to the next Stage. So, it will be in people's best interests to help you succesfully bring your resources back to town.
In a Scientific Node (which is focused on Crafting), you should be able to find Artisans who can enchant Artisan Boosts on Adventurer gear. Even if that's not the case, you can mix and match Artisan and Adventurer gear, just as people mix and match light, medium and heavy armor.
And, yeah, if a specific Non-Combatant Gatherer is getting PKed for loot multiple times every day, Corruption is not working as intended. And the game is probably doomed to fail.
On the fear of wearing artisan gear and having to PvP, I don't believe if there is artisan gear taking up your normal gear slots that anyone will ever wear it except when they're certain they won't have to PvP.
My hope is that the corruption system intends there to be open world PvP over the rarest resources where you'll be making abnormal profits as a gatherer, not the average profit you'd be making. The gathering and crafting system is going to be based on Star Wars Galaxies where there was a lot of RNG in what tier gatherable spawned on a certain planet. (This is a major simplification lol)
And I understand the PvE'rs worry that they won't be able to get those rare resources without having to PvP, and not wanting to PvP. But, I think the alternative is far worse, where the rarest resources on the server are fought over based on who can pull mobs on another player, or who can get to a node first via a teleport. Ashes is about risk and reward. There needs to be a major risk for major profits. And I don't think it'll be boring to have someone help you get those mats, actually that's a major part of the game I'm sure people are excited for.
Steven has said that he wants to give a lot of different playstyles to people in Ashes, but also has maintained that there will always be a risk of PvP... If I can ever find the quote I'm looking for haha.
Do you think a player will go red on a gatherer to pick up his 500 silver ores, risking to lose gear upon death due to penalties, gear that took SO MUCH MORE than those 500 silver ores?
Dont you think that the same player could go participate in a caravan event and loot much more, without going red?
Answer if you can.
Don't worry, your target will be acquired.
Aren't we all sinners?
It was so you can contest world bosses without going corrupted from my understanding
there is incentive to go compbatant instead of staying non combatant, dieing as a combatant half the penalty of death so you loose half of the items you would normally have and half the XP you normally would have. So many you have 40 trophies/resource or what not and lets say drop rate on death is 50% (for simplicity) for non combatant you would drop 20 of those items hwoever if you were to fight back you would only loose half that so 10 items, although if you win the fight you can loot then enemy potentially gaining more items so there is plenty of reason to attack back.
With all of the information we have Ashes is currently extremely hostile towards "casual pve andy", because griefing focused players will have no problem to go around the antigriefing systems and avoid the consequences
I wouldnt be surprised if servers had griefing discords where the griefers clear each other out and return their gear etc? The "planned anti-grief systems" don't account for player ingenuity and resourcefulness to find a way to avoid punishment
Yes the griefers will be low in number, but if each griefer makes a player quit the game every week then in a few years the game has no pve casuals left and the game will have terrible reputation because of it - it would be better outright to say that if you are pve casual to completely avoid this game
― Plato
And, it is not as simple as one death removes all Corruption. One death removes a portion of Corruption.
Some people believe Corruption is extremely hostile towards PvE players and some people believe Corruption is extremely hostile towards PvP players.
For the same reason he has removed death penalties from sieges and caravans - to get more people to participate.
@Dygz
-In regards to caravans being better loot, you are absolutely right, I just figured gatherers would be less guarded and could be taken on solo when a PvP player is bored for quick loot. Yet like you said with corruption hopefully that will deter them.
-They wont have to guess your level because your level will be on display on your nameplate.
-I didn't say corruption is 0 accountability, I said if I fight back they will have no accountability because they wont become corrupt.
-Its true my bodyguards might also be wanting to gather too while they protect, I guess I was just picturing a mercenary PvP guy who would be so bored with PvE stuff lol, but I guess if they signed up to do the job then there ok being there lol. I guess I have just never played a truly open world MMO like this where everyone isn't just in instances all the time and would be willing to help out like a community. I plan to settle at a science node also so hopefully there will be many like minded people who will try to keep PKers off our lands haha. Thanks for all the good points, you have alleviated a lot of my concerns tbh, I really hope the corruption systems works well and deters a lot of the mindless killing of players who just don't feel like PvPing at that moment.
@Goalid
I also hope that the artisan gear doesn't make you completely useless in combat, I still have to kill monsters in the world to get my gatherables after all lol. I am totally down for competing for rare resources! If I get lucky and spot a super rare node I would be down to put out a distress beacon to the guild and my allies that I'm going to need an escort for the jackpot I found. I just hope I don't need to do that for all my normal gathering sessions also haha
That's true, I'm just bringing up if a player wants to go red, or doesn't mind going red, who would they be targeting? Wouldn't the main target for most people who go red be the gatherers? Was just feeling like gatherers will be the main victims of players going red, so here is to hoping the corruption system works well and keeps them from doing that. I hope you are right and they all just go after caravans and leave me alone lol
People with corruption cannot teleport or trade or store any items, unless they store in freehold. So the only way I can think of them doing that would be if they kill you very close to their home and then they have to run home before any bounty hunters see them on the map and hunt them. There will always be work arounds but I think they are working to make the corruption system punish people well enough to counter greifing.
Source on no teleport:
Yeah I backed off my combative stance regarding non combatant death penalties somewhere in here. Dygz and I had a lot of back and forth for a while so I can understand if it was overlooked.
My original position wasn’t taking into account all of the penalties non-combatants received for not flagging. Once you factor in resource loss, experience debt, stat dampening, health/mana dampening, and worse drop rates I believe that is enough factors, and they can be tweaked with balancing. Most people only talk about the resource loss and experience debt in regards to non-combatants so that’s where my mind was stuck.
My overarching point for most of the discussion was that from my point of view the goal should be to have the system balanced to a point where the majority of people would rather stay in the combatant range as opposed to non combatant and corrupted.
Just as the “I only want PvP, when I want to PvP” crowd pushes for corruption to be punishing enough that they aren’t going to get murder hobo’d all the time, I believe that the choice to not fight back should be similarly undesired.
From my perspective non-combatant penalties should be strong enough to incentivize most people to just try and fight the fight, and corruption penalties should be enough to give people pause before they just burst down everyone they see, with the majority of people sitting in the middle preferring to just have combatant penalties. To me that creates a healthy baseline for owpvp.
I am in no way against people with a mindset similar to Dygz having the option to just not participate if they don’t want to, taking the “normal” non-combatant penalties, and letting their attacker get corrupted. Just as I am in no way against combatants having that option to just murder people, with all the penalties associated with that. I just want a nice balance where each side is making an equal amount of decisions on “is this worth”, and after expanding my knowledge of all the penalties all sides will have to consider I changed my stance to “okay that works, just gotta test it for balance”.
What happens when I want to claim a good farming spot and someone(multiple) else trys to farm it aswell without the intention of fighting back? Do I just have to let him farm or fuck myself with corruption? What if he/they keep coming back without fighting? Seems to me trolls and bots will be a way bigger problem than pkers in the open world.
We've got that topic going right now where the devs are asking us how much detail we prefer, but...
Kinda like the health bars - don't expect to see numbers displayed on the nameplate.
If you fight back and they kill you, there is no accountability because you died as a Combatant. True.
There still is no guarantee they will win. But...
Best tactic is to let them kill you as a Non-Combatant so they won't bother you again.
Yes. And it should be easier to find the people who normally play when you play and are in town when you are in town. It should be easy to befriend them as you work towards common goals, like progressing and defending the Node. It's likely that you will be sharing the stuff you gather with local "mercenaries".
There may be Adventurers who are members of your Traders Company who would see great benefit from shadowing you as you Gather. And, they might even have some tasks from that Traders Company to act as bodyguards.
We shall see.
Corruption is designed to be harsh enough that players are not simply going to want to go red. There may be times when they feel the reward for going red is worth the penalties.
If someone simply wants to go red, the best victims for that will be start zone newbies who are so low, it doesn't matter what gear they have.
It's possibe someone might think the easiest way to grab some rare materials is to kill Gatherers. Probabaly won't be all that easy... if Corruption works as intended.
We'll have to test and see what it's actually like.
Well said, @mcstackerson ^_^
The Risk vs. Reward aspect of open-world PvP is integral to Ashes of Creation's game design. Here is a link to the wiki where you can read more about this topic, which is very interesting!
You can't really "claim" a good farming spot. You could try to.
And, yeah, most likely the result will be that you fuck yourself with Corruption.
If they keep coming back, you will learn to share or fuck yourself with Corruption.
Trolls are the ones who think they can "claim" a farming spot.
There are plenty of avenues for people to engage in OWPVP via Caravans and Sieges where everyone is auto-flagged as Combatant. If you want to engage in PvP without Corruption, focus on those acivities.
Non-Combatants are encouraged to flag as Combatant by rewarding them with half the normal death penalties if they die. Attackers are disincentivized to remove player agency to refuse PvP combat by penalizing them with Corruption if they kill a Non-Combatant who refuses to flag as Combatant.
If you penalize Non-Combatants such that most people choose to fight when they don't truly want to, what you have is a PvP-centric game, rather than a PvX game.
Which is why when you die as a Non-Combatant, it's normal death penalties.
Instead of penalizing Non-Combatants for not flagging, you incentivize flagging as Combatant by rewarding half the normal death penalties instead of suffering full normal death penalities.
It’s cool man, we don’t have to argue semantics. We are relatively on the same page with this other than how the penalties should be balanced.
Once again this is my take on what I hope the system will look like. You are more than welcome to have your opinion that all the risk vs reward decisions should be placed on the attacker, and we will see how the ends up in balance testing. From the current resource drop rate they had in alpha 1 I think it’ll be fine.
You think losing 40%(rough number there) of your resources, experience debt, worse drop rates, a state dampening is worth it compared to flagging. I just said that’s fine to have that mentality in my post.
Purely speculative but I think there is a larger subsection of the population that will go “well I don’t want to lose that much, maybe I’ll try”. Someone like @Lithion out in the world gathering will have to think, “man I almost have a full inventory, do I want to come back to this spot right away? Nah I’m good let’s fight it out and save some of the resources”, or reverse side “yeah I want to come back here, I can deal with the larger loss, let them get corrupted so they are less likely to attack me again”. Meaningful choice made, all I’m asking for.
I think everything I have re-educated myself on regarding this equals out to just fine in my book. They need to keep it in that general range though because otherwise going corrupted is all risk no reward.
“One of the interesting components of Ashes of Creation and our flagging system is that it presents the potential for two conflicting parties to have open conflict in the open world over pretty much anything that they may want or disagree with; and if that pertains to a hunting ground, not just the caravan or the castles or the nodes or whatever, it can exist in that area.”[4] – Steven Sharif
Like I’m sorry dude but owpvp other than caravans and sieges is part of the game and they say it repeatedly. Every aspect of the game is risk vs reward. Non-combatant, combatant, and corrupted are all supported choices that should, and currently from their comments carry their own risk vs reward.
Risk v Reward is placed on both the Combatant and Non-Combatant.
The attacker does not have to kill the Non-Combatant.
For people who don't like PvP much, dying with with the normal death penalty will be acceptable if it gives their killer Corruption as a penalty which discourages them from killing more Non-Combatants.
I don't think I commented on whether you think it's fine to have that mentality.
I simply explained why Non-Combatants are not penalized for not flagging as Combatants - instead Combatants are rewarded for flagging as Combatant.
People who don't enjoy PvP combat are not going to be choosing to PvP just to avoid the normal death penalty. People who do enjoy PvP combat will jump at the chance to flag as Combatant.
Corrupted isn't all risk/no reward. Dropped loot is some reward. It's just typically not worth Corruption.
If you want to get some loot from players, it's better to raid a Caravan so that you don't have to worry about death penalties or Corruption.
More to the point, OWPVP includes Caravans and Sieges. But, Caravans and Sieges don't have death penalties and don't have Corruption. They have the least amount of risk when it comes to PvP.
So, it's better for people to focus on those than to suffer Corruption and death penalties for killing a Non-Combatant. There will be occassions when people won't care about those penalties but that will be rare...according to Steven.
Thus: When players are contemplating PvP risk v reward, they should primarily be choosing PvP that won't result in death penalties and Corruption.
It's a portion of materials dropped; not all materials dropped.
I didn't mean like a instance raid group, but smaller groups of pvp'ers attacking individual gatherers.
It's a portion dropped; so probably OK for 1v1 but not much for distribution across a group.
Caravans in general sound like a ton of fun. While node wars sound epic, this is the owpvp feature I am looking forward to the most.
Yeah but PvX is just a catch all for all of the PvWhatevers. It is a PvP game. It is a PvE game. It is a game that encompasses a wide variety of other play styles as well. It is exclusively none of them.
Curious what your take on this scenario would be given other comments have been: A player attacks you, you don’t fight back to give them corruption. You think that will deter them enough so you go back to that area because you really want to farm this particular mob. The player is still there and kills you again. The systems are punishing as they should be, they are rather weak from PvP stat reduction, they’re definitely going to drop that shiny piece of gear. Do you still just keep letting them kill you? Do you just immediately never go back to that area? Something else?
You are penalized. You have death penalties. Larger penalties than that if a combatant. This is what I was referring to when I said semantics. I’ve said this multiple times. I’m not misunderstanding the system here. You’re talking from the perspective of the non-combatant so it’s a reward to go combatant, I’m talking from the perspective of the combatant so it’s a larger penalty to stay a non-combatant. The general concept that non-combatant being “normal” penalties, and combatant penalties being 50% less is not lost on me.
Semantics.
Yes, when I said that I said if the non combatant penalties don’t stay in the same general area it’s all risk no reward. And that is certainly an exaggeration, because obviously no matter the amount of resources dropped there’s some reward if those resources drop. I was speaking in relation to balancing that risk vs reward.
Maybe? To indulge even though I wasn’t talking about that dynamic, I certainly agree with you. Well actually I really enjoy gathering. I’d probably just got farm it myself and just enjoy the caravan for it being a caravan battle despite what’s in it.
You don’t have to worry about spliting the loot though. Also some people just like to watch the world burn, and view their perceived rage you’re experiencing to be worth more than anything a caravan could hold, damn the consequences.
Rare is still most likely a lot of red players. As someone in discord said yesterday: if there are 15k players on a server and just 0.01% of those players on a given day are red, that’s still 150 red players running around. That number is probably low.
There’s a whole bounty hunting system planned. You don’t bother to plan a bounty hunter system if you don’t plan for there to be bounties.
Yeah that makes sense when you’re weighing the risk vs reward of owpvp that doesn’t involve the flagging system vs owpvp that does involve the flagging system. Maybe I haven’t been clear that I’m talking about the risk vs reward present within the microcosm of the flagging system.
He seemed pretty explicit about the level being shown on the name plate in that video, but as with most things it is all subject to change lol. Do you think you would rather have level displayed like they said it would be or you think they shouldn't do that?
If it's a PvP-centric game, then yes, you penalize Non-Combatants for not choosing to PvP.
Non-Combatants are not penalized for choosing to not flag as Combatant for PvP.
When Non-Combatants are killed, they suffer normal death penalties. The same death penalties they suffer when a mob kills them. No different than PvE death penalties.
Combatants receive half-normal death penalties as a reward for PvP.
It's not semantics. The difference is significant.
Because the Non-Combatants do not have larger death penalties than normal for choosing not to PvP.
Default gameplay is as a Non-Combatant.
That's not semantics.
Rare has to be rare, rather than a lot.
If people are choosing to go red a lot, Corruption has failed. And the game is probably doomed.
The risk v reward as outlined by the design is properly balanced.
Non-Combatants suffer normal death penalties when they die.
Combatants suffer half-normal death penalties when they die as a reward for not giving Corruption.
Corrupted suffer 4x the normal death penalties when they die.
There is a bounty system for reds. That does not mean that people will be spending a lot of time active as a bounty hunter at the same time. It means that in the rare cases when someone is Corrupted, there will be people who can hunt them down.
Level is a part of the nameplate, but like health, it is vague info that is displayed rather than details like numerics.
I can’t critique the nameplate/healthbar designs because I haven’t seen them demoed.
You realize that for us to ensure the corruption system works the way we need it to post-launch, we have to turn into blood-thirsty marauders in test, right?
No green shall be safe!
That’s the easiest way for us to test.
😛
But…
for real - for real…
I plan to have a Corrupted Zombie Alt who turns as red as possible before decaying into dust.
Now the thing with WvW it had no consequences on the game, as soon as you left and were back in the world and nothing had changed. And it totally ruined the immersion in the 7 hour rolling battles I had just left.
One thing I'm really looking forward to is the PvX and the consequences rippling out in the world.
So for the PvE only peeps, get out of your comfort zone, and you'll discover a bunch of fun and risk, it's more attractive and engaging for the long term IMHO.
It just seems we have two groups of people in this discussion.
One group that thinks they will go around "tapping people to see if they want to PvP" and that they will be PvPing to defend "their spot", they will be defending their gatherers from PvP and that they will be attacking other gatherers to take their stuff. They believe anyone that doesn't want this is a "carebear" who wants to turn the game into a PvE only game.
The other is saying that the corruption penalties will be harsh and that open-world PvP by flagging as a combatant will hardly ever happen and will only be reserved for people you hold a grudge against and not because you will benefit from it. Gatherers will not be worried about getting PKed but will worry about whether their caravan will make it through. They expect to PvP in the caravan fights, node wars, GvG and whatever else the game decides to add but open-world PvP CANNOT revolve around the corruption system because that would lead to the game being a failure population wise.
Open world flagging for PvP as Combatant will happen a lot because Caravans and Sieges are open world PvP that auto-flag as Combatant and have no Corruption and no death penalties.
PKing Non-Combatants will be rare.
That is the dev goal.
Steven expects that dev goal will be met because PKing was rare in Lineage II and Corruption has harsher penalties than Lineage II Karma.
You actually mentioned several more than two groups, but, there is also another group (on the forums) that believes Corruption won’t protect them enough so Ashes needs a separate PvE-Only server.